The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

(I'd been mulling over asking this for a few days, and a post I've got open elsewhere on the forum makes me want to refer to this one, so here goes.)

As people who've been around here for a while know, my primary personal deity work is with two deities, one of whom has been a consistent presence in my life since the fall of 2002, when she showed up in a dream, and then meditation work, and then other Drawing Down and related ritual work. (And her consort: I'm His because of Her.)

I don't have a name for her (beyond "Blue"). I don't have a lot of identifying information for her. And most of the time, this doesn't bother me. I'm her's, and it works, and it's all good.

However, I'm currently poking at planning a trip to England a year from now, and I'm trying to figure out if I can narrow it down enough to maybe go to suitable locations (or at least make the attempt). And I know we also have some posters here since the last time I brought this up who might have more ideas.

The things I know:

Origin: I am about 95% certain she's English (or from Angle or Saxon roots) rather than Celtic in origin. (Because she is deeply amused by Celtic deities, and yet so very Glad I'm Not Related To Them at times.) And also (as below) not necessarily well known within whatever culture she comes from.

I am also fairly certain that she's one of the (very many) English water deities. Her consort reads as 'settled lands' - the image I get of him very strongly is someone riding the bounds of farmlands or settled areas and tending to them. (The strongest impression I get is of sunlight through trees on a path, and the sound of galloping hooves.)

Visuals: I've always seen her in meditation as having long dark hair, usually pulled back but not in a fancy way, sensible sorts of shoes or sandals, and wearing the kind of 'pinned at both corners' sort of robe/dress that covers everything from pre-history through the medieval period. Indigo blue, and pretty clearly wool.

In terms of spaces: there's a whole meditation thing with an earlyish medieval manor house (either made of white stone or later fronted with it) and a sunken garden in the back with a pool, but it's the kind of architecture that could date from about 12th century to 15th. (It is pretty clearly English, though, and it is decidedly not a castle. Not overtly Tudor, could well have multiple layered historical periods.) The landscape is rolling hills, lots of green, varied plant life, but nothing that is particularly geographically identifying.

Other than the flowers mentioned below, I don't have animals or plants or other symbolic things that have come up.

Relationships: The very first dream I had of her was her getting married, and my running around doing a lot of necessary tasks. The strongest impression I had was of the family dynamics: that she adores the man she was marrying, but that they were both very much secondary figures in the larger scheme (that the wedding was a big deal because it was an excuse for the rest of the family to politic and influence each other, and that the two of them were a footnote.)

Items of interest: In that first dream, at one point I was holding an armful of long flowers on a stem - it looked a bit like a foxglove (and might have been) or althaea officinalis (marshmallow), and there was a very strong smell that reminds me of summers visiting my grandmother in England (very classic country garden), but that I can't pin down to a particular flower easily.

(I have wandered around conservatory gardens smelling things, but I'm pretty sure at this point it's something that doesn't readily grow places I've been living. Very strong smell, sweet without being sickly sweet, and something that doesn't easily translate into perfumes, like a number of flowers.)  

Other references: I've long gotten a sense that she has been very 'quiet' for several centuries: not a deity who has come back into major public notice, and who has not been very dominant since about the invention of the printing press.

The clearest and most easily shared instruction I have from her is "Reach out to those who thirst" with a clear twist on 'thirst' that is about both water and knowledge, and really, they're the same thing, on some level, for Her. (In terms of types of water, it's smaller rivers, ponds, etc. rather than a massive river.)

Places I've already looked: I've regularly poked around the lists of British deities: Sulis is not quite right, Coventina is not quite right, and so on. (And besides, at that point, we get down to "We have about 3 pieces of archaeological evidence to go on." and that may not be enough to rummage with anyway.) There's a way in which there's a number of parallels to some of the earlier medieval approaches to the Ladies of the Lake, but that's also clearly not quite it either (same thing, different family? I don't know.)

But clearly, it's time for another round of looking, so if you have suggestions that ping for you, or sources that I should take a good look at (and why), I'd love to hear them.

It's totally okay with me if I don't work this out, just that if I *am* going to be in England, and can identify a place that might be Hers, I'd rather figure it out so I could plan to visit it.

Why don't you ask Her for names of sacred places? Seems like you're pretty close with Her so she may help you out.

I mostly don't get words from her. (The times I have, it's been filtered through someone else who's been willing to Draw Down for me, and that's not a feasible option any time soon for various reasons. Moving across the country complicates some things.)

And who's to say Her only sacred places are in England? Quan Yin is Chinese, but particularly loves a spot appropriately called Sacred Well here in Connecticut, about 3 minutes from my house. The history of the area is mostly Native American, but if your deity likes a certain place, why question it?

That's .. problematic in two directions for me, and I want to explain why.

First, the lands where I live - like the lands where you live - have their own spirits of place. It is important to M'Lady that I be near quiet water. (Not necessarily living right on top of it, but that it's a part of my day to day or at least week to week life.)

However, I would hesitate to turn any of the spaces where I've lived into something specific to honour a specific deity *as the spirit of that place*. Because those spaces already have one. There's a very distinct difference for me between "I am walking by the water and think of Her." (lots of things make me think of Her) and "This water is Hers." To be more blunt: I'll do the first, I won't do the second.

Beyond that, though, she has always been a deity who has given me a strong sense of place: I can draw the architecture, I can draw the layout of the gardens, I can sketch the line of the hills, and the rise of the road, and the way a branch comes out on a curve of the stairs in the garden, and the sound of the water in the stream. (Well, I could if I were a better artist than I am, but I have exceedingly clear visuals and spatial relationships for it.)

If I can figure out *where* that place is, I would like to visit it. Just as I have learned things by visiting where my father was born and raised, where my mother was born. There are things you learn about someone by seeing the landscape that shaped them most, by smelling the smells they smelled, by listening to the birds they hear, by understanding the feel of the ground underneath your feet that you can't get by walking outside your convenient door.

Logistical things for this trip (starting with the fact I don't entirely trust my ability to drive in the UK, but also about how much time I can plan for the trip) mean I can't just wander around the country looking for something that feels right.  But if I can narrow it down more plausibly, I might be able to arrange something specific. That, however, involves seeing if I can narrow down a location better than I've been able to so far, from the not-easy-to-research bits I do have.

And if I can, I would like to do that. I don't think She's going to be upset if I don't. I don't think it's going to make or break my relationship with her. But I would like to visit her in her own home, if I can. Rather than the functional equivalent of meeting in a pleasant restaurant, or a friendly library or whatever.

(I'd been mulling over asking this for a few days, and a post I've got open elsewhere on the forum makes me want to refer to this one, so here goes.)

I agree, not Sul or Coventina. The landscape though could be many places, I'm inclined to say  Midlands/southern England but that could be wrong.

Have you tried some map dowsing to try and narrow it down a little?

I agree, not Sul or Coventina. The landscape though could be many places, I'm inclined to say  Midlands/southern England but that could be wrong.

Have you tried some map dowsing to try and narrow it down a little?

 
Dowsing of that kind's not one of my better skills. (I haven't tried it recently, but I also don't think it was one of the ones improved by the health crash of a couple of years ago.) I may wrangle suitable maps and give it a try again.

(And yeah, the "Not Them" aspect is sort of fascinating, except when it's being frustrating. Because I've pretty clearly got the right category, and I'm pretty sure right general location. Just. Lack of data. And lack of scent-producing research databases.)

So my part of the world then. Cotswolds ( north of Bath) could fit  but it really doesn't sound like Cornwall or the Tintagel area. That was the preserve of Dumnoni tribe and it's more Celtic. It's pretty around Tintagel but you really will need a car. There is a lovely piece of ancient woodland at Boscastle ( just down the road from Tintagel  and with the famous Witchcraft Museum) but it doesn't feel right - more moorland with small fields  and the main focus there is the celtic St Nectan ( or  Nodens). Very much a water god.

 
Yeah. The Cornwall is more "If I don't end up somewhere else, I've got other reasons for wanting to see Cornwall." (And also, that I haven't been out that way, and have done Oxford and Ipswich and areas around there, though not in a couple of decades.)

(My research suggests that for what I want for Tintagel and Boscastle, I can manage by bus, it's the "Going out to random location" part I'd really want a car for. Which again, not impossible, but I want to make sure I really want to do that, first.)

Origin: I am about 95% certain she's English (or from Angle or Saxon roots) rather than Celtic in origin. (Because she is deeply amused by Celtic deities, and yet so very Glad I'm Not Related To Them at times.) And also (as below) not necessarily well known within whatever culture she comes from.

I am also fairly certain that she's one of the (very many) English water deities. Her consort reads as 'settled lands' - the image I get of him very strongly is someone riding the bounds of farmlands or settled areas and tending to them. (The strongest impression I get is of sunlight through trees on a path, and the sound of galloping hooves.)

Visuals: I've always seen her in meditation as having long dark hair, usually pulled back but not in a fancy way, sensible sorts of shoes or sandals, and wearing the kind of 'pinned at both corners' sort of robe/dress that covers everything from pre-history through the medieval period. Indigo blue, and pretty clearly wool.

In terms of spaces: there's a whole meditation thing with an earlyish medieval manor house (either made of white stone or later fronted with it) and a sunken garden in the back with a pool, but it's the kind of architecture that could date from about 12th century to 15th. (It is pretty clearly English, though, and it is decidedly not a castle. Not overtly Tudor, could well have multiple layered historical periods.) The landscape is rolling hills, lots of green, varied plant life, but nothing that is particularly geographically identifying.

A thought: how literal do you think the country house is? If you think it's a place that her river runs through, you can look for stately homes that have rivers running through them. Look at the National Trust and English Heritage websites, if that's something you think might be useful.

In terms of places, you need a car less in southwest England than you do in Cornwall. Cornwall is very hard to get around by train, although you could get a train to a Cornish town and pick up a hire car from there. It's all very remote and small-town-like (as you probably know). On the other hand, the southwest has quite good train links - although once you get into countryside areas it gets more difficult to get around there too. Remember, too, that getting trains can take a lot of spoons as well, especially if you don't know a particular rail network. It's more possible in the southwest than in Cornwall, though - with planning. (If you want specific transport advice, feel free to PM me!)

(I'd been mulling over asking this for a few days, and a post I've got open elsewhere on the forum makes me want to refer to this one, so here goes.)

 
One thing that might be helpful in narrowing spaces down is to look at a map of old England?  As I understand it, the Saxons were only pagan for a few centuries before converting, so something like this might be helpful:



For instance, it seems unlikely to me that your Goddess would be found in Cornwall if She's more English than Celtic, as Cornwall stayed Celtic in its culture for many, many years beyond conversion to Christianity.  There are also various maps around outlining the dispersion of specific Anglo-Saxon tribes; perhaps it might be helpful to try and get a sense of which of those tribes your Goddess most identifies with - and therefore narrow down your region a bit more?

Sorry I can't be more helpful with specific deities, just throwing ideas out there

Jenett, for some reason I'm getting Gloucestershire, and the Cotswolds.  Maybe something like this?  Mill Dene Gardens.

 
I went rummaging for some of my old notes (yay, online repositories) and pulled out the following details: I note that I'm more certain of the general alignment/lay of the land being a cognate than anything more specific.

- The most notable one is a strong sense that the ocean is a bit to the north - it's not right on the ocean (a couple miles back, maybe 20 at the upper limit?), but it's close enough that you remember there's ocean there. (And that does limit potential locations quite a lot, because there's limited places in England where you get ocean to the north: Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Kent, and Norfolk, really.)

(I am really pretty certain it's not Wales, and I'm fairly sure it's not Kent, and I think not Norfolk: I spent a fair bit of time in Essex and Kent when my grandmother was alive, and the land sounds wrong for it to be there. Essex and Kent sound like mid-range strings and horns, and what I hear from M'Lady's land is deeper strings (think cello and viola, not violin), and bass drum, and hints of whistle or flute (but not all the time), and something else I can't pin down at the moment, but that might be one of the lower double reeds ancestors. (I played bassoon: it's not that, it's not oboe, but it's in that category.)

[Whether the sound impression makes sense to anyone else outside my head - well. Nice illustration of the varying ways people perceive energy and get impressions.]

(and as noted, Cornwall's on my travel list for other reasons, and I agree that it's probably not the right place for this, precisely.)

- A long hedgerow along the road which runs roughly E/W (but maybe more like NE to SW), then a smaller road leading up to the house - it crests up over a hill, and on the right side, there's a few smaller cottages, and then woods behind them. As you come up the hill, the house sort of rises up out of the top. Two stories plus an attic under the roof - long and low, rather than tall. Long stretch of building across the front (maybe 100 feet?) with two wings extending back on either side.

- The impression I have of the house is sort of classical, sort of very-simple-early-Georgian (but I think I'm pinging on the proportions there, rather than the detailing or actual time period.) Flat across the front with minimal detail (no obvious statuary, no pillars), no fancy entrance way, etc.  The front of the house faces south, with a courtyard and the gardens on the back going toward the north.

- The front step is a large slab of stone, the door is wooden and painted dark green, and has a door knocker that my notes describe as maybe brass, very stylised, curving lines, and a sort of overarching crescent and a sort of flattened bowl (my notes wonder about 'sun and cup' but it's not a symbol I've seen before.)

- When you come in the front door, there's a foyer, with stairs leading up, and halls leading to the left and right. The stairs go up on the right side, there's a landing with a broad window seat looking out over the courtyard and down to the sunken garden, and then turn and go up again. (So you go up counterclockwise and come down clockwise, and that's important.)

- The foyer before you get to the stairs is maybe 15, and the width of the front of the house is about 30. The glass on that window is leaded, and decidedly not modern at all - it's got the imperfections and unevenness of 15th century or so glass.

- The back of the house has a square courtyard between the two wings - some benches and some stone urns for plantings, but there's a balcony that curves out at the back, and stairs going down on both ends, into a garden that's about 15-20 feet lower than the courtyard and the house. There's a long sunken pool (maybe 20 feet long?) with some complicated mosaic work in the pool itself, and statues inset along the sides in little niches, but mostly covered by greenery (lots of ivy, lots of ferns, not many actual flowers, though most of the times I've gotten a strong sense of season in my visits there, it's been early fall, regardless of what season it was for me in the physical world.)

- Beyond the sunken garden, there's a hedge maze to the north (that bit, I'm fairly sure doesn't have a physical cognate even if the rest does, and I'm not that sure about the sunken garden bit either), but there's fields and some deciduous woodland off to the left (west) and some more evergreeny-type forest off to the right, and there's a good size stream (that feeds to or from the pool somehow) that runs through bits of the woodland and bits of the forest.

It's the pool part that's most important, not the stream, though.

(Former sacred well? I dunno.)