Vision Quests and Sacred Sites

Home safe from the Rainbow Futures DruidCamp. It is the camp’s 13th year, my 9th camp and my 3rd year helping Mark Graham run the event. I’m so blessed to have him to run around and make mischief with, along with the whole team who make it happen, and a growing tribe without which there would be no point to it. It was, I think, the best one for years. I certainly worked harder and deeper than ever. I haven’t processed enough to blog about it properly, so instead here’s a couple of pieces from my old website again. They were both written and created in the years that I took my first steps into druidry as a path; so they have an extra sweetness today.

Sacred Sites ~ 2005

“In Britain we’re in the position of having a renaissance of usage of all sacred sites. For every tourist at some sites, there’s someone paying their respects to the ancestors – and you remember this is a living, breathing history, whose useage has been hidden rather than forgotten. For myself, true magic lies in the drive to the White Horse evey time things get a little wild, to blow my troubles away on Dragon Hill while safe in the arms of the Mother. It is rainbows over Stonehenge at the coldest of Winter Solstices. It is Wayland’s Smithy, and Knowlton Henge; ditch and bank, stone and barrow. It is home. It is the ancient sites and their call upon me that has forced me back to a re examination of my tribal culture. Now I listen to the debates of controlling access to our heritage, as I watch tourists and locals alike disrespect monuments like Avebury in a way they never would a cathedral…and I know there are no easy answers…

‘We arrived at the car park next to Silbury Hill after an afternoon drive from London peppered by intermittent torrential showers. It was raining again, the worst storm of the day. We parked facing straight onto the western flank of the hill and watched in awe. Awestruck by the ferocity of the rain, which was turning the car park into a lake as the water drained from the A4, and by the sheer madness of Silbury Hill. I’d been there before, even climbed to the top where you can play a game of cricket if you don’t mind a long walk to retrieve the ball after a boundary. But Theo had only seen pictures, and the reality of a 130 foot high manmade mound of chalk and earth is something else.’ – Phil”

Vision Quest ~ 2004

“I undertook a journey in the Spring of 2004 with a friend. Born out of a joint frustration with the practical, material world, we conceived it as a temporary escape – a miniature adventure. In the course of the three days we were away, it became both a vision quest and intensely cathartic learning experience. We travelled in spirals around a mystic Wales that was a place out of place in a time out of time. The sun shone constantly, upon mountains and coastlines alike, as we were led by our own noses through mazes and under waterfalls to our final, central, moonlit epiphany.

I cannot tell you all the stories we told each other, nor all the wisdom we found. I do know that at the end, as we stood together staring through the dark night to the waterfall below, I was shaken to the bone by the power, beauty and overwhelming sound of what we saw. May the Goddess forgive us for ever denying this, the physical realm.

Below are a few photos, and a map of the journey. Seasoned travellers will remember that the map is not the territory.”

Vision Quest ~ the map

Vision Quest Map
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