Caer Abred

ShropshirePagan wrote:I suppose this will be a musing sort of post, feel free to help me explore.

For many years I've been a pantheist, though agnostic with regards to individual gods/goddesses - to me, they may very well be out there, but I just haven't met them yet!

Strangely (well, for me!) since coming to this board I've started having experiences that I'd describe as the start of a relationship with a god.

I went to a tree meditation a couple of months ago, based on the works of Sue and Simon Lily, who are well respected in the field of training on gem and flower essences. The chosen tree this particular month was the Lime and a group of us met at the gates of the Quarry Park in Shrewsbury to go and experience the Limes there.

Quarry Park is absolutely full of the the most beautiful mature lime trees and has about three avenues of them. A small group of us walked through the limes, taking in their energy and being respectful to them. I found myself slowing down and relaxing for starters, a good sign!

A little later on in the experience, we needed to have a brief meditation with an indivdual tree, to connect with it. I chose a lime after a few tries and put my head against it. In my mind's eye, I saw a park with avenues of lime trees though not the one I was in. There was a fork in the path. At the V of the fork stood a man, in a long dark overcoat with a hat on his head and a long grey beard, squared off at the end. He was just standing there, staring straight at me and into my head popped the name Odin.

Also in this experience I saw another man sat on a bench to the left with casual linen trousers and shirt on. He was reading a paper and had grey hair sticking straight out from the sides of his head - into my head popped the information that he was the Lime Tree dryad.

For me, these experiences were very unusual. Whenver I've been on pathworkings where I am supposed to meet a God or Goddess, it just doesn't happen, or I see the back of their head, or know someone is around but don't catch a glimpse, or get there and get the virtual answerphone! So this was very very weird.

In the meantime, in the time surrounding this event it started with seeing Nigel Pennick speak about runes and do a Woden call, other mentions of Odin, ravens, blackbirds, all sorts of things going on. In the meantime I also carried out my Bardic initiation which led me to feel that what is important is this time and this place, this moment.

So ... I've now shared this experience with you and actually would like to thank you for enabling me to have this experience! Through having my perceptions challenging it seems that I've opened up to other possibilities. So far I haven't directly repeated this experience, but I'm very open to see what happens next.

Warm blessings

Elaine x