It is a cosmic time. Monday is the Spring Equinox and today sees the largest full moon for twenty years. That means it really is the time of The Last Werewolf.
To mark such events I have been attending services on Sunday mornings at St Pauls. I've not been able to believe in the one God for a long time but I do very much believe in the English cultural tradition. The cathedral is a very good place to experience this. Besides, it is built on a Roman temple to Diana the hunter and before that in all probability on the site of a pre-Roman sacred site.
Christopher Wren and Hawksmoor knew this when they conceived the epic design of the new cathedral after the great fire destroyed the old one. A great psychic axis climbs from within the depths of the earth up through Ludgate Hill into the sky. It is this which attracted the Romans to the place. The pagan temple was open to the heavens - merely circling this axis but Wren successfully capped it - creating the conditions for London's development as a great international city. It is the reason the building was able to survive the nazi blitz when all around it was laid waste.
I recommend a visit on Sunday - you don't have to pay and you will hear some wonderful music. If you do go, try opening up to the ancient forces around you. They may have some surprising effects.
The central intersection of the nave and the wings is effectively a giant roofed Stonehenge. This became apparent to me in what I can only describe as a psychic revelation - one of a series I have experienced around the Clerkenwell environs. There is a twin psychic pole through that other centre of English culture, Westminster abbey and, as I have noted before, a corresponding horizontal axis along the line of the subterranean river Fleet. The Fleet forms the boundary between the city of Westminster and the city of London. These have always had different gods - power and money respectively - and, together with the spiritual axes through the cathedrals, form the forces around which the physical and psychic city spins.
The central intersection of the nave and the wings is effectively a giant roofed Stonehenge. This became apparent to me in what I can only describe as a psychic revelation - one of a series I have experienced around the Clerkenwell environs. There is a twin psychic pole through that other centre of English culture, Westminster abbey and, as I have noted before, a corresponding horizontal axis along the line of the subterranean river Fleet. The Fleet forms the boundary between the city of Westminster and the city of London. These have always had different gods - power and money respectively - and, together with the spiritual axes through the cathedrals, form the forces around which the physical and psychic city spins.
Long may it continue to do so.
4 comments:
You know, I could've sworn that I felt a...certain something when I was at St. Paul's the other day -- the universe knows it wasn't anything of a religious nature. The energy is palpable, just as it should be.
I realised this week I'd never seen St Paul's, as I passed it on the most fantastic bus route from Liverpool St to Waterloo. In awe doesn't even begin to describe. Good to know it's free on a Sunday, I'll definitely be exploring it in the near future.
I would be interested in hearing more about your psychic experiences. I had a...moment myself while at Bunhill and then another while wandering the trenches at Vimy a few days ago.
Yes there is definately a reason it is there - and yes it is a magnificent thing in its own right. There are many monuments to the famous dead within. Wren's just says: 'If you seek a monument, look around you".
John Donne's, which he wrote himself: "Here lies John Donne, undone.."
That part of the city - including Bunhill Feilds is soaked with myth. I have said it before but you come to London as a visitor, stay as a resident and then become absorbed as an inhabitant - the last being the city's choice, not yours.
Of late, I have started to experience something beyond even that - a kind of assimilation where one becomes affected by the locations themselves.
More soon!
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