SACRED SCOTLAND [2]: THE NEOLITHIC ISLANDS OF ORKNEY
Churchill Barriers, Orkney, Scotland.
The Orkney Islands
The Orkney Islands were cold and windswept. As the long twilight approached, the freezing wind stung my skin, so that I could only imagine what the winters would be like here. Giant barges in hibernation against the grey lashing of stormy waves, ships huddled to their moorings, suspended in oceans that were rocky and uneven with ice, frozen steel decks and anchors, gulls howling through barren masts reaching skywards. It was no place for a human being. Only the luke warm summer took the edge off such a harshness, empty avenues and valleys owned by the wind from a dark north. Scotland was a haunted place, a land left to the spirits, to the faeries and memories of the long dead. Remnants of broken castles and abbies, and the nature spirits gathering in trees smothered by ribbons, by crumbling cemeteries that surrounded churches, nature spirits, telling me their sad songs of ancient forests floored into barren hills in shades of monotone, moss green, naked mounds, striped bare by invaders, vikings, and paraded on by those indestructable standing stones. It was a haunted land - a place of ghosts and old battlefields. It was more desolate that I could have imagined. And to think, there were once wolves here, once wolves.
Outside the St. Magus Cathedral in Kirkwall, I finally confronted Jamie in regards to his drink driving and drug taking and in putting passenger's lives in danger. It hadn't gone too well and he had turned very nasty, hissing at me on the street. The group was not supportive of my actions. They didn't care about Jamie's drug taking with Dora whining, "We like you better when you're drunk, Jamie." To say that you prefered someone as a drunk, showed no respect for that person, or the lives their behaviour may affect. Denise, feeling sympathy for his situation, was later to mention, that on another tour she had been on, Jamie has been throwing up into as bucket, that they held out for him. It was a bad situation [a very bad trip], and I battled this internally, by keeping my focus on my guides and the places we visited.
The Stenness Standing Stones
Stenness Standing Stones, The Orkney Islands, Scotland.
We arrived at The Stenness standing stones that held the afternoon sun as the land around them grew slowly into evening shadows. As I looked between each of the stones, positioning myself at various points within the circle, it seemed as if the energy in the air wavered and that there was a world beyond this world opening up behind the space of each stone. I felt at ease as I observed this and began to understand why many thought that the precisely positioned stones, were of some kind of cosmic significance, or perhaps the portals to other dimensions. At the same time they had disturbed me. I was unable to process the feelings of horror, of a sobbing adolescent woman who was either murdered while pregnant or with her baby. These visions were extremely upsetting, since I would start to feel the emotions of the people involved, as well as seeing pictures of them in my mind.
|
It felt like I was being hauled into their reality, feeling the terror and suffering of victims. Later on, during the freezing early hours of the evening, as I wondered around outside The Standing Stone Hotel, I sensed a huge consciousness/ mind overshadowing my own. Everything was of a mystical quality, as my focus was drawn towards two white swans, battling a small current, as they swam through the wide dark waters, of the lengthening dusk. Across this body of water, were The Stenness Stones, like living entities. I felt drawn to a situation that I did not trust, where the stones were the keepers, of the gateways to worlds, I longed to understand. |
I walked out into the icy wind and saw two swans struggling against the grey water. This was a lonely land, empited of people and before that, the wolves. Everywhere I went in Scotland, every mountain crag I looked upon, every loch I pondered, I sensed the wailing ghosts of loss. The land held a great emptiness for me that could not be filled. There were gods who did not answer and the long dead were long departed.
WHITE SWANS OF ORKNEY
The two white swans were sensing the wolves.
The swans were returning the wolves to the land. The barren haunted land.
The breeze laboured and longed across the glacial highlands of Scotland.
The wind was howling. Longing for the wolves.
Two white swans in the lengthening dusk of summer against the standing stones.
Two swans against the wind in the grey black tide together.
Two white swans longing for the wolves and carrying the sun on their backs,
And the coldest most distant stars beneath their wings as fading lights.
The white swans of Orkney and a haunted whispering land,
Howling beneath the full summer moon.
We are gone from this land forever, the wind is in the bones of the heath.
The highlands still hungering for what they have never known.
The next day we stood inside Maes Howe Dome on a tour, where I spent my time staring into a rock from the floor of the dome, as it shifted into various shapes in my hand. Denise bought some kind of musical instrument [an engraved bowl] and the speaker allowed her to play it inside the chamber. Denise said that she would come to Mackenzie's tomb once we got back to Edinburgh and play it there, feeling that it would be good for him. She felt that all he needed was love and to be moved on to the light. We also visited the neolithic site of Skarae Brae, which gave me more opportunities to develop my skills in psychic mediumship. While the city had been inhabited by short people, as the houses would suggest, in my mind, I saw one of them walking up a hill with a giant person. I said to the others, "But there were very tall people that they mixed with, and these tall people taught them many things."
The Group At Skara Brae Where I was Channelling Spirits.
For me, everything was holy and experienced in a sensual way. I was totally open to all things spiritual and would welcome anything coming my way. I invited contact with both faeries and angels. The angels were my first love, but I wanted to give the faeries a fair go as well. I believed that their trickery and mischeviousness was simply part of their nature. I believed that we needed them and that they needed us. They talked to me often and told me their pain of being banished from the land and the anguish over the disappearance of forests. They distrusted and were hateful towards human beings. For this, I could not blame them. I was physically present in this world, but I was always listening in, to whatever they were saying at the time.
The Ring Of Brogdar, The Orkney Islands, Scotland.
The Ring of Brogdar
Mid afternon as the sun opened out across the land, we visted an expansive stone circle called The Ring of Brogdar. I walked the circle focusing on what may have once occurred here. In my mind, I saw large gatherings of people with headress, not unlike north american indians. They were in attendance for various ceremonies of religious and cultural significance, involving war, mass funerals and perhaps ordinations. It was a meeting place where people came from miles around. As I walked the circle, I took the time to observe the many other visitors. Many were just tere for as walk. Others studied the stones and there were always a few who desired to interact with the stones. I saw a young boy, who looked about 4 years of age, speak to a stone followed by an exclaimation of pleasure. He then lunged forward and hugged the stone and was immediately repelled from it, stumbling backwards, whereupon he began to scream in terror. He would not stop screaming, even as his parents retrieved him and his father carried him away from the place. What the Hell was that all about?, I wondered. It was as though the stone had done something to him.
Leaving The Orkneys
We left The Orkney Islands early the following morning. I felt sad to say good-bye, even to such a bleak and unwelcoming place. I had found the sites interesting and was quickly growing accustomed to reading them. We drove back onto the mainland and stopped at a gift shop along the way. I purchased a green enamelled brooch with 'CREW' written on it, delighted to find this, since it was how we refered to ourselves as a multiple system. A little further down the road, as we stopped beside a place where some boats were docked, the word 'CREW' was again displayed on a backdrop of green. My guides worked in this way. It was like they were laying a trail of crumbs, leading me deep into their woods, where I belonged. Next, I was shown a poster:
 
The 'Crew' Coincidence On The Enamel Brooch, Then Immediately Following On Side Of The Boat.
Was it him again? It had to be Mackenzie. He was showing me that he was No.1 in Europe. It wasn't my guides because they were not from here and they didn't present like this. I studied the poster as he attempted to instill in my mind that that there was some kind of mutual coming together occurring between us. It was very forceful and unfriendly and I didn't like feeling I was getting from it. It was like he was a gigantic unstoppable force of will hurtling towards me, although in this poster, and considering the warning at Cromarty, I didn't know whether it was him pulling me into heaven, or me pulling him out of Hell. I felt powerless to resist this approach, yet moments later, I had forgotten the incident, the feelings of fear and strange attraction subsiding into a general disassociated feeling of being looked after and protected while in love with everything, in a constant state of energised exhaustion.
The Poster With A Giant Man, Flying Towards What Was Meant To Be My Open Hands, Was Clearly Intentional.
The Ferry To Stornoway
For the remainder of the day, Jamie George wound the black car through some extraordinarily barren places in the northern highlands of Scotland. The places we passed through were like moonscapes, barren craters and crags bordered by histories of stone, covered my creeping moss and lichen and scant twisted treees clinging to a brief summer. The places were desolate, only to be broken by a tiny hut here and there, and eaten into by half moon shaped beaches and sandy pebbled coves, largely uninhabited. It would be hard to imagine anybody living here during a winter.
|
It would take an aching heart for the nothern most parts of the highlands, to see this place as beautiful, and to delve into every creek, nook and cranny, for the secret knowledge of the ages. I only felt the desolation and was later to find out, that it was where my own ancestors [The Clan of Mackay] had been removed from the bleak land, that we passed by, during what was to be known, as the highland clearances of Scotland. |
We made it to Ullapool in time to catch the ferry to Stornoway on The Isle of Lewis. Jamie had been taking bends on the wrong side of the road and on more than one occasion, I insisted that he not take unnecessary risks, by overtaking the vehicle in front of us. I was concerned for our own safety and while I was determined not to let an alcoholic be the star attraction, how much Jamie had been drinking [or smoking], before he drove the next day, was always on my mind. It was a relief to board the ferry and to sit quietly looking out upon the highlands of Scotland, glacial and basked in the light of another late afternoon, rising up out of the deep grey Atlantic ocean.
The Ferry From Ullapool To Stornoway, On The Isle of Lewis, Scotland. |
