Hey Mr. Shaman
Hey Mr. Shaman What is it that you do? The signs that you leave What is their meaning? Are you welcoming spring And letting the year begin? Pebble patterns all around The silent drum beat In surround sound What is the meaning? What is your intent? Neighborhood shaman Shadowy magic maker Operating in plain site Yet no one notices your Pebbles and tobacco No one questions What it is you do Except me And Im curious You see
Read More »It’s Time for The Goddess to Return
For some time, I have wondered what is wrong with the world? This constant beat of fear and an almost collective wish to be annihilated at times. We drown in technology and that technology is used in many ways to drive the fear and the message home. With the idea of a climate crisis – that idea that we, humanity, are destroying the Earth, global political leadership fracturing into a sea of ego laden old men, and now a potential pandemic of a flu-like virus, it feels like a fire of calamity is upon us all. Then tonight, as I contemplated what I had learned about Slavic myth and the pantheon of deities they worshipped so far, a whole host of thoughts came rushing into my mind. I think a
Read More »Myth and Fairy Tale – A Slavic Angle
I have always adored myths and legends. Growing up, I was addicted to stories of the Greek Gods, King Arthur and other such tales. I also enjoyed fairy tales and read them avidly. My favorite was one called Rumpelstiltskin. Imagine being able to turn straw into gold? Just like an alchemist. Old Rumpelstilskin is depicted as an Imp or Goblin-type creature but the name is also reminiscent of the German words for a poltergeist. The girl eventually goes ‘deep’ into the woods where she watches him singing and reveals his name. According to some sources, this story or a variant of it could be up to 4,000 years old! Notice how the girl goes deep into the woods…..in order to earn the name of the Imp. Fairy tales and myths
Read More »Hostýn – Jesus as Perun?
I recently wrote a blog about Hostýn and noted that the imagery was, well, a bit strange. First, we have ‘Mary’ standing on the crescent moon depicted as a lunar goddess – actually something you see a lot in this part of the world – but then what is going on with baby Jesus? At the time, I pointed to Zeus as a possible analogy. Well, after some input from Sue Vincent and Stuart France, I was led to the Slavic God named Perun. He is the god of the sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, law, war, fertility and oak trees in the Slavic pantheon. Having come up with that name, I googled it along with ‘Hostýn’ and I found myself back on the monument’s website and an obscure
Read More »Hostýn and a Strange Image of Jesus
Last weekend I managed a quick trip out to Hostýn about 100km from Brno. Svatý Hostýn or St.Hostýn is a hill in Moravia and a place of devotion to Mary. As per Wikipedia…. According to a traditional legend, first recorded in 1665 by the writer Bohuslav Balbín in his work Diva Montis Sancti, during the disastrous raid of the “Tartars” in the 13th century, people who were seeking asylum here lacked water and they prayed Mary for help. It is said that a stream of water came out of the ground and a powerful storm forced Tatars to retreat. That being what it may be, the site is very ancient and was once perhaps a Celtic fortress or settlement of some kind. Another article I found states that… Hostýn
Read More »Energy lines and Wyrd
A strange thought came to me this evening as I was thinking about mapping energy lines and doing a bit or research on the web. I was wondering what energy lines where? – where they came from? and so on and suddenly a thought popped up – Wyrd. The women of wyrd or the three wyrd sisters spinning the web of wyrd – what if part of that web was Earth energy? The ancients felt these earth energies and used them. They built huge structures where earth energy lines seem to cross. How did they use them? Brain Bates in his novel Way of Wyrd has the apprentice being taught how to use lines of the wyrd web to propel himself through space. The book is fictional of course but
Read More »A Final Stop and More Templars
After the experience at Mikulov, we headed back to Brno taking a short detour to a town named Čejkovice. I wanted to take a quick look to see if there was anything there worth spending time on later. Čejkovice was the second Templar establishment in the Czech Republic after Prague and the first in Moravia when they arrived in the 1230’s here. Just as in the case of Jamolice, the town’s coat of arms recalls their presence. Unfortunately, not much is recorded regarding the presence of the commanderie – only a mention in 1248 in a document issued by the Lord of Břeclav apparently. The history of the town is summarized as follows by the website of the Chateau – more of which shortly! Following the dissolution of
Read More »Feeling it at Holy Hill
By the time we reached the car from Templštejn, it was already early afternoon and after a quick stop for a late lunch, it was pretty much already dark. So we headed towards Mikulov on the border with Austria where in the morning the plan was to climb up Holy Hill. Mikulov is a beautiful town at the southern end of the Pavlov Hills and in the wine growing region (Palava is probably my favorite Czech wine). The town was founded sometime in the 12th Century and is today dominated by a fine Chateau at the center of the town standing on a rocky hill called Zameckÿ vrch. It was originally a Romanesque castle that was rebuilt in Gothic form and then as a Renaissance chateau and is now a
Read More »Mother Earth is the Boss and Don’t You Forget it!
Sometimes I have to say what is on my mind and this is one of those times. Increasingly, we live in an era where the media is biased and it seems most people just read headlines to get their news. Despite the massive complexities of almost any topic you’d care to mention from inoculation to climate change, everyone feels as if they should hold an opinion and believes their opinion to be right. Debate has degraded to insult slinging in many parts of social media and indeed, the media in general. In my humble opinion, we are seeing the decline of humanity right now and its saddening to see when we had come so far in recent decades. One area that increasingly concerns me is environmentalism. For me, looking after
Read More »Discovering Templštejn
A prior trip to discover Templštejn ended with the realization that I had somehow taken a wrong direction – at least for a car – yet the end of that journey was a beautiful gorge in the Jihlava valley – well worth seeing. As we left Řeznovice, I determined to try a different route – one that took us into the village of Jamolice. Jamolice was where the original Templar commanderie was set up in Moravia according to the history books and the small village still proudly carries the memory of that in its coat of arms. Jamolice is a small village that essentially hugs the sides of the road passing through it. Once inside the village, we saw a sign pointing ahead to Templštejn but we drove
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