"Raven's Keep" May 22, 2023

"…in the Summer of 2023 I make the journey northwards towards Raven's Keep, the home of clan Wynden and towards the retrieval of my sacred harp, long held in their sanctuary awaiting my return …"

The Schindel Sanctuary

My first stop on the road back to Faerie is to the realm of Malakai Schindel, a fellow bardic warrior and good father living in the elvish woodlands of northern California. Since first meeting in 2006 during the “A Gathering of Heroes” episode, Malakai had proven to be a steady and honorable ally, sharing with me a deep fierceness and dedication to the standards of honor and action in sacred fellowship.

Graciously Malakai shows me around his land, revealing a local glyph, the concrete etched with the shape of a heart.

Like myself, Malakai had a deep appreciation for the glyphs of the modern myth, drawing strength and inspiration from the current medium through which the stories of olde made their way into the worlds. He holds up a signpost reminiscent of one I encountered at the end of “Symbiosis” in 2016, emblematic of our shared journey across the realms of the world tree.

The Grandfather Tree

Mystos, that which we do not know, defines the journey into the Mythica. As I make my way northwards from Malakai’s territories in the underlands I pass a location in the forests which speaks of the ‘Grandfather Tree’, a massive and powerful arboreal guardian whose energies I can feel radiating outwards, supporting the forest in sacred communion.

A power and presence fills the air as I approach her (the Tree, which I really feel should have been called the ‘Grandmother’), a strength which fills my sinews with renewed vigor, the Gift of the Goddess to those who work in alliance with the sacred land.

As I lean against the firm shape of the tree a vision comes to me, an image of this great mother as a node within Gaia’s planetary nervous system, a part of the Tree of Life pulsing with the life-force and vitality that fuels the surrounding forest with life and love.

Route 101 to Faerie

The feeling changes as I make my way northwards, the textures becoming more green, more simple – thick with the silence and the songs of the forest. It’s a portal, and a gradual one, the wilderness reclaiming the land that was always hers from the asphalt ocean through which I pilot the Emerald.

Raven’s Keep

She is a beautiful place. One well-deserved by the royalty of character and community that has been the long stewardship of my clan allies in Faerie.

Navigating towards Healing

I feel especially deeply here in the forest. The weakness in my body. The feeling of mortality, and of my own imbalance in the arts of sustenance and rejuvenation.

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The Elf Lord

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Rivers of Love

A deep wondering comes upon me as I approach Adrienne’s residence. It had been almost ten years since we had been partners, meeting as a result of a deep and intentional invocation I had done during the "In the Name of Love" episode of 2014. Since then, we had both matured and grown into our power, and I recognized myself as having moved from a flippancy of regard for relationships into a far more enduring maturity, one capable of supporting what it means to be a lover with another in it’s fullness. To see her was an act of devotion for me, a willingness to be open to the potential ripples of that long-ago invocation, to see what fertile ground lay in the pages between our shared stories.

And it beautiful. A thing of music, magic and majesty, our laughter and shared artistry pushing it’s way through the surface of the world in a wave of inspiration, carrying us through the city to places of art and nature, to a flowing river of dark wooded water beneath the shimmering moon.

Perhaps, I consider, such is the most appropriate photo, her beauty a thing barely seen in the darkness, the roots of her feet draped in the waters of mystery, distant from my touch across the quiet water.

The Baerlic Tavern

Since that time we’d taken different paths, with Mike’s natural excellence at the movement arts and his steadfast discipline expressing themselves through the route of boxing while I had dived deep into the art of planewalking, tracking my way across the realms of the Mythica.

The Harsh Truth

And it was true. I did find the unbalanced water of the northwest to be sloppy in it’s technique, flush with a seemingly endless dirge of personal divination and emotional acrobatics. It was a style of engagement far from the winter Viking of stoic perseverance and honor, where I found the ideal of compassion enslaved to a culturally encouraged standard of emotional narcissism.

Still …. I wondered, how did my arrival in the city of portals speak to my movement along the realms of my story? While I had gained the clarity of the mountains and the desert, where was the learning edge, the place where my own elements could find their balance? What was the lesson here, embodied through the shifting tones of my engagement with my fellow fae? As I had many times before I invoked the maps of the Mythica, looking at my progression from the harsh places where I had earned my sight into the softer territories of the Creation.

The truth was, I wanted to be soft with her. I wanted it so much. I was willing, in the deepest parts of my being, to be touched by the world.

Priestess of Brigid

As a priestess of Brigid and a fellow fae in the timebound world, Fern and had been immediate allies ever since first meeting in the 2010 episode “Livingwell” when the nature of the Axis Mundi deeply confirmed itself in my arrival in the territories of Faerie.

Here lay the Treasure, for I am not so foolish as to think that I understand the waters of Love with the excellence of the priestess. Recognizing my youthfulness with the patterns of the earth plane I pay close attention to her words, feeling the shape of my interaction with Adrienne and how I may best position myself towards a harmony for all.

Waters of Life

It is a thing of great beauty to be in the Raven’s Keep, the evolution of Wynden Keep and the memories we shared in that place, for to be here is to walk through the fields of Faerie herself, through the karmic impressions and depth of connection with the Land that defines one’s access to the subtleties of the sacred world.

I had always felt the aka of the bardic hall in the living room of Wynden Keep, a place filled with musical instruments and the resonances of thousands of songs still echoing in the space. To be in Raven’s Keep is similar yet different, the impressions of community and family tempered by the well-deserved tones of sanctuary, my friends enjoying the rightful rest of life’s autumn.

Language of the Bees – Honey of the Land

Muse Triumphant

Yet things are always deeper than they appear, for as we invoke our shared expression a vision comes to me through the underlands of the Mythica of the Dragon, the essence of Nature’s temple embodied in the mouth of the river.

As the waters move between us I feel a shifting, a movement into the silence that opens one’s ears to the world. As I do, I sense an energy moving through Jesse, emerging as an inspired poem from the excellence of his bardic voice.

Yet this is the Treasure made plain – the shifting of the self from one shape to another in honor of what is brought to the table by the Characters upon one’s Quest. Just as Adrienne embodied the qualities of darkness and femininity, of romance with the world and ritual alchemy, so did Jesse’s essence carry with it the most sublime of Gifts.

Towards the Ashland Shire

I do an invocation then, opening myself to the five elements and weaving a lyrical to shift my energies towards mystery, to whomever I am meant to encounter in the Ashland Shire along the Quest ….

Characters

Adrienne Awen

Fern DeFay

Jesse Wynden

Mike Witbeck

Raven Wynden