A numinous place

Finding our sacred space

The chaos of Mardoul is my nemeton, my sacred space. A place of refuge and revitalisation, ritual and recovery. I am deeply my true self there, on that short stretch of the Elez river studded by granite boulders, bounded by two ancient crossing places. The intrinsic dynamism of the landscape, emanates from the valley in a harmony of sound and silence, motion and stillness. It is an elemental experience to walk there, drawing on the very roots of life, the source of existence.

Hemming the water are oaks, willows and alders, and the flora of the moors in thick stands of gorse, broom and bracken. Rocks, the spawn of earth, nestle in lying comfort on the banks, garnished with mosses in many forms, buoyantly green like miniature fields sprouting tufts from the bedrock, or patchy as a map. Some sport a slip-cover of lichen, others are so closely knit with their coating that moss and rock are one and inseparable to the eye, the parasite taking on the shades of its host, in a play of greys and silvers, the nuance of ageing in glaucous shades.

The river plays the rocks like musical instruments, passages of staccato, obbligato, crescendo. Strands of sound as complex as a symphony are repeated and rephrased, themes both careless and insistent. Trills galore. Seasons set the rhythm as levels rise and fall, concealing and exposing. The movement of water is a complex pattern based on the unseen underneath, dark lines of submersion. Its words to stone here are alternately loving and savage, caresses turn violent, stroking becomes a slap. In wild weather it is a seething insistence of water. All that rock can do is hold to itself, edges rounded to ease the onslaught, and survive the longest time under a constant assault that is both sleek and brutal. It’s an unequal contest: in the end, river will have its way.

When calm, the channel is a mirror of shimmering reflections, water of absolute clarity like a canvas for trees and clouds, scenes pulled down from the sky to be framed between the rocks, yellow granite sand gleaming up from the riverbed behind the skeletal outlines of branches and reeds. Still or perturbed, reflection is an extra layer of perception, between the upper world and whatever lurks beneath those silhouettes of frail stalks and boughs. It offers a magical three dimensional reality, thought extended beyond the here and now into a deep meditative space.

I see clearly here, whatever the weather. My prickly edging is smoothed by the watery air and I remember what is important, wrapped in the folds of a well-balanced spirit. The genius loci is generously giving, absorbing what I need to shed, expanding what I need to grow. Nature’s processes operate here for any kind of entity. An oak tree offers answers and advice, a rock reminds of loving times, the water spins away beloved ashes. All ceremonies here start energies that thrive, endorsing the rightness of a path. There is an indigenous oracle belonging to this land.

Boundaries dissolve. I am drawn in by the lure of the place’s character, cleansing, affirmative, beguiling, profoundly pacific. There is the separateness required of numinous sensation. The impression of being enclosed and protected from outside interference, helps to send me within and reach inside for layers of thought unexploited under the glare of gaze and gossip, conditions of everyday life. Here I step into the magic. Here is the undercurrent, the pull below, the call to submission of the extraneous. Leave the other world behind. Mardoul’s is an enlightened embrace, a sudden key to experiencing the true relation between movement and stillness in the heart.

A place for human silence and nature’s eternal conversation. For those that seek it, an unfailing source of revitalizing energy. Sometimes the dividing line of life and landscape is thin…