“Faerie Roads” June 13, 2009

In this branch of the Akashic Library, the walls themselves are living wood, their surfaces rippling with galactic patterns that flow like sap through ancient grain. Massive boughs curve overhead, their celestial bark forming archways that stretch into infinite corridors of knowledge. Among the countless portals that dot these living walls like knots in a cosmic tree, one in particular pulses with an earthly vitality. Its frame is woven from smaller branches that seem to grow directly from the Library’s arboreal architecture, moss and tiny flowers sprouting from its edges. Through its misty surface, three figures can be seen walking a winding path through highlands shrouded in Celtic mist.

“There’s something special about this moment,” Calliope observes, moving closer to the portal. Dewdrops form on the moss as she approaches, catching the starlight that filters through the canopy of consciousness above them. “Three travelers on what feels like a very old road.”

Peter’s eyes light up with recognition. “Ah, the Summer of 2009 – the Faerie Roads adventure.” He gestures to the scene unfolding through the portal, where his past self walks alongside two other men, their backpacks heavy with camping gear and cameras. “We were tracking the ley lines through Scotland, documenting the places where the veils between worlds grew thin.”

Through the portal, mist parts briefly to reveal standing stones in the distance, ancient sentinels marking paths both seen and unseen. “This was one of the first times I truly witnessed how the physical landscape mirrors the subtle realms,” Peter continues. “How the ancient roads we walked were more than just paths through the highlands – they were doorways into Faerie itself.”

“Tell me more about your companions,” Calliope says, as the scene through the portal shifts to show the three travelers setting up camp near a circle of stones, the golden light of sunset painting everything in otherworldly hues. Above them, the branches of the Library rustle with ancient memories, each leaf a story waiting to be told.

The Books of Fae TIMEDATE – 2009-6-13 – “Faerie Roads” “…The majestic Faerie Roads adventure, where I receive a prophecy to travel to the Green realms of Scotland with Noah McLain and Patience Yanderling for 6 weeks, embodying the current version of the ancient mythos of the traveling bards…”

This was a perfect example of the principle of the realms of Faerie

Setting Out

This is a deep moment on the Quest, in which my deepest questions about support from the universe and the legend of my walk across the Creation reveal themselves, where I encounter a vision of the holy Grail and receive the blessing of forgiveness it’s sacred wake.

The journey to Scotland opens with prophecy, as my teacher offers a reading, invoking the flushness of the fae energies through the space in the wielding….

Having received the reading, we are given passage by Cerronus to San Francisco, the City of Clouds. Such is deeply meaningful to me, for we made no stops between the mountains of Tahingaard (Tahoe) and the sky launch, interacting with no other vibrational realms. Such was a pure movement, straight from the faerie realms to the crossing, in which we lived the modern myth of it’s legend.

Totem of the Horse

Once we arrived at the airport, the totem of the Horse appeared, wrought into curves of metal. Such was significant on the Path. Through the underlands of the Mythica, I felt the energy of the Chariot. Of movement, flush with the deva of the air, the sideway highways,, calling us to open. Initiating the journey.

How we view things on the quest is always a blend of the what is within and without. Of the energy that things are made of and how we interpret it through the lens of our life. For me, the sculpture of the horse paralleled the essence of what we were doing, traveling across the world on a journey of expedition. It was a sense shared by McLain, the fellow storyteller and adventurer I was living with at Avalon Grove.

As I looked at Patience in the seats a sense of power came to me, the kind of creativity and expanded horizon that came from having the bravery to be who we really were – to allow ourselves to be seen, unencumbered by the chains of inner shame. It was a quality I admired in the many performers I knew who made it their business to express what it means to BE in their very essence.

Sign of the Butterfly

As we land, I was unsure of what direction we should head. Tuning in, I listened to the circumstances, divining the field.

Here, I was led to one of the ladies we had spoken to on the plane, a golden butterfly pinned on her shirt. Like the appearance of the totem of the horse, I felt it as a this as an animal totem, a sign of navigation and her placement as the oracle of the moment, the action setting the tone of our walking the golden paths, those of the transformational butterfly, through the Faerie Roads of Scotland.

Taking her counsel and we headed towards what she referred to as ‘The King’s Road’ in the realm of Edinburgh.

Honouring the Land

As we enter the realms, we are led to a nexus point on the land. One where McLain pulls out one of his flutes and begins to play, sending tones of Opening through the ethers.

It is a song of honouring, of sacredness, of harmony with the deva. In which I witness a great tower behind him, radiant with the energies of Story.

The King’s Road

There is a fellowship amongst those of ply their trade on the streets. A sense of family and kinship in the realms of the circus and the bardic. Heroines and heroes on the bright road of expression, bringing magic to the people along their sacred Path.

Everything is unfolding for me as a divination. As a recognition of the four primal elements playing out as the characters of our lives. In this sense I feel the people as expressions of those larger geometries, archetypical energies encountered along the length and breadth of one’s story.

This plays out on the road. It As we play our music, we encounter a Jester-Knight, strong in Fire. As I feel him in the space, it is the element of Fire that moves through him, showing through the red in his hair and the shine of his performance. I recognize it as an elemental archetype, a living embodiment of a quality of consciousness in the field.

Hearing of our recent arrival, he tells us of a place called Bilston Glen, where we may find lodging.

Bilston Glen

We follow the path off the main road in-between a wall of foliage and a horse corral. It leads us deeper into the green, towards an ancient stonework …

Bilston Glenof the trees and looking at an ancient edifice. He wears clothes woven by his own hands, a pack of flutes carved by his excellence in woodsmanship wrapped in a cloth and tied to his backpack, the ancient traveler in the modern myth. A sense of timelessness moves through me, a feeling that we were standing in the primal forest, in the only forest that there ever was or ever will be, that the world had not really changed, it only seemed so on the surface, far from the truth of the forest and it’s forever.

There is a moment when I witness a photo of McLain, standing in the copse

It was, without a doubt, a sign of the realms. That of all possibilities on the path, we would arrive this confluence of circumstance. Of walking the Olde Roads along the new. It was a profound feeling, anchoring my understanding of the landscapes of legend. The territories of the Mythica. As I gaze off into the Green, I feel the sense of being in the Realms of Faerie

We were walking through a story. A modern myth, bards on the quest together, divining their way across the landscapes beneath the land, each engaged in our own manner and meaning. There was a feeling of ancient knowing, where the paths beneath the path truly began to land. We walked the faerie roads, twirling between the branches of world.

It rained constantly. I loved it. There was a communion with the deva of the rain and the land that I was in wielding, an understanding that came from the land herself, enduring far beyond our singular stories and shifting skins.

As my lens caught the landscape splattered with droplets of rainfall I had a vision, a sense of the water became the land. How they were one and the same, the landscape of our legend and the raindrop of our perception, each aspects of the one.

Not Quite the Roslyn Chapel

Clan Macintosh

I tell him of Copper Chris, the elvish shaper I had met and the Elphinstone Coat that he had crafted for me …

Craigencalt

Not quite the Roslyn Chapel

It was a truly storytale moment as in the fields beneath the fields of the world I could feel our essence, a trio of warriors and kings making their way along the roads between, heading towards the glowing edifice of Divine light that beat within the Roslyn Chapel yet distracted by the most classic of side-quests – the local pub. Here, in the tradition of the ancient bardic, the lads played their music while I gave a visiting woman a tarot reading using my skills at divination in her service.

Clan McIntosh

I tell him of Copper Chris, the shaper who made me the elvish armour of Elphinstone during the “Elphinstone Coat”

Craigencalt

True to his word, Adam’s sanctuary is a beautiful treehouse located in the upper sections of Craigencalt, a place of sanctuary and easement that we gratefully enter, thankful for a place to stay out of the endless rain.

The sense of the deep bardic comes to me again, of us as modern day songmakers and storytellers finding our way along the immortal roads of Faerie.

Sunlight & Wood

It is always the magic of his craftsmanship that astounds me, my senses picking up the impressions of McLain and the nobility of his character all throughout the wood.

It is the olde way. The simple way. The art of making from the most primal elements of the land.

My magic had always been the dancing. The movement and the magic through the weavings of light within and without.

The Maidens

Voices of Stone & Water

True to his excellence in the Earth element McLain finds us shelter, an architecture of stones with which to make camp. and protect from the rain.

I try to connect, but I cannot, the anger fills me and I cannot hear the voices of the land.

Once again McLain shows his excellence, weaving together foodstuffs for us and making a fire. While such may seem commonplace to many, given my fae perspective it is a vastly new experience where I recognize the qualities of earth moving through McLain, embodying into the character that he plays, the bard that he is and the service that his mere presence brings to the worlds.

The two go off exploring on their own, and I find my way across the lands, seeking resonance and guidance from the deva as to how to move through the sense of betrayal I have from the universe, how burning I feel inside and out.

I witness a photo of myself, a shadow upon the land, a counterpoint to the sunny grass. I don’t know why I do at the time, why the inspiration leads me in such a way. Only later will I come to see it’s significance, an emblem of my movement through the realms of Shadow.

A sense of the chroma of the land comes to me then deeply, the feeling that I am moving through the vibrational colors of the people and their passage across Scotland across time ….

True to his excellence in the Earth element McLain finds us shelter, an architecture of stones with which to make camp. and protect from the rain.

And as I feel it dissolving within my vision changes, I am once again able to see the beautiful shifting tones, to hear the voice of the water deva speaking with me, and witness a photo of her dance to anchor the moment.

Earth & Water

The Callanish Stones

My communion with the rains and land of the Scottish isles continues as night falls on standing stones, carrying with it a flush of inspiration, a magic to share with McLain to open a window to myth.

In the Mythica, I saw my actions as an archer of lightning once more, using my photography to mark our movement along the landscapes of the world. Something was clarifying for me in the process, something that spoke to the relationship between where we were on the surface of the world and what we were experiencing beneath, and I knew the photos wrought from my devotion to Story were the key.

As I witness his swirling fire I feel my gaze shifting, deepening into the worlds beneath the world, where the embers and symbols of our light can be seen. There, drawn with fire in raining water, did the Dragon appear, singing the tone of McLain’s myth across the sky.

Once again divination comes to me through the powers of Story as I encounter a series by Simon R. Green around a place called the Nightside …

Rescue on Earth

Soon enough I realize they shoot photos from that other perspective, from that other arrangement of the colors in the self, and I can feel it. The mathematics of it. The mentation.

The Callanish Stones

Yet we are these things, each resplendent in our own aspect of that greater story, each made of our particular mythos …

As I witness McLain on the stone that sense pulses through the air again, that we ARE the modern iteration of that ancient thing, walking the Faerie Roads between the roads of the endless green.

Dragons in the Night

My communion with the rains and land of the Scottish isles continues as night falls on standing stones, carrying with it a flush of inspiration, a magic to share with McLain to open a window to myth.

As I witness his swirling fire I feel my gaze shifting, deepening into the worlds beneath the world, where the embers and symbols of our light can be seen. There, drawn with fire in raining water, did the Dragon appear, singing the tone of McLain’s myth across the sky.

The Hogwart’s Train

“They run the Hogwart’s Train from here” she says, pointing to a track track that circles around the nearby hillside.

We make our way into towne, visiting a nearby chapel. Sensing the vibrations beneath the surface of the land I make note of the glyphs and symbols which appear for us along the way. Apropos for Scotland I remember reading something by Grant Morrison regarding the symbols and etchings that existed all throughout the world.

Yet these were all shapes to me. Architectures of a more subtle geometry than the stone and glasswork of the building. As we moved through the pews I had the sense of a rhythm, a repetition of sounds and thoughts that had imprinted itself into the stones, still resonating and repeating it’s chorus well after the people had faded from form.

In this I found Patience’s hat as amusing as I did in the photo on the plane, a fae creature moving through the patterns of common consciousness.

Arriving in Findhorn and tending the land, feeling the energy of the deva in relationship to the metal bits, getting the divination that " We are the Garden" , that there is no separation, that we are MADE OF THE LAND, of the primal elements, part of the ecosystem of the planet herself. Part of the

"Faerie Roads – Fields of Findhorn"

2009 – "Faerie Roads"

Visiting the Caves

Aleister Macintosh

The Faery Glens

Findhorn

Once again the physics of the quest prove true as we find ourselves in the realms of Faerie, manifesting on the surface plane of perception as the Findhorn Foundation …

One of the most important things about Into the Mythica is the relationship between ourselves and nature and the way in which our consciousness relates to nature. It’s about how much we recognize the various qualities of nature that exist in the subtlety of experience and how those that relationship can benefit u

The magic is always in Nature. The Quest is always through the natural world. Across all time and all dimensions, we are always exploring ourselves, seeing our small part of the tapestry of lives that is the skein of stories.