Open Secrets - Chapter 1

Open Secrets Chapter 5

My new shop is very small. It’s called “Witches” and I’m very proud of it.  It’s a long way from home though, based in a little community of craft businesses in deepest Carmarthenshire.   My shop is right at the front, on your right as you walk in .  My window display is a glorious forest arrangement, full of tissue paper leaves, eerie silhouettes, pumpkin heads and spooky fairy lights.  Irresistable!

I have an arrangement which is half retail and half workshop in the shop itself, but I’m also planning to go out and run workshops in the community.  I do woolly stuff  - 201 innovative uses for a knitted square etc.  I am excited about the shop, but I wish it hadn’t all happened now.

My life has become surreal of late, half distrait craftspeople worrying about wool and sequins, half my unravelling woolly mother about to depart for the spirit world. It’s just plain weird.

As I drive to the shop, my route takes me over the hill behind my old home, past the tor and the standing stones.  This morning, I left early, just as dawn was breaking. It was one of those grey, pearly, misty mornings, but as I got to the brow of the hill and parallel with the tor, the sun broke through the clouds.  It was so lovely that I had to stop and watch for a minute.  I parked the car by the farm gate and stood with my back to the sea watching the first early rays of light flood the valley which the ice age glaciers had carved out all those millions of years ago.  As I turned to look over the sea, I noticed that the early rays passed directly over the roof of the house and then on to Cae Tympyn (the odd shaped mound just on the right hand side of the M4 on the way to Carmarthen.  The house looked quite magical, all lit up with that nimbus of golden light and I stood admiring it for quite a while, before I realised that I’d better get on my way to work.

It will be Hallowe’en next week, and “Witches” needs to be open!

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Some places are just places, spots on the map with no power or meaning.  They may be pretty or ugly or neutral in appearance, but their energy is low. These places will neither help nor harm you, you can live in them or work in them and your destiny will be (more or less) in your own hands.

There are other places which are places of power.  You need to treat these with caution, they can make or mar your life.  The trick is, of course, that few people know which places are safe and which are not ……..

When the world was new, before man had appeared to change, modify and pollute, the great glaciers ploughed and carved their way over the land under the light of the sun moon and stars.  Meteorites fell to earth in the frequent star showers and forces that we can only guess at moved on the surface of the earth.  How arrogant is man, to think that only what he can count, weigh and measure exists!

The patterns of the falling meteorites, the movement of the sun, moon and stars and the rotation of the earth conspired to concentrate cosmic powers in some places on the globe, but only a few.

The Earth became crisscrossed with a spider’s web of tiny force fields, and when man came to the planet, accidentally at first and then with more purpose, he began to discover and focus these lines of power.

“Dewch, dewch, dewch!”   Drychan the druid stood by the stones, his long white robe as ragged as his long white hair and beard. He was thin as a stick with a mad, wandering left eye and a right eye which was piercing as a spear.  Not a comfortable old man to spend time with. The cryman, the sacred sickle with which the druids cut the mistletoe and sometimes other, more sinister things, gleamed in his hand.

“Dewch, pob un, dewch, ‘rwyn galw. Mae’n amser. Dewch. Clywch fy nghan. Mae’n amser , mae’n amser!  Come, everyone, come, I’m calling, it’s time, come, hear my song, it’s time, it’s time.”