De wederkerigheid van gezien worden

All journal-items I wrote under the heading of ‘Crystal woods’ form a whole. In Crystal woods — Introduction you can find global information about this project.

(Photo above: Detail of drawing ‘Deep time’)

Acacia

7 Mei 2018: At nine o’clock I start walking to the Alleebusch (AB), about 22 km back and forth. It is still cool in the Schinveld forest. Temperature will rise to 28 degrees today. I cross the fields of Niederbusch passing deep gardens wth little sheds and fruit orchards at one hand and cornfields at the other.

While walking my notion of time changes, my head coincides with the rhythm of my breath and my feet. At once there is the notion of being somewhere instead of going to somewhere.

Just as I did on previous walks to the AB I stand still under an accacia to admire the intense clearness of the light in the translucent green of spring above me. At the last house I cross the Krümmelbach and enter the AB.

Temenos

A little later I reach the eastern edge of the forest that gives view over waving fields. There I slowly saunter from oak to oak in a haze of delicate green towards a rectangular rampart (20×20 m), probably a Celtic or Gallo-Roman place of worship, a so called Temenos. In the centre of the rampart the rods point at a place of power, a confirmation of what I already suspected: here the white aspect of the threefold goddess is concentrated. I already mentioned the places of black and red goddes in Crystal woods — Alleebusch 1.

When I entered this location for the first time on March 2003 I wrote: “I crossed the AB to a place of power with some impressing oak trees, growing inside of the rampart. It is a place wich moves me, probably an old place of worship, but I also feel new energies, beneficant and soothing. I see a vibrant field of light, first yellowgreen mixed with lila, then whitish yellow, and at last orange red.”

From Iron Age to deep time

Meanwhile it becomes quit warm. I walk across a field where once an Iron Age settlement was located, nosing around for stones with notable shapes. After a while I find a nice one with a smooth, triangle shaped lower side: a polishing stone? A year later, on the footpath between the temenos and the militairy base I will find another stone tool, smooth and elongated, probably a whetstone.

I remember my astonishment some years ago when I found a stone from the deep time on the same field. Namely a ± 450 lillion year old fossilized piece of Tabulate Coral ‘syringopora’, that originates from tropical coral reefs in the Siluur era. It has been transported by the primaeval river Maas from high mountains that eroded to what now is the Ardennes, 60 km south from where I live.

May 8, 2020: During the period of the Corona pandemic I am diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphocytic carcinoma and a few months later also with lung cancer (that fortunately can be recognised and removed in a very early stage), and more than ever I realize how fragile and temporary life is. In this period of medical treatments and recovery I steadely work on the drawing ‘Deep time’, a discovery tour on paper. Via a multitude of lines with interfering rhythms, inspired by photos of a glacier in Greenland, I create a maze, a passage of pure attention and repentance to another time dimension.

Six years later

May 21, 2024: Today I take it a lot easier than i did six years ago: half of the distance Schinveld-Alleebusch I do cycling and from the German border I go on foot. I follow the forest path that runs parallel to the Krümelbach untill the fence of the militairy base. There for the first time an elongated hole and a small dignitary attracts my attention. I notice some characteristics of a place of power: less undergrowth, a birch with bigger extend, a strange chaped pine tree.

After many years and without searching I realize that this location, together with two other places of power in this part of the Alleebusch, is part of a second white-red-black goddess triangle.

Reciprocity of being seen

Further on, nearby the gate of the militairy area, I pass the second place with three old pine trees. A quit different atmosphere here, sunny, open (red goddess place) and a elongated mound (solar place). A hundred meter further I reach the third place of power. I study the series of holes and little mounds and enjoy the subtle energy.

It moves me, the experience of the connection with this still coherent natural landscape, and the reciprocity of being seen and wrapped…