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This Beltane I returned to one of the homes of my heart. I embarked upon a simple quest once more to feel my own soul strong within me, and spent some time on retreat in Sligo, Ireland. Not a long journey from where I live really, especially in these modern times, but a great distance travelled within, in the heart and mind. Furthest west, to the waters and the waves....No phones, no internet, no TV; a peat fire and the sound of the sea roaring beneath our little cottage.....and just beyond our garden, ours alone to visit, an ancient barrow mound, untouched but for the shaggy brown bull that munched on the rich grass that grew upon it.

On Beltane eve as dusk gathered, turning the sky to turquoise and the low hillsides to emerald velvet, I gathered my shawl around me and looked out at Sliabh Gamh the Ox Mountains, sacred to the goddess Aine, encircling me with an ancient and warm embrace. Ahead, Knocknarea stood tall and proud as Queen Medb herself, who is said to lie in the cairn upon its summit, and to the west, foaming around her toes was the wild grey Atlantic. This was an ancestral Beltane for me, one where I felt my roots grow deep and nourished by the very earth herself, where the wind and the rain and the crackling of the fire stirred up the very fibres of my being and made me anew in her bubbling cauldron.  In this place, at Beltane, the old gods, the Tuatha de Danann, the children of the goddess Danu, came to the mortal world.

I followed the flight of the heron through the willows, the wide blue sky above. Skirting my way around the little town, I made my way between the hills, between the greening orchards and down the leafy Well House Lane, the glorious lush green belly of Glastonbury Tor above me bright in the sunshine. I have walked this road a million times, in rain and summer heat, in winter shadows and sleet, in the utter darkness of a Samhain waning moon...it knows me well, and every time my feet tread this path I feel blessed to live in such a sacred landscape. I greet the tree spirits I have worked with over the years, the hidden springs, one a deep secret, another a mere boggy patch in the meadow upon such a day as this...

Turning the corner I enter the gardens of Chalice Well, and the hush of the day becomes somehow more refined as I make my way past the manicured flower beds and beneath the rose archway, passed 'the chakra border', a rainbow of blossoms unfurling. The sense of wholeness I have gathered to me all the way builds now, my body finds comfort in the serenity of the garden, as I make my way along the worn stone pathway to take my seat beside the well. Aching feet find ease upon the cool damp stone. There is the sound of distant drums beating upon the Tor, but all is still here, all is quiet. I am blessed with solitude, but I am not alone. As my stillness gathers, I feel the presence of this place all around me. The spirit of the well, the ancient goddess envelops me. Without words or ceremony, Her presence both warm and bright rises from the waters, and I sit in quiet communion, my spirit drinking in all She may offer. Her daughter, Her pupil, Her priestess.