Ghosts in the machine
We walk among you and you do not notice us. We don’t look any different than anybody else you meet on your journey through the day. You work with us, pass us in the street, you sit next to us on the bus and the train all without noticing who we are.You won’t be able to tell who we are from what we ware. We ware suites, jeans, tee-shirts, bright patterns and plain black. We wear lots of silver and none.
We work in offices, on building sites, in the police and armed services. In every profession and job we are to be found. We stay at home to care for family, or travel the world on business.
But there is one thing we do have in common, something that most people never thing about and if you notice what we do it will be when you wonder if the ancient holy sites are still holy and special. It will be when you notice that the site round an old holy well has been cleaned or why a clearing in the woods you have just stumbled across looks so clean and cared for.
Maybe you see shadows of people on the beach in the evening of a full moon, or voices from the woods as the sun hangs high in the sky at mid summer and wonder who they are or what they are doing. Perhaps its fresh flowers placed carefully so as not to cause any damage at the entrance to an ancient burial site that caught you attention or the small offering of fruit in the woodland clearing that mad you wonder what was going on.
Perhaps you have visited some of the ancient sites in this land and wondered what the people who build them did there or perhaps you wondered were these special places to the ancients and ancestors at all. Maybe you wondered why some places, like to clearing in the woods or a holy well or river feels so special? Maybe you even wondered if these places were still special, if so did they somehow miss the attention of those that in the past came there to give reverence. Wondered even if the gods and goddesses that were worshiped and revered in these places still existed?
It is at these times and in these places you are closest to understanding that which binds us, the ones you don’t notice and pass in the streets, together. The thing that we have in common with each other and that goes unnoticed by others is that the special places are still used today, the rivers and wells still revered as holy places. The Full moon and high midsummer sun are still times of celebration and times to talk to the gods. The Gods and Goddesses are still revered and invoked today just as sincerely as they were in the past. We don’t try to copy the old ones, we don’t do exactly what the old ones did, and we don’t even know how they worshiped in the special places or the names they gave the Gods and Goddess that they met there. But we do feel that we understand their motivations and their need to commune in these places and connect with the aspect of the divine that resides there or is imbedded in the time of year.
We feel the same need and drive as they did; we feel the draw of the still pool and the running brook. The silver other land of the midnight full moon and the power and promise of the mid summer sun calls to us as it did to the ancient peoples. We still talk to the Goddess and Gods, we still feel the spiritual power of the special places, the rivers, wells, beaches and woodlands. We gather there to celebrate and give thanks, and we go alone to commune with the spirits of the place and the memories of the ancients.
But we don’t feel the need to shout about what we do. We feel no need to attract others or evangelise. We don’t claim to have the only way or the ultimate truth; we don’t expect others to feel the call or the power in the holy places, or to hear the voice of the Goddess in the babbling of the broom or the whisper of the God in the trees of the woods. We understand that our way isn’t for everybody. So we drift through your world, unnoticed and unremarked upon keeping the old ways alive, communing with the Gods and Goddesses of yesterday, in our own way, like ghosts in the machine.
Some people have wondered if the old Gods and Goddesses are remembered and still worshiped today, or have they been forgotten to history. Some wonder what happened to the old ways of revering the divine and the turning of the year. Perhaps you have wondered as you read of another archaeological discovery if the Gods and Goddesses of yesterday are still here with us or have all of this passed away to be relegated to the pages of a dusty text book.
So if you wonder about those that honour the old ways, the old places and Gods, know that we are still here. We never went away, changed and different we may be, Modern and looking forward rather than trying to reinvent the past, but still trying to do what we must to keep the old ways the old gods and the old reverence alive and in so doing keeping that connection between us, our children and the ancestors the Gods and Goddesses and the special places of this land alive.