Water | Contemplative Inquiry

Recent days have been rich in numinous images. Images that for me mark the divinity within our material reality. Above, the recent full moon: clear light at the centre and a blood moon halo suggesting a link with the earth, later to manifest in an eclipse. The sky is deep violet leaning into indigo. The shaded trees absorb the energy of the sky as well as of the earth. The whole image feels moving and inspiring – an image for contemplation which doesn’t need esoteric analysis. Its simple presence is enough.

The same is true for the images that follow. Immediately below is a day time sky image. The day was frequently stormy, with high winds and hard rain. Dark clouds testify to moments of lightning, loud thunder and tumultuous rain. But the image itself records a period of respite. In a gap between the clouds, blue sky can be seen and the light pours strongly in.

Rain on a window pane is central to the next image. The rain drops are the primary subject. What’s on the other side (a balcony garden) isn’t entirely clear in the picture and doesn’t need to be. I experience a great sense of cleansing and refreshment here – the water of life as it falls from the sky, each drop itself an ocean. I look out from my interior space, two stories above the ground floor, and connect with this bounty.

The two remaining images come from a recent walk on Alney Island – outdoors and on normally marshy ground. The first is a woodland space with its fresh entangled green. The ground still looks drier than it sometimes does, yet I sense health and recovery here. In the second image, I see a re-greened path with benignly rioting verges. Seeing what I see, I follow the green path.

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August 22, 2025

LATE AUGUST 2025: SETTLING INTO AUTUMN

It is evening and for me autumnal. The sky offers the water a soft light, seemingly pink and grey. The water reflects this back, adding its own hint of mist. It is a tranquil scene.

For the first time this year, I feel a tug towards the Equinox, just under a month away. These canal waters are gentle, but they are drawn from the River Severn, site of the Severn Bore (1). Perhaps the waters are nudging something – maybe the water – in me.

A little later, facing into the declining sun (below) I see the sunset and its effects. I notice the concentrated power of the orb as it appears to reach the earth, and the way in which this energy disperses into the sky. The colour coding shifts from intense white to yellow to red-orange to an orange becoming increasingly grey. I live at latitude 52 north, and the sunset is getting earlier every day, now 8.15pm. Another autumnal feature.

Autumn is also the season of the fruit harvest. This year, many people are commenting that the fruit harvest is arriving early. Below, against the background of a clear blue daytime sky, an apple tree is fruiting. The tree is close to Gloucester Cathedral and may belong to it. Medieval Gloucester was a place of churches and priories. It was also a place of orchards, many of them cultivated by monks and friars. The picture points to natural and cultural continuity, though the fruit are early this year. I am no longer at a point tension between seasons. I am already settled in autumn.

(1) The Severn Bore is a natural tide phenomenon occurring in the River Severn in England, where a large wave surges upstream. It’s caused by the Atlantic tide pushing into the Bristol Channel and funneling it into the narrowing Severn Estuary, creating a more powerful wave that can be up to two meters high and a speed of up to 21 km/h. The Bore travels up the Severn Estuary, from Awre to Gloucester, a distance of 25 miles. It is strongest in the equinoxes (especially spring) and a popular challenge for surfers, kayakers and paddleboarders.

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July 26, 2025

FIRE ON WATER

8pm, 25 July. Alchemy on the canal. The evening sun, low and potent in the sky, strikes the flowing water. At points the union of the two creates a molten liquid light, clearly defined in the still image above.

By contrast, the short video below reveals light and water together in movement. Flow, and patterns in the flow, draw my attention. They show me an energised harmony, becoming more than the sum of their parts.

I notice also that when I play the video without sound, I find it contemplative and reflective. When I play it with sound, the birds immerse me in living nature. I value both experiences.

I usually feel a transition into late summer about now, a little before Lammas/Lughnasadh. The days here are still long, though now clearly not as long as they have been. It’s a warm time, often the warmest of the year. Blackberries have appeared on their bushes, a foretaste of autumnal fruit bearing.

I am reminded, too, of the Fferyllt, the Druid alchemist in OBOD tradition. She is a woman of power and a devotee of Brigid. In the Druidcraft Tarot (1) she is represented by Trump XIV, standing for fluency between worlds, creativity, harmony, peace, alchemy and magic. My canal side encounter with fire on water nudged my imagination towards this figure, who somehow completed it.

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The DruidCraft Tarot: Use the Magic of Wicca and Druidry to Guide Your Life London: Connections, 2004. Illustrated by Will Worthington.

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July 9, 2024

JULY DAYS 2024

My walking time is still restricted. Perhaps because of this, familiar outdoor spaces have become exotic and magical to my eyes. My limiting circumstances are paradoxically making me more focused and attentive, enhancing my felt quality of life. I am readier to find joy in simple, passing experiences.

On my contemplative walks, the shapes and colours of trees move me deeply. Grasses and sky have a similar impact. I am very aware of these July days. I am very aware of summer. I am very aware of my place in the world as the year turns in my immediate neighbourhood.

A little further away, I stand on a canal bridge (below) and look back towards the city, which seems distant and small. Water and sky give me space and perspective. I let the elements of water and air nourish me at a time when I am largely grounded.

Close up at the water margin, I find light shining on the water. There is energy and movement here. The power of the sun is present in both a shifting luminosity on the water and the flowering resilience on the bank.

I shift into a meditation on the four classical elements – earth, water, air and fire – and how they work together to make the fifth (life, spirit) possible. Consciously engaged with the four, I can stand as the fifth, resourcing my individual life within a world of impermanence and interbeing.

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October 11, 2023

LIMINAL BEAUTY AND THE FAITH OF A DRUID

6.15 pm, 6 October 2023. The experience has gone. The images remain. At a surface level, I can use them to trigger memories of my early evening walk. Chiefly, I remember being surprised at how early the twilight was. I hadn’t caught up with the year and was almost shocked. I have caught up now, nearly a week later, as the darkening process speeds up and we approach Samhain. In today’s world, my country will experience a dramatic boost on 29 October as our clocks ‘fall back’. The 6.15 of one day will become the 5.15 of the next.

Looking at the images more deeply, really looking, and giving them time, I can let them nourish me. I connect with their liminal beauty. Both images present me with land, water, sky, and hints of the fiery sun. But they do so in different ways.

In the image above, I am mostly drawn to the energy of water. The variation in shade emphasises movement and different ripple effects. Land, trees, and artifacts are all in silhouette, but the water has light and shade. It is the water that feels most alive. There is variation in the clouds too, with their patterned layers and subtle access to sunlight just above the trees. But they are not as mobile as the water. The sunlight itself seems very subdued. It’s still there, though very much in the background.This is not yet a night sky.

In the image below the water is strong too, but my eyes are drawn above to the clouds, which here are more dramatic. The residual power of waning sunlight is very clearly present. For me, there’s a sense of the tree tops yearning upwards as they reach for the gifts of the sun whilst it still retains a presence. Although I am contemplating images and not immersed in the landscape I have a strong sense of living presence in a field of living presence. In this state I feel a conceivably irrational confidence in life and the world.. A fragile kind of faith, that my heart cannot resist.

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July 22, 2023

THE ROOKERY: MAGIC IN A FORMAL GARDEN

Streatham’s Rookery (1) is a formal garden within Streatham Common, one of south London’s many remarkable green spaces. I made a connection with it in 1992 when living close by.

About a year before I discovered OBOD Druidry, I was working with R. J. Stewart’s The Way of Merlin (2). This taught me, first of all, about sacred space. “Sacred space is space enlivened by consciousness. Let us be in no doubt that all space is sacred, all being. Yet if humans dedicate a zone, a location, something remarkable happens within that defined sphere of consciousness and energy. The space talks back”.

I was an urban seeker and used what the city gave me. From an early age I had been fed by imagery of secret and magical gardens. The Rookery, built in the then Spa village of Streatham (1) became my sacred space. Towards its centre, a wishing well testified to the power of healing waters. It was a good place to begin my journey. The space became more alive, and I, included within the gestalt, became more alive with it.

After establishing a sacred space, I was asked to begin a relationship with a spring and a tree. Stewart said: “we need to relate to such locations. This is a physical relationship first and foremost … we are one with the land, and trees, springs and caves are power points that tap into the energies of the land, and then reach into other dimensions altogether”. I found my spring quite easily (above). But there were almost too many trees to choose from, and I recall hesitating about my choice, to the point even of changing trees on my second or third visit. On my recent re-visit – woven into a rare family weekend in London – I found it easy to find the spring again but harder to remember my tree. I settled on the mature birch below, a good choice for a new, Goddess related undertaking (2). But I cannot vouch for it as my choice in 1992.

Sacred space (“the land talks back”), and befriending a spring and a tree: for me, these were the most powerful lessons from R. J. Stewart’s work. They were a helpful preparation for my later Druid training. I was very pleased to revisit this space in July 2023 and share it with family members.

(1) Streatham was in Surrey before becoming part of the County of London in 1889, and then Greater London in 1965. It began as a settlement around the old Roman road (Street Ham) from London to the south coast at Portslade, Brighton, the site a Roman port long lost to erosion. It appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Estreham. The village remained largely unchanged until the 18th century, when its natural springs, known as Streatham Wells, were first celebrated for their health-giving properties. The reputation of the spa, and improved turnpike roads, attracted wealthy city of London merchants to build their country residences in Streatham.

The Rookery began as a large private house with its own landscaped gardens. Much later, when the house and gardens were threatened with disposal and redevelopment, it was bought by public subscription and laid out as a formal open space, first opening to the general public in 1913. The Rookery is now one of the London Borough of Lambeth’s Green Flag Award-winning parks, directly managed by Streatham Common Cooperative (SCCoop), a local community-led enterprise.

(2) R. J. Stewart The Way of Merlin: The Prophet, The Goddess and the Land London: The Aquarian Press, 1991

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May 15, 2023

CELEBRATING THE MONTH OF MAY

The Irish name for May is Bealtaine. Linguistically at least, the May Day festival sets the scene for a calendar month. As I experience the wheel of the year in my own life, this feels right. May, the merry month, has always been special to me. Born towards the end of the month in 1949, I continue to feel newer and fresher in May, with a heightened sense of life. Changes happening around me, in the rest of nature, feed that sense. I’m part of something bigger.

The demarcation of time might be a product of human counting and naming, but it doesn’t feel arbitrary to me. Counting and naming have a powerful magic of their own. On 14 May 2023 I went on a morning walk, reaching a small wooded area at about 7.45 am. It was a time of dispersing mists and strengthening light. A time of warming up. I enjoyed it from the start, but there came a moment when my experience of the walk changed radically.

I see the wood. I stand at its edge. Hawthorn invites me in, decked in the green and white of the May season. I understand this as a moment for slowing down and shifting into a softer, more intuitive connection with the realm I am entering. I am moving into a kind of sacrament – a communion with nature in a unique time and place. I feel a joyful kind of reverence here, free of solemnity and unction. As I continue slowly on the path, sunlight, striking a slender tree trunk, illuminates my way.

Then comes a tanglewood immersion. Variations in wood. Variations in green. Variations in light – especially light. This place could be dark and dank. At times, no doubt, it appropriately is. But it is May now, and wonderfully backlit. There’s a yellowing of green that points to new light and growth rather than their decay. I have a strong sense of participating in a living world. My own vitality is boosted.

I am now drawn towards water. Again, some foliage is shaded. Other foliage is vividly lit up. On the water, the mist is still clearing. It is still fairly early in the day. It is at times like this that I feel most Druidic, very at home and blessed in this quiet connectedness.

A little later, I crouch at the water margin’s edge. Whereas the previous scene had a spacious serenity, this has intimations of activity, a small but crowded world of its own, with thriving plants and and a thriving sub aquatic realm beside them. Even in this small space, life is complex and abundant. The same holds, on a somewhat expanded scale, to this vulnerable scrap of woodland as a whole. I emerge from my sacrament refreshed and renewed, with the imprint of Bealtaine 2023 upon me.

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June 24, 2022

MIDSUMMER CELEBRATION 2022

The place is called Lower Parting, though it is actually a joining. The parting is 3km (just under two miles) up river. There, the River Severn divides into two channels, east and west, to flow around Alney Island. When taking the picture above, I was standing near the point where the channels meet again. It was around 9 a.m. on 22 June. I had not been there before.

Although every time and place is ultimately sacred, some times and places are easier for me to honour. In my experience this is partly a property of the times and places, partly down to culture and tradition, and partly to do with my own inner and outer availability.

On this occasion, I was within a midsummer period which for me lasts from a day or so before the solstice until around 25 June. I like to acknowledge the stasis (standstill) element within the solstice experience. It is not just about a point of time. Like its midwinter opposite and twin, my midsummer allows an extended pause before the wheel of the year turns. My walk on 22 June was an intentional celebration of the midsummer stasis, something between an outdoor walking meditation and a miniature festival pilgrimage. It was built around my first encounter with an intuited special place, now that I am fit enough once more to walk the required distance.

I can easily understand why people in many parts of the world have seen water, especially flowing water, as sacred. I am on a quiet part of a quiet island in the middle of Gloucester city. The wetland here is blissfully unfit for development, and now a nature reserve. I was able to stand here and look out at the joining of the waters, under a blue sky, and surrender to a benign spirit of place. I didn’t have to attend to my attention. In this extended, flowing, moment, nature was doing that for me. I found, here, a generous horizon, and a living peace that invites participation. I am glad and grateful to have discovered this place on this day.

In my tradition, at every seasonal festival, we are asked to think not only of the time we are celebrating, but also of its opposite. Walking back from Lower Parting, I see features in the landscape that help me. My pictures below do not evoke winter, but they do show light and shade within a single image. On planet Earth, the time of my summer is the time of someone else’s winter. These are both ways in which opposites complement each other in an interconnected world.

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March 18, 2022

RIPPLE EFFECTS

Watching the fast flowing ripples as wind moves over water. Enjoying the power of the elements in this playful mood. For a brief time, delightedly immersed. Then stepping back and taking a brief video and a still picture. Seeing, later, how different they are. Rich moments are not hard to find, it seems, if I’m willing to find them in simple experiences.

‘My spirituality’ (an odd term, though widely used) is becoming simpler and more natural. My defining term, contemplative inquiry, has begun to seem complicated and formal to me, though in essence I still find it valid. It also identifies a thread of continuity in a decade of exploration. I am going to keep it as a description of what I do, even as my specific practice and understanding develop. One of my hopes is to simplify my inquiry process itself, without diminishing it, as I continue to move and change. Ripple images feel relevant somehow, both in themselves and as a metaphor which I can’t quite, as yet, fully decode.

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January 2, 2022

WELCOMING 2022

Bright Blessings to everyone at the turn of the calendar year. With some fears and greater hopes, I have crossed the threshold into 2022. I have welcomed it into my life and declared myself ready for the journey.

In a way, ‘2022’ is a fiction woven from our human experience of linear time and a cultural decision about numbers. But these things are thoroughly ingrained in me and feel like givens, completely natural. I remember clocking this, or signing up to the tribal custom, in the new year of 1957, when I was 7 years old and found myself remembering 1956 as a full, known year. It was the first time I had been conscious of such a thing. Now I was somewhere new and exciting (1957) though the feel of my bedclothes was familiar in the very dim early morning light. I remember this vividly and, truth be told, better than I remember waking up yesterday.

Flowing water is often used as an image for the passing of linear time. On my walk yesterday morning, I checked this out in nature and made two brief videos of a stream. Standing on the bridge at slightly different times, facing in opposite directions, I filmed a stream flowing both towards me and away from me. My feelings about the two were a little different.

The water coming towards me felt fresh and energised. I was curious about the patterns on the surface both from the flow itself and from the rain. I was drawn in, more meditatively, by the sound. I was also interested in what stories the water might hold. But I didn’t follow these up, out of concern for losing the immediate experience. Above all I, felt invigorated. I enjoyed this flow.

Flowing away was different. It wasn’t raining and I could hear – I think – sea gulls. They are certainly around. Again I enjoyed patterns in the water and the enlivening strength of the flow. But I was strongly aware of it moving away from me. Yes – it was reliably replenished … but for how much longer? And, in any case, a movement away is a movement away. Movements away carry a sense of loss. This isn’t just about my age. It is built into the experience of linear time. Things pass away into a temporal distance. Linear time is the mechanism that allows anything to ‘happen’ at all, but also the guarantor of impermanence. There’s a poignancy in this condition that I allow myself to experience and hold – not, here, seeking comfort in the eternal. I watch the power of a little stream, grateful for the miracle of existence, softly sad about its vulnerable brevity.

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Tag: Water