If you choose to come and linger
Place upon your lips one finger
Hear the wind He knows our secrets
But if you spill them you will regret
We ask for blood and you will bleed yes
If not offered then we will take it
It’s our tithe for you to be here
And if given your sight is freed dear
Before your eyes our vision shimmers
Of our power your knowledge glimmers
On this day the curtains thin dear
And you and I we both can be here
My beating heart lies just beneath you
My teasing laugh is just beyond you
No matter how far or long you reach dear
The edge of me you’ll never breach dear
I am not as the others paint me
I’m not some pretty sugared dainty
If I’m primed I’m sure to thrill you
But if you cross me I will kill you
For I’ve an eye for those who are false
And if you lie then I’ll have your pulse
I’ll poke and prod and beat and break you
For that’s the way that I remake you
I’ll bind you up or spin you about
I’ll give you sight or gouge your eyes out
I’ll lift you high above it all
Then watch you fly or I’ll watch you fail
I’ll wear the form that terrifies you
And then I’ll sneak up right behind you
As you watch these visions streaming
Careful you don’t head home screaming
Beyond our Hills our call we send out
Awaken those whose ears will hear our
Silken voices threading this place
Green grey brown they colour His face
He has you tightly on a leash dear
Won’t let you stray beyond His reach dear
So be careful how you treat Him
Kindness comes from how you greet Him
Beneath your feet treasures await you
But dig them up and they’ll forsake you
For all that golden does not glisten
And all we ask is for you to listen
The ground it hungers for you to feed them
Hungry mouths awaiting seeding
If all you do is just to stand there
Before your eyes all will be laid bare
If you choose to come and linger
Place upon your lips one finger
Hear the wind He knows our secrets
But if you spill them you will regret
Communing with spirits, of whatever variety, brings up a lot of demons to negotiate; inner and outer. In Western cultures, admitting to seeing and communicating with something many can’t see will bring up the spot fires of eccentricity or madness. And not just from those now referred to as ‘Muggles’. I have found myself having to leave groups because some people within them could not let go of the madness label when confronted with my confessions. For a long time I battled with it myself. My earliest writings about my experiences I never dated so I could pretend it was fiction if asked. Until I met someone who also saw and communed with spirits (and was happy to talk about it) I didn’t know what to think.
My dance with fire is a very personal one, and yet something I know that a lot of other people do. I don’t choose the spirits that come to me. I don’t choose their gender. I don’t choose their ethnicity. I don’t choose their colour. I don’t choose their type. They are just there and we either connect or we don’t. I commune a lot with spirits of Egyptian deities. One of them told me once that my soul was Egyptian. I commune with spirits of the Fae Folk. I was told by one I trust that our bloodlines had crossed at some point in the past. I commune with other spirits as well, those tied to my blood whether they be ancestral spirits or other kinds. One of them is Horned. And I commune with spirits of this land; with Indigenous spirits.
There is a lot of talk about the dangers of cultural appropriation. That unless there is some kind of ancestral link to spirits or deities then you should not work with them. Especially if they belong to a living practice and heritage. There is a lot of guilt mixed into this. People not wanting to take yet more from a people who have had too much taken already. People not wanting to give away something they have had to struggle to hold onto. I don’t know where I stand with this. Should I tell the spirits that I’m working with that I can’t work with them because I’m white? That would be rude, seeing as how they want to work with me. And yet many of the arguments I hear make sense with regard to the living.
Actually working with spirit is something I initially found hard to do. Not the engaging part, but the treating them as if they are living breathing people. My background, television, movies, books, all told me that I was to command the spirit and the spirit was to obey. If I asked a spirit its name it had to tell me. In reality, I found this to not be so. Spirits have agendas; they can lie; their concept of time, of ethics and morals, of purpose tends to be very different from mine; they speak in riddles or images or concepts that often loses something in translation. They require work. Some are easy to like and become part of me. Some are hard work and harder to shift, and yet somehow that’s fine. Some are hard to classify or define and most of the time they are around it’s difficult to know how to take them.
Grandfather is a spirit of an Indigenous Man, an Elder, an Aborigine. He tries to teach me things; to sing (but I can’t pronounce the words the way he can and it just comes out wrong), to make rhythms (only I don’t have the ear for them and struggle to get them right); to understand the land around me and everything that’s in it. I’m trying to work through that one. I understand now that when I share food with him and he gives it back to me in a different form that I need to pay attention to what I’m eating because there is lore there for me to learn. At the Winter Solstice he gave me a mix of different wattle seeds and the juice of a red berry he said came from a fire tree (because when it was in flower it looked like it was on fire). The mixture was like a cake and was to warm and waken the fire within me. Sometimes when I am with him and look down, my skin is dark like his. And sometimes it’s just my normal colour.
Recently I took a trip interstate and had a profound experience with the Indigenous spirits of the land there. Until then I hadn’t realised how asleep the land I usually work with is. When I looked around I saw the spirits of many Indigenous people around me. I had intense physical reactions to specific places; some good and some bad. There was a very special river that appeared to me like a huge white serpent. Spirits of an Indigenous man with a spear walked me around one of the places and began explaining some things to me. Then I seemed to become wrapped in a web and a spirit spider came to me. The land felt like home yet to my knowledge I’d never been there before. When I left I cried because it hurt to leave.
Coming back to Grandfather he took me to a place that I recognised because it was close to where I was born and grew up. It was a time from the past. There was a river and a cave. In the mouth of the cave was a young woman, who was frightened. A European looking man in olden day clothes forced her into the cave and began attacking her. Then a baby cried. He heard it, found the baby and smashed its head against the stone wall of the cave. Then continued with the attack. He strangled her. After he had finished. I was in shock from seeing that. Experiencing it. Yet it wasn’t over. In the back of the cave was an young Indigenous boy, about five or six maybe, or perhaps a little older. The man waited just outside the cave and the boy seemed to join him. Before he left the cave the boy painted three hand prints on the cave wall; two red and one yellow. I don’t know why Grandfather showed me that, but I know it was important. Since then, the boy has also started to appear. He told me his name. From what I understand, before I can learn certain kinds of knowledge I need to go through something very specific and traditional. I’m not sure how I feel about that. And yet there is an expectation of building community with these spirits that is leading towards it.
At the beginning, I was cleansing the land in a way that my ancestors had traditionally cleansed their land, according to a special spirit I work with. I did this with the help of Fae spirits that I work with. It was a very Western thing. Then the karmic healing work started and Grandfather began sharing things with me. Now I feel like I’m being drawn into something that’s quite different and it’s like dancing with fire. Beautiful, and warm, but a distinct danger that if I’m not careful I’m going to get burned. And the fire is very hot. Fire that destroys; fire that creates; fire that watches.
Working with Grandfather on cleansing and healing the energy lines or vibrations of the earth (the serpent Ngulla-Gulla) led me to wonder about the nature of our relationship. It seemed to be a little one sided in that I found my path to be linked to earth energy healing, I worked in the way of my ancestors and with my spirit allies, and I found it very satisfying. But what of Grandfather?
I asked him after a working whether there was anything I could do to help him and the next time we worked, he led me to a vision spot where I knew I had healing work to do. I began to feel into the land to see what was needed and found myself pulling together fragments of something that had been shattered. I pulled them together and found that they were oval rocks with squiggly lines on them and faces made up of dots and lines. There were five, including one large one in the middle and four at the quarters. When I had finished I noticed that Grandfather was crying. He said that the place had been broken by ancestors of my blood, and that they needed to be healed by those who broke them. Now he could sing them back to power.
The next time Grandfather led me to another spot that looked like an overgrown clearing in a heavily wooded place near water. I felt and began my working as per last time, but this time a skeleton emerged. As I worked flesh began to fill out the bones and then there was an angry faced man looking at me with such hate it scared me. But I could feel that my work was not done. I pulled and two more skeletons began to appear; a woman and a child. I reached out to Grandfather and asked him to help me as I was draining and they were not fully formed. He took my hand and together we helped Borong’s wife and child to emerge. The following week when I visited, Borong (who seems to be a bird man) threw a spear at me. My spirit allies protected me, including Grandfather who knocked it away with a shield of bark and gave me the spear-head.
My most recent working was very harrowing and only partly finished. Grandfather led me to a place that was partially enclosed by rock. It had designs painted on it, including handprints and something I couldn’t quite make out made up of swirling lines. Part of it was obscured so I never saw the design fully. There were two groups of people there; Europeans and Aboriginals. The Europeans were all male but the Aboriginals were a mixed group. I saw terrible things happen that I won’t go into here. I just thank my spirit allies for protecting me from the worst bits. It is a tainted place because of it. I pulled the colours that symbolised the harm – yellow for the urine; red for the blood; white for the semen and black for the death. I pulled it up like the dirt from Ngulla-Gulla and with my spirit twin’s help did a cleansing very similar to the one I do for the serpent. The colours mixed, then were filled with light and then healing energy and the healing energy was returned to the land. But it still felt tainted and I know I will need to go and do more work. It was terrible and draining but necessary.
It is my karmic debt in some ways for living and working here. Although I have no idea how much my actual ancestors were responsible for the terrible things that happened to the Aboriginal people and this land, people of my blood were and continue to be responsible. I feel like I have to do something to help the healing; to waken the sleepers and restore that which was broken where possible. Work I’m only just beginning to understand. I don’t know where it will lead and I began with work with a loving heart but this last working has made me realise how dark the work could become. I only hope that I keep my heart loving and compassionate.
Every week I visit a piece of land and work with its energies to purify and, where possible, heal it. My work is very ancestral for me in that I work with a stone circle, with spirits of place, and with energy lines. Visiting and working with earth energies in the UK in 2010 and my studies since then regarding shamanic practice and witchcraft have helped me to realise that everything I do in this landscape my ancestors either did or were capable of doing back in the UK and other areas of Europe. I work with a modern built stone circle, but the land beneath it is old and carries the memories of those who have walked it over the centuries. I work with ancestral spirits, both mine and those linked to the land itself. It is a blending of workings.
Upon arriving at the circle, I cast by visiting and honouring each of the five stones before honouring centre, Grandfather (the Guardian spirit of the place, who is an Australian Aboriginal Elder) and the other guardians of a more feathered variety (magpies and willy-wag-tails). I asked Grandfather what he would like me to bring as an offering and he said bread and water, so I bring seeded bread and fresh water and place it in the centre. Before offering it, I eat some, offer some to Grandfather, and he transforms it into something else which I eat. Sometimes it is a square of meat from an animal, or it might be a worm or bug, sometimes it is leaves, berries, earth, bark. It changes from week to week. Then I drink some of the water, offer it to Grandfather who drinks and transforms it into something else that I drink. Sometimes I can see that the water is from a wonderful waterfall, or from a clear stream, sometimes it is polluted water or has something in it. That changes to. The remaining water I offer to the centre.
My working involves sinking into the landscape to check on the state of the energy serpent that lies beneath it. Sometimes the serpent is yellow, or orange, or red, and I know that healing work is needed. If the serpent is green I know that all is well. Sometimes the serpent is mostly green except for a specific spot, and I will focus my attention on that spot.
With the help of my spirit allies, I search along the serpent energy line, pull out anything that is ‘dirt’ by which I mean is in need of cleansing or healing, and pool it infront of me. We spin the ball of ‘dirt’ until it compacts and becomes hardened and blast it with bright light. It begins to sparkle and shine like a diamond. We then send healing energy into it until the ball glows green. And then we gentle return it to the serpent. Grandfather will often sing while this work is going on. I don’t know what he sings much of the time, but it is a song of power. Just as I do my part in the healing, Grandfather does his. Our workings blend together.
Initiation after completing the Shamanic Apprenticeship required my thinking about what my service was and who I would be serving by my practice. What gifts did I bring that I could contribute to community. I thought about a lot of things leading up to my initiation, but kept coming back to land. It was in Cornwall back in 2010 that I had felt myself drawn to stone and to the vibrations of the land. Once I sat down and really thought about it, everything was drawing me to working with the land in quite specific ways. Connecting, finding serpent energy lines, and cleansing / purifying the lines and energy centres so they were healthy. Working with the spiritual guardians of the land and my own spirit allies.
I decided to make a weekly commitment to a particular place by a nearby river. There was a modern stone circle set up on one side of the river, with painted stones to commemorate the native inhabitants of this land. A mix of Aboriginal and European as it was next to a garden commemorating other groups from different places in Europe.
My first session I called on Mother and she gave me a possum skin cloak to put on to protect me (I didn’t ask from what). She said she would always be with me when I wore it, regardless of where I was, and agreed to act as intermediary between me and the local spirits of place. With me was Bob, of course, and my spirit twin: an ally I had found when working with trance into land-based vision quests, and who was tied to my ancestry or bloodline.
The circle was made up of five stones, which appeared to me to represent water, spirit, fire, air and Earth. In the centre was a young tree to one side of a circle of stones. The ritual was very simple – I brought offerings of cake (from a vegan bakery) and water, which I placed in the centre ring of stones after tracing my way around honouring the elements and guardians. And then I sat so I could be in closer contact with the earth, and opened myself to the vibrations of place. I could feel beneath a powerful energy serpent, not quite aligned with the circle. Already awake and being tended by someone, unlike other areas where the energy slept. To my eyes, the serpent was orange-red colour, which meant that it needed healing/cleansing work. But I didn’t want to act without being in contact with the guardian of the place.
Mother introduced me to an Elder, an Aboriginal male spirit, who guarded the place and who was quite wary of me. I asked if the offering was accepting, and he said it wasn’t. That I should bring bread and water.
That first time was quite awkward as I had not yet found my routine or developed a working relationship with the Elder, who I began to call Grandfather at his request (when I asked what I could call him by). There was a lot of translating going on between my allies and Grandfather to find a way that this could work. The serpent healing did not happen the first time because things were too confusing in my head and it didn’t feel like the right time. But Bob was angry with me and told me off for not doing my duty and healing the serpent when I had noticed it had needed healing. The next time was better.
For several years I spent my time honing my practices and learning new skills; mostly associated with shamanic witchcraft from my teachers, Bob and Gede. I began to understand my strengths and weaknesses, which aspects I preferred to work with and where I fitted in the scheme of things.
Most of my practice is devotional in that I foster relationships and work with various deity spirits. But I also found myself becoming involved with spirits of other varieties. I would delve down into the earthen chambers of passage tombs and climb up into new realms (in my trance work), and when out on the land, found myself continually drawn to communing with stone. Natural stone mostly, which to me often appears as a vision of an opening eye, in skin much like that of a reptile. The spirit of stone that I would speak to may be sleepy, may show me images that it was witness to or sensations it experienced or just blink and ignore me. I would see shapes and colours associated with the stone, which I came to learn was a representation of the stone’s vibration. And I saw serpents in the land.
Bob would give me the task of feeling into the landscape I was in and finding energy lines. Seeking them out, knowing where they were, and describing to him how they looked or felt to me. The lines would often appear as serpents of specific colours; green, being healthy, orange and red, being in need of purification or healing, were the main colours I would see. Sometimes blue, which would be much less dangerous and not need purification or healing.
One time at work, I wasn’t feeling very well and was open when I should have been closed. I felt a probe from below (the land on which my work place is situated is poisoned due to the former occupation the space was used for). I answered, felt my energy draining very quickly, and saw a spherical sinkhole open up around me absorbing my energy. I almost passed out. At the time, I didn’t realise what was happening or why, but it was a very good lesson for me and I learned to shield myself more effectively. I later came to understand that what happened was linked to what I do: my path. The energy was sick, and my energy was used to help to heal it. Of course, it needed more than I was able to give, but the understanding was the beginning for me of finding my path.
Sometime later, at a workshop during trance work, I found myself called by Mother, the spirit of an Aboriginal woman that I met some years previously. The trance experience held me for the duration of the work, and I found myself unable to let go until I was finished. Mother took me through a landscape I didn’t recognise to a cave near water. In the cave were oval shaped rocks. My task was to paint them with wavy lines, eyes, and a mouth, and set them in a circle. Around me in the workshop, energy was being raised. I found myself tapping into and pulling down that energy, using it to charge the painted stones, and to heal or purify the nearby land serpent and send the pulse of healing energy into the land.
It was only after this experience, which left me drained for several days, that I understood Mother was a land spirit and that I was being called to perform some healing work needed by the land itself. Discussing it with Bob I also began to understand that land energy healing work is something witches have always done; that it is in my blood and I have ancestral connections to working with land in this way.
The thing was – Mother is Australian Aborigine land spirit and my ancestry is from England, Scotland and Ireland. To my mind, initially at least, there were issues with the work as a result of this that I needed to resolve. It was more than the possibility that my ancestors were quite probably involved in activities that harmed Aboriginal people and this land. It was also the logistics of how to go about doing the work; how to apply it in a way that would be acceptable.
Upon my initiation from the Shamanic Apprenticeship I had undergone, I found my answer.
Detail from the Uffington White Horse, England 2010. Horse or Dragon?
Shortly after my return home, I ventured to the first ever Reclaiming Witchcamp held in Australia. I knew nothing of Reclaiming and wasn’t sure what to expect. My return had confused me on a number of levels as the way that I had connected to land was different somehow. Harder to connect with and foreign. I hoped to find something that I could use to help with connection and understanding.
In Boscastle, Cornwall, Bob and I walked in the early morning beside the stream, through paths strewn with holly and oak and along the cliff paths. As I walked I felt my roots go deep into the soil; it was sometimes hard to move my feet. It felt like home, despite being my first ever visit and to my knowledge I had no Cornish ancestors.
Back in Australia, even though I was born here (as were my parents and their parents) and lived here, it felt alien to me. I had no roots in the soil when I walked; just an emptiness of being far from home. I couldn’t explain it and found it hard to understand.
The path I chose to explore at camp was called Earth Song and it showed me several things: connecting with land can result in emotional turmoil due to environmental damages caused in recent times that needed to be addressed (or at least considered); that I was not alone in my connections to land and the vibrational energies that I had encountered in England and Ireland; and that different people worked with these energies in very different ways, yet there were also similarities.
Wandering around at camp on my own, I found myself reflecting on what was missing and realised that it was in many ways spiritual connection. But this caused considerable conflict within me as the spiritual connection with the land on which I lived I saw as being linked with the Aboriginal peoples who were here long before my people arrived. And with that guilt at what part my own ancestors may have played in the terrible crimes that were inflicted upon them as the land was cleared by my people for farming and towns. How could I connect with a land and spirits that my people most probably helped to harm? I sat at the side of a track and poured out my conflict to the land and was answered by a spirit of an Aboriginal woman (she appeared as a disembodied head at first). She said that she had heard me and could feel my anguish. And that she would be willing to act as a ‘go-between’ for me in connecting with land. She said to call her Mother, and called me by a new name. Her totem was the blue wren, which I have in the heart of my home now in her honour.
I didn’t realise at the time that Mother was a land spirit, or how important she was to become in my learning how to connect and work with earth energies in Australia. But that is for another post.
Please note that the Featured Image photo is from a later Camp, held in a different area from the first one as I don’t have any photos from the first camp.
When I found ‘Working with Earth Energies: How to tap into the healing powers of the natural world’ by David Furlong, I had been searching for something that kind of related to communing with stone but wasn’t sure what I was looking for. This book helped me to begin to understand the work I was becoming involved in from an energy working perspective. Most of what I’d found after being introduced to communing with stone tended to focus on ley lines and dowsing, and because I wasn’t sure still what I was actually doing finding books that were relevant was quite tricky. Yes, David covers dowsing and ley lines, but he also covers a lot of other things.
One thing from the book that really resonated with me was the small story about St Nectern’s Glen and how it had been transformed from a place where the energy was driving people away into one people were drawn to. This vignette would have greater resonance later on for me, but as I’d recently been to St Nectern’s Glen and had experienced the energy of the place first hand (it’s one of my all time favorite places so far), I found myself really drawn into the story. What I like about David’s work is that he talks about how he experiences a place; what he looks at and does in order to adjust the energy; and the results of the work.
The book is also full of different energy associations that could be worked with from land chakras to the plants and animals that are on it; to Feng Shui; to Luciferic energy and more. David discusses energy exchange that occurs all the time between everything and how this influences health (both physical health of people and of the land itself). The concept of healing the land through energy work really attracted me and felt like it fitted quite strongly with what I had been doing when communing with stone.
Being close to a sacred place at a time of year that is also considered sacred (the Autumn Equinox) was too wonderful an opportunity to pass up. So we made our way to Loughcrew, in County Meath, Ireland intending to be there to see the sun rise. The passage tomb was aligned in such a way that the rising sun at (and around) the Autumn Equinox would enter the tomb.
Being at Loughcrew in daytime is pretty special but being there in the dark and (as it turned out) fog was something else. The eeriness of pre-dawn fog and anticipation for the sun to rise combined with a place that pulsed from centuries of sacred connection transformed Loughcrew into a gateway from this realm to somewhere else.
We didn’t get to see the sun rise as the fog failed to lift, despite our pleas to the elements. But we were able to do something else pretty special, and that was to spend some time inside the tomb with flashlights. Inside, in the darkness, with the thick smell of earth and constant presence of stone cramping our movements, there was a stillness. A reminder that this was a tomb; a sacred place where ancestors traveled to the realm of the dead and a doorway for those remaining here to visit, remember, and reconnect with them.
Bob explained to me as we were walking around sacred landscapes that it was important to get to know a place. To introduce your self to it and allow it to introduce itself to you. That was when I began to realise that place could be sentient; could communicate and feel. Whether it is the spirits of place or the landscape itself I think depends a lot on what you believe. Perhaps they are one and the same.
I didn’t know how to introduce myself at first. Bob laughed at my early attempts, but told me it was intention more than words and it was important to talk to the landscape in the same way it spoke to me if I wanted it to understand me. So I would talk and send images and feelings at the same time because that tended to be the kind of thing I received when talking with stone. Images of what it is to be human; of me and where I was from; a little of how I felt. Then to open and see what images and feelings came through.
Walking into Weyland Smithy for the first time felt very special. I was drawn to it and could feel it calling out. It was a very warm place; lived in and living. Unlike the West Kennet Long Barrow, which I had visited not long before and which had felt abandoned and cold. Perhaps the difference was because Weyland Smithy had been reclaimed by the living in some way where as West Kennet Long Barrow was for the dead. Perhaps for other reasons. My feet connected with earth and I felt my roots go down with every step. I felt welcomed and happy.
When communing with specific stones, I was shown yellow rectangles and pink looped lines and a blue-green spiral as I walked among them. The images came very easily as if the stones were eager to communicate with someone willing to listen to them. Similar types of stones had similar shapes and colours, which I found to be very interesting and thought was linked to their purpose. Bob smiled and said nothing.
Green and Grey 
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