Excerpts from sacred music while you read my site
Myself: I have conducted much research into the lives of westerners pursuing these four spiritual paths. I have interviewed many such individuals. I have undertaken in-depth studies of many centres, institutions, groups, meditations and rituals. I have unrivalled personal practical experience of these four spiritual paths. I have completed intensive academic study of them. All this assistance is fully available to you, as much as you need. I am an expert astrologer and teach astrology. I also offer retreats, workshops, rituals, festival celebration, shamanic journeying and transformational sweat lodge ceremony. I have completed a five-year social-anthropological field study where I extensively studied how individuals in the west are now understanding themselves by participating in western forms of Hinduism, Buddhism, paganism, tantra, shamanism, magic and utopian community. I have conducted much research and have degrees from three universities, as well as a counselling qualification. Previously, I worked in community development and in industry. My aim in setting up this programme is to offer unstinting ethical service to the spiritual development of all who ask for it. I have always found that landscape is a major gateway to experiencing the divine. This page therefore continues with sections about two of the many sacred landscapes that have changed my life. The first is about the Glastonbury sacred landscape. At Glastonbury, I now offer Celebration of the Eight Great Festivals for people following the Paganism course. The Festivals are combined with explorations of the spiritual Glastonbury Landscape and guided journeys across it. They are linked to tantric exercises demonstrating the union of Wicca with other shamanic and tantric spiritual paths. The second is about the sacred landscape of the Callanish Stone Circle in the far Outer Hebrides Islands northwest of Scotland. At Callanish, I provide regular workings for people following my astrology courses, where we powerfully and accurately contact the true nature and exact energy of each planet as it manifests concretely and often ineluctably in our astrological natal chart and in our lives.
The Landscape of Glastonbury Glastonbury was the chief Centre for our Field Study Glastonbury is a global place of pilgrimage. For very many centuries, the landscape of Glastonbury has been seen as especially sacred space. Explanations of its sacredness reflect the spiritual understandings of the pilgrims and express the highest spiritual aspirations of the times they live in. These perceptions of the numinous have now become etched so deeply into the contours of the landscape that this land has thus become a gateway to contact with the divine - and the perceptions of the sacred are fed by the especial and unique character of the landscape itself.
Chalice Hill and the Tor. There is a line of sight from St Joseph’s Well in the Abbey, which is off picture to the left. From the Well, you look over the swelling belly of Chalice Hill (to the left of this photo) to see the peak of the Tor.
Glastonbury Tor: The summit of the Tor was flattened to build the medieval church to St. Michael the Archangel, the Weigher of Souls. Only the tower now remains. This image shows the terracing on the Tor. Are these terraces agricultural? The fact that they are on the dark side of the Tor as well as the light suggest not. Pagans suggest these terraces could be a ceremonial labyrinth of the same date as nearby Avebury and Stone Henge. Until the Romans and the medieval monks drained the land, the Tor and the other Glastonbury hills were islands in a shallow inland sea or marsh-lake.
The Red Spring: Ferrous-rich waters rise from artesian depths
The Abbey Crypt: site of St. Joseph’s Well
St Joseph’s Well, believed to be the site of a much earlier pagan Holy Well
‘The Tomb of King Arthur’
The Cross of Queen Elizabeth II
Glastonbury Town road sign
Other way markers
A Bender Site
Yew tree
The Landscape of Callanish Five thousand years ago a unique Stone Circle was built at Callanish on the Isle of Lewis, in the remote islands of the Outer Hebrides, northwest of Scotland. The circle is built on a commanding promontory surrounded by water and has two attendant rows of stones, one running north to south and the other crossing it at right-angles, east to west, the two rows joining at the huge central stone of the circle.
Callanish Stone Circle Uniquely, here at Callanish, once every 18.61 years, a ‘Lunar Standstill’ occurs. The Moon sets so low that, from the northern end of the stone row or ‘processional way’, it appears to set magically, actually within the stones of the circle itself.
The Moon appears to set within the circle And as it does so, it also appears to roll along and set on a hill just across the sea to the south behind the circle. The hill is shaped like a recumbent Goddess in the landscape, a Cailleach na Mointeach, running along her body, as if making love to her.
Cailleach na Mointeach The place is unique, because if you go to a latitude even a few miles further south than Callanish, the Moon is too high above the horizon to do this; and if you go even a bit further north, the Moon sets just below the horizon and so the ‘Lunar Standstill’ effect is therefore lost. The stones themselves are immensely powerful: gnarled and serpentine contorted spikes of milky moonlight-coloured gneiss, one of the most ancient rocks of the surface of the Earth, and their ethereal quartzite glitter thus echoes and amplifies the magic and energy of the Moon.
Quite probably writing of Callanish, Diodorus of Sicily recorded in 55 BC regarding the Hyporboreans: ‘There is on the island a notable temple which is spherical in shape and the Moon as viewed from the island, appears to be but a little distance from the Earth. The God visits the island every nineteen years and dances continuously the night through, from the Vernal Equinox until the rising of the Plaeides.’ Many people think this passage from Diodorus refers to Stonehenge, but it couldn’t have been, because Stonehenge is far too far south for the Moon to set on the horizon in this way. It has to be about a circle at the northern latitude of Callanish, and it is quite probably about Callanish itself. At Callanish, and virtually nowhere else, therefore, you see the Moon getting lower and lower so that it appears to touch the ground (though it is a little less so if you are visiting at a date not so close to the times of the Standstills). Thus, for our ritualists standing within the circle, the Moon actually sets into the raised arms of each course member. This provides a uniquely powerful and unforgettable personal affirmation of all the work and study done to understand how the exact energy of the Moon manifests in each individual life.
Moon Ritual But the Circle of Callanish is not just focussed on the Moon. At each Equinox, the Sun rises at the eastern end of the east-west stone row, rolls majestically along the line of the row and sets at its western end. We also therefore use sacred landscape to affirm the unique manifestation of Solar energy in each of our lives, to find out exactly what our individual Sun is about in our natal chart and in our life. Of course, the Stone circle is not only built by Neolithic peoples to be about alignment to the planets. It is also a place of power on the land, a place where magic was instilled, a place where a people worshipped and were buried, a place where people came from many miles to witness its special splendours, a place where the forces of life, death and rebirth were concretely witnessed, venerated and participated in - and we also visit the many ancient sites on the Island of Lewis: Brochs, Iron Age huts and ‘black houses.
These ritual events are particularly powerful for people studying my Foundation Course in Hindu Astrology. This course is described on the Level 4 Page on this site. Using the Sidereal Zodiac of Hindu astrology (as opposed to the Tropical Zodiac of western astrology), you get a far more accurate and precise sense of the energy of each planet as it manifests in your life. It’s even better than western astrology – but you need both astrologies, as western astrology can provide a necessary psychological insight and transformation, if studied properly. Within this Foundation Course and within these ritual events, I teach two very special features of Hindu astrology: Firstly: a set of Hindu Astrological Symbols – one for each of the degree of the Sidereal Zodiac Second: how the Lunar Mansion (called a ‘Nakshatra’) that each of your planets falls within at the moment of your birth, so powerfully and so concretely tells you the details of the fate you are here to work with. This is a lunar zodiac, as also used by the Babylonians, and it wonderfully supplements the Solar Zodiac as a divine gift. Callanish is a powerful place to do this part of the work, and thus to contact the unique and individual truth of each of your planets’ energy. The symbols are genuine and powerful. They are true and clear guides to the detailed realities of your life. They are very robust and powerfully descriptive about the person almost at an ‘animal level’. No punches are pulled. It’s rather like reading about Homeric or Celtic heroes and their geises, instead of the looser and sometimes more de-personalizing and de-individualizing ‘psychologising’ that Western astrology so often offers. Here are two examples: Of the symbols, if you have a planet at 7 Scorpio at the moment you were born, this is the Degree of Eagerness, Anuradha, ruled by Saturn, which denotes one whose object is to gain knowledge and whose object is to attain his desires. In his dealings with others, he holds the thoughts uppermost and endeavours to turn the light of his acquisitions to material things. He has the ability to make his work on Earth interesting and popular. He gains by deaths and certain work with others, but happiness will not be his so long as he holds the false lights of materialism before his eyes. His happiness is in the ideal, the true, and the only real. It is a degree denoting will power and the ability for sculpture. If afflicted it denotes extreme obstinacy. Of the Lunar Mansions or Nakshatras, if you have a planet in the Nakshatra Hastha, at the moment you were born, this is about the weight of the responsibilities of mundane existence and various socio-family involvements which so much overburden the individual that her highly activated mental framework often verges to its breaking point, but inner spiritual and divine guidance provides the necessary fortitude to save the day and the individual acquires special accomplishments, siddhis, whereby she succeeds in subjugating the darker forces along the way and breaking through on the path ahead.
To enrol: To enrol on any of the tantric spirituality courses, click here. To use these packs quickly, simply complete Sections A and B of the enrolment questionnaire, then follow the instructions in the ‘Action’ page. Provide what information you easily can. Don’t feel you have to get bogged down in ‘difficult to find’ information. However, if you want to go into things in more detail, that is an advantage, and the packs also contain the answers to a number of ‘frequently asked questions’. Please note that these packs are just my idea of the information I feel I need so as to be of best service to you. However I fully understand if you want to present yourself in some other way on enrolment, that you feel suits you better, in which case just use my ideas as a guideline. Please email me or phone me if you have any queries, and I will be pleased to help. My email address is info@michaelconneely.com Enrollment and Payment - You can enroll on-line using the forms accessed by the ‘click here’ sections near the foot of these web pages, or you can email me, or write a letter or phone to discuss, whatever you prefer. Payment is in advance. You can pay by going to the Price List page and clicking on the ‘add to basket’ sections to use Pay Pal, or you can pay by cheque, bank draft, postal order or cash. If you have any queries, please get in touch and I will be pleased to help.
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