What do you do when you get that urge to break free, to jump in the car and just drive? Where do you go? Do you heed the call or push it down inside ~ hush it for a while?
I’ve never been much of one for self-discipline and routines. A reaction perhaps to parents who were military officers – still running life like clockwork, even in retirement. Ashamedly, I’ll admit, when I was younger and “the call” would start to rise within me, I’d phone in sick or disappear, with just a note to cover my arse in my absence (I think it’s the call of the Wild Woman in me ~ but I do not know her name). That’s why my car has always been my most treasured possession. It ain’t nothing fancy, but as long as it goes, and in good repair, it’s my freedom ~ my way to escape.
When I get “the call”, I always seem to head out West.
West of me it’s wilder; less cultured. More spaces round the road.
The Wild Woman in me does not want to sit in 3-lane traffic, heading towards the city lights. That would simply crush her soul. {I often wonder how those suity-types breathe/survive in the small-box spaces of London living; the close-up crush of others on the tube and the shoulder-nudging-shoulder-forward-ramble on the streets} A journey of this sort requires, at times, the longest possible route, with long pauses of nothing and time to reflect. No Motorways Please.
These days, as a Mother, I’ve learnt to portion my freedom into parcels. Some I plant ahead of me along the way, to lie in wait like jacks-in-their-boxes. They will spring surprises on me to excite me from the drudgery of homespun domesticity, hopefully at just the time I’ll need it most. But sometimes when an opportunity presents itself, I just have to go.
With no great plans laid out today, I drove Rubin to nursery, listening to my inner voices singing to the sunlight (the clocks went forward yesterday here; British Summertime has officially arrived). I dropped him off and turned the car the other way . . . . towards the West. That old familiar buzz of freedom ~ the recklessness of leaving chores and paperwork behind. I feel more alive. I’m on the road. Not quite Kerouac, but veering wildly from the path of reality. Losing my illusions.
Lately I’ve felt “the call” in a way I’ve grown to recognise. It comes with a pull in my solar plexus. Hangs round like the veil of a dream all day. I start to taste a memory that I can’t quite describe.
This call is Glastonbury.
The Lady of Avalon.
Mystical Goddess of Many Faces.
Brigit Ana, Morgana, Magdalena to me.
Glastonbury is many things to many people, and it would take a long time to explain these. Religion, History & Legend unite around her core. The strands of myth and magic woven into something “other”, not quite in this dimension. A space between the worlds.
There are things I do not like about the place. Dope-smoking, drinkers, good-time travellers. There’s a little too much tie-dye and crushed velvet for my tastes. But I have to accept that we are all drawn there for the same reason. I am learning not to judge.
For me, you see, Glastonbury is the home of the Divine Feminine Flame of Power in this country, and may actually be (I suspect) one of the most significant anchoring points of Divine Feminine Power in the world. [In truth, I've yet to visit some of the others, and some are only just beginning to unveil themselves now; hidden away all this time from the dominant Patriarchal Powers of the world]
Many do not realize how deeply they have ached to be connected to the Flame of the Divine Feminine again. Perhaps they go to Glastonbury not quite knowing why they’re there. But they are touched by the hand of the Goddess, nonetheless. Is it a surprise that so many young people flock to the now-legendary annual (well, almost) music festival of the same name (which is not actually in the town but a few miles out on a nearby farm at Pilton)? Of course, it’s no surprise that the Goddess would choose music as the vehicle to draw so many to Her. And there they may attend Her, without inhibition, or the restrictions of dogma or religion.
As a self-dedicated Priestess of the Goddess, Glastonbury is important to me because it’s somewhere that I can make sense of myself. And it’s the only place in this country with an existing, modern-day, Goddess Temple. My first visit to the Temple was only two years ago. It felt like coming home. At 31. But probably I’d been away for many more years than that.
When I’m there, I feel the presence of Brigid all around me ~ Great Triple Goddess of these Celtic Isles ~ and I know that I’m not mad, that I’m not losing my grip on what is real, as some would say. I’m just back on the road, heeding the call of the wild. And rediscovering what is truly real. Still losing my illusions. Watching them unravel behind me as I travel.
Today I couldn’t go that far. The 2 hour drive. Lack of time, lack of petrol in the car. But I have appeased the Wild Woman within me by coming West, a mere coupl’a miles. I sit in the sun now; watch the sparkling blue sea and know that soon I’ll be on the road again ~ on my way to Avalon. It’s not quite the spontaneity I crave but it will do.
{I am wondering if the call to the West will one day take me further in that direction than I’ve gone before? I find myself dreaming of unfamiliar places . . . . a power in the Earth that does not rise from this land, but that I know I’ve felt before ~ a long time past}
When once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci
