The Fire and the Rose

 

Yesterday I was walking Sky (the Corgi so named) and I looked up and saw one of the hawks circling, a rich reddish glow of sunlight on his back as he banked and turned. I stopped and watched briefly, then walked on, but soon heard his unmistakable call above my head. Looking up, I saw his mate, a bit to the south. He was calling to her and, I believe, to me.

Slowly and easily they circled, closer and closer, a sublime dance in the vast clear sky. I stood transfixed below, gazed in wonder and awe as they drew closer together, turning and turning in the gyre, in the flame, towards the bright sun. I whispered, "Ah! my beauties, I cannot follow thee, where you are going, not yet. But I will carry you in my heart, and write the story of this moment, your winged grace, your eloquent vision."

 

 
I walked on home. The line from Robinson Jeffers' poem came to mind...."give your heart to the hawks." It is not in Roan Stallion, but looking there, I found this:

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To The Rock That Will Be A Cornerstone Of The House

 

Old garden of grayish and ochre lichen,
How long a time since the brown people who have vanished from here
Built fires beside you and nestled by you
Out of the ranging sea-wind? A hundred years, two hundred,
You have been dissevered from humanity
And only known the stubble squirrels and the headland rabbits,
Or the long-fetlocked plowhorses
Breaking the hilltop in December, sea-gulls following,
Screaming in the black furrow; no one
Touched you with love, the gray hawk and the red hawk touched you
Where now my hand lies. So I have brought you
Wine and white milk and honey for the hundred years of famine
And the hundred cold ages of sea-wind.

I did not dream the taste of wine could bind with granite,
Nor honey and milk please you; but sweetly
They mingle down the storm-worn cracks among the mosses,
Interpenetrating the silent
Wind-prints of ancient weathers long at peace, and the older
Scars of primal fire, and the stone
Endurance that is waiting millions of years to carry
A corner of the house, this also destined.

Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you
The wings of the future, for I have them.
How dear you will be to me when I too grow old, old comrade.

-- Robinson Jeffers

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Only the previous day, I had read about the paramagnetic properties of some stones, and how some of the stone circles in northwestern Europe were built with paramagnetic stones. I recalled the small stone I brought back with me from Scotland, which now lies half-buried in the earth at the corner of my house. Here, then, is a mysterious connection, a synchronicity...a sign pointing deeper into the labyrinth.

Callanish Rose Stone

It all comes together so intensely: the intimations of wholeness, the patterns fulfilling themselves.

In the great circling gyre of the cosmos within and above, the still point at the center am I.

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Hymn to Athena

Athena, bright Athena
Divine Goddess of Wisdom and Courage!

The light of thy wisdom shines in my heart,
Serenity and joy shine forth from my countenance
in thy holy name.

As above, so below,
As within, so without,
It is so.

 

Oracle Reading:

Bill Worthington, c. 1994

The Druid Animal Oracle