3. Sacred Earth Magic Lesson One

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THE

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M Y S T E R Y S C H O O L

A Path to Higher Consciousness

through the Arts of Sacred Magic

_____________________

A COURSE IN SACRED EARTH MAGIC

LESSON ONE

The devotee at Nature’s shrine must approach her altar reverently and with quiet mindif s/he would find her beating heart and know the power within the form.

The doorway of her temple exists and is to be found in every natural thing:Contemplation of a single flower may lead the seeker through.

A plant displaying Nature’s symmetry, a tree, a mountain range, a single peak, flowing river,a thundering cascade -- each and all of these will serve the contemplative soul’s entrance to the

realm of the Real wherein Nature’s Self abides. . .

Self-identification with her inner Life, deep response to her beauty without and within -- these arethe means of entry to her inmost Shrine.

– Geoffrey Hodson



1

Sacred Earth Magic

Lesson One

OVERVIEW OVERVIEW OVERVIEW OVERVIEW

1. READING AND STUDY

The Connecting ThreadThe Three Realms

2. PRACTICUM

The Earth Altar

3. INNER WORK

VisionJourney: Druid Circles

4. IN THE GREEN WORLD

Three Ways to Open to Nature



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NOTE: NOTE: NOTE: NOTE:

How the Lessons are Organized: In each lesson, there will be four areas of work, each corresponding

to one of the four elements:

AIR Reading and Study

FIRE Practicum: Creativity and Making

WATER Inner Work

EARTH In the Green World

The Air section contains reading material in which you use your mental faculties. Knowledge is

associated with the “heady” element of Air, symbolized by the upward triangle and cross-bar.

The Fire section involves making something for magical purposes in your environment. Creating is

associated with the element of Fire, symbolized by the upward triangle.

The Water section involves magical working within the inner temple of the mind. The element of

Water, symbolized by the downward triangle, is associated with the VisionJourney and other imaginalwork.

The Earth section involves working in the physical environment, usually out in Nature, (the Green

World). This is associated with the element of Earth, symbolized by the downward triangle with cross-

bar.

All four elements are important for a balanced approach to Sacred Earth Magic.

Note: The four areas may sometimes follow a slightly different order than shown above.

The Four Elements



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1. READING AND STUDY 1. READING AND STUDY 1. READING AND STUDY 1. READING AND STUDY

INTRODUCTION: THE CONNECTING THREAD

When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

Holy the air, the water and the fire.

To contemplate the flowing curves and spirals of Celtic

art, the pouring-out of forms in vigorous,

organic swirls, is to get a glimpse into the way the early Celts

perceived the web of life. The astonishing interweaving

patterns, whether on vellum page or stone cross, reflect a world

filled with the endless delight of movement, a perfect,precarious balance between the orderly and the unbounded.

Interlacing designs speak to us of dense thickets in the deep

forests that once covered the length and breadth of Britain and

Ireland. Here and there an animal or bird appears out of the

tangle of knotwork, as if from the shadows of trees. Human

forms intertwine with animal, both joined by twisting and

turning filaments that connect the whole tapestry. Sometimes a

form that starts out as human may end up as beast or bird.

This rhythmical interpenetration of forms reflects the early Celts’ experience of the world as animate,ensouled. Their world was peopled by a pantheon of gods and goddesses who inhabited or personified

different localities. Ireland itself was seen as a great goddess, one of whose names, Eriu, gives us the

country we know as Eire. Her body was the land itself: in County Kerry, two hills like great breasts are

named the Paps of Anu, another of her names. To be an Irish king meant a ritual marriage with the land

in the form of a goddess known as Sovereignty. Cavernous earth-chambers like New Grange in the

Boyne River valley built by earlier races were regarded as entrances to her womb, where the spirits of

the ancestors dwelt. Lakes, wells and springs were sacred to goddesses, their waters bestowing healing

and nourishment. The sea was the province of Manannan mac Lir, King of the Land-Under-Wave.

Trees too were perceived as having distinct qualities and attributes: the bright berries of the rowanafforded protection from evil, the nuts of the hazel bestowed wisdom. The sacred tree stood at the

center of each tribe's village, while the druids worshipped in temples of oak groves.



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Animals were regarded as powerful spiritual beings that could connect human beings with the unseen

realms, or Celtic Otherworld. The white hart beckoned to the hunter whose prey was not flesh, the boar

drew him on into the darkness. Seers would know the future from watching the movements of birds

and translating their cries. The Tuatha Dé Danann, (pronounced too-u-huh jey don-unn), the old gods

that lived in the hollow hills, often appeared to mortals in bird or animal form.

Under the influence of Christianity the sacred places still remained, only the names were changed. The

living, speaking universe was still glorified as the creation of the Christian God. Mary or St. Brigid

now guarded the holy wells and even Jesus himself was seen as one with all of Nature:

Son of the Dawn

Son of the clouds

Son of the stars

Son of the elements...." 1

Gaelic prayers and hymns collected in Scotland as late as the 19th century invoke the power of theanimals, as in this blessing:

Wisdom of serpent be thine,

Wisdom of raven be thine

Wisdom of valiant eagle . . .

So to pagan and Celtic Christian alike, the natural world was viewed as a bridge that spanned and

connected the worlds of Earth and Spirit.

A closer look at this connection reveals two different ways of knowing the universe, each increasing inintimacy until the boundaries between subject and object no longer exist. First, the familiar position

where a human being relates to Nature as perceiver to perceived, both separate, discrete entities.

Because within this relationship Nature is seen as of intrinsic and equal value with the human, this

might be called the I-Thou position. The second, less common, apprehension of the world is the

relationship of communion, where the perceiver begins to assume the identity of the perceived and

boundaries blur. Eventually, a kind of symbiosis takes place in which the human identity becomes

transparent and empty of its usual significance, and dissolves into the unified field of the One Life.

1 Bamford, Christopher and Marsh, William Parker. Celtic Christianity. Massachusetts: Lindisfarne Press, 1987. p.40



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THE I-THOU RELATIONSHIP

The I-Thou position is to us the most familiar way of knowing, where Nature is beheld as the subject

of human experience, and is the subject of a number of poems written by people who lived a simple

ascetic existence in the wilderness. Some of these were pagan visionaries and seers; others early

Christian hermits and anchorites.

These forest-dwellers lived in huts made of wattles, or even caves or trees; the walls that circumscribe

our modern lives, cutting us off from intimate knowledge of Nature, were fragile or non-existent. To

live like this is to see oneself in perspective, small in a huge and teeming world. In one poem, a 7th

century hermit describes his dwelling:

I have a shieling in the wood,

None knows it save my God:

An ash-tree on the hither side, a hazel-bush beyond, A huge oak-tree encompasses it.

Two heath-clad doorposts for support,

And a lintel of honeysuckle:

The forest around its narrowness sheds

Its mast upon fat swine . . .2

The clarity and detail of his descriptions are typical of Celtic Nature poetry, springing as it does from

lived experience. Unlike the later medieval poetry of European courts, where Nature is a pale allegory

of abstract qualities, these verses carry the fresh quality of everyday life. The sheer variety of naturalphenomena in each poem provides for us, living as we do at a time when we have decimated so many

species, a window onto a world that teems with the diversity of life.

Glen of the sleek brown round-faced otters that are pleasant and active in fishing; many are the

white-winged stately swans, and salmon breeding along the rocky brink . .3

Celtic Nature poets evoke a participation with life where all the senses are involved. We who have

banished ourselves from the rich banquet of the natural world, preferring the empty calories of

"virtual" realities and consumer items, can sense how it must have felt to our ancestors to be satisfied

by the natural abundance of things:

2 Meyer, Kuno. Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry. London: Constable,1959, p.47

3 Jackson, Kenneth Hurlstone. A Celtic Miscellany. Middlesex: Penguin Books,1973. p.72



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Ale with herbs, a dish of strawberries

Of good taste and colour,

Haws berries of the juniper,

Sloes, nuts.

When brilliant summer-time spreads its coloured mantle,

Sweet-tasting fragrance!

Pignuts, wild marjoram, green leeks,

Verdant pureness.

Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world,

A gentle chorus:

Wild geese and ducks, shortly before summer's end,

The music of the dark torrent.4

The vividness of the imagery recalls Blake's famous phrase: "If the doors of perception were cleansed,

everything would appear to man as it is - infinite." And indeed, in the pagan Celtic wisdom tradition,

poetry was regarded as a central skill of the seer and mystic . According to the old tales, the poet-seer

received divine illumination by eating a sacred substance from Earth's body: most often the Salmon of

Wisdom that come from the well at the heart of the Otherworld. When Finn mac Cumaill, the famous

warrior-seer, eats of the Salmon by the banks of the River Boyne and becomes enlightened, the first

words he utters are a paeon of praise to the month of May, as if the taking-in of the magical fish has

opened his eyes to the wonder of the world:

May-time, fair season, perfect is its aspect then; blackbirds sing a full song...5

In every poem, the poet's relationship with the natural world is specific and intimate. In the 20th

century we tend to talk about trees, not to them, or we may expand our consciousness so far as to "hug

a tree." But in the following poem, the poet addresses individual animals, plants and trees revealing an

authentic I-Thou relationship with each:

Little antlered one, little belling one, melodious little bleater, sweet I think the lowing that you

make in the glen...

4 Meyer, ibid .p.49

5 Jackson, Ibid, p.63



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Blackthorn, little thorny one, black little sloe-bush; watercress, little green-topped one, on the

brink of the blackbird's well....

Apple-tree, little apple-tree, violently everyone shakes you; rowan, little berried one, lovely is

your bloom.... 6

The personal life of the poet is hardly mentioned in these poems. Only occasionally do we get a

touching glimpse of a few domestic details, and then only in the poems about winter when the poet is

confined inside:

"Cosy is our pot on its hook," begins one verse of a poem known as Winter Cold, but this line is only

put in to contrast with the plight of wild animals:

The wolves of Cuan Wood get

Neither rest nor sleep in their lair,The little wren cannot find

Shelter in her nest on the slope of Lon.7

The scarcity of details of the individual life highlight its relative insignificance compared to the huge

drama being enacted outside. The poet makes himself transparent so that he can relate to Nature from

a deeper level. The German poet Novalis called this place "the seat of the soul" which he located as

"where the inner world and the outer world meet, and where they overlap, it is in every point of the

overlap."

The Relationship of Communion

In the relationship of communion, the boundary between human and wild animal is blurred; in the

transformative, it dissolves altogether. This is the province of the great bards and seers who were

masters at walking between the worlds. By daring consciously to undergo egoic death, they were able

to expand individual consciousness to identify with the experience of other-than-human forms, and in

that other reality spend many lifetimes as elements or creatures of the wild. Through living in the skins

of other-than-human beings, they attained the wisdom of a self that identified itself with consciousness,

6 Jackson, ibid, p.73

7 Meyer, ibid,p.57



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not form; a fluid consciousness that could become universal by flowing into the myriad aspects of life

in the natural world.

The initiates of the Celtic Mysteries were skilled at doing this, and could also shape-shift into other

forms of life to expand and extend their consciousness, and learn the wisdom and power of the more-

than-human world. This was the highest form of initiation in the Celtic Mysteries undergone by the

most daring of the poet-shamans, such as Merlin and Taliesin in Wales and Amergin in Ireland. In

Celtic tradition, Amergin, (pronounced a-vair-gin) the druid of the Sons of Míl in Ireland, describes his

experience in a famous incantation:

I am the wind that blows on the sea,

And I am the wave of the ocean,

I am the sound the sea makes,

I am the stag of seven tines,

I am the bull of seven fights,I am the hawk upon the rock,

I am a teardrop of the sun.

I am the fairest of flowers,

I am the boar of boldness,

I am the salmon in the pool,

And I am the lake in the plain,

I am the word of skill,

I am the spear-point of battle.

I am the god who kindles fire in the head,

Who makes wise the company on the mountain?

Who foretells the ages of the moon?

Who knows the secret resting-place of the sun?8

The threads of the web of life are experienced as an exquisite pattern of Celtic knotwork, with the

human being an integral part of it all.

8 Ford, Patrick. The Mabinogi. California: University of California Press,1977. p.60.



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THE THREE REALMS

Many ancient and indigenous cultures throughout time have made sense of the world through a

simple threefold cosmology, based on the Tree of Life, which spans three realms or levels of Being, asshown in the diagram below.

The Tree of Life and the Three Worlds The Tree of Life and the Three Worlds The Tree of Life and the Three Worlds The Tree of Life and the Three Worlds

Within the inner realm of each of the three levels dwell living forces and beings that can be

encountered on the path of Sacred Magic:

1. The UnderRealm: Roots of the Tree

The roots of the Tree of Life reach down to the UnderRealm, a realm of deep power. It is a place of

untamed forces, of the dark and cavernous earth and the ocean’s uncharted deeps. The UnderRealm is

home to many beings and forces, both great and small. The vast and unspeakable powers known to ourforebears as the Giants, do their work shifting rock and water, fire and gases within the heart of the

Earth; slowly and inexorably moving the continental plates; releasing magma from the fiery molten



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core. Closer to the surface live the forces and beings that are nearer to the human world and who

therefore are able to bridge the two realms. Some of these may be the spirits of our own human

ancestors. Long buried in the earth, they are yet still present in spirit to be of help to their living

descendants – if we choose to honor them and know how to address them. Often confused with the

spirits of the dead, yet a race apart, are the Faeries, who traditionally live within the land under ancient

barrow-mounds or in natural hills, rocks and caves: a tradition that goes back to the earliest myths of

the Celts. Although both masculine and feminine energies are present in all the worlds, the

UnderRealm is primarily the realm of the Goddess, or Faery Queen. In Avalon, she appears as Morgen

le Fay the bright Goddess, Queen of Avalon, and as various aspects of the Dark Goddess of Annwn,

the Deeps. We study UnderRealm in the first course in this series, The Way of Morgen.

2. The MiddleRealm: Trunk of the Tree

The trunk of the Tree emerges into the Middle Realm, which is the subtle dimension of the world in

which we live and breathe. Within this realm are the inner powers of the natural forces – the spirits ofthe wind, the rain, the lightning and the snow. Here, too, are the elemental kingdoms, the province of

the hosts or hive-like beings who are the builders and maintainers of the natural world: the gnomes of

the earth, salamanders of fire, sylphs of the air and undines of the water. The spirits of plants and

flowers, which have also come to be called Faeries, are found here, along with the great nature spirits

of the landscape: the devas of rivers and forests, mountains and seas, dwell in this world; along with

the powerful spirits of the animals and birds, whose wisdom has been found to be invaluable for all

those who practice natural magic. This is the Way of Merlin, who is priest of the wildwood in service

to the Planetary Being, or Earth Mother, and whose deep knowledge of the Earth has much to teach us

today.

3. The OverRealm: The Tree Crowned with Stars

Above the crown of the Tree of Life is the OverRealm where the vast powers of the celestial kingdoms

pour down their influences on the worlds below. This is the realm of the wheeling planets, whose

unceasing dance within our solar system creates the patterns that influence our personal and planetary

astrology. At their center is the Sun, whose spiritual aspect is nothing less than the central Great Being

known as the Solar Logos, of whose body, Earth and the other planets are like chakras, or vortices of

energy. And beyond the solar system, the eternal constellations whose influence, according to the first

astrologers, was particularly mediated by the Pole Star to which the axis mundi points, and Ursa Major,

the constellation which endlessly circles it round. This too is the heaven world where the numinouspowers of light and sound, pattern and number reside, whom we call the Angels and Archangels,

closest of all living Beings throughout the worlds to the One Light from which all creation streams

endlessly, joyfully forth into manifest being. This realm is explored under the guidance of the Great



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One we know as the Archangel Michael, the herald of the new Aeon in the third course in this series,

called the Way of Michael.

Although we are using a cosmological model of three realms,

it is important to realize that, like all other systems, it is only a

model – a virtual filing drawer that people have used for

millennia to help them conceptualize inner space.

Philosophers, magicians and mystics of many different ages

and cultures have realized that all these various and glorious

forms of life are in fact the links in a one great continuum of

Being that reaches from the depths to the heights, from the

densest matter to the most subtle of energies, until all forms

and appearances dissolve into the One Light, the Light

Supernal of the Uncreated One, the Infinite Source of All,

from Whom all these sparks come forth. But for practicalpurposes, such models have proved indispensable to those

priests and priestesses, shamans and druids from every culture

who have taken the spirit journey down to the UnderRealm

and up to the heights of the OverRealm in their search for

wisdom and power, and is no less invaluable for us today, as

we set about reconnecting with the vast and living cosmos that

is our true home.

The Tree of Life includes all

beings



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2. PRACTICUM 2. PRACTICUM 2. PRACTICUM 2. PRACTICUM

THE EARTH ALTAR

Creating an earth altar is a simple way to provide a focus for your magical work in the Green

World. Like your sacred space, this can be placed in or out of doors. Because the natural world is in

constant flux, this kind of altar is not meant to be a fixed or elaborate affair, but a living shrine that

changes all the time to reflect the changing tides and seasons.

For an inside altar, use a low table, window ledge, mantelpiece, or even the floor. A small cupboard is

useful, for it can do double duty as a storage place for ritual objects, candles, incense, etc. Outside, use

a piece of rough, natural wood, a log or a tree-stump, or whatever Nature affords you in your

environment. Cover an inside altar with a cloth colored to reflect the changing seasons. Keep only

natural ‘found’ objects on an outside altar, as a cloth could get wet or stained.

Decorate the altar with things you find in the course of the time you spend outside, for instance shells,

feathers, leaves, acorns, dried grasses, flowers, and stones. These are all gifts from the Earth, and

displaying them on your altar is a continual reminder, even if you live in an urban setting, of the

bountiful generosity of our Mother Earth. The only thing you should buy are candles, and these should

be of natural beeswax or soy. Regular candles are made of paraffin, a petroleum product, and ought to

be avoided, since our dependence on fossil fuels is one of the ways in which we are despoiling the

Earth. You may also want to have on hand incense that is bought or made from natural ingredients.

When you have finished raising the Earth Altar, sit before it and light the candle, saying,

“I light this flame in the name of the One True Light that shines through all the Worlds.”

Spend a few moments in the Deep Silence that underlies all things. Feel your connection with

the Earth below you, the Sun, Moon and Stars above you, and the Green World around you.

Rest a while in peace and gratitude for the immeasurable wealth and beauty of which we are all

a part.



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3. INNER WORK3. INNER WORK3. INNER WORK3. INNER WORK

The Journey Within

This is perhaps the most important magical skill to master, as it is the primary way of entering

the inner worlds in the Western Mystery Tradition. The skills required are first of all, the ability to

focus and concentrate, and secondly, to use the imagination. A word needs to be said about the latter:

Our precious and remarkable imaginations have been devalued and maligned in modern society. From

an early age we are told that the ‘imaginary’ is inferior to the ‘real.’ If something is ‘all in your

imagination’ it means you have made it all up, or are deluded. In fact, the imagination is the language

of the soul. It is the equivalent of our most important sensory organ – sight – only turned inwards,

rather than outwards. Everything that exists which is not physical expresses itself as energy, or force.

The imagination is a creative mechanism that enables us to give form to the forces of the invisible

planes.

There are two ways in which this works in the magical arts. The first, used in most VisionJourneys, is

when the images are supplied for you. Like characters in a novel, they are drawn so that you can see

them in your imagination. As you learn to build them into reality on the imaginal plane, they will be

‘inhabited’ or ‘ensouled’ by the inner power that they represent. (If you build it, they will come!)

In the second case, the inner forms can arise spontaneously in your mind’s eye. There is usually a place

for this within each VisionJourney. For example, you are told that someone will be opening the door,

and you let the image of this being emerge of its own accord. The moment when you realize that the

images are not merely dancing to the tune of your imagination, but have become real, with independent

knowledge and consciousness, has to be experienced to be believed.

The journeys in this course will take you to different parts of the MiddleRealm. It is recommended that

you do them a few times following the structure as given. When you have done them enough times to

where you have built up the structures clearly, so that they become like stations in Inner Space, you

can explore different areas or other characters within them. However, it should be said that it is not

wise to go off on inner travels without an inner guide to accompany you.

Before you begin, you have to decide how best to access the script. The most convenient way is to usethe CD sent to you for this purpose. Otherwise, you can have someone read this out to you or to read it

slowly to yourself into a tape-recorder and play it back. You can also read it a number of times to



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yourself, jot down the order of events and then begin, perhaps opening your eyes and looking at your

notes once in a while. The latter is a good preparation for advanced journey work.

Practice the following two journeys as often as you wish, but at least two times each. Before you

begin, make sure you relax, ground and surround yourself in the Sphere of Light.

Druid Circles

In the Druid tradition of Wales, evolution proceeds as a series of incarnations through different life-

forms. These cycles of being are represented as circles, and they correspond to the three worlds on the

Tree of Life. According to these teachings, all life begins in the Cauldron of Annwn (pronounced an-

oon) in the UnderRealm, where

tremendous energies swirl about

in a chaotic pre-form state. Then

an individual spark of life,which we generally term the

soul, emerges and goes through

a series of four stages at the next

level, which is called Abred.

Abred is actually a series of

circles, representing in turn the

mineral, vegetable, animal, and

finally the human spheres of

experience. After human

incarnation comes the circle ofGwynfid, (pronounced gwin-vid)

the “White Land,” in other

words, the spirit world. (After

this, the divine spark becomes

one with the Source of All, known here as Ceugant, (pronounced kie-gant).

In the following VisionJourney, we expand our sense of who we are by traveling in spirit through the

Druid Circles.

VISIONJOURNEY: DRUID CIRCLES

You can do this Journey inside or out, sitting or lying. It’s particularly effective performed lying on theEarth.

Ground, center, and enter the Silence . . .

Druid Circles



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Feel every part of your body connect with the Earth; really feel the presence of the Earth beneath you,

supporting you . . . . Now let your consciousness to sink down into the soil. Below you is a fermenting

cauldron, the cauldron of Annwn, in which extraordinary changes are taking place every second.

Countless life forms that have left behind their leaping, crawling, walking, flying, blossoming lives

have fallen into this crucible to be transformed. Below you, even now, a myriad of insects, funghi,

earth-worms and others of her servants are at work: shredding, eating, digesting, excreting all the dead

husks—of leaves, butterflies, animals, humans—magically reshaping them into a black moist bed of

soil to support new life.

Now send your consciousness deeper into the earth. Be aware of the weight of the rocks that lie

beneath the soil—granite, sandstone, shale; the black, white, and red—shot through with bands of

minerals, darkly glittering; crystals that shine like stars within the stones. Now enter the first circle of

Abred ….Let yourself become one with the mineral kingdom – a mountain as old as the planet itself,

once part of the seabed, thrown up by unspeakable forces now stilled – enormously, timelessly rooted

in the earth, its head in the stars………or as tiny as a grain of sand among trillions and trillions ofother grains, endlessly shifting, sifting, with the tides of an ocean ………………….the stone people

…they are all alive: it’s just that their hearts beat slower than ours …….

And eternities pass ……and you enter the second circle of Abred ….become aware of the plant

kingdom: algae and seaweeds, forests of kelp, grasses blowing in a savanna wind, yellow and orange

lichens on a rock in a wood, prickly pears, an oak wood, a rain forest blooming with delicate orchids,

vines hanging with fruit ……..become one with the plant kingdom now – soft green moss on a rock by

a stream, a mountain strawberry, a wild rose………..what does it feel like to blow softly in the

wind….or to split your husk and feel your seeds fall to the ground?

And eternities pass… and you pass through into the third circle of Abred… become aware of the

animal kingdom …. listen to the voices of the wild: the roar of the tiger, the belling of the stag, the

howl of the wolf; the cries of owls and the tapping of woodpeckers, the whirring of birds’ wings, the

padding of soft paws………become one now with the animal kingdom, with the salmon leaping

upstream, the fox gliding thru the night, or the snake shedding its skin…..feel what your new body is

like and what it feels like to creep, walk, climb, run or fly in free motion….

And eternities pass…..and you move into the fourth and last circle of Abred…become aware of the

human kingdom …..you are standing on two feet …notice how different that feels: you can stand like a

stone, grow like a plant, move like an animal, but you can now create with your mind and your handsand you can sing and dance and dream in your heart and make that dream real upon the Earth ……….

And sometimes in your dreams you are aware of another circle of existence, Gwynfid, the Circle of



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Light:

“I saw eternity last night,

Like a ring of pure and endless light . . .”

and in your dreams and visions you can sometimes go there: a place where you are a body of light, free

from the confines of form, the boundaries of space and time, the struggles and ills of the mortal

coil……….Here all is fluid, flowing Freed from the human illusion of separateness you swim within a

sea of wisdom and love ….playfulness and freedom, where your consciousness can become anything it

wants just by imagining it………..and to get here, you need to let go of everything which is keeping

you from becoming divine energy….all attachments, resentments, cravings, jealousies, desires…

anything that keeps you from your freedom….let them go now…drop them like old clothes that you no

longer want clinging to you…become your natural, free-spirited self…the self that you really are with

behind all the thoughts, emotions and images in your mind….let yourself be free….and float in this

place of light and peace for a few more moments, Then slowly become aware that you are drifting inslow, easy circles like a leaf upon the air, back down to your human body . . .And now you are fully

back in your body in the physical world, and it is time to return.



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4. IN THE GREEN WORLD4. IN THE GREEN WORLD4. IN THE GREEN WORLD4. IN THE GREEN WORLD

The globe is a living being with incarnate power, life and consciousness. The earth breathes. Its heart

beats. It is the body of a Goddess who is the Spirit of the Earth. Rivers are as its nerves, oceans great

nerve-centers. Mountains are the denser structure of a giant whose outer form is humanity's

evolutionary field, whose inner life and potent energies of the abiding place of the Gods. The

approach to Nature by modern people is almost exclusively through action and the outer senses. Too

few among her human devotees approach her in stillness, with outer senses quieted and inner sense

aroused. Few, therefore, discover the Goddess herself behind her earthly veil. - Geoffrey Hodson

This section of each lesson is where you spend time out in Nature – an essential part of Sacred Earth

Magic! If you live in a city, you may have to do this work in your own yard, or else find a nearby park,

woods or public gardens. Hopefully, over the course of a year and a day (or more) you will also have

the opportunity to visit some wilder areas.

EXERCISE ONE: SENSING THE WEB OF LIFE

Take a walk in the Green World: in a park, woods, meadow or your garden – a quiet and peacefulplace where you will not be disturbed.

1. Breathe deeply and allow any tension in your body to melt away.

2. Be quietly aware of the still center within.

3. Now, every time you exhale, let your consciousness expand into the space around you.

4. As you continue to breathe deeply, visualize golden-white light flowing down from above into

the top of your head. It fills your body as running water fills a vessel. See it flowing out

through the soles of your feet into the planet. In this way, you will be open to the heavens and

firmly grounded to the earth. When you breathe out, feel the light expand within you.

5. You can go through the above steps slowly, using as many intakes of breath as necessary for

you to feel you have accomplished each step. The more you practice, the more quickly you will

be able to attain meditative consciousness in three single breaths, one for each step.

6. Once you feel relaxed and centred, use the breath as a way of feeling yourself expand. As you

exhale, you are expanding into the environment around you. It’s as though you have an extra

set of eyes, ears, hands and so forth that reach far beyond you.



Sacred Earth Magic

Lesson One

18

7. When you feel ready, select five objects at random. Five is the number of the intuition. Start

with objects near you, and then move out to more distant ones. They might be flowers, bushes,

trees, stones, clouds, hills, or whatever draws your attention. It might also be an animal, such as

a squirrel foraging for food. Observe each in as much detail as possible, as though you are

seeing it for the first and last time in your life.

8. Imagine a line of white and gold light extending from your heart to the heart of each thing you

selected. Feel this connection.

9. Now extend the connection to all of Nature. Be aware of your union with the vast Web of Life

all around you. You are part of it. It is part of you.

EXERCISE TWO: THE I -THOU RELATIONSHIP

Choose a natural form to connect with from the “I-Thou” position. This could be a blade of grass, atree, a cloud, an ant – whatever you choose. Spend time with it, and get to know every detail of it. Use

all your senses, your cognitive perception, and your feelings.

Write a poem to it, as if you were talking to it.

EXERCISE THREE: THE COMMUNION RELATIONSHIP

Stay with this natural form or choose a new one. This time, let your consciousness melt into it, as if

you are actually becoming one with it.

Remain in this state as long as you like, then come back to your normal frame of mind again.

Write a poem, about your experience, beginning, “I Am . . .” (see Amergin’s Song in The Connecting

Thread )

© Mara Freeman, 2005. No part of this material may be reproduced.

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3. Sacred Earth Magic Lesson One