Luxor Life.

I have been here in Luxor now for nearly two years now and it has been an education! I learned to just be a witness rather than try to change things because I learned that it is very difficult for anyone to change centuries worth of beliefs in a short space of time, no matter how frustrating it is to watch how those same beliefs just don’t work!

Living in the middle of Egyptian society is very different to living an ex-pat life and I have had no desire to become involved with the ex-pats who live here, except for two ‘foreign’ wives of our next door neighbours whose husbands are related to my husband! We meet for coffee and a ‘vent’ and exchange the stories of our lives and what we are experiencing. Its always interesting to see how our experiences match each others and how we feel about them.

Full Moon over The West Bank.

Its not easy to live here. In fact it can be infuriating, expecially when you see how things are run, or not, in most cases. The corruption, across all levels of society is rife. Traditional and Islamic beliefs create a mish mash of cultural life which is hard to keep up with sometimes. Much of it doesn’t make any sense. But I have been trying to understand the origins of certain beliefs, the sources of certain behaviours, both dysfunctional and healthy, and that activity keeps me interested.  But it can also drive me crazy!

When I first moved here it didn’t take long for me to see how things could be done differently. So I tried…and met with huge resistance. In the garden I pruned the apple trees, just like I did with my trees in the UK. I trimmed all all the suckers from the Guava, orange and Lemon trees and Omar and I managed to get some of the garden to grow potatoes and onions. No-one actually believed that we could do it. I had been growing veges since I left home at 19 years of age. I know how to grow veges! But I was a foreign woman and obviously knew nothing about anything!

It was very difficult. The one thing that drove me nuts was that no-one ever waited for things to be ripe before they would just pluck them from the trees. Lemons, figs, guavas, pomegranates and apples all disappeared. The kids and women just helped themselves. There are four flats of people here in our building plus Mother and Father. Four sons and their wives and children occupy the flats, ours being one of them. If something was grown in the garden people just helped themselves without considering anyone else’s needs. I couldn’t understand it.

Virginia Creeper clad walls of Mount Brandon.

I looked back to my own childhood and my Grandmother’s orchard. Mick, the gardener grew everything there and if my grandmother wanted anything she sent someone up to tell him and he would give her what she needed. Woe betide anyone who took something without first asking for it! To my mind this was how it should be. There was always food for the kitchen. Things were ripe and ready to be eaten. But here, as soon as it appears it is picked, unripe and unready!  Nothing had a chance to grow so nothing was shared either. Everything was so mismanaged! How did these people ever survive?

Orange blossoms on the tree…

I gave up on the garden and my role in it after a very clear message from one of the older brothers that my ‘work’ was not appreciated. After pruning one side of the apple tree, I left one side the same as it was just to see the difference, this older brother saw me and said “What are you doing with my apple tree?” It was said in a ‘jokey’ way but it felt nothing like a joke. This was the brother who never set foot in the garden I might add!  I laughed, taking it lightly, and replied “Just wait until next year and you will have lots of apples”. This little apple tree only produced small quantities of apples, 5 -6, when it could have been producing lots but it had never been trained or pruned.

Two days later Omar and I were in the garden again and the brother appeared with an older man. They went straight to the apple tree! The old man was checking out the tree and my pruning. The message was loud and clear and I felt it in my stomach like a kick! “This is MY tree and you have ruined it”. Omar obviously picked up on his brothers intentions too and so he asked the old man how my pruning was. The old man replied that I had done a good job but I had pruned it back too hard. But it was good. (They only take off dead leaves here and the tiny tips of branchces when they prune).

Even though the old man ‘approved’ of my work I felt completely gutted. The brother’s actions were telling me clearly that I had no ‘rights’ in their garden.  It upset me for the entire day and I made a decision that I was just not going to get involved in the garden again. What made it even worse was that the other brothers defended this brother’s actions even though it was also clear as a bell to them what his intentions were. But no-one stood up to him!

Water Fowl. Keeping Cool.

So I turned my attention to chickens. We bought our chickens and converted an unused mudbrick shed into our chicken house. Omar’s mother kept her chickens and ducks in another shed along with the sheep. I bought my chickens ‘proper’ feed from the shop and gave them scraps as well. A few days later ‘Mother’ told us that rats were stealing her hens eggs and so, innocently, I suggested she keep them with our chickens. Bad move. Although I fed them they were now no longer my chickens. She questioned every little thing I did and undid everything too! The other women would send their children to get the eggs without asking so we told htem that when there were enough eggs we would share them with everyone. One wife refused any eggs at all because she couldn’t just go and help herself! Then another brother felt so quilty that the other wife wasn’t getting eggs that he refused the eggs as well. It was ridiculous.

There was a constant battle for control and I became so fed up with the whole thing.  Nobody else could see what was happening, or rather they chose not to. We decided to build another chicken house below our flat. Our flat is above the ‘apple tree brothers’ flat. Omar made mudbrick walls and put a door on and just before we were about to put our chickens there the brother kicked off again. He ranted that he didn’t want chickens outside his house!  That was the end of that idea!

I went to the UK for two weeks and when I came back I decided that I was going to take back my power and my control and take care of my own bloody chickens! So we put a lock on the door. Mother got one too..lof course. Totally defeated the object but one can’t reject mother!

The women, who were feeding them scraps, threw these scraps over the door and it stank. We told them to put the food outside the door rather than throwing it over the door and leaving a horrible stinking mess as you walk in to the coop! Nothing went down well. Mother was out of the loop!  But the scraps were still thrown over the door!

Two remaining ducklings!

We bought three ducklings, two of which died when someone let them out of the palm run they were in. So we put our last remaining duck in with the chickens. But two days later Mother bought ducks and where did she put them? She threw them over the door and in with our chickens, which effectively meant that she could now enter as she liked.

I gave up and gave her all the chickens to look after! I had had enough. She was not pleased as it now meant that she had to feed and water them everyday. I no longer paid for their food and had nothing more to do with them. She complained that she still wanted me to look after them, which really meant she wanted me to pay for their food!  We said OK, but didn’t act on it, leaving her with the responsibility! We still own our duck, which she looks after,  but most of the hens have been eaten. In the winter we are putting concrete stairs up to the roof and we will build houses for our birds and rabbits. Then I will do it my way…hopefully!  But before doing that I will make sure that ‘the brother’ doesn’t take control of that idea too! It he does then I will not build the stairs but will wait until I have my own farm someplace else!

But there is a point to this blog. These incidences of power and control taught me about how women’s lives are here in the poorer parts of Egypt. How people can all live together and how the power dynamics between men and women, and the women themselves, make or break a family. I will write more about this in the next blog.

PS. The little apple tree died in the end and produced nothing at all after all its little apples were eaten. Everyone thought it was a case of ‘bad eyes’ after the pruning fiasco! Too much negative energy etc. All the other trees we took care of are now producing more fruit than they ever have.  Hey ho!

Egyptian magic in Modern Upper Egypt.

One of the things I was excited about when I moved to Luxor in Upper Egypt was the possibility of studying local beliefs in magic. My husband Omar had told me about spells which people had placed on each other and how this impacted on people around him. I found it hard to understand how people could believe that this worked until I moved here and saw what their belief in magic was all about!

My first experience of this was while I was still living in Winchester, England and a couple living next door to Omar’s family were having marital problems. Their family had called a Sheikh in to help them through the use of magic. Sheikhs are men, generally, who have studied Islam and also have psychic abilities. This particular Sheikh told the couple that a woman who wanted to steal away the husband had placed a spell on the man to make him lose interest and cause rows with his wife. He instructed the family to buy very expensive incense from a particular seller and to have it ready when he arrived. This incense cost nearly a months wages!!! But, family harmony was important.

Very Expensive Incense

The Sheikh arrived at the appointed time and I was online with Omar at the time. He told me when the incense was being burned as he could smell it. Houses are very close to each other here!!! I tuned in to see what I could pick up as this Sheikh worked. Energy began to fill my room so the Sheikh had some healing power, however, it felt very controlling and masculine. It felt like the wrong energy. I tuned into the wife’s energy and it felt to me that she was feeling completely neglected and unloved by her husband. What she needed was more love!!! So I joined my energy to the Sheikh’s and anchored some female energy in their flat to bring some level of love into her home.

When I moved to Luxor shortly afterwards I monitored this couple’s progress. I realised quite quickly that the man was not interested in being married at all, and just didn’t give his wife anything. This led to her feeling unloved and unwanted and so they argued all the time. It was not the result of any magic, just a husband’s unhappiness with his wife! The problems had been there even before their marriage so it was inevitable that there would be problems afterwards.  However, magic was seen to be the cause, instigated by a jealous ex-fiancée who wanted her man back! They couldn’t see how the husband’s emotions were actually the reason.

Each time they had a problem it was ascribed to the ex-fiancee’s  jealous behaviour. As far as I could see it was just the husband not being happy in his relationship and wanting the freedom of  ’singleness’ again. But the Sheikh has the explanation for everything and his word is trusted and believed.

What makes it even more unbelievable is that it is the Sheikh himself who tells the couple that another person has paid a Sheikh to put a spell on them!  This then just adds to the fear of the wife and the misbehaviour of the Husband who then believes he has no control over the situation, or his emotions and behaviour! How useful for the men!

Apart from the obvious evidence of marital disloyalty the Sheikh’s instructions to buy expensive incense from a particular seller tells me that they were making a lot of money out of ‘helping’ people. But when I say this they say ‘Oh but he does it for free’. Of course he does, because he is getting half the money the poor people paid for the incense!!!

There is no denying that many of them do indeed work with energy, some in a quite powerful way, but it is a form of lower magic, where the Will is imposed on the people in need. There is no sense of doing whatever is needed for the person’s higher good. They are doing basic, lower chakra magic. Which is why it probably doesn’t work!!! But people believe it does and most of them are being conned into employing the services of these Sheikhs. The joining of Islam with this magic gives it a ‘holy’ tradition, even though there is nothing God-like or loving about how they work. However, they will often use the Qu’ran in writing their magical formulas.

 

I wonder what the Quran itself says about the use of magic? I will have to look it up!

As far as the couple are concerned there are so many other issues involved with their relationship that it will take quite a few blogs to understand them so I will take them a little at a time. They are a good study in how relationships and Upper Egyptian belief systems operate!

My School Career Counselor or How to change your future in one easy (?) lesson!

I’m ill in bed reading Dave Eggers’ “A heartbreaking Work of staggering Genius”. Right now he is in a bar, having left his 9 year old brother with a male babysitter. He is having a conversation with an old school friend who mentions that he has just seen a ‘Job Counselor’.  I am instantly transported back to my old school and the  Job Counselor we had there. Then I remember an incident I had with her over a job placement in our ‘Transitional Year’.

I went to a school in Blackrock, Dublin, called Newpark Comprehensive.  It was part of an originally private,  Protestant school called “Avoca and Kingstown” where I had originally attended Middle School.

Graiguenamanagh Bridge and Brandon Hill.

We had just moved from Graiguenamanagh, Co. Kilkenny, to Dublin, after the separation of my parents and my father, being an atheist, chose this school. I had been educated in a convent prior to this. I imagine he wanted us to have the best education in a non-traditional, and non-religious setting.  And what better way to assert his independence from his very Catholic parents than to send us to a Protestant school!

Avoca School in the 1960′s.

That lovely red-brick building above was our middle school. It was founded in 1891 and merged with Kingstown Grammar school in 1968, four years before I went there.  The original heads of the school developed innovative teaching programs and introduced sex education and nature study. I can vividly remember the nature study but cannot remember the Sex education until we were in Newpark!  The school became a centre of Educational innovation.

I can remember, at the age of nearly twelve, sitting in our classroom at the front of the building, behind one of those lovely bay windows in the above photo. The very modern building of Newpark had just been built in front of the old building, on its lovely gardens. It was a horrible, one-story building, completely out of character with the lovely red-brick building which it faced. One of the entrances was right in front of my window and I saw a young man come out and stand in front of the door. He was dressed in a tweed suit and was probably about 16 or 17. Its hard to judge when you’re twelve! He took a pipe out of his pocket and lit it and stood there, calmly smoking. I was amazed that a student should be allowed to smoke, in school!  But that pretty much summed up the School for me. It was all about freedom, freedom of expression, of development.

When I was twelve I moved to Spain for two years with my mother and two of my sisters. We went to a Spanish Catholic school on the outskirts of Torremolinos for a year and then to a modern school up in the woods behind the old village of El Calvario. I think I probably attended for at least two weeks. Sorry Mum!

Back in the Day. Playamar, Torremolinos.

When the two years were finished we moved back to Dublin and went back to Newpark, but this time I was so far behind, educationally, that I had to go down a year. All of the friends I had been in school with in Avoca were now a year ahead of me so I had to start all over again.

Fourth Year in Newpark meant Transition year where you learned about life outside school! i.e. WORK. TAXES etc. Terrifying stuff! As part of this experience we had to choose three work placements to try out jobs we might like to do in the future. For my first one I chose a bookshop in Dublin, as I loved books. That was OK but all I spent the week doing was adding books to shelves. I was more interested in reading the books than stacking them!

The next job placement was in Pelican House, the blood transfusion service. I had always wanted to be a surgeon when I was a child so this might give me an idea of how it might be in reality! This is where our Job/Career counselor came in! My friend Sarah and I had chosen to do this placement together and we were instructed, by our career counselor, not to spend the week filing, which is how Pelican House had gotten most of its filing done in the past, by using students in Transition year. She told us that we were to get a much experience as possible in all departmental within the service. No problem, we thought!

Pelican House.

We planned well together for this placement. By this we mean that we plaited our hair in tiny plaits so that in the morning it would look frizzy! (I had very long hair!) We chose our headwear, in my case a baseball cap and in Sarah’s a black Trilby! I don’t remember what we wore, as clothes were never very important to me, but I’m pretty sure it involved jeans and shirts! It was the 70′s and the era of Grand-daddy shirts. All in all the perfect ensemble for working in the adult world of a blood transfusion service!

For the first two days we spent our time doing…?  Yep…filing! Halfway through the second day we were asked how we liked the job so far so I said exactly what my Career counselor had said to us, albeit a little more politely, I thought! I said that the school had told us that we were not to do filing all week  but were to experience as much as we could about all aspects of the work. The woman disappeared and we continued filing!

The following morning we got into work and were there for an hour before the same woman appeared and told us that we were to return to school at once! What? We got our stuff together and got a bus into Blackrock. All the way to school we tried to figure out why we were being called back. Had someone died? My younger sister had died the previous year so anything was possible! Had someone in Sarah’s family died? Had an accident? All the way we panicked and conjectured. Drove ourselves nuts!

Once we arrived in school we raced to the Career advisors room but she was waiting out in the main corridor. I walked quickly up to her. “What’s happened? What’s wrong? Why did you bring us back?” She stared at me, angry. “Do not be so rude Ann Murphy”. I was shocked. I wasn’t being rude. I was scared! I did not understand what was going on. We just stood there, speechless. She continued ” I received a call from Pelican house this morning. They told me that you refused to do filing!!!” Refused?? CONfused! ”You have completely embarrassed the school and Pelicon house are considering dropping us from the Transition year placement program”

Hang on a minute, I thought. I did exactly what you said to do! “But you told us that we were not to do filing and that was all we were doing.” I responded. Her answer was to deny saying it in quite that way and that the woman had said I was extremely rude and that if we wished to continue our placement there we would have to go back in and apologize to the Director! I was flabbergasted. Apologize? For what? Telling the truth? Doing what we were told?

But she wasn’t finished. “And on top of that you wore clothes totally inappropriate to the job.” OK, that we did! There was no denying that! But apologizing to the director? To say we were shocked was an understatement! I was really angry but also nervous. Now we would have to return to Pelican house and look like idiots for following instructions by adults who should have dealt with it themselves. Why didn’t they organize the placement properly instead of leaving it up to us to do their communicating for them?

So the following morning I found myself on the bus into Dublin…alone…going to apologize to the bloody director!!! Sarah had managed to get out of it and had a ‘sick note’ so I had to face the humiliation by myself!! Thanks Sarah!

The end of that week proved quite interesting though and I got to experience how it was to work in a blood transfusion service! But these experiences taught me that the adult world could not be trusted and I wanted no part in its subterfuges and machinations! I was going to live in a commune, be self sufficient and make my own rules!!!

At least I knew what I was doing!

Four of my daughters and two granddaughters!!!

I have never left that experience and continue to this day to live outside of societies ‘norms. To me I might as well be dead as living a life like that where I cannot speak the truth for fear of upsetting other people’s apple carts. If you don’t want me to do something then don’t tell me to do it!  Simple! But I have learned to accept that other people do not necessarily tell the truth, that they are unable to. They can’t even see it! My daughters too have learned this from me and always call a spade a spade, even if it hurts, which it often does. But I appreciate that its their truth so even if I don’t like it, I accept it. After all..its what I taught them to do…

Oh…and if you have actually read the whole blog without getting bored  and are interested to know what my third and final placement was…it was harvesting sweetcorn for my father. One penny per cob and all we could eat! Pretty good really! Until I had to spend my Christmas Holidays in hospital being treated for lumbago, the result of pulling large plastic boxes filled with corn on the cob, by a rope, through row after row of maize stalks! The upside of that? I learned how to weave and make basket chairs as part of my recreational therapy!

Who needs school?

Channelling on Ascension and the New Age. 2012

It is our great pleasure to introduce to you a new and exciting piece of technological brilliance. The Human Soul.

Why? We hear you ask. What is new about the Human Soul?

The Human Soul

This new soul technology is creation at its best. A Soul technology that supersedes all other models. It is the new and improved Human Soul, made to fit any body during any time period. There are no limits to its wonders. With this new Soul your world is light and bright and breezy. Simple yet abundant. A timeless joy and experience.

OK, It sounds like an advert doesn’t it? But this is how you are sold endless realities and soul experiences by those who profess to have all the answers and stand to reap the financial rewards that such advertising creates.

Ascension…

But how do you tell the difference between true soul realities/futures, and false? How can you tell if there are no guidelines? It is easy. If someone tells you something that feels like a fantasy and that fills your heart with the joy of avoidance then you know it is not the truth. There is no sudden leap into a bright new world, but a slow crawl towards the light, just as there has always been. However, for some their lives will change but not in the fantasy light worlds expressed by many, for these worlds exist only in the higher dimensions and can only be glimpsed by those who have their mind and heart awareness open.

Connection.

Life on earth is not supposed to be trouble-free. It was designed to be a school of experience, as you know. Mankind has a long way to go before he is free of the karmic chains which keep him bound here, year after year experiencing both love and hate, joy and turmoil. This will not change in a day, but the efforts of those to create more loving experiences, i.e. the light-workers of the planet, are bringing in newer energies. Energies which will allow those who have struggled to grow, to move through their ‘stuck’ places, patterns and emotions. Behaviours and patterns which have proved difficult to shift, through many lifetimes, now have the chance of being pushed through like never before. The increased intensity of vibration at this time is allowing a window of growth, mercy if you like, to allow these souls a little ‘help’ in finally moving through their most challenging experiences. Experiences which they have struggled to overcome in the past. It is like a damned river which nothing can clear until a flash flood comes and sweeps it away. The energies propel them forward in their growth so that new cycles can begin to be experienced.

So in this way is the New Age inaugurated. No new bodies of light, and no avoidance of mistakes from the past. All is NOW.

Cosmic Help

Reap the benefits which such time affords you and do the work necessary to clear your fields and the collective field, for all is One. Join with your neighbours and clear, clear, clear. Once everything has cleared then the world will indeed seem a little brighter but it will still be the same world. One of hope and joy, but also pain and challenge, for that is why you are here. Make no mistake about it. The world is not going to become a paradise overnight. It will take thousands of years before humanity is capable of evolving beyond the point of returning, collectively.

It is the time for a New Age, a new age of challenges and new experiences but you will all remain, bar those who have evolved beyond the need to be here, as has always been the way. Some will remain and some will stay and that is the way it is.

Clarity

So stay focussed on the journey and not on the outcome and continue to work your way through difficulties and illusions until you are free once more. For that is the path through life.

We hope that this answers the many concerns you have had around this issue. Nothing will change and everything will change and that is how it is.

John Tavener and Father Yule.

John Tavener.

17 July 2009. Although I wrote this a few years ago I thought I’d add it here.

 We went to see John Tavener in concert last night at Winchester cathedral and it was amazing! Prior to it I had spent the day at my daughter Bizzee’s house and had sprayed myself with ‘Brigit’ essence, an essence of the Goddess Brigit. For two hours later I felt dizzy and nauseous and completely ungrounded, very shaky! I wondered if it were the essence or because we had to do some work in the cathedral! Often my energy ‘prepares’ itself for earthwork and I just usually feel ill for a while. Its as if the the energies required at the site fill my ‘energy-field’ beforehand and its nearly too much to handle.

When we got into the cathedral the program said that Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ would also be played. It turned out to be rather pleasant but not a patch on Tavener! That was incredible. It really was energy music. It was called ‘Towards Silence’ and it was a meditation on the different states of Dying and Being, according to the Vedantas. The sound was created by a Tibetan singing bowl and strings. It was magical. Winchester cathedral was built on a a large blue leyline, a ‘water’ line and of feminine frequency. These lines are called the Dragon Lines in China. (You can read more here: http://earthdragon.moonfruit.com/#/earth-dragons/4519719579)

Father Yule

As I listened I became aware of how the music seemed to open a gateway to another realm. Then, as I got more into the music I saw ‘Pan’ sitting up with the orchestra!! He was the fawn, with hairy legs, beard, leaves and berries around his head like a crown and playing a pipe!! He seemed to be in a ‘nature’ dimension which co-existed with ours but which was invisible most of the time.

Then he disappeared and Father Yule was sitting there, large as life!! ‘Father Yule’ I thought. ‘What’s he doing there. Isn’t he Saxon?’ He seemed to embody a pagan version of Father Christmas. He was a fat, red-cheeked man, naked except for a red cloak which hung around his shoulders and wore some kind of woollen trousers. Around his head he wore a crown of ripe fruit and leaves and his energy was that of male abundance!! I’ve never worked with that energy before so it was very interesting. When I ran a group in Winchester we went to the grounds around the Cathedral and did an energy working. At that time I kept seeing a huge monolith where the Cathedral now was. It seemed to be on an island surrounded by water. An energy which called himself ‘Jack in the Green’ showed me how it had been here in the past. It was a male fertility site (red star on image of Winchester below) and was balanced by St. Catherine’s Hill (pink star on image below) which lies nearly south of it. St. Catherine’s Hill is the Feminine site in the area and energy flows in from the sun and is then channelled through radiating energy lines from the centre of the hill to ‘feed’ the surrounding landscape with energy, keeping it fertile and abundant. However, the female needs the male to create so the cathedral obviously is part of this ‘partnership’.
I’m not used to working with the masculine fertility aspects of nature as I normally only work with the feminine creative essence so this was very interesting.

Winchester Aerial view of sites.

As I sat and watched the musicians playing in front of the ornate rood screen at the top of the nave the image changed and a group of white-robed ‘priests’ appeared in a circle, right in front of the stage where the musicians were playing. As they stood in the circle I saw a hole open up in the centre of this circle and gold light began to flow out, like honey. It continued to flow out, filling the floor of the cathedral with gold liquid until it lapped against the pillars and was quite a few feet deep. It seemed like the music was also filling the cathedral with gold light. The sun had nearly set and what light there was left of it shone into the cathedral, filling everything with a gold light. Combined with the Tibetan bowl, which was now resounding around the cathedral it felt incredibly powerful.

As the bowl continued to resound around the walls the image changed and I now saw vines and plants climbing up around the pillars. It was as though the cathedral was being filled with nature. A few minutes later the image changed again and now the fawn was visible on the stage. There was no roof any-more. The cathedral was open to the sky. Nature had returned.

The druid/priests walked in a line and stood in front of the stage, looking down the nave to where the audience were sitting. They seemed to be waiting. Then, as the music drew to a close, the Yule father appeared again, smiling broadly and the druids began to walk forward. I thought they were going to form a circle again but they walked around the outside of the circle they had created and then walked out a door in the south-side of the cathedral.
The music drew to a close, and in silence, everyone left the cathedral. A very wonderful evening…

Boundaries

One of the things I have recognised here in Luxor is the way that children are raised, in both poorer families and better off families.

Having been raised in a culture where Catholic, Irish, values are imposed on children and where God is seen as the ultimate authority, being here in Islamic Egypt feels surprisingly familiar! Father was the law-maker and the punisher, the one who you had to take seriously. Mother, on the other hand, was more manageable. It was easy to bamboozle her, to manipulate her or to lie without feeling too much fear. The fear came with her statement “Wait until your father comes home”. Then you knew you were in trouble and had overstepped the mark, the boundary line drawn by your parents.

Dad’s Home…

 My own father had been brought up in a very controlling family and he had attended a Christian Brothers Boarding school in Limerick where abuse was rife.  During  the 70′s, when I was a teenager living in Dublin with my father, he replayed his own history with me. Boundaries were very strict and abusive and it always felt to me like I was in a boarding school too. My mother, who lived separately to us, gave me very few boundaries; so while raising my own children in the UK in the 90′s I was very confused and vacillated between being too strict or too lenient. I found it very difficult to find the right balance with discipline.

When I was training to be an abuse counsellor I did many parenting courses in an attempt to find this balance. But I had started too late, as my girls were now teenagers and their patterns were already set. However, living now in Egypt, I recognise how important setting boundaries early in the child’s life is.

Told off by Mother….

Children have few, if any, healthy boundaries. There are invisible boundaries, which seem to exist in the parents mind but which are unknown to the child… until they are overstepped. When they are overstepped the child is physically beaten and is subsequently left in a permanent state of fear, still unsure of where the boundaries lie. Nothing is explained to them about what boundaries were overstepped or why they are being punished.

Young Girl from Upper Egypt carrying Rice.

For boys this is even more so. Girls are usually being trained from a very early age to be wives and mothers, so they do much of the Mother’s work, fetching and carrying, going on errands or making tea all day. They help to look after the younger children and all day long they are called by one person or another  to do this or that! The adults rely on the girls to do the things they don’t want to do. The boys also do errands but not as much as the girls, because boys are going to be husbands, telling their wives what to do!

Young Girl from Upper Egypt taking care of younger brother.

Boys flounder more as their roles as young males is not as clearly defined as that of young girls.  With the introduction of the internet, mobile phones and satellite television young boys spend most of their free-time using these technologies in the pursuit of excitement and girls! Their adrenalin levels are always raised, but they have no healthy outlets for all of this wild energy. Boys as young as ten years old are left to amuse themselves, sometimes going to bed at four in the morning because no-one tells them to go to bed! They float around in their young lives and try to find strategies for survival, usually though avoidance and lying. They have no direction and no purpose. Many are illiterate because even the teachers don’t care and their undirected energy spills over into violence and uncontrolled anger.

The effects of this way of life last into adulthood and many men end up living lives where they do not recognise boundaries, especially with women. Men continue their childhood survival strategies, lying when they think they are going to get into trouble and avoiding, by manipulation, denial and not taking responsibility for their actions.  They also act out their childhood anger with their wives, who act it out with their children.

Passing it down.

The result is also addiction, to alcohol, marijuana or sex. The men float around looking for direction, and work, from their government and local officials.  They feel powerless and direction-less because they get nothing from these father figures. Men are not taught to be independent and self reliant. They are taught to be completely dependent, and scared of authority.

This cycle continues down through the generations. In many ways it is no different to the cycles of abuse experienced in the West except that there is no education or help for these dysfunctional family relationships here in Upper Egypt. These dynamics are the norm. Without free therapeutic help and parenting education these cycles will continue. In Cairo there are more and more centres being set up offering help and advice to people but very little here in Upper Egypt.

It will take years to change these dynamics but it has to start somewhere. Making sure that education is improved would be a good beginning…

Eve’s Garden.

Replying to Deb-Aurah Araznu’s (link at bottom of page) status update on Facebook I decided that my reply needed some expanding. The poster was describing her experience of spiritual expansion and she spoke about the Garden of Eden. Having been brought up as a Catholic in a convent we were taught the story of Adam and Eve and the tree in the Garden of Eden. Needless to say, when I was  6 years old I didn’t question the wisdom of the nuns. After all, they were closer to God than I.

Eve in the Tree. John Coates.

Or maybe not! As I developed as a healer and worked more and more on the meaning of myth, often I would awaken from sleep with ‘realisations’. One morning I awoke with the image of a naked Eve standing on the roots of a large tree, with an apple in her hand, and she had a serpent entwined around her body. But this was not the Christian Eve. This was the Mother Goddess, a far more ancient version than the Christian vision.  The ‘knowing’ that went with this picture was this: Eve represented the Mother of Creation, nature, that which fed us and sustained our physical bodies. The apple that she was offering to mankind/Adam, was her wisdom and knowledge of the Divine Feminine; The path of the Mother. Divine Love. The serpent was the energy which flowed through the earth, it brought fertility to the land, and fed the people and all that lived upon it. The tree was the Tree of Life. Not in the way which the Jewish people understood it but as the vehicle through which the apples might be brought to humanity. The tree was life. It is only through living a physical life, experiencing the whole range of emotions and life events that we can truly grow.

Eve: the Primordial Mother. Adam: humanity.

We do not grow by forever being out of our bodies and in our minds; that growth is limited. The wisdom of the Mother therefore is the Mystery of Life, birth, death and everything in between. Our sacredness is experienced through our bodies. It is in the experience of living that we face our greatest challenges and experience our greatest joys. Through the realm of emotion we learn to overcome fear and to rise into our soul awareness, instilling in ourselves the flow of Divine Providence. The Mother is Abundance.

Isis as a tree giving food and water to to a man and his wife.

In Ancient Egypt the Mother Goddess Isis was represented by the Sycamore Tree which fed the Pharaoh and his family. But Isis, and Osiris, are said to have been born of Lusaaset, (The Great One who comes forth). She was the Grandmother of the Deities, and she too was an Acacia tree. She was the Goddess of Creation.

But why trees? Apart from the obvious link to the fact that they do provide life to humans in the form of food, syrup, water, and wood? Well, the answer to this also came in the shape of a ‘morning realisation’. I awoke, on another morning, with an image of the Kabbalah, the Jewish Tree of life superimposed on Egypt!

The Tree of Life.

While I was walking to work later that morning I had another image. The central ‘trunk’ of this tree was the Nile River, feeding the entire tree. The Branch containing the three spheres Hod, Gevurah and Binah were the Goddess Isis, the Divine Feminine. The opposite three, on the other branch was Osiris, the Divine Masculine. The Tree of life, in the Jewish tradition represented creation and the Divine Balance between the feminine and the masculine. But that wasn’t all. Each sphere represented a sacred place on the map of Egypt. The Isis spheres representing sites which were predominantly female and the Osiris spheres representing sites which were masculine in their nature. The spheres along the central trunk were sites where the energies were ‘balanced’ between male and female.

Map of Egypt.

The tree was not purely an esoteric idea but a real, workable map of energy sites where, when all these sites are functioning correctly, brings balance and abundance to the country. The lines on the tree show the connections between each site as all sites are connected via a matrix of energy lines which feed the landscape and its atmosphere with the energies of the site.  It functions a little like a Mother board in a computer. Remembering that the Hebrews came from Egypt with Moses, who was a priest, it is easy to see how the sacred knowledge went with them. But somewhere along the line the information was lost and it became a purely esoteric method of connecting to the Divine. The Mother aspect having been relinquished somehow.

Apples of the Goddess.

This brings us back to the garden of Eden! The Garden is the Realm of the Mother in Balance with the Father. For the tree cannot exist without the life-giving sun and rain. But the Hebrews who brought the knowledge of the Tree of Life and the Garden of Eden decided that they no longer needed the Mother. They could do it all themselves, even though to begin with they obviously brought the belief in Hathor, in the form of the Golden cow, with them, along with the story of Isis and the tree. But the story of Divine Harmony and Balance was distorted so that now the Divine Feminine was reduced to being a tempting harlot, weak and ignorant, bringing shame to mankind and forcing their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Somehow the Hebrew God became the fearful, avenging and angry God who hated the Mother and all women of the Earth.

So what part of ‘Honour thy Father AND thy Mother’ did they not understand?

If you want to read Deb-Aurah Araznu’s blog here is the link:

http://www.bluerayhealing.com/becomingcrystalline.htm

What Have They Done with Mother?

On doing my usual morning routine of checking out the latest news on-line I found this article: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/05/23/bishop-urges-priests-to-drop-the-hail-mary-from-masses/

Mary grotto from the 1950′s. Fourmilewater, Co. Waterford.By Ms. Jen.

Having been brought up as a Catholic and educated by Nuns I was immersed in the religion and one of the most important facets of our worship was Mary, Mother of Jesus. She is everywhere in Ireland. Every town and village has a grotto for her. She is Mother of Ireland. In later years, when I began to develop as an Earth Healer, healing the fracture in the collective unconscious around the Divine Feminine, I began to understand more about how the Mother was both revered and diminished in the Catholic religion.

Loughrea, Co. Galway. (Oninstagram)

In 2002 I attended a workshop which was the final part of a process which had taken me to Egypt the previous year and which changed my life completely. During this workshop, in Glastonbury, I met a woman from Australia (land of my birth) and we attended a Catholic healing mass. Everyone else did the Goddess-thing, it was the Summer Solstice, but we wanted to experience a Catholic healing mass.

While I watched the Eucharist being blessed during the mass I was struck by how Ancient Egyptian it all looked and felt. The priest looked like an Egyptian priest, dressed in his robes and the offering of bread and wine, traditional offerings to the Gods in Roman times but beer was used before they arrived.  In rituals to the God Amun in Karnak,  bread, cake and beer were offered in a ritual to the God every morning. The god lived in a shrine before which the ritual was carried out.

http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Karnak/assets/media/resources/DailyRitual/guide.pdf

This is like the tabernacle in the alter where the wine and communion wafer were traditionally kept during the Catholic mass of my youth! I remember the priest standing in front of the altar, facing it with his back to us. At a certain point in the ritual he would open up the golden tabernacle doors, pull back the little red curtains/veil and take out the gold chalice containing the wine and the little gold platter on which lay the priests communion wafer. The communion chalice lay directly beneath it. (The definition of ‘Tabernacle’ is an enclosed space where God’s presence lives!!! An idea first brought out of Egypt by Moses!) 

The Tabernacle in the Altar. God’s dwelling place!

He would carry out this part of the ritual with his back still to us. He blessed the wine and communion, raising the chalice to the altar/God and ate his larger wafer in silence and drank his own portion of the wine. Then he would turn to us, the faithful and we had to file up to the altar where we were then given the Body of Christ in the form of a communion wafer.

‘Old mass’ now trying to be ‘resurrected’.

There is very little difference in this ritual to the Ancient rituals in Karnak, Luxor!!!  Only in modern times has it changed where it has become more simple and last supper-ish where the public are now more included in the ritual and there is no more altar!

Modern mass.

But what struck me the most from watching this healing mass ritual was the energy! As a healer I can ‘see’ energy and feel it. As the ritual progressed I could ‘see’ the energy charging the wine, like a vortex descending into the fluid. I hadn’t been to a mass in years so this all came a surprise to me. BUT there was NO energy going into the communion wafer! I couldn’t figure out why not! AND the only person to drink this charged wine was the priest himself!!!

Years later. attending a memorial mass in Ireland for my ex-partner who had died in the US, again I witnessed the same thing happening. A vortex of energy entering the wine but not the bread. We got the the bread/communion and the priest drank the wine.  What was also interesting was the size of the vortex itself. Like all channels for energy each person is able to channel the amount of energy directly related to his development. The bigger the channel developed through devotion and service the larger amount of energy that can be channelled into the physical world. This priest obviously had an ability to channel larger amounts of energy as the vortex of energy, which looks like a small white tornado, that he channelled was quite large.

My third experience in Ireland, during a funeral mass for my aunt Terry, who was a very religious and loving woman, confirmed this again. The wine was charged with energy but ‘zip’ went into the bread! We, the public, were not given the wine, although this time both the priest and his helpers received it. His helpers were the ones who now served the communion wafers to the public, where before it was the priest who carried out this part of the ritual. As in the energy healing world, in order to pass on an energy transmission you have to be ‘charged’ yourself, so they were drinking the charged wine!

Passing out the communion wafers, US-style.

The public received none of the benefits of this spiritual energy…at all! It was only during a later trip to Wales and while doing energy-work at the ruined St. Dogmaels’ abbey in Wales that I finally understood what was happening…and what had been lost! St. Dogmaels lies beside the River Teifi and was built in 1120. It was built on the site of an even older church called the Church of Llandudoch.

St. Dogmael’s Abbey, Wales.

In the ruins of this church is a crypt which is no longer roofed and is still accessible. It lies beneath where the altar would have once stood. When I was down in this crypt I felt a very strange slow-moving vortex of energy. When I tuned into it I ‘saw’ that it was a vortex of earth energy associated with the Mother, the female energy of the earth. (There are both male and female energies of the earth). As I experienced this energy I could see the priest on the upper floor standing in front of the altar which once stood there, a basic stone table, and he was doing the mass ritual. However, what was fascinating was that as he charged the bread he did so over this active vortex of female energy and this energy charged the bread, from below!!! When he was charging the wine the vortex of energy came from above, as I have always seen it do.  Then I was given the understanding of the Catholic ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost’! The father is the upper/Solar energy and the Holy Ghost should be the Earth/Female energy. The ‘Son/Daughter’ is the medium between the two. The son/daughter is the one capable of channelling both masculine and feminine energies into the physical world so that all could partake of it! He stood in the Middle, the unifier of the two worlds. This was the mystery of the Trinity, the three energies in one person! God the Father, Earth the Mother and the soul of man/Woman. “Honour thy Father and thy Mother”. God wasn’t just talking about your parents!!!

This charging of the bread is an ancient fertility ritual done way back in the time of the Goddess Artemis and by our ancestors in Britain and in Ireland. Read about it in another adventure in time on my older blog!!!

 http://gaiamethod.blogspot.com/2006_01_22_archive.html

So when did they get rid of the Poor Mother? And why are the Catholic bishops trying to oust her again??? Nothing but complete control will suffice obviously! We are still living with the priests of Amun! When will it ever change?

Channelling. The ancient paths…15/8/12

Micheldever Woods in the Spring.

Ancient footsteps fall flat upon the modern world, the shoes no longer fit.

Ancient pathways lay untrodden whilst modern man whistles by on wheels, the paths forgotten.

The waters glisten, yet are quiet, the sounds of oars upon wood a forgotten memory. The creak and groan of planks as they move through the water, no longer heard. All is fibreglass and steel…man’s creations.

Abandoned Fishing Boat in Wexford.

The sounds of the woods, an axe’s fall, an arrows whistle, gone now. Only the sound of gunshots crack and roar through the trees.

Time passes by but slowly now, Giant Elk bellows…a distant memory.

Micheldever Woods in Spring.

It seems so long ago and yet it was only yesterday. A yesterday which is still with us…in our minds. For all of human history lies here, hidden in the depths of the mind where no time exists.

All human knowledge resides here. Nothing is truly forgotten, it only appears so.

But how do we access this knowledge, this not-so-forgotten history?

Let us see…you could contact the ancestors, the Ancient Ones, those who still inhabit the dimensions of human memory.

Or…you could travel the ancient pathways and wear the old shoes and thereby allow your mind to bring to the fore long forgotten memories and skills. You see how easy it is?

The tea House of Brandon Dale. My Magical Place when I was a child.

Try it now and discover for yourself how humanity has moved through the ages and how he has forgotten himself in the process. When you have ‘remembered’, bring it back to life and then you will see how to move into the future.

Ramadan.

We are four days into Ramadan now! Ramadan is that time in the Muslim calendar when all Muslims fast from Sunrise to Sunset, taking no water or food for the daylight hours. Ramadan begins at a slightly earlier time every year in our calender, so it can be at any time of the year depending on the Islamic Calender. Last year it was August and this year is is July! The hottest times of the year.

Jordanian woman hanging the Ramadan lights.

During Ramadan month you also have no sexual relations during the daylight hours, no mean feat I’m sure! You do good deeds, taking care of your neighbours who might have less than you, you spend more time praying and getting closer to God. Ramadan is a time when you think peaceful thoughts and do no evil etc.

In many ways Ramadan is viewed in the same way that Christmas is viewed in the Christian Calender. But Christmas is more about abundance and Ramadan is about self-sacrifice for God, perhaps more like Lent! But as much as it is about self-sacrifice people here love doing it, or at least they believe they love doing it! Fasting for Ramadan makes you a ‘good Muslim’!  The point of fasting in this way is to teach people how to empathise with people who are starving or have no water to drink or who struggle on a daily basis.

However, living in a community where struggling on a daily basis to meet your basic needs is the norm I fail to see the value in this practice! There are people who live way below the poverty line and most people around me are poor. They already know what it is to suffer and be hungry and live in perpetual fear of  their needs not being met. When I see this around me everyday I fail to see how Ramadan is of any benefit to them whatsoever! And to be honest, when you are really thirsty and not eating all day where is your focus? It’s not on God, let me tell you!!!

Certain people are exempt from fasting, such as old people, children, pregnant women, people who are ill or women who are menstruating. However, even they will follow it! Children see the adults doing it and they do it too. This is crazy to me, as children are often malnourished here and fasting for a month adds to the malnourishment!!!  Old people too need water and food, yet they will also fast.

The Water Carrier.

It is a strange thing though. It is totally accepted here and not doing it feels like you are swimming against a huge tide of energy. I find that I am looking at it objectively but in my experience I find that I am unable to eat! I am within the flow of the Ramadan energy and I cannot do otherwise.

Our last meal of the day is at 3am and then we sleep. We then go for the entire day,until sunset without food and water. The first meal at sunset is called ‘break-fast’ and is usually quite filling. More protein being eaten during Ramadan than at any other time. People generally pray more during Ramadan especially in the evening. Even people who don’t normally pray will pray as it forgives the sins of the previous year! Unfortunately this is like catholic confession!!! For those of you who are Catholic you will probably recognise this!

Because of the work I do around the origins of religious festivals and customs I want to understand how Ramadan came to be in the first place. I know from reading about Islam that Ramadan pre-dates Islam. The month of Ramadan is the ninth month in the Arabic calender and comes from the root word rmḍ, which denotes ‘intense heat’ and ‘scorched earth’ and ‘shortness of rations’. (A very informative site about Ramadan is here: http://bloguna.com/alfalah/view/11327 )

If you are living in the desert at that time and this is your reality in this month then fasting is not something you are doing out of choice. It was something that you have to do because there is no food available.   Life before Islam was a predominantly pagan one, where Polytheism was the norm, and Mecca was their sacred centre, housing 360 stone and wood ‘deities’.  Arabs were tribal and each tribe had its own ruling deity so perhaps each tribe had a representative of their own tribal deities anchored at Mecca and these made up the 360 statutes. This would have given each tribe an equal share in the sacred place. But what makes me curious is if each tribe had their stone/wooden tribal deity there and the New Muslims removed them, rededicating the site to Allah, then whose tribal deity is still there in the form of the sacred stone? The Quraysh were the most powerful tribe in Mecca at that time so perhaps their tribal deity remains, although it has changed its name to fit the newer belief system?

Women kissing the Black Stone at the Kaaba.

According to tradition Abraham had originally built the Kaaba and had dedicated it to the the One God of the Hebrews but that the Arabs had turned it into a place of  ’Idol worship’. So when Mohammed arrived he was ‘reclaiming it’ for the One God, the word for God being ‘Allah’ denoting a male God. However, there was also a word for his female counterpart: Al-Lat and she too was originally worshipped there and that the stone was dedicated to her and the seven major planets. This has conveniently disappeared…but that is another story!

So what might Ramadan have meant to a nomadic culture whose spiritual and economic centre was at Mecca (and Yathrib)? A time of scarcity and lack, where food and water is limited? Did they too have a belief in ‘God’s Will?  Or did the religious reasons for self-sacrifice come from the Christians or Jewish populations of the time? According to Karen Armstrong the Arabs of pre-Islamic Arabia were arrogant and warlike, and therefore Ramadan taught them humility. However arrogance is still the norm here, many centuries later!

But was Ramadan the reality of all the nomadic Bedouin AND the sedentary urban dwellers at Mecca? Mecca was a thriving business centre, most businesses made up of money-lenders, traders and merchants. During Ramadan no war was allowed, no murder or any evil act of harm to another.  The settled peoples lived in constant fear of Bedouin attack so was this religious rule created by God, or by the Arabs who used Mohammed’s teachings to benefit themselves, once Mohammed had grown in stature?

I believe that Mohammed tried to offset the harsher beliefs of Ramadan by slightly changing the festival to make it easier on people who were more vulnerable, such as the elderly, ill or indisposed. We all know how hard it is to change anybody’s belief, no matter how negative so I imagine that Mohammed had to follow his guidance carefully and see what could be changed in a very practical sense!

The Prophet Mohammed.

In the Qu’ran it says ““O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may become God-fearing.” (The Quran, 2:183)”

Somehow I doubt this. Why would a God of Love want people to fear him? This sounds like Judaic and Christian patriarchal beliefs again and not something channelled from ‘God’ or his intermediaries!

So, I am experiencing Ramadan and seeing where it has come from and how it has evolved and in the process I have realised that there is a book here!  So lots of research to keep me going while I fast!

(I have just realised while re-reading this that all of the pictures I have put on this blog are of women! Except for the picture of the prophet. I wonder what that is about?)