the raven

Hi everyone

Thank you very much for your accounts of the Imbolc ceremony, I will enjoy them and imagine myself there!

On another note – I’ve been doing some reading – has the Grove ever been on a visit to the Ankerwyke Yew – reputedly the oldest Yew tree around – in Buckinghamshire, I think? Would it be a good visit one day maybe? It is reputedly more than 1000 years old. Just a suggestion, excuse if old hat, maybe you’ve all been there already?

Happy Imbolc
Francesca

Hi everyone I’ve just been finding out a bit more about Ankerwyke Yew. It’s apparently about 2000 – 2,500 years old, or thereabouts though it’s v hard to tell how old yews are after a certain point because they grow and behave in a very idiosyncratic way, the more so as they get older so the carbon-dating stuff is unreliable.

However I gather the Ankerwyke yew is a mere spring sapling compared to a couple of others, (including one in Scotland which is reputed the oldest living thing in Europe, a mind-boggling 4000 or more years old, in a village named in Gaelic something like ‘place of the sacred grove’ – I bet there’s Scottish druids queueing up to celebrate there) Anyhow the Ankerwyke one is near Windsor, on land owned by the National Trust, which I assume means it’s open to the public. The nearest station is called Wraysbury, though I don’t know how far that is from the actual tree. Fairly near I think. But it might be worth investigating further maybe?

I will leave a proper write-up to someone who wasn’t organising it, as I’d like to see how it felt for somebody else. However, after the seedgroup we agreed that we would put the details of the music we played up on the site, so here goes.

1) As people arrived. el-Hadra, the Mystik dance, ISBN 3–88848-094–9, published by Aquarius International Music, CD number AIM 0094.

2) Daniel’s choice in talking stick round was Dido’s Lament, which is the last part of the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell. The recording was by Les Arts Florissants, conductor William Christie, publisher Harmonia Mundi, number HML 5905173.

3) Lorraine’s choice was “Chi passa per’sta strada” by Filippo Azzaiolo, arranged by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, from the album Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet, Sony Classical.

4) Additionally, Daniel played “Cherubic Hymn” (Izhe kherumvimy) from the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom by Tchaikovsky. The recording by Corydon Singers, Matthew Best. Hyperion CDA66948,

5) We finished with “La Bas” from the album “The Mirror Pool” by Lisa Gerrard, published by 4AD, CAD 5009.

A short account of Sunday! It was a great meeting, and many thanks to Mark and Daniel for organising it, and to Daniel and Lorraine for hosting it.

A few things struck me especially – how much music means to us all, what an endlessly absorbing topic of conversation it can be, but also, how very differently we all view it and what an expression of individuality it is. Several people made the point that music can be both a great unifier and a great divisive force, it’s an expression of identity both individual and group, or tribe, or, as Andrew commented, class. I suppose it’s a language, but it’s also a rich source of all the things we want and need to find in it, emotion, meditation, humour, transcendence, relaxation. It was also interesting to realise that not only ‘Spiritual’ music with a capital S is in fact spiritual to, or resonates with, (as was discussed on Sunday), any one individual. Our spiritual and religious feelings are as wide-ranging as our tastes in music!

I was particularly interested in Daniel’s thoughts about the way sound resonates, and the whole conversation about sound and space, and spaces, as I’d never thought about any of those things before. Mark also played an amazing CD of sounds and tunes and birdcalls on ancient wind instruments – as a wind player himself, (who played beautifully to us on his penny whistle) obviously these instruments are dear to his heart!

I don’t know people well enough yet to be able to say how such and such a piece reflected so and so’s personality, but I liked what Hilde said about identifying with certain words in her ‘Dead Can Dance’ song about making a path for the spirits because that is what she works on in her own shamanic practice. I’d never heard of that band before, though others had. That piece sparked off a conversation in itself about the relationship between music and words, with some of us being more oriented towards one or the other, or vocal or instrumental music in general. All thought-provoking stuff, why this should be, and what the relationship is.

I think it was Daniel who commented, after we’d finished discussing our ‘round’ of chosen pieces, that it felt quite emotionally intense. I suppose it did, but it also felt as if we could have another seedgroup on exactly the same subject another day, and the pieces would have been quite different, ditto the conversation!

Stop Press: We now have organisers for all the meetings listed below apart from the picnic (proposed) on July 10th. Please consider if you would be prepared to organise this, especially if you haven’t organised anything else recently. Hint: it could well be the easiest thing to organise of the whole year!

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Yesterday I had one of the more interesting days of my life. I was one of a team of people who did a spiritual clearing of a large house in Clapham that its owners had difficulty selling, or even getting people to come and view.

Now, I’ve never done anything like this before. I was a fourth member of a team, mostly there to hold a bowl of water and learn about this kind of work. A friend of mine was heading the team. I have to tell you now: I have/had great difficulty believing in ‘bad energy’ and the idea that you can make it better with a bit of meditation, some incense and some red flowers. I have trouble with ley lines. But yesterday, I felt the bad energy for myself, and felt it change. And all we did was have some fun in somebody else’s very nice house.

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Yes, I have spent the last year or so on the Earth Element. Mainly because of what I had set myself as a task for Gwers 18. But now I’m ready to move on, hopefully somewhat faster.

Gwers 19 asks you to do something practical for the protection of the Earth. I decided that we humans are killing ourselves by polluting the Earth. So I joined Friends of the Earth. So far so boring.

But I also believe that we are killing ourselves, at this moment in history but not for the first time, by paying more attention to what divides us as a human family than what we have in common. On a daily basis the media bring us messages that present difference as a threat. And we often willfully maintain prejudices and misunderstandings between people.

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