Catkin Lodge in Amesbury, England

Catkin Lodge in beautiful rural Wiltshire is AA 3 Star rated accommodation and is the nearest Bed and Breakfast to the ancient Stonehenge Monument. Catkin Lodge is only 15 minutes from the historical City of Salisbury with its magnificent Cathedral and Old Sarum Hill Fort.

In addition to this, Terry, the owner and host is an intelligent and talented fellow. I completely enjoyed my stay at Catkin Lodge and recommend it to everyone interested in lodging in the area. The rooms were clean and comfortable and the big, old fashioned tub was a great place to soak walk-weary bones at the end of a long day of sight-seeing.

Here is another link to their website.
http://www.catkinlodge.fsnet.co.uk/

Terry makes coffee for us Yanks in a wonderful French coffee press and presents an incredible full English breakfast in a smart breakfast room full of his own paintings of Stonehenge and the Salisbury area. In my own office back here across the pond, I have two of Terry's prints and two more on the landing upstairs. Just seeing his talented artwork was worth the stay at the Catkin and the rest was just a whopping plus to the good fellowship I enjoyed.

Glastonbury--

My day in Glastonbury was the highlight of my 2002 Samhain trip to southwest England. Morning dawned unexpectedly beautiful--sunny and warm for early November in England. I woke to birds singing and incredible coffee brewed in a fancy French coffee press. After a decadent bath in a huge claw-foot bathtub brimming with “real English lavender” bubble bath, I enjoyed a yummy traditional English breakfast with two interesting students—one Greek and one French--and Terry, our B&B host. (My B&B in Amesbury, Catkin Lodge, was 5 minutes from Stonehenge and “simply smashing.” See more details abut this fine accommodation at the end of this article.) My host and fellow breakfasters assured me that the drive to Glastonbury was about an hour, perhaps a bit more. With sun was shining brightly, off I went with map in hand in search of the graves of King Arthur and Guinevere and the mythological last resting place of the Holy Grail.

The route to Glastonbury from Amesbury follows the A303. The A303 is a "dual carriage way" (two-lane highway), but not limited access like American interstates. During the day, it's quite nice. There are two lanes, so the folks going 80 in the 60 mph zone can whoosh by as quickly as they like. I found it a bit difficult at first remembering that the LEFT lane is the SLOW lane. The beeping of an irate “lorry driver” enlightened me quite quickly. At night, as I returned, I found the A303 quite dangerous and choked with rush hour traffic in the early English dark. Roundabouts replace exit ramps and are confusing and dangerous. I circled one roundabout twice before I fought my way into the proper lane. The A303 switches back and forth between 1 and 2 lanes, with little notice or reason, so someone like me driving on the “wrong side of the road” for the second time, the first on crowded highways like this one, has a lot to anticipate. The narrow streets and lanes never cease to amaze me or the places where people will risk their lives to pass you: hills, corners, anywhere they feel like they are being held up by the silly American (Yank) woman actually following the speed limit. At least I had an automatic transmission, thanks to Auto Europe, a car rental company I highly recommend to all my fellow travelers. Automatic transmissions, which we take for granted here in the US, are uncommon in the British Isles and Europe.

Glastonbury Tor showed itself first, rising high above the city, shining with the first sun in 2 days reflecting off its stones. The streets of Glastonbury are the same nightmare as all southwest England's streets--unbelievably narrow, with the right of way determined by the largest vehicle or the most aggressive driver. I saw two “street people” here in Glastonbury, one woman with her dog, begging money from her seat on the sidewalk, and on the other side of the street a musician of sorts, an older hippie-looking fellow with a flute and drum, with the typical collection hat open in front of him. These were actually the only street people I saw on this trip, although a well-dressed gentleman at Salisbury Cathedral asked me if I could loan him 80p for the bus. I answered him negatively with my best Yank accent and he hurried away.

The streets of Glastonbury are alive with Pagans of all types. Shops are very revealing in their names, "Man, Myth and Magick," "The Goddess and the Green Man," "The Crystal Star," "The Goddess Temple," and many more. How they make any money at all crowded there together in one crystal mecca is hard to say, but business appears to be good as all the shops were crowded with tourists and locals as well. This is the alternative community's “Shangri-La” in Britain. Classes, seminars, and demonstrations of every kind abound. There are readings of all types, reflexologists, herbalists, an amazing array of “ists” and “isms” for everyone. Vegetarian foods battle with coffeehouses and traditional British pubs. One gustatory highlight is a wonderful bakery aptly named Burns the Bread, reflecting the humour of the establishment’s owners.

Names like Kathy Jones, Nicholas Mann, John and Caitlin Matthews, and others you will recognize scream out at you as you wander the bookshelves in the 20 or so bookstores. I could spend millions here on books, and I noticed that the books that I picked up were often signed by the authors. There were signs for workshops and presentations held everyday and everywhere. There are all types of Wicca and Pagan "things" that I have never seen in any American stores. But then again, I have never seen this many "New Age" shops in one place. American pagans should sit up and take notice of this wonderful place! At The Crystal Star, I met Antares, a “name” that describes him pretty well. His soft-spoken manner belied his hard sell, but he was friendly and ACTUALLY talked to you, which is something most Brits have yet to learn about American shoppers. We LIKE to be waited on. Everything Antares showed me could be marked down just a little bit more if I showed a spark of interest, but didn't immediately add it to my stack. Antares parted me from £49, and I'm happy that I spent every pence. He also shared his past lives and his feelings that Samhain should be quiet and personal, not a “festival,” but a time to honor the ancestors in sacred silence and ceremony, and that he had been regressed back into his past lives recently, once of which was attending a boy's school in Glastonbury, by an American psychologist who was absolutely “brilliant.” I gave Antares my card and told him to stop by if he was ever stateside, especially at Beltane or Samhain.

The trip through Glastonbury Abbey was picturesque and beautiful but devoid of anything spiritual for me. I took a ton of beautiful photos but little else. I saved The Chalice Well and Gardens for last, and it was definitely worth the wait. The Chalice Well was an extraordinary place, charming enough to calm the soul, even without the extra benefit of the mystical water from the Chalice Well with its mythical healing properties. The flowers in the gardens, even in November, were incredibly beautiful. The babbling of the red and the white springs cooled the head and soothed the soul. I was lulled into a feeling of happiness and relaxation that held me steady through the harrowing drive home. I waded in the chilly waters of the healing chalice pools, drank the water from the chalice fountain, and filled two water bottles with the precious water. I watched small voles scamper through the amazingly lovely English gardens full of herbs, lavender, roses, morning glories, and larkspurs. The Chalice Well Gardens are an enchanted fairy garden full of beautiful, blooming flowers, even in the cool November air. Inside the gardens, all the rest of the world just fades away. I've had this feeling in other such places, but this was definitely one of the best places I've ever visited.

My First Trip Outside the USA--Iceland at Beltane--

At Ostara, on March 20, 1997, I lost my job as manager of the college bookstore where I had spent the last five years of my life. You know what they say--no good deed goes unpunished. In retrospect, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I suddenly realized that I had one full year of unemployment in which to find another position. I decided to do something absolutely crazy wonderful. I had a bit of money saved up and I was going overseas-Scotland, Ireland, Wales, England, maybe even further. I was 41 and in pretty good shape for me. Time to head across the pond! I had been dreaming about Scotland and Ireland for too long.

I searched for discount airfare and found a flight to Glasgow on Iceland Air. During the course of booking the flight to Glasgow, Iceland Air offered me an inexpensive two night stop-over in Reykjavik. I had no intentions at that moment of going to Iceland, but since I was a foot loose traveler, I thought, “What the heck...”

I stepped out of the plane from my first trans-Atlantic flight on April 30, 1996--Beltane eve--in a place where Paganism is one of the official state religions. (In 1972, after a long campaign by poet and Gothi Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson, Iceland once again recognized Nordic Paganism as a legitimate and legal religion.) That night, I watched breathlessly the many bonfires lighting up the hillsides which I could see glittering in the darkness from the window of my hotel room. I could hear the wild shouting of celebrations echoing from the hills around the hotel. The night was literally on fire with excitement.

After my own small Beltane ritual in my room, I submitted to jet lag and slept like I hadn’t since the date of my unemployment. Beltane morning, I awoke and drank a toast to the first day of summer with my wonderful Icelandic coffee. (Who knew that the Icelanders took their coffee so seriously?) I decided to take the Golden Circle tour offered from my hotel and it was one of the most wonderful tours I ever set upon.

The tour is still offered by Reykjavik Excursions and is affiliated with Iceland Air who made all this possible for me to enjoy. They also offer a special discount on the tour to Iceland Air passengers. The quote below is from their promotional brochure. The pictures of Gullfoss, the largest waterfall in Iceland, are mine.

You can walk around the world-famous Geysir area, a geothermal field where hot springs are in abundance, geysers explode and pools of mud bubble. The Geysir museum is included as a main feature of this area, an informative multimedia exhibition that vividly shows how the forces of nature shaped the country and the people.

One of many highlights of the tour is the volcanic crater, Kerið, and another is the Gullfoss waterfall, the queen of Iceland's waterfalls, tumbling down a deep gorge. Finally, but no less spectacular is a visit to the Þingvellir National Park. This is the place of the most historic events in Iceland and exceptional beauty. Þingvellir is the original site of the oldest existing parliament in the world. The Great Atlantic rift is clearly visible, a rift which is slowly pulling Iceland apart along tectonic plates.

Locations visited include: Hveragerði greenhouse village, Kerið volcanic crater, Gullfoss waterfall, Geysir hot spring area and Þingvellir National Park.

This entire area is quite amazing from a geologic perspective, as well as for someone who has an interest in Norse mythology. The bookstores and coffee shops of Reykjavik are full of copies of the Icelandic Sagas. In addition, it was just outisde Reykjavik that I made a purchase that has blessed my life ever since that day. While wandering through the Hveragerði greenhouse village, I came upon a traditional weaver of Icelandic wool. On her loom she had a magickal creation of sea blue and green. She looked at me and she could see the longing in my eyes. She said, "I am just about ready to take this off the loom, do you want it?" I asked her how much it was and she even translated the krona into USD for me. She said, "For you, $90." As you can see from the photo below, this cape got a lot of wear in Scotland over the next two years of my journeys and I wear it every winter to this day.

Brighid and Her Sacred Well

Brighid and Her Sacred Well
by Branwenn WhiteRaven

(originally published in Circle Magazine: A Quarterly Journal of Nature, Spirit and Magic)

Part 1: The Choosing
Candles shimmered and glittered everywhere in the small apartment in Washington, DC, transforming everyday reality into another place, another time. The smoke of our sage and lavender incense rose and whirled around us. Face to face, our bare feet scrunched and slid on the salt strewn on the floor. While my partner Bran chanted a blessing, we entered the doorway into trance. Suddenly, the roar in my ears stopped with a deafening silence. There were no sounds, no words, no movement, no thoughts. For a second, I ceased to be, my heart stopped, my breath froze. My eyes closed tightly, but the surrounding landscape formed and reformed around me, hanging between the worlds.

Bran stopped chanting and jumped back, immersed in his own visions. The candles trembled. A flame shot up over my head. A voice filled my mind, filled the room, filled my womb. Pictures flashed through my head of a single standing stone thrust up from the treeless green hill. I stood in a circle with eighteen others, who over and over repeated the words, "Brid is come, Brid is welcome." I had no concept of where I ended and the song began.

A light flared again above my head in the chilled flat. Bran's voice called my name over and over. Candles were burning down, guttering out in the grey February dawn. A voice filled my universe. "You are mine! You are my daughter!" My eyes opened and I saw the fear and concern in the eyes of my lover. "Are you all right?" he asked. I replied, "I am Brighid's. I am. I have been called..." My words trailed off, becoming indistinct. "Mother," I breathed, "I have come and I am yours."

The frigid air around me was chilling, and I paled. Bran took me by the arms and gently led me back the long hallway to our tiny room. I fell, tumbling into the bed with the motion. My eyes closed and I stood again on the hillside with the eighteen priestesses of Brid. I chanted. I was called and I had been chosen. Once again I spoke, with calm dedication in my eyes. "Brid, I have come, and I am yours."

Part 2: The Origins of Brighid
Brighid, the Goddess to whom I had dedicated myself, is the Celtic Goddess of inspiration, healing, and smithcraft. She is one of the best examples of the survival of a Pagan Goddess into Christian times. She was canonized as St. Brigit by the Roman Catholic Church and various stories are given of Her origins and Her life. She was a Druid's daughter, described in the Carmina Gadelica as the "daughter of Dugall the brown." She is reported to have predicted the coming of Christianity and to have been baptized by St. Patrick. Popular folk tales describe Her as the midwife to the Virgin Mary, and She is thus always called upon by women in labor. The Christian St. Brigit was a nun, and later an Abbess, who founded an Abbey at Kildare in Ireland. She was said to have had the power to appoint the bishops of Her area, an unlikely role for an Abbess, made stranger by Her unusual requirement that these bishops also be practicing goldsmiths.

In ancient times, the Goddess Brighid had a shrine at Kildare, with a perpetual flame tended by nineteen virgin priestesses called Daughters of the Flame. No man was permitted to come near Brighid's shrine and neither did Her priestesses consort with men. Even food and supplies were brought to the priestesses by women from the nearby village. When Catholicism overtook Ireland, Brighid's Fire Temple became a convent and the priestesses became nuns, but the same traditions were upheld and the eternal flame kept burning. Each day a different priestess/nun was in charge of the sacred fire and on the 20th day of each cycle, the fire was miraculously tended by the Goddess/Saint Herself.

For more than a thousand years thereafter, the sacred flame was tended by nuns. In 1220 CE, though, the Bishop became angered by the no-males policy of the Abbey of St. Brigid of Kildare. He insisted that nuns were subordinate to priests and must open their abbey and submit to inspection by a priest. When the Brigidine nuns refused and asked for another Abbess or other female official to perform the inspections, the Bishop was furious. He decreed that the keeping of the eternal flame was a Pagan custom, and ordered the sacred flame to be extinguished. Despite this persecution, St. Brigit remains to this day the most popular saint in Ireland, along with St. Patrick. In the1960s, though, Vatican II declared there was insufficient proof of St. Brigit's sanctity, or even of Her historical existence, and She was decanonized, so that the Roman Church's campaign against Her became successful. Recently, however, despite the initial protests of the Roman Catholic church, two nuns, by the name of Sister Mary and Sister Phil, have reestablished the worship of St. Brigit at Kildare and have relit Her sacred flame, which burns once more. The first modern Candlemas/Imbolc celebration at the ancient site of Brighid's sacred well in 1997 drew hundreds of people and grows every year in popularity. The flame of Brighid's love burns brightly once more.

Part 3: Brighid's Sacred Well
In the summer of 1998, I was called to Ireland by Brighid. Specifically, She called me to come to Kildare to visit Her cathedral. The train ride from Dublin was filled with faery-tale scenery, after which a short walk brought me from the picturesque old train station to the cathedral. It was as beautiful as I had expected, since I had already seen pictures of the site in books.

As I walked around outside and inside the cathedral, though, I was struck with how empty I felt, or more specifically, how empty the cathedral and the grounds felt to me. I found the tiny plaque that indicated the hole in the lawn where the sacred Pagan fire temple had once been. For me, though, everything there was sterile and bare, devoid of any mystical or magical feeling. I was very disappointed. I had come thousands of miles to see St. Brigit's Cathedral, but was very saddened by what I discovered there, so I instead trudged into the town of Kildare. I stopped at an information kiosk in an antique building in the heart of town to see how I might redeem the rest of the day. I poked through the pamphlets and brochures, but nothing struck my fancy. Even more dejected, I left the information center and headed out to look for something to do to pass the time until the next train left.

As I came to the main intersection in town, I noticed a signpost indicating Brighid's Holy Well, with an arrow pointing to a road that led out of town. Suddenly brightening, I headed down that road to see what adventure I could find. I thought the signpost had said that the well was a mile away, but I have found that in Ireland distance is similar to Pagan Standard Time, and is a very unstable measurement.

About two miles into my journey, I started to wonder whether I had missed some important turn in the road. Before I gave up and turned around, though, another sign with yet another arrow pointed me down a gravel road. By the time the road had turned into a narrow path, I finally saw a park, or at least something that looked promising, up ahead in the distance.

Finally reaching the entrance to Brighid's Holy Well, I breathed a sigh of relief. The small park was absolutely delightful. The lawn within the park's fence was green and lovely. I had no idea how amazing the day would turn out to be, but I could feel that something incredible was about to happen. I walked reverently to the spot where in legend Brighid had supposedly healed the lepers, and put my hands into the soothing waters. I was totally engrossed, saying the Genealogy of Bride, when I stopped and suddenly looked up into a face so beautiful and familiar to me that I didn't jump or feel alarmed.

I asked this faery apparition if she was the guardian of the well and she answered with a huge smile, "Yes. Did you call me?" My new faery guardian, one of the human members of Solas Bhride (the nuns associated with Brigid's cathedral) was named Tara. She looked enough like me to be my real sister, with red hair, blue eyes, generous figure, and all. She took my hands, pulled me up, and said to me, "Come, Brighid has sent me to take you to meet Sister Mary and Sister Phil."

One of my most cherished possessions is a letter from Tara telling me how Brighid brought her to the well that day and how glad she was that she listened to the summons. Tara and I spent the rest of that day together, and, much later, she gave me a ride back to the station so I could catch the last train back into Dublin. We talked and talked and drank huge cups of tea at her home just a few minutes from the well.

As promised, Tara took me into town and introduced me to Sister Mary and Sister Phil, the Brigidine nuns who have reestablished the worship of Brighid in Kildare. I had taken some water from Brighid's holy well and Sister Mary gifted me with a candle lit from Brigid's eternal flame. I use that votive candle to light each candle on my altar every time I do ritual work.

Sister Mary has re-lit Brighid's flame and keeps it burning in her home. Every time I light a candle now, I see Sister Mary, Sister Phil, and my guardian faery friend, Tara. I, too, have become a Daughter of the Flame, and a guardian of Brighid's Sacred Well.

Photos and article by Branwenn White Raven

Branwenn@aol.com