Beltane at the Cave

Beltane at the Cave

The sky is darkening, from an intense pale blue to a darker but equally intense and clear blue, flecked with clouds the colour of doves’ wings and that faint blush pink of a linnet’s breast. It has rained off and on all day, bringing the final April showers after a dry month. From below the wide ledge of clean, white sand that is the entrance to my cave, scents rise from the forest below. Resinous aromas from the many firs and conifers of all kinds, the fainter scent of blossoms, and the pungent odour of wet earth and vegetation, all mingle as I wait for the light to fade past a certain point.

I kneel, the sand wet under my knees, and bow towards the setting sun, my head almost touching the earth. A shiver runs through my whole body. The evening songs of the birds falters, then ceases, and I know this is the moment. I lift my flint, and bring it down hard onto the rock, and miraculously, a shower of bright sparks flies out. It lands on the little pile of tinder, and after a moment, a thread of smoke rises. I lean forward, blowing gently, cupping my hands around the newborn flame, blowing, blowing, blowing, until the flames rise like hungry chicks clamouring for food. I feed them, dry twigs and resinous pine needles and they crackle greedily.

I add more fuel, slowly, letting the fire build until I can add small logs, and by that time, the light has faded almost entirely from the sky. When I am sure my bonfire is burning steadily, I fetch a stool so that I can sit by it. The knees of my trousers dry in the warmth that emanates from the fire. A chill breeze seems to roar down off the mountain, making my fire crackle and roar back at it. I pull my blanket around my shoulders, and gaze into the blaze.

There is great sadness, a weight that bears down on my heart, a sorrow that is more appropriate to Samhain than to Beltane, and I sigh. This is the place where I am always alone with my thoughts, where no other human comes to be with me, but this evening, I feel the void. A great change has taken place in my lineage. I have, my default, become an elder. One might consider I am a new matriarch, but it weighs on me, because I have lost my mother. Oh, I know, I know. Nothing is ever lost, they say.

Through the flames I see that my companions have come. Great she-bear who kept me company through the deep winter, Reindeer, and others, shadowy in the penumbra of the fire, sit with me, silent and respectful. I welcome them but I do not speak.

As the last light vanishes from the sky, and the Evening Star glitters into view, I hear one last burst of bird song. It’s one I have not heard for some time, for this bird, once common and little thought of, has become rarer. I see the singer, perched fairly close to me on one of the stunted apple trees at the edge of the ledge. A song thrush, singing so beautifully that tears, healing tears, rise in my eyes and spill over as I remember that my mother’s name means song thrush.

Mending the Cosmic Egg

Mending the Cosmic Egg

One of the most pervasive of symbols in creation myths is that of the World or Cosmic egg. From the earliest recorded example of this concept in Sanskrit scriptures, right the way through to cosmologists in the 1920’s and 1930s invoking the idea of a gravitational singularity as a cosmic egg, the egg as symbol for the creation of the universe or world has been found across the globe and throughout history. Do have a quick read of the linked article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_egg

Shortly after I moved to my current home (about 7 years ago), I dreamed a strange dream. In the dream, something fell down the chimney, and when I went to look, I saw that a large egg had fallen down, and had cracked. Something was moving within the fragments of egg and after a moment, from the ruins a creature emerged. It was an extraordinary being, a serpent, but with the head and wings of a bird. It escaped from the wreck of its egg and ran away from me, hiding itself within the room and then the house. I recorded the dream, painted it and then, still baffled, I forgot it.

 

A couple of years later, I returned from a work trip abroad; the following morning, my husband admitted that while I was away, an item had been broken by accident. As a birthday present, years before, my brother had given me an ostrich egg. It was a blown one, totally plain and I’d really loved such a quirky item. This had been knocked off a shelf, by a series of improbable events, and smashed to smithereens. The pieces had been collected together and I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. I promised myself I would one day mend the egg. I finally accomplished this difficult task a few weeks ago.

If you have ever seen the documentary with Sir David Attenborough about the extinct Elephant Bird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASJvktzfQ4g you’ll see how tricky it is to piece together such an item. His egg was a lot bigger than mine, and was broken into fewer bits. It took me over a week, allowing the glue to dry between sessions. It was very frustrating, as the more complete it became, the harder it was to get the final fragments to fit. The tiniest of misalignments, measured in fractions of a millimetre, add up. The final piece fell inside before the glue finished setting, making it impossible to retrieve. A few minute scraps of egg were missing, lost when it broke. But the overall integrity was there, and using some gold outliner (originally for glass painting) I emphasised the cracks, the process called Kintsugi. Kintsugi is a Japanese concept, the basic idea being that instead of hiding brokenness, you accentuate and draw attention to the damage, so that an item that has been restored is seen as MORE beautiful because of its history. It’s a very healing thought, that instead of being fit for the rubbish heap, something is held up as having greater loveliness because of what it has been through.

For me, taking the time to piece back together that egg had significance. Something that was broken has been honoured. It is a beautiful thing, and it reminds me that however damaged I feel I am, the efforts I have made to make good that damage, while they can never erase it, and I can never be as I was before, I have become something else. Something that I hope can be of use and joy to others.

We cannot mend the original cosmic egg, but perhaps we can envision a world where the damage is made good. Those visions are the ones I would like to explore. I may be a dreamer, but nothing can exist unless someone has dreamed it first.