Petals of the Rose

Petals of the Rose

Guided Journeys

Sue Vincent

A collection of guided meditations, designed to open aspects of the personality in as gentle and natural way as the petals of the rose open at the touch of the sun. Each inner journey will carry you to a haven within your own psyche from which to explore layers of your own being, learning their meaning and purpose.

From mystical and silent castles, to the song of the unicorn… each journey takes you deeper into your inner being and carries you out beyond the stars…

Continue reading at The Silent Eye

Grand-Solar-Minimum…

*

Big Bee was packing…

“Haruppa,” said Teigue-the-Fool.

“Trunks,” said Big Bee carefully placing a mental tick on his list…

“The Myceneans,” continued Teigue doing likewise.

“Goggles,” went on Big Bee…

“The Tang, Shang, Hang and Yuwen Dynasties,” countered Teigue.

“Snorkel,” laughed Big Bee, recalling much happier times…

“And the Mayans!” finished Teigue with something of a flourish.

“What about them?” asked Big Bee, finally acknowledging the somewhat cryptic utterances of his advisor in chief.

“They’re all empires which collapsed when things got colder,” said Teigue, with a sly grin flicking the edges of his thin mouth.

“Well, I’m counting on a little sunshine, for the next six weeks at least,” smiled Big Bee.

“Don’t forget these,” said Teigue waving wood and cat-gut at him.

“Ah, princess tippy-toes she, erm, she doesn’t play tennis,” grimaced Big Bee with no little regret.

“They’re snow-shoes,” said Teigue-the-Fool, quietly…

*

 A Questionable Science:

Love and Death in the Time of COVID 

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions. 

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…

*

Now available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon

The watchers

We were being watched. It was palpable. In fact, as I raised the camera to watch the watchers, others could see it too… we weren’t imagining it. They had been following us all day, dark, hooded figures flitting in and out of vision, all across the Derbyshire landscape. Sitting on fences, following our footsteps, watching our every move at every site we visited. We even had evidence in bag and pocket… and the camera had quietly documented their stealthy observation…

Sitting in the little courtyard of the pub in Castleton, by some miracle on the part of my companion, the staid half of shandy I had reluctantly asked for had been transformed into a nicely chilled Stowford’s … I love Derbyshire!… and we were surrounded.

There were jackdaws on the low rooftops, on the chimneys… whole families of them, including the young one that misjudged and went flying in a way that failed to involve wings.

I snapped away happily while the pint of Guinness and half of Stowford’s slowly disappeared, then passed the camera across to my companion so he could see the day’s photographic haul. As always I wait, judging his reaction by the tilt of his head and the set of his lips.

“We’ve got our Dark Sage.” …

Continue reading at The Silent Eye

‘Tub-Thumping’…

*

‘O Mister Wot

What have you got?

Are they the keys to Browning Street

In your back pock…’

*

“Infernal racket!” A bleary-eyed Big Bee emerged from beneath the cushions of his couch and blinked in the over-bearing light of the bunker.

“Ever so sorry, sire,” smiled Teigue-the-Fool, “I didn’t realise you were still here.”

“Trying to think,” said Big Bee.

“Ah, you may need more than silence to navigate this little predicament.”

“But we have more than silence,” smirked Big Bee.

“Another one bites the dust?”

“Nothing like a minister falling on his sword to keep the vultures away, what…”

“What’s Wot got to do with it?”

“What indeed,” grinned Big Bee and said nothing.

“Oh, I get it,” hazarded Teigue, carefully placing a finger on the corner of his mouth, “no body is talking about the six hundred million lateral flow test results that went missing.”

“Missing?” laughed Big Bee.

“Lost?” said Teigue, raising his finger in the air.

“Deliberately destroyed to preserve the pro-lock-down narrative.”

“Can I quote you on that, sire?”

“Don’t be silly, Teigue, of course not.”

*

… ‘O Mister Wot

Just like Pol-Pot

The trail of deaths

Lie hidden from the flock…’

*

 A Questionable Science:

Love and Death in the Time of COVID 

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions. 

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…

*

Now available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon

 

 

 

Menorah…

Menorah as Chalice

*

… The Book of Revelation can be described

as a book of arcane symbolism.

*

It seems to me astonishing that such a work should have been

accepted into the recommended canon when so many

other far less controversial texts are regarded as apocryphal –

this word which now has connotations of spuriousness or falsity

is derived from the Greek word for ‘hidden’ –

Apocryphal works, then, can be regarded

as those books which possess hidden wisdom.

*

It will be useful to consider the opening few paragraphs

of Revelation and compare them to Daniel’s vision of Michael

which we looked at in earlier posts…

*

“It was on the island of Patmos.

I was meditating on the seventh day

when I heard behind me a voice as of many waters,

“I am the beginning and end, first and the last.”

I turned to see who it was that spoke,

and I saw a figure resembling the Son of Man.

He was standing in the middle of seven golden candlesticks.

His beard and his hair were like white wool.

His eyes were flames of fire.

His countenance was bright, as the sun when it shines at its height.

He was clothed in a long white robe.

About his breast went a golden girdle.

In his right hand, he held seven stars.

His words rang out of his mouth clearly

with the poignancy of a double-edged sword:

“I am he that lives and was dead.

I possess the keys to death and hell.

I shall live forevermore.”

I fell down at his feet and they were like fine-brass forged in a furnace.

He laid his hands upon me, “You must write down all you see in a book,

and send it to the Seven Churches of Asia.

Let all the churches know that I am he who searches

the reins of the heart and gives to everyone, according to their works.

Tell them to remember from whence they have fallen,

to return to their first love lest I come upon them like a thief

and remove their candlestick from its place,

thus speaks the ‘Amen’: ‘I know your works, I know that you have a name,

I know that you live, and yet, you are as the dead!'”…

Continue reading at France & Vincent

Pants on Fire…

*

Big Bee entered his bunker, ripped the overlarge black mask from his chops,

and collapsed into his comfort chair.

“How went it?” asked Teigue-the-Fool.

“Could have been better,” mumbled Big Bee into his chest and then, brightening somewhat, “how did it look from this end?”

“It couldn’t have looked much worse, sire,” said Teigue.

“Really, how so?”

“The Main Stream Media showed pictures and extended video footage of the after photo-shoot party.”

“They did, huh?”

“They did. When quizzed about social distancing and numbers one of your ministers tried to claim there were less than thirty people there. When that blatant untruth was exposed he admitted that government business had always followed different rules than those the general populace had to follow.”

“Something of a Barnard Castle moment, then?”

“Times ten, sire, times ten.”

“That bad, you think?”

“Given that parliament does follow social distancing rules, it’s pretty much an admission that no government business takes place there.”

“Is that how it’s being interpreted?”

“By the political intelligentsia… Yup!”

“Only one thing for it then,” said Big Bee charging from the bunker without his mask.

“You turn if you want to…” muttered Teigue. The bunker was only sporadically filled by his cacophonous laughter.

*

 A Questionable Science:

Love and Death in the Time of COVID 

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions. 

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…

*

Now available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon

 

 

 

Bottom-Rock…

*

Big Bee stood contemplating his overlarge leather travel-bag.

“Stay-cation?” asked Teigue-the-Fool.

“If only,” smiled Big Bee, “unfortunately, men in my position can’t afford such luxury.”

“Busy… busy… bees,” sang Teigue, shaking his rattle.

“Indeed,” continued Big Bee, “and my plan to vaccinate the world by the end of the year has almost come to fruition.”

“You sound like a Bond villain,” said Teigue.

“Bond villains don’t save the world, they destroy it,” sighed Big Bee.

“Quite,” said Teigue, and then, “almost?”

“I just need to convince the rest of the K-Nine countries.”

“Ah,” said Teigue, “of course, most other countries of the world outside those of the K-Nine already have the ‘pandemic’ under control, and without the use of a vaccine.”

Big Bee looked blank.

“I-ver-mec-tin!” pronounced Teigue, with a flourish.

“Insufficient clinical trials,” blustered Big Bee.

“No need for clinical trials if it works in the field,” smiled Teigue, “which it clearly does, and without the initial spike in deaths the vaccine rollout initially produced, and it already has a forty-year safety record.”

“Damn I-ver-mec-tin! Damn, damn, damn I-ver-mec-tin!” growled Big Bee, clenching and un-clenching his hands, into and then out of fists, and shaking them alarmingly. “We’ll see.” He zipped up his travel bag with a resounding ‘zing’.

“Portugal?” asked Teigue-the-Fool.

“Portland bloody Bill,” snarled Big Bee.

*

 A Questionable Science:

Love and Death in the Time of COVID 

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions. 

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…

*

Now available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Fact-Checka’! …

*

“The only thing

mutating

is the lie!”

Count Jack Black

*

 A Questionable Science:

Love and Death in the Time of COVID 

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions. 

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…

*

Now available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon

A Questionable Science…

 …Love and Death in the Time of COVID 

by Stuart France and G. Michael Vasey

‘The Gallows and Gibbet Inn’, proclaimed the sign, which singular nominal ought really to have aroused, if not my shackles then, at least my suspicions. 

Too late, Anu was already tugging me over the threshold into the warmth, and the light, and the sound of voices, and music…

…They were all in there!

Black Jack Davey… Teigue-the-Fool… The Miller’s Son… The Sorcerer’s Apprentice… H.R.H. the Lord of the Elements, and one-hundred-and-one other far less savoury characters.

Most of them in their cups. Reprobates all! And what a tale they had to tell.

If you have ever wondered why all the public houses are shut.

You had better pull up a chair…

Now available in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon

Overkill Hill…

*

Never look back!

It is good advice, unfortunately, in story-telling this advice,

when given, is never adhered to.

Orpheus… Lot… Dr Faustus…

They are all concerned with Soul.

The Soul that turns to look back is caught in time.

It may be an ‘intention thing’, like trying to serve two masters, do not walk one way and look the other.

There are any number of mythological monsters depicted in this way to prove it.

Tiamet… Nergal… The Dread Beast of Mercia.

The hero ‘slays’ them all, by moving forward.

*

*

But going back to take another look, that is different.

That is part of going forward.

And it is also inevitable.

This time we inadvertently found ourselves following our own advice from one of our books.

*

*

We started at Hordron’s, that hoary old receptacle of time, went on to Strines, the ‘Peacock Pub’, and finished up at the Old Horns Inn.

And this time when we got to Bradfield, ‘Castle Hill’ was illuminated.

*

*

No need to wonder where we will be heading next then.

*

*

But first, we had another encounter with one of our mounds to experience.

We needed more photographs.

*

*

And photographs…

Were duly forthcoming.

*

*

Once we had braved the curiously over-friendly sheep…