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Singing in the Church

by David Cross Read on
‘Joyous’ and ‘Joyful’ are the two words which sum up the evening of Singing in the Church on Tuesday, August 11th, courtesy of much loved Unicorn Voice Camp. An hour and a half of beautiful acapella singing interspersed with three public participation songs, culminating in a song led by a professional counter tenor who – having first sought Rev Sarah Muffet’s permission – led from the pulpit and added his own obligato to the three different strains we audience members were struggling with. This brought the house down!

At the beginning, the compere spoke of the pleasure the campers all derived from their annual visit, and said this free concert was their way of saying thanks for us treating them with so much respect. This was later referred to in a letter from the Church Wardens thanking Unicorn for putting on such a wonderful show and contributing handsomely to Church expenses.

Our church is rarely so full! For some, on this occasion, it was ‘standing room only’! The acoustics of our church are incomparable and served only to enhance the magnificent quality of the unaccompanied singing. Each year more from our community discover the delights of the Unicorn Campers’ concert but even so only a handful of our fellow villagers were there – it would be lovely to see more next year.

It should be remembered that most of the campers are complete strangers to each other, having come from all points of the compass, and had only had a single day in which to practice and rehearse.

Their current charity is Water Aid, and in the one week they raised £6,600 among themselves, as well as patronising the Shop and Post Office, the Church and the Thursday Fish n’ Chips van run by Roger and Ginny.

The evening finished with a resounding vote of thanks from our own Sarah Muffet who spoke in her habitual clear strong voice, saying what each and every one of us would like to have said; only she did so with practised ease and charm.

In Your Hands

by Jo Hanstead Read on
Here are some ways the Dances of Universal Peace weave through our lives with far reaching effects. For me, they link my love of music, a spiritual path, and being a teacher and body worker.

I first met Sufi Dancing at the Osho ashram in India in 1990. It was about the most gentle thing on offer in an otherwise full-on programme of workshops and meditations. Back home, I followed up the connection and attended James Burgess’s New Year Retreats. At that time, learning the words of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic in a few days seemed a huge accomplishment. Now people pick it up in an afternoon – it is in The Field.

Talking of fields, a profound and regular aspect of my DUP experience has been on camps. They are brief, questionably unsustainable microcosms of life, reflecting whatever aspects of oneself are most up for mirroring. Love, pain, anger, aloneness, friendship, joy, almost wholly orchestrated by what one brings to camp along with one’s tent. After 18 years I actually experienced a camp without a very wobbly Wednesday.

I have been a McTimoney chiropractor and craniosacral therapist since 1987. I learned I loved to pass on practical skills to enthusiastic students as a tutor at the McTimoney Chiropractic College. In the last 3 or 4 years I have offered short workshops at UK dance camps (Sacred Arts Camp, Unicorn, Peace Through the Arts) with the evolving title ‘I can’t believe its not craniosacral therapy’. This may only be funny to those of you who see ‘I can’t believe its not butter’ at the supermarket. Yet also to those of you who like me are stunned at how much desperate ownership there seems to be these days of skill that are our birthright. We have forgotten how to help each other.

In the past, hands-on healing skills were passed on from teacher to student, rather like a Sufi silsilla, or Kabbalistic shalshelet, chain of souls. Teacher and pupil were only different in relation to time. The stream was passed through the generations. My experience of teaching chiropractic for a number of years showed me that whereas there is still a component of this, it is often engulfed in politics, and other 21st centaury hurdles. Refreshingly, DUP still has a large component of ‘catching’ the teaching. Many of our teachers, for example Tansen Philip O’Donohoe, teach by their very presence and how they bring through the dances; teaching from the heart.

I discovered that camps are wonderful place to teach the hands-on healing skills that can be ‘caught, not taught’. This is because: a) The skills are intrinsic to us. b) It is simply permission and tuning-in that is required. c) A heart space is common to both the dances and simple hands-on healing. d) By having no outside-led agenda, there are far less block to picking up what is going on in someone’s body. Often during a professional course it can take months to ‘feel’ anything. Yet in a field, having danced all week, it takes minutes! Many people who have never tried before find that their partners experience lasting and positive physical and emotional effects from their first ever five minutes of hands-on work. This is in all senses truly a Field effect.

Kiara Windrider came as a participant to the UK Unicorn Dance Camp (PTA) this year. His students, Sarah and David have been offering Ilahinoor, a newly available ancient healing practice, at camp for a year or so. Once having received the Ilahinoor transmission it can be passed on to others. Its roots include a connection to Rumi, and it is here to help us align to changes happening to the earth. Kiara is committed to keeping it non hierarchical and available to all. It is completely in the Unicorn spirit, seeding healing and connection. Visit www.ilahinoor.co.uk for more details.

So … putting all the above together, soon after the Unicorn camp, In Your Hands was birthed. Parented at least in part by DUP, camps, our caravan of souls. It is a network, an umbrella for short, inexpensive courses to teach whoever needs to learn the basic hands-on skills needed to help friends and family physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It is not about professional qualifications. It includes workshops in tuning-in skills, in Ilahinoor, and other similarly available techniques. Visit www.inyourhands.net to watch it evolve.

DUP has helped many of us discover our passions. I love being a musician for the dances. This means embodying among other things a blend of sun and moon – actively creating, yet being responsive to the leader and the group. Empowering people in hands-on skills is similar.

There will be big changes over the next few years in the earth, in society, and in our consciousness. We all have a unique contribution to creating a connected and heart centred society. We can use DUP as itself, as part of the Sufi path, or as a vehicle for some other manifestation of the Dance of Life.

Thank you Rumi, HIK, SAM, Matin, James, Rasullah, Nickomo, and all DUP beloveds, past, present and future.

Jo Siari Hanstead, Frome, UK,

Unicorn Voice Camp

by Sian Kerry Read on
I am lying in my tent, damp earth beneath me, the smell of wood smoke, the rhythm of rain on canvas, feeling safe and dry. Sounds filter in: singing, sawing, laughing. This is Unicorn Voice Camp, a mythical land that exists once a year in a field on Gold Hill organic farm in Dorset. Ostensibly a singing camp, but so much more.

Over 400 people for eight days camping in circles of around 10 tents, cooking collectively on woodfires, hanging out with old friends old and making new ones. No alcohol, no drugs, no meat, no electronic music, no overt use of mobiles, makes it sound like a place of correction and maybe it is, because every so often we need to come back to the earth (literally), to basics emotionally, to live simply, to remember what is most important to us.

Unicorns arrive on foot, by train, on bikes, most by cars which rest redundant in a field as we walk to the organic farmshop or stroll to the river to splash and play amongst dragonflies. Barefoot children clamber on a rustic climbing frame, a petticoat- wearing cherub swings on a rope swing. There’s plenty of dressing up, playing and laughing for all ages.

Once a year I go to ‘church’ – in a big top each morning ‘Harmonic Temple’ takes place, an hour of global spiritual songs and chants. A few hundred voices resonating in glorious harmony feeds my soul. And aside from this daily weep (don’t forget the tissues) there’s music and singing everywhere, from barbershop to pop, from Abba spoof to Georgian drinking songs, African gospels to Indian ragas.

Communal woodfired showers and long drop toilets are a challenge to our 21st century sensibilities, but it’s only bodies, we all have one and it’s good to be reminded that they come in a remarkable range of shapes and sizes. Coinciding with the arrival of the Leonids we are treated nightly to shooting stars with a soundtrack of owls, as we sit by the fire in the evening feeling that we share both with each other and our ancestors, jokes, stories and intimacies. Yes there are wasps, arguments, the occasional axe –idents but there are so many moments to treasure; returning to the modern world is an annual grieving process.

Unicorn is green, not just because it’s low impact, generates little rubbish, conserves resources, facilitates intergenerational eco dialogues; but because the ethos of the camp is about community, cooperation, support and play - aspects of society that have got lost along the path to individual material wealth. We need to work together, trust each other and remember crucial human values in order to find a way forward that is for all. Hearing self penned songs performed by amazingly talented teenagers, calling out for green justice, generates faith in this post-Thatcher generation, because there certainly is still such a thing as society.

Gerbils, Cats and Humans

by Barbara Morgan Read on
family constellations When my children were young we kept gerbils. These tiny rat-like animals live in the desert normally and burrow tunnels in the sand. They are creatures who live in community. I learnt a lot from watching these tiny creatures. They had 11 babies first time round. The father was a very watchful parent, going round the aquarium and gathering in his young to return them to the nest several times a day. On one occasion, we lost one of the young, couldn’t find it anywhere and I feared he had climbed out of the aquarium. We eventually found him in the food bowl which had been upturned by their tunnelling and fixed against the side of the aquarium. When he emerged, the whole community of gerbils gathered round him and began licking him furiously.

Not realising how quickly gerbils mate again after birth, we soon found ourselves with another 11 of them and a rather overcrowded aquarium. However, within a very short time the numbers were back down to 11. I assume the others were eaten. We then gave away most of them to friends and kept 2 females as companions. They lived for about 2 years and just before the death of one of them they built a tomb out of the sand. It was an amazing sight. She crawled inside and died. The other one sat very still for several days opening and closing her mouth but not eating or drinking. I can only imagine she was screaming or wailing.

So these tiny creatures were capable of great love and care for their young and at the same time, they were capable of eating each other for the sake of the preservation of the community as a whole.

Many people don’t trust their bodies any more. They don’t think their bodies have the capacity to heal themselves. This provokes another story about my pets. I have two cats and some years ago one of them got hurt while I was away. My son was looking after them at the time and said she had disappeared 24 hours previously. I eventually found her lying under a bush, her eyes looking startled. I brought her indoors and laid her on my sheepskin rug. She lay there for several days, not eating or drinking, in fact barely moving. My daughter’s boyfriend felt I should take her to the vets, so from a place of guilt, feeling I was neglecting her in some way, I took her.

They said she had hurt her back leg and may have been hit by a car but they weren’t sure. They gave her some painkillers and sent me home with her. With no pain, she got up, walked on the injured leg and went to eat and drink. In a short while, when the painkillers wore off, she returned to her place on the rug and lay back down. She remained there another 3 or 4 days and during that time she would stand up briefly, test her leg and then lie down again. Eventually she began walking again and was fine.

Now I’m not saying there is a right or wrong way to handle such a situation. I am simply using this story to illustrate that there are other possibilities, that it may be possible to return to a more trusting place in ourselves, where we let the larger forces take over again and submit ourselves to our own fate.

Why am I telling these two stories? Well, if I look at us as human beings, I see that our population is still increasing and we are using up the earth’s precious resources and at the same time, we still insist on saving lives at both ends of the spectrum. Many people now fear both birth and death.

Is the saving of life a natural phenomenon? Does it exist elsewhere in the animal kingdom? Or have we become so separated from our own souls, our family soul and the planet’s soul that we no longer know what’s good for us? I have no easy answers to these questions. I am simply wondering what has happened to us as a species which has the privilege of sophisticated thought and reflection, that we have moved so far from the natural rhythms of life and death.

If indeed, we have become separated from our souls, from our deep connection to our bodies, the planet and to each other, how has that come about? If I look at it in a small way, through the experiences of my own family, I see that my father’s experiences of war changed his life completely. For him, fighting in the war was both horrific and wonderful. He clearly had never felt since such a feeling of deep friendship, loyalty and comradeship. Ordinary life just somehow never matched up. At the same time, the preservation of life became paramount. So was he more, or less in touch with his own soul in fighting in the war?

I would argue that both were true. We must surely separate ourselves from our soul in order to be able to kill another human being and yet the very act seems to promote our feeling of kinship and love for our fellow human beings who, in this instance, are ‘on the same side’. And then, on returning from war, did those men have to separate from their own souls in order to survive, to cope with the horrific memories of war, to cope with the return to ordinary everyday life? Did the women have to separate from their own souls to survive the daily possibility that their husband, boyfriend, lover would not return? So was it the experiences of war that changed our perspective on the value of life and death? We would have to go back much further in history to answer that one.

This piece of writing has been interrupted by a very real experience of facing the possible death of a loved one. My grandson was recently diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. And of course, as a human being and a grandmother I wanted his life to be saved and fortunately for us as a family it was and he seems fine now. So I am not proposing some moralistic new way of being, some new dogma which would simply replace another dogma about how we should live our lives and face our own deaths and those of our loved ones. I am simply posing a lot of questions about our whole way of being and wondering about how we have arrived at this place in our evolution and the inextricably linked evolution of the planet.

Barbara Morgan is a Family Constellations Trainer, Supervisor and Practitioner and Editor of the International Constellations Journal –
The Knowing Field
email:
www.ordersoflove.co.uk

Constellations and Community

by Barbara Morgan Read on
family constellations In 1996 I came across Bert Hellinger, founder of constellation work. This began a long and beautiful soul journey for me. Many skeletons came out of the cupboard in relation to my family history and many of my family relationships changed quite radically, not always directly connected to me. It was as if a great big boulder had been dropped in the middle of my family and stirred everything up. It was extremely painful at times but the outcome has been worth every tear shed. I deepened my connection to both parents and to other family members and I felt more keenly than ever before the need to return to my roots here in Somerset which I did three years ago.

It’s not that I no longer have problems; of course not. If anything, I feel them more keenly. It’s more that I no longer feel I am searching for something. Something has settled in my own soul and that feels amazing. As a grandmother I feel deeply the fact that I live so far from my children and my grandson. That’s very painful for me at times. And I am luckier than many. A significant number of people are living in a different country, often a very different culture from the one they grew up in. Many people have moved around so much they don’t feel a deep connection to any particular place. What effect must this have on our connection to our own souls, to each other and to the earth?

Well, I do see a gradual return to something of what we had before. We are beginning to create our own communities again. Here in Frome, this is becoming an increasingly apparent phenomenon and it is wonderful. I think what we have created at camp is something of a move towards community and nourishment for our souls – living close to the earth, as naturally as possible, connecting meaningfully to others through song, dance, cooking and conversation. But even here, in this optimum environment, difficulties can occur. Relationships can be fraught at times. We re-create in some form our unresolved issues with our own families and have another chance to sort it out.

Bert Hellinger, former Roman Catholic priest and missionary to the Zulu and founder of constellation work, sees everything that happens as a movement – on both a small and large scale. If you start to view the world in this way, without any pre-judgement about how it should be, then your whole perspective changes. You see that there are no rights and wrongs about what happens. It just is.

He suggests, sometimes with great humour, that everything begins with our mothers, that if we can look at our own mother and see her exactly as she is, with no need to change anything about her then we can begin to find peace. Then of course we need to do the same with our fathers. And we cannot do this from a place of thinking this is what we should do. It is a movement of the soul, but to me it makes absolute sense. These are the two people who gave me life. My life came through them and if I continue to reject them, if I remain angry with them, how can I find a place of true acceptance in myself? How can I ever find inner peace? Any other search for this becomes a substitute for this basic soul movement.

And to make this movement, I need to see them beyond anything they might or might not have done to me, in the context of the greater whole, of their own fate and of mine. And this is not about relinquishing anger or blame. We may need to go through that but if we get stuck in it, there is no lasting peace for us. It’s also not about condoning anything that anyone has done either. It’s about simply allowing people to face the consequences of their own actions.

So if we widen this out to look at what is happening to the planet right now does this mean we should just find a place in our own souls to just accept what is happening? Should we simply rest back on our laurels and seeing it all as a natural movement, do nothing? Well as an individual I just don’t seem to be able to do that. I think I need to do what I can to at least try and slow down what’s happening and maybe even if reverse it. Maybe doing what we can is also part of the bigger movement. The positive side effect is that we are forming communities, looking at ways to help each other and the planet.

The same goes for peace and war. In my own soul, I long for peace on a personal and wider global level. And yet, maybe peace is only possible as a counter to war. Maybe we need wars. I’m not sure. So I suppose in my train of thought here I am saying here that we do what we can and then at some point, maybe we need to surrender to what is, whether that be to do with our own lives, the lives of our loved ones or the life of the planet. Maybe we need these huge movements to shake us out of our humdrum existence and once again put us in touch with how much we love and value each other and the planet?

This is definitely an exciting time to be living on this planet. Much is changing and we have no idea how it will all unfold but I do feel that we will have an increasing need for each other, for community, for getting more in touch with our own rhythms and the rhythms of the planet. I think we have created a beautiful movement in these camps and I am grateful to all the founders for this. Maybe this is a place where we can have time for reflection on these issues and on our own inner movement towards peace and self-acceptance.

I often think of the serenity prayer these days (and you may need to find your own perspective on what or who you see as ‘God’) which to me, has the essence of what I have been writing about:

God grant me the courage to change the things I can change
The serenity to accept the things I cannot change
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Barbara Morgan is a Family Constellations Trainer, Supervisor and Practitioner and Editor of the International Constellations Journal –
The Knowing Field
email:
www.ordersoflove.co.uk

Chinese Tea Ceremony

by Nesta Burgess Read on
In the middle of an exciting and busy camp we were a group of people gathered for what is so completely different: a Chinese tea ceremony.

The “Tea” starts long before the first sip of the actual liquid when one can say “I am having tea”, it's just knowing that we aren’t going anywhere for another hour or two, and we are committed to sharing special time and space with others who are doing the same thing together.

In the beginning our particular choice of tea is carefully made after a long meditative process of appreciating the aroma of several different varieties. As the “smelling cup” travels around the circle, the most intimate thing is shared – breath. Thoughts and feelings are also shared until finally a unified choice is made about a single type of tea for our ceremony.

Now the preparation process can begin: with great care water is heated to a particular stage of boiling which is the most suitable for revealing the flavour of tea. Tiny clay cups are washed and heated, dry tea leaves are also warmed up before brewing. One could see this whole process as a tiny model of universe with the five primal Chinese elements interacting with each other: Fire heats up Water which soaks the tea (Wood), liquid is contained within clay pots and cups (Earth) and the human mind (Metal) oversees the whole process.

After the most careful and attentive preparation of every detail and ingredient, finally the first brewing is made and, rather surprisingly, spilled out! This action, which symbolizes a sacrifice to gods and ancestor spirits defines very clearly that it is not a casual drink for quenching thirst – the sacred ceremony has higher, not material, goals.

Second brewing. This is the first acquaintance with the tea as a liquid and many interesting things can be observed: the difference between smell and taste, and the way they change as the tea cools down, the flavour that stays in the mouth after the drink, and – probably the biggest discovery which also teaches us about the nature of life – every person perceives the flavour of the same tea very differently.

Third brewing. This is when familiarity starts developing with the tea – more subtle flavours and “afterflavours” also, relation between people becomes more subtle, sensitive and relaxed. In China there is a saying which expresses trust and fondness of another person: “We have already had Tea together”.

Fourth brewing. This is approaching the time for an inner choice – whether stubbornly to hold on to the concerns of problems and future plans in the back of the mind and to enjoy easy and mellow, yet only partial relaxation – or to make a decision to be total, to be “here and now”, which includes becoming more alert, concentrated and therefore more open to most sacred levels of the ceremony.

Fifth brewing. The tea flavours and smells become much more gentle and subtle – so does our mind and feelings. We can now see meaningfulness of every aspect in the ceremony as well as our ordinary life, and yet at the same time we start becoming aware of the “bigger picture” which allows us to question the real and deep mysteries of life.

Sixth brewing. In complete stillness and silence we can hear the spirits of our ancestors passing their knowledge to us. A ritual which has started thousands of years ago allows us to see ourselves as being rooted many generations into the past, passing wisdom into the future. And perhaps just for a moment, we can touch eternity.

Seventh brewing. The last cup helps us to come back into the daily world and bring our new experiences with us. Perhaps this will allow us to rediscover and become more enthusiastic about some things that had become habitual and even boring in our lives – we might start noticing the smell of freshly toasted bread before eating it, or having a little “dust wiping ceremony”, maybe even becoming aware of the sacredness of breath a little more often…

Sustainable Frome

by Peter Macfadyen Read on
On a freezing cold night, on the first Thursday of this year, 70 people braved the ice and headed to an alcohol free hall in Frome. Why? And why have a similar number come every month for over two years? Some undoubtedly find bringing food to share a chore – though others revel in demonstrating their skills at ensuring Locavores are well provided for. The youngsters (of whom there is usually a good crowd) probably find the “meeting bits” boring, but they hang on in there. Some people definitely cringe at the initial minute of silence, regular poems and the “spiritual” bits. Others gnash their teeth when the “anoraks” start extolling their latest plans for wind generation, electric cars, or anaerobic digesters...but this core – of a wider group of around 400 – clearly find something worth coming for again, and again, and again.

This is the monthly meeting of “Sustainable Frome” – a Transition Town that was heading in that direction before that term had become well used – a network of people who have created a community within a community, one which shares many of the facets of that all too brief Unicorn Community in the summer –and surely it is no coincidence that around a dozen Unicorn regulars are amongst the core of Sustainable Frome as well?

The monthly meeting has spawned a plethora of other regular groups – ones that do the techie stuff like Buildings, Energy, and Waste...and also, crucially, those that focus on Spirituality Earth Healing and The Work that Reconnects”. One off events including an annual green fair that over 2000 people have attended, and links with local government at all levels; a website, a forum, a programme of events…thousands of voluntary hours working towards trying to reduce the vulnerability of a community as it faces the triple crunch of climate change, peak oil, and now (bigger and faster than anyone predicted) the collapse of the financial systems.

The Unicorn Camp experience currently allows a few of us to discuss some of the crucial issues that make Sustainable Frome work, over the camp fires of Dorset. The Frome Community Choir and regular Harmonic Temple events in Frome help cement the links – hopefully more and more of the carbon conscious people of Frome will head south once a year for a holiday perfectly in keeping with the Sustainable Frome ethos.

But let me be clear, while much has been achieved, Sustainable Frome currently touches the lives of remarkably few of Frome’s population. There is MUCH to be done if we are really to be in a position to hold back the tide of pressures that pushes in on a small and vulnerable community. The Triple Crunch will change us all. Will the ethos and structures of Sustainable Frome and Unicorn be strong enough to withstand and take advantage of the spaces that change inevitably brings?

Blessed by Unicorns

by Margie McCallum Read on
I first heard of Unicorn Camps when I was in the Sahara Desert. Three years ago, on a wonderful journey-cum-retreat led by Alan Heeks, people kept talking about Voice Camp. The very idea of combining two of my favourite occupations had me asking questions. Once I knew it was real camping and unaccompanied group singing I floated off into a vision of heaven.

But I was nearing the end of my four-year sojourn in the UK, soon to head back to New Zealand, so I set my dream aside. Less than a year later I found myself back in the UK, living in Somerset. The same fellow desert-travellers had let me into another of their glorious secrets – Frome.

A clutter clearer by profession and passion, I was asked by the Frome-based Creativity Team if I would look after the store tent at Voice Camp. Then some Dance Campers, two women I had met through studying 7 Words, begged me to join their Creativity Team as well. It seemed much too generous a gift to give myself, to go to both camps, but I was being challenged by life to exercise my ability to receive abundance, so I did.

By the third day of Voice Camp I was in my stride, relishing the mix of spirit and song, drumming and dance, ceremony and concert, fires and friendships. Dance Camp (or Peace Through the Arts as it’s properly called) wasn’t love at first sight for me, but the Dances of Universal Peace grew on me, and the routine of daily Sufi Meditations fed my soul.

Being someone who likes to get things going then pass on the reins, I agreed to oversee the store tent one more year at Voice Camp. My 2008 Camp was very much less demanding because of all the sorting done the previous year, especially the mammoth sift and record session by the whole of the Dance Camp Creativity Team at the end of the 2007 camps. I found myself more able to enter other aspects of camp life, receiving from giving and giving into receiving. I joined some lunchtime discussions about living sustainably and found myself amidst some of the most inspiring and influential people in the field.

As I walked from the final gathering I decided I had to rejoin this group next year. I had been considering doing something different – a festival, or another sort of camp, but suddenly I felt part of a community I wanted to commit to.

Passing on my passion and skill as a clutter clearer was also a joy. My offerings into the Water Aid auction brought me into contact with two women who shared their challenges and frustrations in exchange for some motivation, skills and new understanding. And I enjoyed the passing sense of community created by the daring people who responded to my Fringe offer to discuss how to declutter and simplify life. [See the end of this article for a 7 Words summary of Living a Clutter-Free Life.

I have always loved community – the delight of working together, the sense of shared purpose and experience, the whole that is bigger than the sum of its parts. I have left the communities of my homeland, and now I am blessed with my living community of Frome, and the wider community of Unicorn Camps. I feel a unicorn has bent down and blessed my soul with his horn.

Druidry

by Rasullah Clarke Read on
Druidry these days is essentially about reverence for Nature, a way of feeling a connection with Creation and Creator through observing and celebrating Nature in all its forms and seasonal variations. There are plenty of different Druid orders worldwide that people can join and each will have its own emphasis, sense of lineage and unique ideas about how to ritualise this witnessing of Nature. The order that I personally hooked up with is the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids from which this comes:

The Druid Tradition is ancient, and represents one of the wellsprings of inspiration of the Western Spiritual Tradition. But even though it is ancient, it is as relevant and alive today as it ever has been. All spiritualities grow and change - and Druidism, or Druidry as it is also known, has changed too - and now it is experiencing a Renaissance. Every year new Druid groups form, new websites spring up, and new books are published. Druidry has become a vital and dynamic Nature-based spirituality that is flourishing all over the world, and that unites our love of the Earth with our love of creativity and the Arts. And flowing through all the exciting new developments in modern Druidism is the power of an ancient tradition: the love of land, sea and sky - the love of the Earth our home.

The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids is a spiritual group dedicated to practising, teaching, and developing Druidry as a valuable and inspiring spirituality. The Order was founded over forty years ago (in 1964) by Ross Nichols and a group of members of The Ancient Druid Order, including the writer Vera Chapman. The Ancient Druid Order developed during the early years of the last century out of the Druid Revival which began about three hundred years ago. The ADO traces its origins to 1717. The term ‘order’ is derived from the tradition of magical orders rather than from the tradition of religious orders. Neither the Order nor Druidry is a cult. A cult revolves around a personality, a charismatic leader, or a particular deity or saint. The Order and Druidry have none of these characteristics.

Membership of the Order is open to followers of all faiths and none, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or ethnic origin, and there are currently over eight thousand members in fifty countries.

Both the Feminine and the Masculine principles are celebrated and represented in the Order’s teachings and membership. The Order is not patriarchal or biased in favour of men – many women are in leadership roles and over half the membership is female.

Although most members practise Druidry on their own, there are over ninety groups around the world that offer the opportunity for members to meet and celebrate together. In addition individual members and groups organise gatherings, retreats, conferences and workshops.

For the last twenty years the Order has been offering a comprehensive training in Druidry which covers all three grades of Bard, Ovate and Druid.

(see www.druidry.org)

My experience of OBOD and of Philip Carr-Gomm who is the current head of the order is that, although guidance is given and knowledge passed on, there is plenty of room for finding how to follow your own spiritual path within the teachings and there is no dogma that you must subscribe to. It is also a path that you can follow alone or experience as a member of a local group, the choice is yours.

Studying Druidry has given me more of a connection with, and interest in our ancestors on these lands, what their lives were like, what their myths, legends and beliefs were. It has also made me want to make a deeper connection with plants especially trees and also with all of the animal world. I watch and notice much more about nature than I used to and it is an ever deepening source of pleasure for me. This spills over into what I do – lots of vegetable growing these days. Being a “Druid” has helped strengthen my ecological awareness and desire to live my life in a less environmentally destructive way. I feel like I am on a path that feeds me and one in which I will never stop learning, I don’t have to define it too specifically and so it stays alive and in creation yet I now have reference points that connect me with others who have similar passions. I can feel I am walking my talk with more focus.

Pluto in Capricorn

by James Burgess Read on

Pluto has changed signs again, now in the sign of Capricorn throughout the period November 2009 to March 2023, and such an event can sometimes be dramatic—as it was in 1914 and 1939. We know that the movement of celestial bodies are rhythmic; they circle the sun smoothly and always return on time, therefore to guess at the future we need to look at the past with rhythm in mind. It takes about 246 years for Pluto to complete its orbit around the Sun and re-enter any particular sign of the zodiac, so to study what happens when it does requires us to look at the history books and sift through for clues.

It seems that issues have arisen that touch upon what people can and cannot do—played out by the powerful authorities that influence the march of history. Some of the events have been quite pivotal in the development of religions; others have had great impact upon political matters and marked the rise and fall of a few impressive empires; a few were indications of shifts of attitude. In different ways these were all expressions of the reformation of the fabric of social structure—the underlying issue of how to develop civilization.

Always there was something to make a profound impression on history during Pluto in Capricorn. In every case there has been a major development of awareness experienced by humanity, as vast tidal waves rippled across time—waves of social change as transformative and enduring as Buddhism, Christianity, discovery, schisms, wars and empires. These seminal events are examples of what has occurred:

Confucianism begins in China
Buddhism enters China
Rome begins its dominance
Rome takes Britain
Christian Mission of St Paul begins
Goths take Rome
Marco Polo enters China
Luther seeds Protestantism
Cook arrives in New Zealand and Australia

Looking back one Pluto cycle to see what happened last time, we notice that the seed was planted for the birth of an empire. The Boston Tea Party was the refusal of Americans to pay British taxes, their will to independence, and the beginning of a power that dominates today’s world.

The hard events that are written down are simply clues pointing to underlying streams of humanity’s ideas, expectations and destiny—which find their way into our books according to the selective processes of commentators, who have no way to put them into context. For example, we can learn about the fact that during the 1340’s the population of Europe was devastated by plague—an event whose implications are resonating strongly 600 years later because it killed off so many small villages that vast migrations towards cities began, and the stage was set for the Industrial Revolution—leading inexorably towards climate change—because a city-based population tends strongly towards machinery and away from relationship with land.

This was truly a Capricornian expression, yet more like Neptune in its insidious hidden eating-away process, and indeed Neptune was in Capricorn then—and subsequently during England’s 1664 plague and again for the Aids scare of 1984. Also an earlier plague in 542 AD that eventually killed off 50% of Europe’s people was said to be the cause of the migration of the Goths who fled the rats and went on to take Rome in 546. And on the same theme, the pied piper of Hamelin was another story of rats and big societal changes, based in 1284 when Pluto was in Capricorn. Is it too fanciful to suggest that rats are the antithesis of government, representing the absence of good order? Failure to clean up the mess we make is surely as much to do with rats as it is to do with climate change.

The challenges that we could expect to come up during the intensely saturnine years of a Pluto Capricorn transit are those things that hold in place our sense of security on a society level—our social security. We include government, banks, laws, institutions, corporations, and structures of all kinds, including religion and even morality. Some of these will have to go through watershed-level shifts. What is essentially unhelpful has to wither and fade, so I think it would be naïve for us to trust in the system—it’s dying—or at least transforming.
With thanks to Palden Jenkins

Harmonic Temple: A Beginner’s Guide

by Nickomo Read on
Nickomo I coined the name ‘Harmonic Temple’ in 1993 to describe the genre I had begun to work in, of creating short accessible harmony pieces, based initially on sacred phrases from different spiritual traditions, and later using non tradition-specific English words to provide the intended focus. The name attempts to describe the musical space created by singing these songs together; ‘Harmonic’ because it is produced by vocal harmony, ‘Temple’ because of the sense of sacred-space that is created. What I experience when surrounded by acappella harmony is a literal immersion in the sound, as though it were water, or a heavenly realm, - hence also the allusions to angels. As well as being very beautiful, it can be empowering, healing, cathartic, or calming, depending on the nature of the music and the attunement of the words.

There are certain conventions that have become established as being most conducive to the experience described above. One is that the songs are sung in a circle, with the centre as the focal point of the music. Usually the songs are in four parts, and are learned by gathering in part-groups along four quadrants of the circle. Although they are referred to as soprano, alto, tenor and bass, the vocal range required for each part is much less demanding than in traditional choral music, being designed for ordinary ‘natural’ voices rather than for classically-trained singers.

Having learned the parts, the singers are encouraged to tune-in to the whole sound, rather than get too fixed on their own part, in order to receive the full immersion experience. As the song is repeated, singers are encouraged to roam freely around the space, and especially to take some time in the centre, where the blend of voices is at its strongest. For a quieter, slower song, this could mean most of the group holding the outer circle while taking turns organically to visit the centre in smaller groups. For a more upbeat song a general melee can develop with everyone dancing around.

Sometimes we arrange things more formally, like a ‘Healing Circle’ in which people take turns to lie in the centre (individually or in small groups depending on the size of the circle) while the rest of the group surrounds them with song. Or there may be a simple dance performed in a circle, often involving meeting different partners, or a ‘spiral’, in which the circle is led through a labyrinth pattern, meeting each other’s eyes as we walk past in time to the music.

The Inspiration Most of the mantras that inspired the first wave of Harmonic Temple songs were first encountered in sessions of Dances of Universal Peace, about which there is plenty of information elsewhere on this site. For me, the great thing about the dances was an opportunity to engage with the non-dogmatic spiritual wisdom of different traditions through the medium of music and dance. As a harmony addict I always particularly appreciated it when there was spontaneous harmonizing in the circle. From the mid eighties to the early nineties we held a weekly Chanting Group in our house near Bristol, where as well as improvising harmonies to chants and songs from various traditions we also learned some set pieces, such as the chants of Taizé. It was for this group that I first created short four-part acappella compositions of a spiritual nature.

The Development I began sharing some of these songs at Music and Dance Camps, then in workshops, and in 1995 there was sufficient interest to get a group of singers together for a recording, which went out as a tape called ‘Harmonic Temple Volume 1’, as well as a book of the music. In 1998 it was followed by ‘Volume 2’,And in 2000 by ‘Beauty All Around Me’, the first collection to be released as a CD. Subsequently the best of the first 2 volumes were squeezed into one CD and book and released under the name ‘Ateh Malkuth’.

Since the turn of the century interest in the Harmonic Temple has grown, and as well as regular workshops in the U.K.,we have shared the chants in New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Eire and the U.S.A. The last three collections have been recorded by an ever-expanding voluntary choir, creating on the CD a sound much more like the sound of a real Harmonic Temple session than on the first recordings. ‘Here Right Now’ was recorded in 2002, ‘Singing with the Angels’ in 2005, and ‘Deep Peace’ in 2007. New pieces are still emerging, and are shared at workshops along with golden oldies.

Unicorn Daily morning sessions of Harmonic Temple are open to all at the Unicorn Natural Voice Camp – usually the best and biggest sessions of the whole year - and sessions are offered at the Unicorn Peace Through the Arts Camp on alternate days, in response to feedback about their popularity.

More More information about these CDs, books, and the workdiscs that also accompany them, downloadable samples, how to order copies, workshop information et al, please visit our website

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