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Ancient sacred sites in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds
Wednesday, 31 May 2023 at 05:03
I’m here preparing the first draft of a commentary to the next video likely to be published on my YouTube channel, Motorcycle England with Dr John Dunn. It will, no doubt, be edited down as the video progresses towards completion.
Ancient sacred sites in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds
The Hoar Stone, Enstone
I’ve just passed through Sanford Martin, here in the Cotswolds. I’m seeking out three sacred sites from pre-Roman Britain. These all take the form of standing stones, or megaliths, as they are sometimes known.
My first stop will be Enstone, which was named after a standing stone called the Giants Stone or Entastan, part of the ruins of a neolithic barrow. The standing stone is also known as the Hoar Stone.
Having ridden through Enstone and past the Hoar Stone on the B4022, completely missing it, I’ve turned to make another approach along this lane from the small hamlet of Fulwell.
No wonder I missed it. It is hidden in a small wooded enclosure, completely screened from the B road by trees and bushes.
This is a site that at first does not want to be found, does not want to be videoed.
The Hoar Stone stands almost invisible, yet only a few feet from a narrow road, in the dappled shade of Woodland.
These are the ruins of a large single chambered tomb, although today only comprising of three large stones, one of which is almost nine feet. It probably dates from between 3,700 and 3,100 BC.
The stones make up the burial chamber, which was once covered and surrounded by earth in the form of what we now describe as a long barrow.
The stones form three sides of a rectangular box chamber open to the east with the remains of the fallen and broken capstone in front of them. The stones would have been covered and surrounded by earth in the form of what we now describe as a long barrow.
The blocking or portal stone to the chamber is missing.
It is a magical site that will, no doubt, draw me back time and time again.
The term 'Hoar' which also applies to several other monuments, is thought to originate from the Goddess Hoeur, the Great Mother, the beginning of all things, worshipped in pre-Roman Britain.
© John Dunn.
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The Task
Tuesday, 30 May 2023 at 03:55
The Task
As man ate of the tree of knowledge, he was unable to fulfil his vocation as mediator of all creation. Meant to rule over creation in a relationship of love, Adam instead gave himself over to his senses and became dominated by creation…
The task for Adam’s descendants is to reassert control over creation.
© John Dunn.
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Centre
Monday, 29 May 2023 at 04:31
The Ptolemaic metaphor
Centre
Man is at the very centre of creation and theology, but he brings the entirety of creation with him. Charged with the task of unifying the multiplicity and divisions of creation and offering it back to God.
The question is, where does the God, or Logos, reside?
© John Dunn.
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Now, the “I”
Sunday, 28 May 2023 at 03:21
Now, the “I”
The continuous death of thought intensely asks the soul’s essence for resurrection, as a restoration of the life from which it continually springs, unknowingly. For this resurrection is already actualised in the human heart.
The saints of every region on Earth have born witness to it. Now, however, the time for conscious resurrection has arrived. The mental must not be avoided, but transformed. Now, the “I” that we each say we are cannot be the “I”, except in living thinking.
© John Dunn.
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Lightning strike
Friday, 26 May 2023 at 07:49
Lightning strike
The destruction of nature must occur to overcome the animal-human limit to restore to Nature the connection with the lost principle.
Only then can we retrace the cosmic dimension of the fall into matter, insofar as it connects (within itself) to the inner cosmic Impulse, namely, to the principle from which Nature has become alienated.
Consciousness of the principle from which Nature is alienated enables the Logos flash of lightning to strike animal nature and render it human.
The lightning strike is the destructive act upon reflected nature, or ‘thought petrified’, i.e. that which appears to be ready-made and devoidof our own shaping content.
Until that strike, light remains solidified in the denying of itself. However, each disintegration of matter is a moment of ascension of the light, rendering the miraculous as an actuality, the beginning and the ascension - always.
© John Dunn.
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Further North
Thursday, 25 May 2023 at 07:55
Scagway in Alaska, starting point for the Klondike Gold Rush hopefuls
Further North, travelling on...
Train over the White Pass Railway near Scagway.
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