Spirit Hour On Omey Island 2018-9-16
Omey Island
September 16th, 2018
It is September 26th, 10 days after having been at Omey Island. I am curled up in a yurt. It is 42 degrees Fahrenheit and 5.5 degrees Celsius. My computer battery is at 88%. As soon as I have wondrously succumbed to Omey and the realms of creation Anne and I got to participate in, I will probably have to go to the Stable to plug into the only electricity in this off the grid paradise Avalon Permaculture Center. We kept the woodstove burning all night…mostly Kea because her warmth needs are greater than mine.
I am trying to calm down because I want to write so badly that my mind is tripping and skipping and not settling to language very effectively. I think I will just tell you the story.
When we went to Omey several years ago, we, as a group, crossed over in a wide channel that has no water for only a short period of time for you to go to the island. We had crossed over into a part the island where there were mounds several places. People began to walk toward the mounds while I went to the front of the island to sit on a stone and look out at the sea.
I was disturbed in ways that I could not explain. I felt a rage that I couldn’t identify. I looked out into the ocean and in the distance a black wall of darkness was roaring across the water. I suddenly realized that we only had short period of time before the storm was going to hit full force. We were not protected, and the channel would fill with water and we could not get back to land. I started screaming and racing toward the people spread all over the place, “Run!” “Get on the bus!!!” “We have to go!!!” Con realized what was happening and began to gather up everyone as fast as he could.
We finally got everyone on the bus and spun out toward the channel. The wheels of the bus hit the sand. The water churned into the channel at a breathtaking speed with a whipping wind that spun the bus around. The sand became a slippery hydroplaning horror.
Slipping and spinning, Con, our mighty warrior with flaming red hair, answered the call with a ferocity, wit, and concentration. Everyone in the bus was completely frozen, but no one freaked visibly. You heard a huge expulsion of breath when we felt the wheels catch, straighten, and the bus started up the hill to street.
We stopped at the first pub for lunch and whiskey.
As we shared, the storm passed. The sun came out. Lunch finished. Nerves calmed, I asked Con if we could go back and see if we could cross again. One of the things you learn being with the earth, not just walking on top of it, is that there is an emotional component to the earth. That emotional component is not like our emotions. It is storms and sunlight and natural phenomenon that express the earth’s emotional nature. Rudolph Steiner, Philip S. Callahan, and others have spoken about and shown evidence that our emotions influence the weather. It is well known that when people are on most trips with me, good weather follows. I don’t talk about it because it is my unity with the earth that has us celebrate our time together in such an intimate way. That is ‘real’ magic… Also, I only press into the earth within my mind of creation when I need to not be disturbed so that everything is still and not busy with disturbance. I do not take advantage. Also, I am aware if there is a storm coming and a space is created for me to be in union with the earth, the weather will push back or move because everything has to have a place. And our earth is a dual nature. You push it. It will push back. It takes a real sense of balance and equity to work in unity with the earth forces and few people take the time to redevelop that intelligence. The ancestors of this island did. You get the jest of it after a while because you are aware that you are synchronizing with the greater whole of which you are a part. There is an equanimity that begins to become natural and able to be counted on. Or not. 🙂
Con felt it too. Something had driven us off the island. Some kind of suppressed rage that someone or all of us had triggered. Suppression always balances with violence if there is great suppression before a balance point where suppression can be temporary and less violent and violence in like kind can begin and be shorter and less suppressed. You see that in this land too.
We both knew we had to go back. Something had met us at the island and we needed to go back and not be deterred. It is always about relationship. It is always about reestablishing relationships that we are part of and we are designed to have. In those relationship, we learn the natures present in the relationships and we expand to include. Then we make covenants. When my daughter and I got to be with 2 200-pound and 1 800-pound Bengal and Siberian tigers, you just didn’t drop you head lower than theirs. They would bite your neck. It wasn’t personal. It was just their nature. After a while an affinity occurred so natural and so deep, I could lay down on 800-pound Sher Khan and we would snooze together. We took time to lay down our natures to make a space to be together. Weather is like that.
We were amazed when we got to channel. It was as if the wind had cleared out the water. A damp sand rolled out in front of us. We crossed.
The mounds now stood out damp and slippery from the storm. We were navigating muddy puddles that were not there before. Some people stayed where the land was firmer but several, Anne being one of them, made their way to the mounds. I, on one mound, went into an altered state so I am not sure what was actually happening in the time frame we were in when we crossed over. What I saw was Anne on one mountain and two other people on another mound and I was standing on a mound facing them. I realized I was standing on a burial mound of women and children. I saw the men carrying over the bodies of their daughters, their wives, and their children. I felt the lives cut short suddenly cruelly and with intent from hunger and fever. I knew men had died to, but it seems that where I stood the bodies were women and children. I began to weep. I lived their short lives. Their horror that a hostile nation would deny them food when their potatoes were affected by the blight. I watched their laughter vanish. I watched them go inward to survive. I watched tearless faces frozen and alone, their loved ones gone. Some kind of knowing rose in me. I knew I was not one of them and that I had plenty of room within me to carry them with me as I grew old here and carried on from the point in time they had vanished.
What I did not know until later was that Anne had had an experience that had her committed to the very same thing as did the other women on the other mound. We left the island carrying the memories of what we experienced on behalf of all life, especially those who had not be able to life forward.
The ways of magic and mystery are not so concise and patted down as the ways of the rational and the explainable. Perhaps what I experienced will make no sense to you. It is still what happened. A deeper intimacy. A more expanded shared field.
Two things were pressing into me in this trip as we made our way toward Omey. One was that I heard myself say to the fairy kingdom, “We have come to thank you for taking care of our dead while we were so weary we could not take care of them ourselves.” I felt a huge sense of relief in the fairy kingdom. The elemental world is needed now to keep in check and balance the chaotic earth forces that are clearing and cleaning and resetting the earth’s field. We are stronger now than the people blighted by suppression and hardships we cannot even imagine. I said to them, “We have come to take back our care of our dead.”
When I got to Omey, Anne needed to go back for something. I walked across. I took off the large rainbow thermal jacket. The sun was glinting off of the rocks and gentle tiny waves rippling some places in the open channel. Cars were crossing. Even with the startling rainbow jacket spread out on the rock, no one saw me. They drove through. Even Anne whose jacket it was. When I saw Emer walking across, I knew she would see me. And she did.
Anne called Emer to see if she had seen me and Emer told her I was sitting right beside her. She came back. Went back and rounded up people to come back to the beach and we began our day.
The rest of the day lives in the Spirit Hour call and the photos. When we left, I knew I would not be back there. I also had the funny feeling that I would be back to Ireland however.
My beloved Lara transcribed Spirit Hour below. You have both the audio and the document. In Joy.
dearest Tantra,
don’t know if you’ll get this email, but the transcript to today’s Spirit Hour below.It was potent and beautiful, the telling of your interwoven stories…And So Grateful I am always.I know they’re imprinted in my Memory of memories because of Ancient Mother and your deep intimate palpable Bond with Her so strong and far-reaching in its depths, and because in shared fields on this shared sacred vision of L.O.V.E., we be on behalf of all Life, together.Bless you so.Lara Roopnarine