The Once And Future Ley Line

Part two of my report on the ancient sites tour of Southwest England with Freddy Silva and the Prophets Conference.

The Prophets

Our group traveled in not one, but two large coaches. The word Avalon was inscribed across the side in foot high letters announcing our mythical trek. But we were not on the trail of Arthurian legend, we were going further back in time to uncover the mysteries of ancient sites.

I sat in the back of the bus with an astrologer and a conspiracist, both English women. I met Stella the astrologist, walking from our B & B to the coach parking lot. She plied her profession in Australia and had her own magazine column and radio show. She looked athletic in her biking shorts and sports shoes, but complained that I walked too fast. Too much success had usurped her exercise time, she told me.

I met the conspiracist when we stopped at Silbury Hill, a man made mound. 

"Silbury Hill was built to monitor human progress", Freddy was saying, neglecting to mention who was doing the monitoring.

"It's like trying to talk to people about conspiracy theories," I said to the conspiracist, coincidentally picking up on her pet obsession. Giants, levitation, healing stones—it all came under the category of alternative realities not readily accepted by the mainstream. 

"I just don't say anything to people," said the conspiracist whose name was Elizabeth. I realized then, that she had probably indexed the whole kit and caboodle of conspiracy theories. 

"It's the Virgo in you that is so attracted to conspiracy theories," I heard Stella telling Elizabeth on the coach. "When I come across a conspiracy theory I just read it once then leave it, but you're obsessed with them," she explained. I was relieved to hear that there was a reason why the idea of conspiracy itself was so addictive. Rather than analyze the usefulness of the content, people gave in to the intrigue and paranoia of uncovering secret information. Fond as I was of certain conspiracy theories that had fundamentally changed my view of government, there were plenty of egregious things wrong with our exploitive capitalist system that was no secret at all. But I stayed out of it. I was absorbed by Freddy's book drawn by material I had never come across before. His information stimulated my mind, keeping it pliable and allowing new thoughts to arise. Serendipitously enough, just as we arrived at a new site I would be reading about it. 

We were at St Catherine's, a chapel high up on the top of a hill, sitting all by itself above the little village of Abbotsbury. Freddy called our attention to the placement of the chapel.

"If you want to encourage a congregation to come to church you would build it in a much more accessible place. So there must have been a different reason to put a chapel half a mile up a steep hill. There was; it was to take advantage of the telluric energies." I had to look this word up when I read it in his book. Telluric energies referred to earth energies. They could be currents traversing the landscape or ley lines as they were named by Alan Watkins, a Welshman who discovered the phenomena in 1921.

The chapel of St. Catherine's, a building of light colored stones and a lovely peaked doorway was situated on the Mary ley line, the feminine current. Once inside the heavy wooden door we found an empty room, no pews or an altar; nothing at all inside just light from the clear glass window. Freddy asked Peachie, a woman on staff with the tour planners, to lead us in ceremony. We did the same toning exercise as we had done in Stonehenge and found the note to be much higher. It was indeed a feminine energy.

Outside a stiff wind blew which Freddy attributed to the masculine energy of St. Michael. While we were inside, a rainstorm came upon us. It lessened when we departed from the little chapel. This was no accident Freddy commented; with this many people we were a force interacting with the land, thus rainstorms would wait until we were sheltered.

I was glad to have on my heavy waxed cotton raincoat, anyway, along with my water shedding leather hat. I had decided to bring the coat, instead of just a windbreaker, because of a shamanic journey in which a cockatoo showed me what the weather would be like for our trip. When my friend Gail in Henley read about my journey with the white bird, she said it must have been their cockatoo Tallulah who had guided me. I'm sure it was I replied, excited at having seen something with an actual connection to my trip. I had been wondering, since cockatoos were not native to England. When I met Tallulah she was indeed white with a yellow crest, but much smaller in person. Or perhaps it was I who was bigger. At any rate, in shamanic tradition, I had scoped out my trip beforehand and was thus prepared. None of the Europeans had brought rain jackets.

Having explored the divine feminine, the following day was devoted to becoming acquainted with the masculine energies. We began the day with another chapel on a hill, St. Michael's of Brentor near Dartmoor, built in the 12th century on a volcanic plug. With its dark stone and squared off tower, it looked aggressively masculine. The hill itself was ragged and spiky with weeds. Four thousand years ago, a mound had stood on the site. We dutifully climbed up to the chapel.

"All of you taking the steeper path must have Capricorn in your chart," Freddy joked watching the handful who were on a goat track straight up the rock face.

Inside the chapel were pews facing a stained glass window depicting the Archangel Michael, sword in hand held vertically. Behind us a workman was fixing something behind a metal grate. We did not attempt a ceremony, but listened to Freddy tell us how the sword of St. Michael pierced the telluric forces represented by a serpent or dragon. This piercing was done to prevent the geomagnetic force from moving away. The telluric energy was then captured inside the church where it was enhanced by the design of the building.

Once Upon A Ley Line

For the ancients, the land was all about power spots, places where the veil between the worlds was thin allowing a connection to the divine and guidance to what future lay ahead. Currents of geomagnetic forces connected these power spots along straight lines aka ley lines. Freddy explained that temple builders aimed to tame the currents of earth energies and keep it from moving. The cornerstone of the building pierced the current just as an acupuncturist pierced a meridian with a needle. The altar was then placed directly over the current. The altar was the spot where initiates experienced enhanced shamanic journeys. Or as Freddy put it, you went to the altar to be altered. 

I already knew from my year studying the earth based feminine tradition, that the snake was a symbol of the goddess and the story of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland represented the Catholic church taking dominion over the earlier pagan religion. So I was a little alarmed that, in Freddy's version, the snake was being pierced, but he was telling us that this was necessary to insure that humans could access its powers within a temple designed for the purpose. Then the Catholic priesthood took control by positioning themselves at the altar as the middle man. They kept the people from this direct access, denounced the symbol of the snake as evil, claimed the divine knowledge (direct access) was forbidden to man and made St. George a hero for slaying the dragon. It all amounted to the same thing. The control and dumbing down of the populace.

In the foyer of the little chapel of St. Michael, I was surprised that I felt a definite physical sensation. Long upright rods of pressure were stabbing through me into the ground almost pinning me in place much as the sword might pierce the dragon. I sat down next to one of my tour mates and told her how "stabby" the energy felt. She agreed. 

While we were in the chapel it again began to rain. It lessened a bit as we climbed down the hill to board our coaches. Freddy knew of a good pub in a nearby village, but when we got there the cook said he couldn't accommodate so many people so our coach drivers took us to the nearest big town where we stopped at a market square and fanned out to all the local eateries. I joined one of the prophet conference speakers, invited by his girlfriend who had shared with me the stabbiness of the energy at St. Michaels. Geoff Stray, a Brit whose day job was driving a bus, had written a half dozen books on the Mayan prophecy. He and his girlfriend were more interested in my work as an organizer than prophecy, but at the end of our lunch I couldn't resist asking how they were preparing for 2012. They weren't. It was a non-starter of a question. What exactly did one prepare for? Nor did they seem worried. (Like Freddy they would probably advise putting a case of champagne aside and inviting some friends.)

By afternoon our luck was running out. As we headed up the narrow little country lane to St. Clether's Well, we were thwarted by a bridge that was out of commission. Then when we decided to head for our third destination we were faced with a road that was closed. This meant turning the bus around; a seemingly impossible task. The driver, an older man experienced with country roads found a "T" intersection where he hoped to make the turn, but the back wheels started to dig into the soft shoulder and we appeared to be stuck. We asked him to let us out so the bus would be lighter. The drama of the stuck bus continued on for some time as everyone tried to help. Finally with enough traction from rocks borrowed from a neighbor's landscaping and handfuls of gravel several of the prophets threw under the wheel, half a dozen men in the group managed to push the coach to solid ground.

Freddy commented on how troublesome the male energy had become, referencing the state of the world, unbalanced as it was by female energy, but how we had managed with some grace to avert disaster. We were too late to make it to our third destination, but Freddy found another St. Michael's chapel on the Michael line. This was a ruin at Barrow Mump just off the motorway with easy access for a coach. A perfect save. On the hill the wind whipped around us as Freddy bid us all imagine archangel Michael delivering into our hands a sword of light. Afterwards, I realized the wind had taken my prized turkey feather right off my hat. It was nowhere to be found. I was upset that this insatiable masculine energy had run off with it, but all things considered it was a fair price for so many days of awesomeness. (There would be other more modest English feathers to adorn my hat.)

So it was with eagerness that we looked forward to our final day when the masculine and feminine energies would be expressed in perfect balance. For this experience we headed to nearby Wells Cathedral. This medieval example of architectural perfection stood in the middle of the town surrounded by green lawns. Stepping into a medieval church felt downright modern after all the ancient stone circles and neglected chapels. The Cathedral was teaming with life. A youth orchestra occupied the main hall rehearsing for a concert. Men and women in clergy robes strode purposely about.

Freddy pointed out the structure built to support the walls in the transept. After it was found that the walls were bowing outward from the weight, a builder had been called in to fix the problem. He neatly designed a double arch shape that happened to incorporate the shape of the vesica piscis, a symbol of sacred geometry discovered by the ancients and first recorded by Pythagoras. Freddy felt that this was on purpose claiming that builders were a subversive lot and were still faithful to the old pagan ways. The word pagan, he noted, is French for someone who lives in the country. Here a division of city and country culture was implied. The city culture being about centralized control and thus more authoritarian while the pagan culture followed the old ways of individualized access to the divine. (This rather reminded me of the city states of Asia aggressively courting the globalized market and sucking up all the resources of the nation while the peasant cultures in the country continued with the remnants of a localized sustainable economy while they still had access to the land.)


In the chapter house stairwell of Wells Cathedral, Freddy pointed out more subversive activity in a small decorative statue of a monk piercing the dragon. (Actually the monk has a stick in the dragon's mouth and is smiling so no struggle seems to have ensued.) This, he explained, indicated the builders understanding that there were telluric energies present. There were other dragon motifs at Wells showing dragon heads with beams coming out of their mouths very similar to the Chinese way of depicting dragons. The Chinese were aware of earth energies too, and put them to use in their study of Feng Shui.

Pilgrims Purpose

Skeptics, Freddy told us, would not be able to experience a site as designed for they are pre-programmed not to feel anything, defiantly waiting for proof, for the some feat of magic to be performed. Yes, skeptics, are by definition non-participants. And human participation was the final element needed to bring alive the power of a site. We were entering these sites as pilgrims, Freddy told us, not as tourists and that made all the difference. The quality of our attention and awareness are expressed as electromagnetic impulses and such impulses react with the forces held within the temple, fusing into a sympathetic resonance that then allowed for an interactive experience. 

The stairwell where the dragon was pierced led to the chapter house, a large round room with an arched ceiling. The large space easily accommodated all 50 plus of us and we spread around the perimeter sitting on the bench. Here again we toned the room with sound and were rewarded with the heavenly acoustics characteristic of cathedral space. The proportions of the room were so pleasing that we perceived it to be in perfect balance by whatever criteria, whether masculine with feminine, yin with yang or architectural ratio. None of us wanted to leave. The place opened us to reflection and memories, filling me with a sense of connection to the distant past that commanded my undying loyalty more appropriate to an age of faith than of doubt and bringing tears to my eyes. In real time, the room made me feel in balance, finely tuned, strong and agile. I wanted to dance the space despite the hard stone floor. I waited for everyone to leave, before leaping across the floor and turning a few cartwheels.

Wells was built over an ancient site as most medieval cathedrals were, whether to convert the local pagans to the new religion or to continue to capitalize on the earth energies is open to interpretation.  We visited the garden courtyard where the foundation of the original chapel can still be seen. Across the lawn was a small window in the wall looking into the garden where the original well head emerged as a lovely pond. 

Water in the form of underground streams, as well as electromagnetic energies were the first two elements required for placing sacred sites. Next came sacred measure and geometry. The entire cosmos of the planets studied and taken down in numeric form, then embodied into the measurements and architecture of the temple building, recorded there for posterity. Thus when we visited Glastonbury, that afternoon, we heard the story of how King Henry the VIII came to Glastonbury to demand the treasure (taxes collected) and not being given any blew up the cathedral, not realizing that the cathedral itself was known as The Treasure, a farmer's almanac of information about the movement of the planets, eclipses, seasonal events. All that was left was a few buttresses and a piece of the chapel ceiling.

For our final event together we climbed up the side of the hill just beneath the Tor. The Tor was the iconic symbol of Glastonbury. It was the tower on top of a hill; said hill was once surrounded by water and was the island known as Avalon. Freddy got out his dowsers and found an energy vortex in the ground, counting out nine spirals. He then directed us to form two intersecting lines like a celtic cross. Thus joined we ran together in a counter clockwise direction to insert our energy into the vortex. After three or four turns we ran the other direction to release the energy. Freddy counted the spirals again and there were 23. This was to show us that in interacting with the land we were able to increase the energies and keep them potent. 

Thus the purpose of the pilgrim was revealed. To bring to the earth our energy, keep alive the fecundity of the land and keep the planet happy so both would thrive for another year. Not a bad practice considering our current relationship to the planet.

The Prophets Tour

Part one of my report on the tour of ancient sites in southwest England. In which I learn how the visitor's participation animates the power of the sites in their role as temples.

Stonehenge

Of all the iconic landmarks that could represent England, I was most attached to Stonehenge. Its mystery kept alive something that history hadn't managed to categorize and box up. It dominated the landscape, despite being bound on two sides by noisy highways. To the average visitor it was cordoned off and had to be viewed from a distance, but Freddy Silva, our tour leader, had promised that we would have complete access to the stones. And though there were so many of us that we had to enter in two groups of 26, we would all have an hour at sunset to absorb the mystery held within the circle of stones.

Catherine and I were in the second group. We stood on the path feeling the stones from afar. And we could feel it too. I hadn't known to do this on previous visits, but having practiced feeling for energy forces emanating from individuals in my Shamanic healing workshop, I was enthralled that this sensation was so defined against my palms, like a wall of buoyant energy. I was too hard of hearing to hear the high pitch sound given off by the stones, but Catherine could hear it. Both of these phenomena Freddy had mentioned we might sense.

Since this tour was a part of my Shamanic exploration, I came prepared to dance my spirit animals at the site. I had my iPod with me and began to do a jig of sorts, much to the amusement of Catherine who was taking video pictures of me (and listening to her own iPod—to a Buddhist dharma talk). Then we hung out on the grass, on this clear evening, watching the first group mingle about among the stones. After a while, I lay on the ground to attempt a shamanic journey, but I couldn't do it; the site appeared to be protected underground by a rigid replica of the stones and I was unable to proceed. Just at that moment Catherine was telling me to get up. It was time to go in.

As we entered through the gateway stones, Freddy told us to hold an intention for something we wanted to ask the stones. Ask the stones! I was surprised by this New Age speak for I had joined the tour because of his knowledge of geomancy. At the same time his charming manner told us not to hold him accountable for any of this woo woo stuff. (I often used such charm myself just to see how far people would humor me. To charm was, after all, a casting of a spell to remove you from ordinary reality.)

And so he told us the story he espoused, about how Stonehenge came to be built by a race of Egyptian builders—giants who were some twelve feet tall—who came to Britain circa 8,000 B.C. as part of a temple building boom after a global flood. Said builders had levitated the stones into place. In England this levitation story is popularly attributed to Merlin. I was familiar with discussions of levitation from other New Age literature, but giants—not so much—apart from Jack and the Beanstalk and Haggard in Harry Potter.

These builders were "dedicated to the preservation and transmission to the future, of a body of spiritual knowledge from the remote past," Freddy says in his book Common Wealth. They wanted to "maintain an unbroken chain of self-help centers in the face of potential chaos…because temples are living organisms that amplify human potential". It was the part about amplifying human potential that had excited me enough to make this journey across ocean and continent to see for myself.

Curiously, once inside the circle, I could no longer feel the electromagnetic force. The stones seemed quiet and protective. Later I would learn that the site was designed in such a way that an electromagnetic field was created around the perimeter to protect it and to alert those who knew how to use such sites. Perhaps that was why I couldn't journey outside of the site. And why I was seeing a picture of it all locked up. Duh.

Stonehenge was originally intended to be a lunar calendar, Freddy told us, which was why the blue stones used to be outside the circle of larger stones, but when the climate changed, the ancients moved the stones inside to adapt to the new solar oriented climate. Thus mankind went from a feminine culture (governed by the moon) to a masculine culture (governed by the sun). That's for sure, I thought, but I'd not heard it attributed to a change in climate.

Even more interesting was the healing properties that Freddy mentioned was associated with the stones through sound. Sound was a method healers used to put the human body back into alignment. This coincided with recent information I had learned about the use of sound to open the chakras for healing. 

Sound was a tool we would use to raise the level of energy within the site; this would make it easier for us to access what the site had to offer, Freddy told us. He then instructed us to find a note that we felt emanated from the stones and sing it. This was called toning. I'm not much of a singer, but I did indeed feel that the note I picked was true to the stones; it was also in harmony with the rest of the group. 

He then suggested we look around and find the stone that was calling to us, go to it and see what it had to offer. He encouraged us to "go with the faeries" as we did this. In his own way, he was speaking in shamanic terms.

The best way I knew to access knowledge from an "inanimate" object was to use a fluid mind—enter the dreamscape with my spirit animals. Standing before a large stone on the perimeter, I meshed with Mongoose, climbed up to the top and asked for a vision of the future. I saw a man in a horse drawn cart coming down a dirt road. He looked like Igor from the movie Young Frankenstein.

"You've been reading too many peak oil books", I said to Mongoose, and climbed down again.

At the next stone I meshed with Bear, climbed up to the top, looked at the sky and saw a space ship by twilight. Well now, this was more fun. I stayed there waiting and a hatch opened. A humanoid alien walked down the gang plank, put out a finger and touched me then returned to his ship and took off.
Having got the obvious visions out of the way, my mind was emptier of expectation. I approached a small stone about waist high. I had Mongoose touch it. (We were not allowed to touch the stones; it made the guards anxious.) The pint size stone started to dance and reminded me of Silly Putty, a favorite toy I made my parents buy me when I was ten. What had entranced me about Silly Putty was that you could press it onto a newspaper and take from it an imprint. The stone was telling me it was a publishing stone. Good enough; I had friends telling me to publish and now a stone too. 

Behind it was a taller stone with a tiny hole where an eye might be. It told me it was a reporter stone and received massive amounts of information through his one eye. This visual amused me so intensely, I was satisfied that I had found the right message. I sat back and watched a crow fly to the top of the lichen encrusted stones. He caught a wasp buzzing about there and ate it. 

The sun was setting. It was time to go. As we left the site, a woman in our group came up to me.

"I love your energy", she said. This is New Age speak for I think you're hot—on a cosmic level. 

"Are you Native American?" she asked me. Ah, she was fooled by the feather in my hat. I told her my background and asked her where she was from. 

"Jerusalem," she said. 

The Hat, The Shirt, The Feather

My outfit for Stonehenge was purposefully flamboyant. For the trip, I had sewn a shirt from fabric so full of colors it looked like a Rousseau jungle. The shirt had a floppy collar and wide medieval sleeves ending in elastic clown ruffles at the wrist. (Very useful for pushing up the elbow when the day turns warm.) To the open V neck collar, I could add my white aviator scarf when the nights got chilly. I wore the shirt like a tunic with my black belt with the sun ray brass buckle (made by a craftsman in San Gimignano from our visit to Italy). Worn with black pants, it was, all in all, a swashbuckling effect. When you can't blend in, you might as well stand out. It makes people consider twice before pigeonholing you. 

To complete the outfit I had to have a hat. If I was not to be English (for I knew the English did not hear my accent as English), then I might as well be American. This called for a baseball cap or a cowboy hat. The closest I had to a cowboy hat was my leather Australian Bahmah (also perfect for rainstorms).

My mother noticed the feather poked into the hatband when she came to take us to the airport. She commented on it being shaman like. Indeed, it was the final shamanic touch. It was a turkey feather, often used by Native Americans in their ritual ornamentation. I found the big, brown and white striped feather on a recent camping trip to Henry W. Coe State Park. There you can hear the wild turkeys gobble as you wake up. They left me the feather on the trail near the campsite.

 "It's all about the hat," I told my mother as I put it on my head for the ride to the airport.

The Prophets

In the next few days I would get to know the tour members. Many were professional intuitive counselors, astrologers, channelers, healers, Reike practitioners, massage therapists plus an accountant. The tour leaders referred to us as prophets after the name of their conference. It was not altogether a misnomer. I had been "prophesying" doom for some years now.

At Avebury we gathered at the very long procession of what was originally 600 stones standing in two lines about 20 feet apart. The pairs of rocks were designed to wake up the entering initiate as electromagnetic energy bounced between them. 

The site was on two ley lines known as the Michael and Mary line (or in pre-Christian times as the Apollo and Athena line). The stones on the left guarded the female line and the ones on the right, the male line. Several of the prophets said they could feel the pulsing between the pairs of stones. I couldn't feel it, but I was used to being the dumb one in the group.

To show us where these energy fields began and ended Freddy asked for a pair of dowsers and sure enough one of the prophets produced a pair. As he walked across the field in front of the stones, with the L shaped metal rods in his fists, the dowsers turned just as he reached the edge of the stone and turned again when he reached the other edge. I was dumbstruck. Now I was going to have to learn about dowsing. (It is not unlike the pendulum with which I already have a familiarity.)

For his next demonstration Freddy called for a volunteer. We had, by then, entered the main field where the stone circle lay. We were at a very large female rock at the entrance of the circle. It had a seat in it where the volunteer would sit. Once she did so, Freddy scanned her with his hand to discover the site of the ailment (as I had learned in my extraction healing workshop). He held his hand there and toned the appropriate note into the rock face. At the top of the "sound" chamber the rock jutted out capturing the sound and sending it back down to the patient.

"I can see her chakra expanding," said one of the prophets with a North American accent.

"Ah good so it's working," Freddy said.

Later I spoke to the woman who could see chakras and asked if she was an intuitive. She said she had been able to see auras since quite young and was giving classes when she was thirteen, but there was not much money in intuitive work so now she was a coach. Hmm, yes, join the club.

On the third day, of the tour, we followed just the Mary line for we were devoting the day to getting a feel for the feminine energy. And what a lovely day it was for taking in the sites. First a fertility site where the Cerne Giant with his impressive phallus was etched in the hillside with lines of white chalk. Then a visit to the Cerne Well in a quiet walled garden behind a church. 

As we sat in the dappled light under the trees, Freddy encouraged us to enjoy the contemplative environment and to drink from the stone basin in the ground at our feet. The water was full of iron and was good for us, he said. We would also be drinking the memories of all those who came before us which would connect us to the past and future. The water was cool and thick. It had been a long time since I could drink water directly from nature.

This, I thought, was the perfect place for a shamanic journey and just as I picked my intention for the journey (to help me further bond with my two power animals), a German woman, not from our group, spoke up and announced that she was going to lead a shamanic journey and anyone who wanted to could join her. I looked up to see a large, bespectacled woman in a poncho and a hat much like mine. In her hand she held a handmade skin drum.


How serendipitous was that? I put my face in my hat to block the light and she began to drum exactly the beat that I was accustomed to.

And so we three spirit friends, Bear, Mongoose and I set off on a fast ride in a dinghy up the Cerne spring. We were enjoying the open countryside when the spring led us into an underground tunnel behind the Cerne Giant. We then came to a large wooden door. The drum bid us enter and we walked into a sun filled village peopled with celebrants. Following the path we came to a rock face from which water poured forth. A pretty woman in period dress and flowers in her hair stood beside it. She handed us each a crystal goblet and bid us drink. This we did and were thus refreshed and bonded in this ceremonial pilgrimage to the wellhead. Just then the drum sounded the beat of return and we hurried back the way we came, boat and all. It was such an invigorating journey it filled me with magic. Afterwards I got up and introduced myself to the German shaman, exchanging a few words about our shamanic traditions.

A Prophets Advice

For lunch there were two pubs to pick from, The Royal Oak and The Giant Inn. Naturally I picked the Giant. Soon other prophets joined me, ones I recognized for their high level of intuitive skills. When they asked what I did for a living they were fascinated that I went into people's home to do actual clutter clearing. How funny, I thought, for their work was equally exotic to me.

Another prophet, an Englishwoman, sat down next to me and bid me tell her about the feather in my hat, asking if it was an eagle feather. She also wanted to know what was up with the red rock lobsters on my bright yellow shirt. I explained about the turkey feather and told her how I had made the shirt from a vintage Hawaiian sarong (in the same style as the Rousseau jungle shirt). This seemed to past muster and she proceeded to speak to me as a peer. 

She was a channeler, she said, as if describing an ordinary job. (I love that down-to-earth quality of the New Age Brits.) I asked her how that was different from a medium. She said mediums just work with dead people. She used to do that, but dead people weren't any wiser for being on the Other Side and she was tired of them leaving footprints on her psyche. Channelers, she told me, work with the energy of the earth, Gaia for instance, to ask her to be gentle with her back cracking which we experienced as earthquakes.

She asked how San Francisco had managed to avoid having an earthquake, because from where she stood, one was due, what with all the earthquakes happening in Japan and all.

"I don't know", I said, "all of us who live there are nuts." For living in earthquake country, I was thinking.

"It probably feels good living there", she said, "because of all the negative ions coming out of the cracks in the earth". I hadn't thought of that.

"We'll you must be doing something right," she concluded. Yes, according to Gaia relationship theory, we must be in her good graces. I liked to think so with all the weekend events I went to to improve things with the planet.

She told me about brokering deals with unfriendly spirits that harmed the environment. It sounded so much like what I'd been reading about possession by unwanted entities, I told her about my hoarding clients. She said I should do space clearing after I decluttered my clients' homes. 

"I'm not really trained in space clearing", I told her. "It's more the department of my Feng Shui colleagues." 

"I'm giving you a hint," she said adamantly, not put off by a lack of credentials. "And you should change your name to Ananda," she added. This was a Sanskrit name also used in Thailand. Perhaps she had changed her name too, I wondered later. She had a Celtic one with a handful of vowels. I heard it as Elfa.

When I told Catherine, that evening about Elfa's suggestion, she reminded me that Ananda was also the companion to the Buddha. Yes, I remembered. He was the dumb one who didn't get what the Buddha was going on about, asked a lot of questions and wrote everything down.

"Well, that sounds about right," I said.

The Queens English

A report from my trip to England in which I fall in love with England through my mother tongue and must promptly extricate myself for fear of losing my edge.

The Queens English

It was Freddy who started it; this journey quest to England in search of the next step, not that I knew what that was exactly. I was aiming for spiritual advancement, but it could just as easily have amounted to a rabbit hole of arcane, academically dubious material. New Age types are not given to vigorous, intellectual analysis, but when I heard Freddy's English accent, I felt in the hands of someone who was educated.

Americans are apt to attribute an education to nearly any kind of English accent. I benefit from this mythology all the time, but Freddy spoke the Queens English as it is heard on BBC (and at Harry Potter's Hogwarts). Freddy had been the opening act of The Prophets Conference on 2012, which I attended in Palm Springs last March. I was so intrigued by the sacred geometry of ancient sites in his presentation, that I examined the 5 day tour he was giving to see if it would justify the peak season airfare to England. I decided I could manage it, if I slept in a tent. 

At this point Catherine got interested, said she would come along for the ride, wherever it was I wanted to go as long as I planned it. Catherine was not the vagabond, tent-traveling type, so I wrote friends in England who might be pressed into putting us up. With only three months to prepare I plotted out a two week trip that linked visits with friends, inexpensive B & Bs and rail travel (offered at a discount if booked exactly to the day and time of travel). This coordination tested the limits of my event planning skills, but I was satisfied that it was feasible.

I had not been to England since 1993 (for the funeral of my English grandmother). My English contacts assured me that England had not changed. I am pleased to report that it has been improved upon. Restaurant food, for instance, was so improved it could have been a different country. Part California cuisine, part European slow food movement boasting regional British specialties. American style customer service had also been embraced in shops so no longer did I have to fear the grumpy, put-upon sales matron. Pay telephones worked when you put the coin in first instead of after dialing and toilet paper came in soft rolls instead of glassine sheets. (I exaggerate a wee bit. Those strange waxy sheets were no longer in use by 1993.)

But it was true, England had not really changed. There was the rolling sheep studded countryside still unspoiled, the pubs and villages, public footpaths and miles of train transport. I was reminded, again, of how the built environment can affect a way of life. The British, on the whole, knew enough not to spoil it. It seemed to go hand in hand with their uber politeness as they waved thank-you to the motorist who paused to let them pass on those tiny country roads. 

A far cry from the competitive Bay Area traffic and soul, sucking concrete business parks of Silicon Valley. Even San Francisco, beautiful as it is, was said to be the least friendly to visitors in the entire country. When I read this, I vowed to personally change this attitude, along with the snarky online presence that had somehow spawned out of our geek speak. But then, last summer I nearly ran over, with my bicycle, some annoyed Midwesterners in a cross walk, while attempting to beat out the car traffic along the San Francisco waterfront. Given a little wider road, I could see that British drivers easily picked up speed, too, leaving pedestrians at their peril.

This England:
Henley-On-Thames

Our first landing, in England, would be the home of my American friend Gail and her English husband, Clive. When they met us at the airport, she hugged me for dear life and burst into tears. She was lonely in England. The English had not quite embraced her as one of their own even after 22 years; her emotional style overwhelmed them I could see. The British reserve had not changed and Gail was at a loss to penetrate it with her New Jersey born, American Italian exuberance. Even with the help of her English Sheepdog (for the English go completely soft with their dogs). Gail was intuitive based and not the least bit cerebral so had no irony or deftness with words; she liked to call it like it was and wear her heart on her sleeve. All, so not English. She did, however, match the British in understatement.

"Our spare room is not much, but it does have a nice view," she had written me. The view was a stunner—rolling, sheep-studded, countryside as far as the eye could see and not a building on it, just classic hedgerows dividing up the fields. Catherine spent everyday sitting in a chair basking in the late evening glow as though at the beach. It was so quiet we got the rest we needed too. In the morning we could hear, through our bedroom window, sheep bleating.

Gail and I had worked together back when I still had a day job. She met Clive when he came to California seeking a business opportunity. When the deal fell through, Gail and her youngest daughter Courtney, moved to England with Clive. Courtney also married a Brit and now had a little girl whom Gail doted upon. All three saw each other everyday while selling their Nirvana Natural line of herbal shampoos out of the home office. Clive drove around to clients cutting hair. In the evening he treated us to home cooked meals and brought out his cockatoo to do tricks for us after dinner.

Clive was a character in the truest British sense, eccentric, passionate about topics of interest and devoted to his hobby of making models of English villages from scrap materials, recycling the styrofoam that meat was packed in. Built to a 4mm scale they were uncannily accurate. Having an absorbing hobby, he told us, was the key to mental health.  

It was Clive, who happily filled us in on his home town of Henley, plus various opinions on the Royals and politics. He was proud to show all his favorite spots telling us the literary and movie making trivia of each destination. There was also, on top of his patter, another layer for me to tune into. That of self reflection—of seeing oneself in the context of a larger world. His perspective automatically included the countries of Europe and the States. The UK was, Clive told us, the bridge between Europe and the West—the US. He commented on how speech patterns tied in with identity. "The British answer a question with a question, don't you see?" he explained. 

As I listened to him I realized that he, too, had constructed in his mind a big picture of how the world worked. The whole world. We probably wouldn't agree on everything, but at least he had such a world view. At home my mind was too often corralled by the high fences of the American point of view, seemingly unable to picture anything beyond the two coasts (while Mexico was blocked off by a real wall and Canada seen as part of our English-only North American identity). Because of this, I felt it was difficult for Americans to see themselves in the international arena as the heavies in a world empire. Public discourse often framed the US as the underdog, vulnerable to attack at any moment from savages who didn't understand our "freedoms" (and our economic free market rightness), while conveniently ignoring Europe, an already democratized entity (with civilized social services like health care). Meanwhile, context in America was so sorely muddled by the shouting heads on right wing Fox News and wordy liberal ideologues on the left, rendering the average American delusional. (Most Americans would agree with me as long as I was talking about the opposing political party.) As it stands, nothing sensible can be discussed to address real problems. It was this polarization that would make me itch, periodically, to leave the US and seek an alternative view.

On our last day in Henley, I found that I had the wrong train ticket for the station we would depart from. Clive roll played for me how to be thoroughly indignant at the ticket office while stating my case as having made every attempt to play by the rules of the system. 

"Shut up, Clive," said Gail when he repeated this performance for the third time. It was so well thought out, it could have been a Monty Python skit. If I could just drum up such a head of steam. (Thankfully no one even asked to see the ticket at the station and once we got on the train the ticket matched the train.) We bid our adieus vowing to come back much sooner than my 18 year hiatus.

We would spend the weekend in the lovely high end town of Bath and then head to Glastonbury, the curious tiny town that had become a mecca for all things New Age. Friends at home followed along on flickr as I uploaded pictures each night. Narrating the photos also kept my trip data in order for future reference. This was a working vacation. I wanted to get my money's worth, though it meant I slept about 5 hours a night, and napped so much during the day, that Catherine said I was missing half the scenery. 

The Ancient Sites Tour not only fulfilled my expectations, but confirmed my path. Freddy so consciously used the English language to reveal layers of meaning that I'm saving the experience for an essay of its own. 

After the tour, we journeyed to the home of old family friends in Cornwall.

This Other Eden: Cornwall

Arriving late in Penzance, we were thankfully met by Aidan (whom I had first met when he was ten or so and I was 18). He drove us to the family farm where he lived with his husband Patrick, a prolific novelist. We offered to take Aidan out to dinner, but he told us they were having a dinner party at home with a few friends and he hoped we wouldn't mind joining them. He had cooked for it too.

When he took us into the dining room to meet everybody it was clear that everyone was gay. How delightful. We couldn't have felt more at home. There was even a lesbian couple, Carol and Jo. They each gave me the universal, gripping handshake of the tribe. While the men gently pressed my hand, towering over me in flowing linen garments. Two were professional artists. A third guest, of this illustrious crew, was an actor.

We were on review, I realized; the guests of honor by dint of having come so far and being related through my mother who was Aidan's mother's best friend when they were ten.

I explained how our train had developed a malfunctioning whistle so, due to safety requirements, we had to get off and catch another. When asked how many days we had been in England, I said it seemed like three times as long because we had crammed so much into our schedule.

"You must be knackered," said Jo which made me laugh at such a word. Her loose blond hair fell to her shoulders, while her girlfriend Carol had hers short. Jo collected up her barking terrier and offered me a seat on the couch with her, while Patrick took Catherine into his care at the other side of the room with everyone else. Jo was soon asking me questions, just the two of us.

Her diction was so distinct that, with each precise spacing and tightening of consonants, I felt my own diction bumped up a notch and my brain getting smarter as a result. Despite the seven hour train ride and half empty glass of champagne in my hand, my mind was seeking out all the layers of information in the conversation. She was asking me questions about how I talked to clients as a professional organizer. She knew enough about psychological terms to be a therapist, but not quite enough to confirm it. Later I found out she was a lawyer. No a barrister, she corrected me. (In England this means with robes and wigs and all.) Well no wonder. I could imagine hearing such diction ringing out in a courtroom drama from the 40s.

But there was something else that was entering my head like a drug. Jo had a style that was so charming it flirted with flirting if you get my meaning. It was harmless enough; just a fun way to connect, but it was allowed. At home I spent so much energy trying not to flirt in this manner with straight colleagues at networking functions that I had to give up drink—and take up combative argument. I inherited the flirting gene from my English mother for by the time I was ending high school, my best friend (and first lover) was accusing me of flirting with her boyfriend adding the comment "And you didn't even know you were doing it." Americans don't often mix charm with inquiry. American lesbians, once they learned to flirt, did it broadly with low brow humor so was unmistakably flirting. How did I get this lucky to have entered the British reserve so delightfully? I was asking myself. 

Jo told me she had read one of my essays that Aidan forwarded to her; the one about building a composting toilet which, she said was verging on "barkers". "Barkers" is a word I've only heard once in a movie with Meryl Streep and I was beside myself laughing at the Britishness of it. Its meaning could not be mistaken, as in barking mad, "mad dogs and Englishman" i.e. just plain crazy. It made me laugh to hear it again. It cost Jo something to offer this assessment so I knew she meant it. (Doubtless, others of my readers thought the whole composting toilet project was barkers too. Catherine wasn't too keen on it at all, but it earned me rank with the eco living crowd.) What Jo really wanted to know, I felt, was how attached I was to the character I represented in that piece. By this hour, I was so not attached to anything I ever stood for, I was in danger of trading it all in for a life in England. So in love was I with the beauty of the land, the language and the life there.

"I've always wanted to have that adjective applied to me," I replied laughing. And so felt accepted.

In contrast to Jo's charm, Carol was self-deprecatingly witty. The next evening as we set out to dinner at Aidan's parent's house, two fields away Carol said "I've had too much to drink. I'd best be kept on a short leash."  This was so brilliant a use of self for own joke, my mind reeled at the implications. I might have quite a lot in common with Carol, I thought. As a landlord, she worked with tools and houses. She would offer what she knew if asked and I sensed that that was a fair amount.

Everyone was so smart, we were beginning to feel intimidated. They were well educated, too—Patrick at Oxford even. Oxford was such a mythological place of highbrow learning, Catherine wanted to go there to experience it. We did go our first day out from Henley and had the mythology confirmed by the over-the-top architecture and the history. I secretly realized that if I had gone to Oxford it would have been even more difficult to escape. I would have had to have as much conviction as, say, Oscar Wilde (an Oxford graduate). Reporting from The Barking Edge takes gumption (and dang it someone has to do it).

Aidan's mother, June, welcomed us into her home with such goodwill and down to earth commentary, we immediately felt at ease. But it was too late, for I had already internalized the British sense of modesty and was beginning to pull up on the reins. I was watching myself choke the emotion from all my stories and redirecting them to some other subject besides me. I could no longer use myself as a foil because it just seemed too self-indulgent to even be in the picture at all. I felt apologetic. Soon I would have to get a real job. 

Even Patrick, the natural leader of the conversation, as a professional story teller, asked questions that didn't require emotional content, so careful was he to protect your privacy for you. Not like our lot in California who don't think something is real until you tell them how it personally made you feel. I needed that reflected back to me so I would know that people were interested. In retrospect the British probably needed that too. 

Next time I visited, I vowed, I would come armed with a bigger bark.