A magickal place


It doesn't just happen

I want to talk again about this attitude that "pure" Nature is somehow better.

Part of this is probably umpteen generations of farmers in my bloodline, but I think that attitude is mistaken.

And so did the ancients.

Do you think the Hill of Tara just popped up that way? Do you think that Stonehenge emerged fully formed? Do you think that the Temple of Delphi was created without human hands? Do you think that Canyon de Chelly burst forth without human intervention?

There is an retired architect named Malcom Wells you should know about. And if you don't think you should, think again. He's one of my heros, just in case you hadn't noticed. His writings got me thinking about this topic years ago. In one of his books, he described his Cherry Hill office and how it had it's own micro climate and how the design shielded most of the noise from the adjacent 6-lane highway.

That got me to thinking about Disneyland and it's berm. Likewise, the park itself is shielded from some of the weather and most of the noise from outside. With nothing more than a carefully arranged but sizable mound of earth, the climate and sounds inside change.

See, I have this idea. As grand as untouched nature can be, there is something amazing about human creativity and nature combined. A well designed home, a well designed garden, all these ADD to the magick of a place.

It's the difference between watching and manifesting.

It's another of those things I am really not explaining well, am I?

Okay, at the risk of being needlessly poetic.

The land around us isn't all wilderness to be visited only on holidays. Some of it has been domesticated. We owe it to ourselves and the Divine to pour magick back into the domesticated land, to make it something OTHER than the frosting left by a developer.

That doesn't mean cutsie statues all over (although I am a sucker for a well done statue). That doesn't mean filling the yard with flowers. That doesn't mean just putting in a garden.

It means directing forces that are already there. It means introducing forces that aren't there or have been suppressed. It means shaping and balancing. It means concentrating flows. It means weaving yourself into the essential spirit of a place and making it something more than just both of you combined. It means attuning yourself and the land you touch to the cycles around you. Not just the seasonal cycles, but the life cycles.

You pour yourself into it, it pours itself into you.

The measure of a man is in the lives he touches.

Posted: Thu - August 13, 2009 at 03:22 PM
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