Michael Conneely
The impact of our visit to Ireland was so vast that the insights flooded me.
We arrived for the Full Moon Eclipse at the end of September which was on 29th September at 3 am where we were. And Mercury was retrograde. Interesting astrological influences under which to travel! But then it is energies such as these that produce breakthrough and revelation, earthquake and tsunami.
The Graveyard of my family
The change that hit me was not least because of family issues: being confronted with the graves of my grandparents and uncles, and even unexpectedly meeting the best friend of my sister, a woman who indeed had just recently met my mother – all these are my blood, my family: none of whom know I exist.
Maggie Pashley
And indeed Maggie and I are now embarking on some Family Constellation Work and Inner Child Work. And this cross-relates to the shamanic technique of Soul Retrieval that I teach (see my website: www.shamanic-healer.net ).
We are using the ‘Inner Child Work Book’ by Cathryn Taylor. And there’s also: ‘Between the Lines – Healing the Individual and ancestral Soul with Family Constellation’ by Nikki Mackay. I have just read the bit in the book where a person sabotages themselves and makes themselves invisible out of guilt for ‘disappeared’ family members.
We revisited the cemetery where my family members lie buried. They don’t know I exist. The cemetery is an unimaginably beautiful and ancient burial place beside the ocean.
Oxford University
I was so struck to see that one of my uncles died – I believe tragically young, I believe about age 29 yrs – on a date just two days different from the date of my first Sade Sate. For those who don’t know Vedic astrology, ‘Sade Sate is the moment when Saturn transits across the Moon in your birth chart. It occurs only once every 29 yrs. It is a deeply fated moment (though the whole period lasts seven and a half years overall as Saturn goes through the sign before the birth Moon, the sign of the birth Moon and the sign after the birth Moon). But for him to die just 48 hrs off my exact experience of Sade Sate means there is a deeply fated sharing of fate and destiny between the two of us. I never met him of course. His death was just at the moment that I was going up to Oxford having won a scholarship as an undergraduate.
And the important thing I was named after him. This has big meaning. My mother named me after him. What was her reason? What fate did it set up? I understand that he was the youngest of the very large family, and as the next to youngest, my mother had quite a part in his care. I understand he was never very well. I don’t know his date of birth: only his date of death shown on the family tombstone, but using the death dates shown on the tombstone, I feel that study of the astrology between them and me would reveal so much of the fates governing my life, their lives too!
I could find out their dates of birth. Indeed, when we met the best friend of my sister, the woman mentioned above, a friend of hers was there, and he said that the Irish Ancestry centre in Dublin were incredibly helpful in tracing one’s ancestors details. Interestingly, oddly: he was reading exactly the same book as one of the books I was reading at the time: ‘The Origins of the Irish’ by J P Mallory.
Glassilaun Bay
And indeed, as predicted by Elizabeth Hendricks, the psychic healer in West USA without whose input we would not have made the journey, very weirdly, some energy did move into my body from the rocks of Glassilaun. Elizabeth Hendricks had told me that this healing and empowering energy was in the rocks in Glassilaun and it was waiting to move into my body. How weird this sounded. But it turned out to be true!
The rocks at Glassilaun
Glassilaun is an island-studded bay in remote Connemara in the far west of Ireland where my family lived until early 20th Century, and closely around it they mostly still live now. The people lived by fishing and farming, and indeed in the remote areas, we saw they still do. That could well have been my life had I not been put into one of the Convent Orphanages of the Bon Seccours nuns and then adopted in England. A terrible scandal has erupted in Ireland about the deaths of these orphans in Tuam nearby where my family lives. These deaths were both before, at the same time as and after I was in one of their orphanages: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/04/claim-of-800-childrens-bodies-buried-at-irish-home-for-unwed-mothers
But back to Glassilaun beach: The place has an utterly beautiful setting and energy such that I felt and acted as a very different person after the first visit there. I felt I related so much better and stronger to people. In Ireland, I felt more on the same wavelength for communication and management of boundaries in dealing with people.
Following the time I spent at Glassilaun, I feel I have been put in touch with my energy patterns and rhythms so that I can live my life and do my work more powerfully and happily.
And following being at Glassilaun, I was flooded with vast and powerful realisations such as the nature of the Druid path and its cross-correlation with Shamanism. I felt I came to clearer understanding of the public role of the Druids: their formal though exoteric work binding their societies together, like the Brahmin Vedic Priests (these two indo European spiritual paths have a common root). But I also came to understand deeper their interior work for the development and healing of each individual, including the use of Divination.
So I will be structuring these realisations into Irish-based Druid Path course modules over the coming six months for my Druid Forest School (see my website: www.druidforestschool.com).
A Cauldron for the Dagda
In particular, I developed rituals for contacting the four sacred weapons of the Tuatha de Danaan: The Sword of Light of Nuada, The Spear of Llugh, the Cauldron of The Dagda and the Stone of Fal.
These rituals in my case are very much vision-based and aimed to the personal healing and empowerment of the people who will do them.
I got so turned away from the Druid Path fairly recently because of the rote reading of scripted rituals and the meaningless hierarchicalism I got subjected to in a group that was part of OBOD (The Order of Bards Ovates and Druids).
Indeed, Maggie has just ordered me a vast sword for use in these planned rituals and teachings – a gift for my birthday that is coming up on October 18th!!!
The Morrigan
And also I had huge opening for vision path ways of contacting the Gods and Goddesses of the Tuatha de Danaan:
These are especially The Morrigan and the Dagda for the novel I am now writing (which deals with the arrival of the Tuatha de Danaan in Ireland and the 1st Battle of Moytura).
But they are also especially to do with Llugh for the sequel of my current novel which will deal with the 2nd Battle of Moytura and the decision of the Tuatha to remove themselves from this world. I think they did this because they saw that the incoming Milesians (the ancestors of the Irish Celtic peoples) just could not appreciate their utter specialness. But they are waiting to return: waiting for the individuals who can understand how to open the door for them and receive their special gifts.
And the inspiration and structuring for my 6th novel that I am writing now: ‘The Morrigan and the Dagda’ has just all so strongly and clearly fallen into place, such that I will be allotting a big part of each week into finishing the writing of it now.
And I also saw so clearly the need for the peerless and powerful sure declaration of Vedic astrology to now take on board healing and empowerment work – and not be so locked in its ancient and traditional millennia-old ‘remedies’ and mantra to deal with the phenomena it so powerfully predicts will come our way at birth – and at predictable intervals in our life.
I plan to put out at least a webinar a week (that will be free to my course attenders) demonstrating the vastness and power of the countless techniques of Vedic Astrology – and of psychodynamic and evolutionary Western astrology as well, focusing on the charts of myself and the course attenders.
But I shall always link these presentations to openings for healing and empowerment where necessary, rather than rote recitation of rules, rote demonstration of the application of rules or even ranting legalism that much Vedic astrology has sadly got trapped into, rather than confining them to the mentalism that so confines so much psychodynamic astrology.
But it is the family issues that truly are the foundation of all this. In my case, there’s the issue of invisibility and not having been valued, of being made to fit in with adoptive sibling situations that stretch the imagination to say the least.
So this means that my courses in the Runes, the Ogham, The Druid Forest School and Shamanic Healer Course will all be rooted in powerfully authentic and healing vision work. I am so impressed at the way the attenders on these courses are so commendably proficient in for example the identification and use of their personal divine centre and the sureness of their ability to return to it. I am so impressed at the palpable realism of the vision work they embark on which is so very well developed. I am so impressed at the ways in which they envision their personal embodiment within the Otherworld landscapes: it become so fluent: what you are wearing, your sensations: what you feel and see.
Grace O’Malley’s Tomb on Clare Island
To return to our visit to Ireland. I truly believe it is the most beautiful place on earth. We visited Clare Island and saw the tomb of Grace O’Malley who died around 1604. She was the last Irish Queen. With her died Irish Law. It was replaced by the Roman Law used by the English. Under Irish Law land is owned by the clan. Under English law it is owned by the landlord. The English called her a Pirate Queen. History has it that she even gave birth to one of her children on one of her battle ships and she rebuked the captain when he asked her to show herself on the prow of her vessel as the men were growing faint-hearted in the fleet when it was fighting the English. At one point the Governor of Galway hung many of her men on either side of the road into the city. She even went to meet Queen Elizabeth I of England to plead her case – but the society she represented was doomed.
The Irish Famine
On Clare Island there were shocking testimonials to the brutality of the rule of the English Ascendancy Landlords over the Irish. There were pictures of Irish tenants unbelievably too weak and ill to move being evicted from their homes, of English soldiers evicting little girls from their hovels. The chief Landlord of the tenant on Clare Island was Lord Lucan a rich nobleman who lived in a mansion. On the shores of Killary Harbour where we stayed there are the ruins of two whole villages that were wiped out by the Irish Famine.
We visited Arigna, Ireland’s last coalmine where there is a wonderful Visitor Centre, and we also visited the west of Ireland’s iron mining in the unbelievably beautiful nearby Sliabh an Iarainn mountains, which some legends associate with the Tuatha de Danaan.
Mweelrea Mountain
We stayed in the Connemara Hostel run by Sleep Zone. It’s an old manor house hostel in Killary Harbour near Leenaun. The hostel had a wonderful atmosphere led by Fergal and his band of willing helpers from Taiwan, France, Germany and you name it: some of the many students and young people making a living while contacting the beauties of Celtic Irish culture. Killary Harbour is Ireland’s only Fjord. You look out of your window over the fjord to see Mweelrea Mountain, the highest mountain in Connaught. Mweelrea Mountain is usually wreathed in mists because its cold land mass precipitates the moisture out of the air.
Maggie climbs Croagh Patrick Mountain
Mweelrea Mountain is higher even than near Croagh Patrick Mountain which was featured in my last novel: Druid, which features an attempt to overcome to restore Irish spirituality from the damage Saint Patrick did to the country. Saint Patrick is reputed to have spent forty days and nights on the top of Croagh Patrick before setting out to convert Ireland away from its heritage to the Church of Rome, the successor to the Empire of Rome which fell to the barbarians during his life time. Reputedly he fought the Goddess of the Land there: the Spirit of Place: Corra. At one point she engulfed him in her jaws, but he threw his holy bell at her and defeated her and confined her to the lough below the Mountain for eternity! See my Blog on the barefoot pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick and Reek Sunday, every last Sunday in July when the Catholic Church has supplanted the Druid Harvest Festival at the Mountain: http://blog.starwheelastrology.com/2014/07/27/croagh-patrick-reek-sunday-july-27th-2014-irelands-holy-mountain-call-to-restore-goddess-and-god-to-irelands-holy-mountain/
Bohea Stone
We also visited the Bohea Stone. This is carved in the same spirals and ‘cup and ring’ carvings as new Grange. If you stand at it you see the towering pinnacle of Croagh Patrick. On two days a year: on around April 17th and on August 24th, to those standing at this monument of the Megalith People, the Sun appears to roll down the northern edge of Croagh Patrick rather than setting behind it. It rolls down the side of the mountain and sets in the cleft between Croagh Patrick and the mountain to its side: visible testament of the Sun as Lord of light descending into union with the Earth Goddess. The Megalithic People aligned their lives with this unforgettable spectacle: April 17th marking the start of the growing season and August 24th the start of the harvesting season. The sacred year is divided into three portions. When you are at the site, you can clearly see that the arrangement of the stones is like a (sacrificial) altar, with a huge flat stone surmounting the structure.
On the first day we attended wonderful Irish music at the Clifden Arts festival, and we also heard peerless Irish pipes music played in Westport: the uilleann pipes which are played with bellows under the elbow rather than being blown as in the Scottish bagpipes. It is the most utterly beautiful sound. Paddy Keenan truly played the music of the Celtic Otherworlds. Get his CD: The Long Grazing Acre.
My Readings, novels and Courses:
If you would like one of my expert worldwide astrology readings, these exceptionally combine both Vedic and Western astrology. Healing modalities are also available. See: www.starwheelastrology.com
Or join one of my truly caring and very high quality astrology courses: My astrology Courses websites are: www.mastervedicastrology.com and www.enlightenedastrologycourse.com. These courses can take you into supported and mentored study as deep as you could wish for.
Also there are very regular webinars (http://www.mastervedicastrology.com/webinars.html)
Always there is opportunity to combine and use the perceptions generated by top-class astrology with healing and transformation work. In no way is this rote astrology-learning for the sake of it! Get in touch!
My novels are presented in my website: www.inspirationalnovels.org
The forthcoming Druid courses and the ogham Course is at www.druidforestschool.com and www.oghampathways.com
My shamanic Healer course is described at www.shamanic-healer.net
And my Runes course can be seen at www.rune-path.com