A young deer appeared out of the mist yesterday morning, grazing on the sparkle of the dew-laden field – it felt like a farewell gift from the land of Brittany.

Or Breizh…the rumblings of identity and self-determination are found here, too – a poster in a community gathering place in St.Cado places images of an elder Breton and an elder from one of the North American First Nations side-by-side, and is captioned “Breizh   Amerika: 500 ans de Résistance” (http://spered-breizh.com/produits.php?famille=Posters%20/%20Skritello%F9 ).

In the western part of Brittany, Finisterre, “the end of the earth” – signs are in Breton and French, and they have an Ofis Publik ar Brezhoneg (“Public Office of the Breton Language”) that existed first as a local movement, then was taken over by the French government. It was strange for me to hear the exact same discourse for Breton over French as we have heard for French over English in Quebec….

That Breton is a Celtic language is obvious even to a barely-aware ear – one of a family that includes Irish and Scots Gaelic, Cornish, Welsh and Manx, and of which only Welsh is not considered an endangered species. The feeling that the land formed the language, and called its people to it, came as a wash of warm-fuzziness as, travelling the Breton countryside, we passed through the heathered highlands and lochs of Scotland, the cliffs of western Ireland, the faerie forests of Wales, the pink granite of Cape Breton, the friendly coves of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island… and even the land around Heartroot in Quebec, where the last person who spoke only Gaelic passed over recently, I am told. (That there were Quebec Gaelic speakers has been largely ignored, even by Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Gaelic)

In La Forest, along the Ria Etel, old oak, ivy, heather and holly all breathed the same salt-sea air as their Druid brethren through the ages. (The term “Ria” is used in English as well as French for a tidal river, filling and emptying with the sea and the moon.)

There is little energy still held in the megalithic multitude surrounding Carnac – what remains is wonder at the sheer size of the endeavor. As is the case with so many of the monumental undertakings of humanity that were based in the quotidian concerns of human survival, whether they were efforts to derive foreknowledge of seasonal shifts or supplication to deities and ancestors for aid and succor, their time was…and is no more. A living Spirit no longer dwells there. Paths of feet through millennia that have not walked in reverence on the earth, surround and wind through the ancient stones. If there is any truth
in the belief that photographing a living being steals its soul, the millions of camera clicks that yet echo in the air have eaten away at the place, one shutter-wink at a time. (This depends on the intention of the operator of the photographic device: an iPad scurrying from one un-experience to the next and an image taken in order to inspire memories of a relationship with a place are two very different kettles of fish.)

There are some sites where Magic remains, and they are not just the spots that have avoided the desecration of unconsciously consuming visitors. Places that are even slightly more difficult to access attract a different variety of guest, and the sites where one must enter into darkness are perhaps spared some of the bright glare of insatiable intellectual curiosity. This may be why the pyramids of the Giza Plateau have managed to hold on to some of their Spirit despite tourist tsunamis through the ages – in the darkness, surrounded by the bones of the earth, one cannot help but connect with other-dimensional states, if one is not overwhelmed by a sense of one’s mortality, and overcome by fear….

Cairns and tumuli and caves and tunnels, sweatlodges and initiatory ritual burials, all return us to the bowels of the Earth of which our bodies are fashioned, where resides the genetic material of our ancestors and therefore the history of our bloodlines…of humanity. Making peace with Darkness is making peace with our pasts; releasing our fear of Darkness is letting go of the engrained, cellular beliefs that What Has Been Must Always Be.

A few of the sites we visited in Brittany felt as if they have been holding their breaths, or perhaps more that they’ve been in a deep somnolent state, waiting for our human collective Consciousness to shake off the nightmare illusion of death and separation and to reclaim the faculties of our Higher Mind, freed of the fright-founded fetters of cultural, social and religious tradition. Rehabilitating the masculine energies of humanity, we are finally able to eschew domination as a paradigm and step back into integrity, dignity and alignment with our Essence. The Prince is then worthy of awakening the Princess….

Toning in these places, the stones awoke and embraced me:  I felt the boundaries of my learned identities dissolve, and melted back into Oneness…Grace…Essence.

Many mysteries presented themselves to me in Brittany. Not the least is how a people who live largely on combinations of flour, butter, milk, eggs and sugar in varying proportions, and who seem able, one and all, to consume at luncheon what I can barely manage in a day, retain their “lean and mean” silhouettes. I’m thinking it must be genetic…! (Please don’t write to me about this point – I am partially joking, and do realize the importance of chemical-free, local food, fish predominating over red meat, etc, etc.)

I feel as if the pieces of a very big and complex puzzle have been shown to me – they involve the Acadians, Mont St. Michel, the ubiquitous Nicolas Fouquet, the specific properties of granite, the Black Madonna, the Monastic Order of Jerusalem, the biogeometry of places and cultures and, of course, the Sinclair clan! Now, I just have to wait until each piece settles into its place – perhaps there are more yet to come – and the portrait paints itself into clarity…. À suivre..!

Blessèd Be…