WES Friend Profile

I rejected Christianity at an early age, preferring the scientific texts at school to the Biblical texts that read like fairy tales. In early 1977 at the age of eight I was greatly affected by a television programme called Children Of The Stones. Filmed in the Avebury stone circles the programme was a tale of megaliths, ley lines, alignments and ritual. To an eight year-old the programme was utterly terrifying, with its chanting voices, supernatural events and adults linking hands at ancient sites. This is where my Pagan path began but apart from reading, it didn't progress beyond this for many years. A visiting friend once requested a visit to Glastonbury and the two of us found ourselves in Chalice Well. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace whilst in the gardens, a feeling I'd never experienced before. Something was stirring.

In the late 1990s I became very unwell and left full time employment for five years. Regular trips to Avebury began and early on in this period I discovered Reiki. Initially not much happened for me but I had great results when working on friends and family. I progressed to Reiki Master and did a life-changing 10-day course centred on Glastonbury. I was amazed to find a course that took in some of my favourite places. In Reiki you have a series of attunements - a type of blessing to open you up to the energy. Over 10 magical days attunements were carried out on Glastonbury Tor (sunrise and sunset), Wearyall Hill in Glastonbury, at Avebury, inside crop circles and at Stanton Drew stone circles. Some of the course was also carried out in Chalice Well and in the nearby city of Wells. As well as significantly expanding my healing repertoire, the course gave me a new love for the Glastonbury landscape. I became a Companion of Chalice Well and started to visit regularly. Enjoying the water from its red spring as well as from the White Spring across the road, I began to work out a way of collecting large volumes of water for use at home 18 miles away. I now have up to 250 litres at home at any one time, and I top up as necessary on each visit.

Suffering from a spiritual emptiness I began to develop an interest in celebrating the natural/Pagan/Celtic year. I started by visiting the Stony Littleton long barrow just a few miles from my home. This is aligned to the mid-winter sunrise, with the chamber lighting up just on the few days around that period. I then started to attend organised events, starting at Chalice Well. The first of these was an Imbolc celebration and the note beforehand requested songs and poetry contributions. I liked the idea of reading poetry at the wellhead. Even though I had no experience of this type of thing I set to work on some Imbolc text. This went well and I became motivated to write similar poetry for the other quarter and cross-quarter days, as well as for other special events such as the Chalice Well Healing Weekend, the White Spring, the full moon and a celebration of water. The full moon itself became an interest and I started doing walks up the Tor on these nights, as well as attending celebrations at Chalice Well and undertaking the Reiki 3 Master Energising Exercise when facing the full moon.

Taking a few photos at the original events and placing them on my website, I realised how much interest there is in celebrating the seasons. Many people now expect a package of my photos on the day of each festival! Of course, I can't always oblige. The Chalice Well Imbolc and Beltane events have generally been the most popular of the celebrations but things stepped up a gear in 2007 with me attending multiple events. For Beltane I attended the excellent Chalice Well event in the morning and returned to Glastonbury in the evening. This was for an event at the White Spring, where I performed my Beltane poetry for the second time that day, as well as a session on my singing bowls. I was pleased to find out some time later that my bowl playing had inspired a visiting witch to purchase her own singing bowl the following day! For Summer Solstice it was an early start and chaotic scenes on the Tor, before a gentler session at Chalice Well at Midday.

For Lammas 2007 I started the previous evening at the Goddess Temple, before a sunrise event with the Western Order Of Druids on the Tor, with me debuting my Lammas poetry in front of an amazing sunrise. It was at this point I made a commitment to join the Order. It was then back to Chalice Well at midday for an excellent event. I received more reaction to my website photos and report on Lammas than any previous event. Being one of the lower profile seasonal celebrations, the interest must have been down to me attending multiple events and providing photographs and a report covering each of them. This gave me a commitment to attend multiple events in the future. For Samhain 2007 I took in Avebury for the first time, with an aim of doing a ritual there for each of the eight annual celebrations thereafter. For the Spring Equinox 2008 I visited Stonehenge for the sunrise, again with a commitment to attend other rituals there in the future, although not at the point of high chaos at Summer Solstice. Other events soon followed at Stonehenge with the first Beltane event at Stonehenge as well as three with private groups at Summer Solstice. Also at Beltane 2008 I visited Stanton Drew for an event with the Dobunni Grove, again with a feeling that I would be returning on a regular basis. It feels like things are expanding all the time. I love celebrating the passing year out with nature. And it's great to be able to share my poetry with so many people.

My use of Reiki extends mostly to training nowadays, although I still do some healings on demand. My courses make use of the local landscape, with Reiki 1 courses visiting Stanton Drew for the attunements and Reiki 2 visiting Stony Littleton. I have also developed a course called Healing With Natural Energies. This is a magical day involving water, crystals, magnets, chakras, auras, sounds and dowsing.

I am very pleased with my evolution to date and I'm very comfortable that my spirituality is linked to undeniable facts such as the position of the sun and the moon. The total rejection of Christianity was correct for me and I have no regrets. It's also pleasing for me that more and more people seem to be following this path. I also now realise that I needed to crash out of full time employment for a few years in order to get things underway. Now back at work, I'm happy to do lunchtime healings on stressed colleagues and I talk about my life outside at the annual Learning At Work Day, part of Adult Learners' Week. And I find a surprising amount of interest by co-workers in my growing collection of seasonal pictures. Could this be the start of something really big?