I woke up on an Iron Age hillfort at the border of Scotland and England. In the rain. I always imagined that this is how the narrative of the book would start. As I lay there in my sleeping bag, I reflected on the things that had led me to that point in life: The years spent in training as a spiritual healer. Mediumship school. Moving to San Francisco and starting my healing practice. Teaching the Merlin-oriented healing ceremony workshops around the country. And finally the Quest, The Heart of Merlin. I can’t remember a definitive moment when the seed of the quest was planted in my heart, but I remember as it started growing and my obsessive fervor for all things Merlin started growing. A year and a half of research and planning later and I’m lying in the rain at the battlegrounds where Merlin, maybe more accurately called Lailoken, went mad and fled into the Calidonian Forest to escape human society.
Little did I know that the previous two months of trekking through England and Wales, visiting every sacred site that seemed relevant to the Merlin legend was only preparation for what was about to take place for me in Scotland. As I lay in the rain, I tried to decided whether to wait out the rain or try to get up before it got worse. I check the forecast on my near dead phone and it looked like it was going to rain all day. I better just get up quickly before it got worse. An hour later, I had packed up and made my way through the muddy fields and paths back to the little village of Longtown. Little did I know what magic and syncronicites awaited me that day.
I had a couple of things planned for the day but the rain was determined to derail me. I stayed cheerful with soggy shoes as I caught a bus to the next town over and again made my way through another wet field with high grass, soaking me up to the knees as I searched for a couple of megalithic stones. I was searching for the remaining bits of an ancient stone circle now known as the Lochmaben Stone. The proximity of it to Carwinley (Less known as Caer Gwenddolau) had lead some to speculate that if Merlin Lailoken had been living around Geweddolau’s Fort in Arthuret then he surely would have taken part in ceremonial or political meetings at this sacred circle.
I finally found the stone and spent 20 minutes or so appreciating it. I held the massive stone, literally hugging it to try and see if I could feel the energy. The soggy shoes were not going to distract me from my purpose. Unlike some of the places I’ve trekked to on this trip, Lochmaben Stone was a minor one and I didn’t feel the need to spend all day or all night there in order to divine it’s secrets. Like most old circles, the magic is being able to use it in the context of the stars and the greater landscape, and since this circle barely existed anymore I didn’t sense much energy coming off of it. It was nice to see it though and appreciate the history. It wasn’t until later that I would learn its relationship to many other stone circles in the area.
I had meant to visit a castle after the Lochmaben stone, but Merlin had different plans for me. As I headed towards Dumfries on the bus I started looking on the couchsurfing website for a host for the night. A day of rain means a wet ground and I really wanted to avoid sleeping in a puddle. Within half an hour I got a message from a guy named Luke in Dumfries. He said he already had a couchsurfer and some airb&b guests but I was welcome to grab the couch. I was imagining all 5 of us crowded into a small flat, which is always an adventure. I was in for a surprise.
I arrived in Dumfries and after a quick stop at the museum to see the 7th century grave stones, I arrived at Luke’s house. I stepped in and met his architecture assistant. He showed me around the amazingly beautiful and massive house. It was like nothing I have seen before and words can’t really describe. It was like a beautifully curated museum piece. Old met new in graceful way. In some places, old pieces of Victorian wallpaper hung down around perfectly placed pieces of vintage furniture. Stone floors and solid wood. It felt ancient and its history and age were well honored, a wonderful example of interior designer wu-wei like I had never seen before.
Anyway, I met Luke who was a solid gentleman from South Africa. He was soft spoken and generous. I met the other couchsurfer who was an 18 year old German kid on a cross country cycling trip and was traveling for the first time in his life. Later came Craig, a native Scot and friend of Lukes. Then over dinner, the two airb&b girls from Boston showed up. This was our cast for the evening. 3 Americans, a Scot, a German, and our British South African host. Over a candlelit arrangement of exquisite homemade foods, the magic began.
I started telling them a bit about my quest and my Merlin story. Luke had told me earlier that I really needed to meet this woman in Moffat named Niamh who was really interested in Merlin. After I told my story, Craig told me that he was going to Moffat the next day and he could give me a ride. I already needed to go that way so I gladly agreed.
The next day we get up and had breakfast. The whole cast of characters departed in their separate directions. I get in Craig’s sporty teal car and tell him how I’ve been really trying to hitchhike with someone in a convertible but it has yet to happen. He looks at me and smiles and points up. I’m sitting in a convertible. I laugh at the magic that just keeps happening. We put the top down and drive up to Moffat.
Now let me preface the rest of the story by saying that since I started planning this trip over a year ago, I knew that Moffat and the Hart Fell hills around it were going to be the pinnacle of my quest. I didn’t know why but I just had an intuitive feeling. I had no idea what Moffat would be like, whether a tiny village consisting of a post office and a pub or a bustling trading town. It ended up being somewhere in the middle, a slightly quiet and cozy farm town with a nice high street and a lot of attractive old grey stone houses ornamented with red sandstone.
Craig is going to take me to meet this woman Niamh who I heard about. As we’re heading toward Moffat, I asked Craig why he’s was going there and he tells me that he was already planning to go see Niamh because it had been a while since he visited. The fact that I needed to go to Moffat and see her fit harmoniously into his plans. Magic.
We arrive at this gorgeous old house which I find out is the second oldest house in town, from the mid 1700s. I had heard a couple of wild things about this woman, like that she is a Druid and that she moved here because of Merlin, so I didn’t know what to expect. What I found was a charming older lady with bright eyes and a sweet smile. She brought us in and showed us her work-in-progress renovation project. The house was completely under construction in every room so eventually we had tea in the back yard as Niamh told me about her relationship with Merlin.
She had moved into that house with her recently deceased husband so that they could be within two leagues of Merlin aka Hart Fell where Merlin drank from a holy spring and regained his sanity and where some say that he later died. She told me about how she and her husband meant to write a book about the 12 treasures of Merlin. I told her about my background with Merlin and then asked her about the Nikolai Tolstoy connection to Merlin and Hart Fell. This is where more of the wild magic continues.
She tells me that Tolstoy gave a talk last year in Moffat about Merlin. She said that it might have been recorded and I needed to call this woman Liz Roberts who organized the talk. I called Liz right away and she told me it wasn’t recorded but Tolstoy is coming back next month and I needed to email Jan Hogarth to find out more. This got me very excited because I had been trying unsuccessfully to contact Tolstoy for months to interview him about Merlin and a great book he wrote in the 80’s called the Quest for Merlin. I emailed Jan and told her what I was after. More on that in a minute.
After all this, it’s time to go, so I head to the grocery story to stock up on apples. My intention is to go up on Hart Fell and do a three day apple fast as a sort of Shamanic vision quest to discover the ancient secrets of Merlin and Hart Fell and its holy spring. With 23 apples and 5 liters of water in tow, I start down the 3 mile road that takes me out of town and to the base of this beautiful hill and valley. Eventually I get to a gate that says “Hart Fell Spring 1.5 miles.” I enter and begin my journey up the holy mountain.
The path vaguely follows the snake-like stream that cuts through the valley. Past sheep and deer fields, up hills, and finally off the rocky path and into the grass, I follow the water until it takes me to the magical well that I am looking for. Tolstoy’s research has shown that it’s very likely that this well is the spring that Merlin drank from after 7 years of living like a wild mad man in the forest and regained his sanity. Currently the well has a little man-made cave around it that dates to Victorian times when Moffat was a well know spa town. It’s filled with mucky sludge and great acoustics and in one corner is a deep pool, the source of the spring. I didn’t dare to drink any, not knowing if it was safe but I anointed myself with it and dipped all my crystals and magical jewelry in it. I explored the surround little bit of area and then set up camp for the night, right between the well cave and this other little natural cavern that Niamh guessed that Merlin would have slept in.
I slept well and woke up refreshed in the morning. I started my apple fast the night before and as I got packed up I continued with several varieties of apples. I wanted to get all the way to the top of Hart Fell and plant myself there for the vision quest. It took an hour or so, but I eventually climbed up the steep rocky valley to the top of the ridge and found a beautiful place that overlooks the surrounding hills and valleys. It was truly spectacular and breathtaking. The lighting was amazing and strong the whole time I was up there which left me with a very red face by the end. I had donned my “madness clothes” which was essentially a very comfortable outfit consisting of tights and a couple merino shirts. I unpacked my stuff and sat down. I checked my phone before I turned it off and discovered that Jan had already returned my message from the previous day. She was eager to meet me and sent me a couple of links about the Environmental Arts Festival she was helping to put on and about her Quest to take water from the sacred spring from Hart Fell to other peaks in the area on horseback. She said she would come to Hart Fell spring in a few hours so we could talk. The connections just kept happening and I was astonished by the long string of connections that had begun because of a rainy morning on a hill fort.
I spent the next few hours getting acclimated to the environment I was in. I spent a lot of time singing and wandering and looking at the different kinds of plants that lived up there and investigating the base of the stream that starts at the top and cuts down through the valley to ground level. Eventually the time had come to go down and meet Jan.
When I got down to the spring she was already waiting for me. We spent an hour or so talking about the magic of the spring, about Tolstoy and about her Quest to spread the sacred water among the hills as an act of healing for the earth and local lands. It was a great meeting and in the end I was invited to be part of the festival and part of the water ceremony that she was planning. It was perfect because since I had changed my plans on that rainy morning, I was now a week ahead of my itinerary and had a lot of extra time to volunteer to such a noble project. We eventually said our goodbyes and I returned to my hilltop solitude to continue my internal search for the Mysteries.
I didn’t know what the whole point of my trip was until the next day. Before that day, I thought it was about having a fun adventure with a magical spin in order to write a book. Even though my goal was lost ancient wisdom, actually, I realized it was really a selfish pursuit aimed at my own sense of self satisfaction. I know now that the reason I came on this quest was to heal myself. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing dramatic or romantic, just raw dark reconciliation of my entire life and all my misdeeds and missteps.
I fasted for 2 days on apples and then on the third day I had the revelation I had been searching for. Jan had showed me the clean place to fill my water from the sacred spring. I drank my fill of that blessed liquid that cured Merlin of his madness and subsequently helped lead me out of mine. I had this phrase rolling around in my mind for a few weeks: slow epiphany. That’s what I had kept saying. Now that I’ve had the big epiphany I can see that I really was having a slow epiphany this whole time. Everything that I did before Hart Fell and every person I met contributed to the bigger awakening picture that I got on the Holy Mountain that day.
This wasn’t my first time attempting a self healing ceremony on myself, so I knew to enter the situation with a foundation of prayer and a firm intention on what I wanted to work on and what I wanted to shift. Thanks to the slow epiphany I knew exactly what to ask for. I awoke in a mindset of humble devotion.
My setting couldn’t have been more perfect. I had situated myself on the top of a huge canyon with the snake-like winding river cutting through it. The canyon overlooked a series of valleys and wide open green fields. Signals of humanity were barely perceivable and shelter from the elements was non-existent. Besides the incredible view and the closeness to the sky, there is a living flow of water that rises from deep inside the earth and emerges through the soil that I was sitting on. That makes the whole top of the mountain soggy and when you step down, clear water squirms up through your toes. As the day went on, I realized that it made me feel like I was in a womb or in the birthing fluid of the land.
So here I am sitting in living earth birthing fluid with sacred water as medicine starting to activate inside me. The ground is pulsating and emanating rainbow colors but since I’m no newbie at this I push all that to the side. I’m here for a soul cleanse on a cellular level, not a recreation day of afternoon fireworks. I’m prepared to weep and I surely will before the day is over.
I’m laying on a mat doing intuitive yoga postures. My body must know what’s about to happen and knows it needs me to be completely flexed and open through every muscle in my body. After 20 minutes of this, the sun comes out from behind a cloud. The sky is an incredibly vivid blue with hardly any clouds. I take off my shirt and pull out this bag of coconut oil that a woman in Wales gave me. I start rubbing the oil on my hands and face. Then I get the idea that I need to take off all my clothes and anoint my whole body with what has become to me a sacred and protective oil.
I spend a long time tending to every part of my body. I’m massaging the oil into all my skin and muscles and getting everything completely aired out in the sun. I’m going into an altered state as I meditate on my physical experience. The whole time I’m doing this I can’t stop thinking about Roman gladiators getting anointed in oil before battle. This image maintains itself in the back of my mind for the whole day.
I’m in a timeless place so I don’t rush it at all, but when the time comes, I finish anointing myself and stand up. There is a feeling happening inside me and I realize I haven’t eaten yet. It the third day of my apple purification so I pull out an apple and start eating it. The raw life force contained in the apple; the sugars, the juices, and flesh enter my body and mix with the medicine that’s already in there. Shortly afterwards, the purge starts happening and it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
I’m standing up, naked and glinting, with the sun shining down on me and the liquid flow of earth birth coming up to meet me from the ground below. I put my arms out to greet the sky and I look up to the sun. I open my mouth and this raw sound comes out of me. A long tone. A raw human sound that resonates through my whole body and vibrates every bone of me. I lose consciousness for a microsecond. I can’t tell if it feels like the sound is coming from the earth or from the sky and I don’t care. I’m just open and letting it move.
It goes on. On and on. I start realizing how it’s doing something inside my body. I can feel that these sounds roaring out of me are affecting my stomach, my gut. I know that I’m purging something out of me but I don’t know what it is. This goes on for a long time. I start walking around and find myself standing in various comfortable puddles of the earth birth water. I have this idea floating through my mind that Jan put into me the previous day about doing sacred art to heal the earth. As I’m now very consciously releasing heavy stuff, the tone in my throat is making gets lower, as low as I can physically go. I feel like the water under my feet is sucking toxic things out of me, whether that’s actual physical toxins or negative thought forms and behaviors I can’t be sure. I’m just going with it. I’m starting to think that what I’m doing is affecting the land below me as well as my own body.
I’ve had all I can take for the moment. I’m tempted to think that maybe I’m just singing but the way it leaves me so breathless with my heart pounding, I know something deeper is happening. I’m starting to hear the sound of the tone in my mind and that’s rolling around with the Roman warrior and the earth healing idea. I’m exhausted though and I lay down for a while.
I can’t exactly remember how it all happened but I took a walk around for a while feeling blissful but worn out already. I then tried to turn on my phone to send a few text messages. It’s almost dead but turns on for a brief moment to let me send a couple of heart felt texts back home. This is all I needed and the shell around my heart cracks open. As I’m texting, I start sobbing. I turn off the phone and start contemplating all my loved ones back home, my parents, everyone I’ve ever dated, and on and on. I’m thinking about how I treat people and how my self centered perspective on life has created certain repetitive cycles in my relationships. Every girl always tells me the same thing in the end and I’m pondering that hard over tears. This is precisely the thing I’ve asked to work on and to be healed today.
At this point I had already put my clothes back on but I continuously anoint myself in the pure coconut oil thinking its blocking me from the sun. Actually I think it was helping to cook my insides. I was sizzling and sweet smelling. I’m happy that I’m clothed because right then I hear the sound of an airplane. I look up and there is a plane flying right over me and it’s very close. It’s a small plane and I think I can see the pilot as he curves around to get a better look. I wave. I think someone waved back but it’s hard to tell. I start hysterically laughing because I haven’t seen anyone in 24 hours and suddenly there’s a guy watching me from the sky. I don’t know if it’s a the farmer checking his land or just a recreational flyer. He flies off and I’m laughing and crying at the same time. As I’m pondering my own faults and habits, I’m simultaneously thinking about the complex world that we live in and how it’s impossible to ever know what’s going on. I’m looking at this fence that I’m leaning against. It’s wood timbers and wrought iron wire. Is the metal local? Is it from Asia? Is the wood local and why is there a fence up here anyway. It’s for animals I can imagine but still, how long must it have taken to put miles and miles of fence that must have gotten flown in from some other part of the world, just to save the farmer a few bucks. I just can’t understand how that can make sense. I was reading Revolution by Russell Brand the previous week and he was talking about how British apples are flown to South Africa to get waxed and then flown back to Britain to be sold as “local.” Just to save a few bucks. All this is going through my mind and the Roman warrior is still doing battle and over all that I’ve got this voice inside saying weird southern baptist style stuff about Jesus and his flock. And this stuff was coming up that didn’t seem to have anything to do with me, stuff that I don’t even believe in about religion and male/female gender roles and more. Needless to say I was having a heavy trip.
The plane comes back around and through blurry, tear filled eyes I watch it as it circles around me again. When I turn to follow it, I see a tiny dot of a person coming across the hill. I stare for a while because I can’t tell if it’s really a person or not. I didn’t expect anyone to be up there because I hadn’t seen anyone for so long. Eventually, I realize that it is a person and they are coming down the path that I’m sitting on. I tidy up my pile of stuff and get it out of the way so the guy can walk through. He comes towards me and I see that he looks just like me. I awkwardly wave, self conscious that my face must be all red from crying. He walks up and says “Are you Justin? I’m Daniel.” I gawk at him for a minute and then let out a roar of laughter. The syncronicities are just too much. I remember now that Jan told me that a certain Daniel might be up here but I had forgotten all about that. He told me that he spent the night up on the hill at a different place and wondered if he would find me. He’s also part of the Environmental Art Festival and is working with Jan on her quest.
We sit and talk for a few hours. I’m happy to see another human to pull me out of my low point and learn about the surrounding area. Daniel is a Moffat native and spent his young years playing up on these hills. He is studying geoscience and is wearing a crystal necklace too, so we have a sort of camaraderie and I can relate to where he’s coming from. He tells me a bit about how the geology and water activity that helped to form the area. We talk about life and the fence and the birth water this is still oozing up from the earth that we are sitting on. We hug and take a photo and he says he has to head down and go to work. As he’s walking off, I yell after him “How will I know that this really happened?” He replies “You have the photo!” I laughed. Good point.
I decided to go and find this special spot I found the previous day the overlooks the snake river and the valley. It’s the perfect place to see the whole way down and the perfect spot to sing. I discovered that if I sing from right there it resonates the whole valley. The effect is amazing. I can’t see Daniel anymore because he’s around a twist of the valley but I serenade him with prayers of thanksgiving to the Goddess and the water. I feel like all the magic song spells that I’ve written over the years never made as much sense as they do when sung and resonated through this special valley. After an hour or so of singing, my throat is dry and I need more apples and water.
I continue my internal pursuit. A few more tones come out of me throughout the afternoon at various pitches. I’m feeling pretty light and loose, like I purged most of what I had to lose earlier in the morning. I reflect on everything that’s happened. It’s hard to explain in it words but through the day the big epiphany happened. In some personal ways it came as direct realization about how I need to proceed in my life relationships and how I need to change my attitude and outlook on life.
In bigger ways, it came as a seed in my mind. The seed talks about saving the world. I don’t exactly know what the seed will grow into but I know that there are going to be others to help show me and help the seed grow. I know it has to do with things like learning about earth systems, permaculture, natural building techniques and community. The realization I had in regards to my Merlin quest was the thought that if someone like Merlin was around today he would be looking after the land and teaching others how to do the same. After all, when he was cured of his madness, his forest house became a sort of school for studying the mysteries of nature and life.
In the modern era, Merlin would be a steward of the land and would teach others how to be the same. He would show us and maybe he is showing us in subtle ways how to live in harmony and how to heal all the damage we have caused the earth through industrialization, war, and the bullring and spreading of city culture. Everything that I have done so far, in my life and in this trip, has led me to this realization. My Merlin quest led me to my own personal Holy Mountain and then told me a story that was completely different than the one I was expecting to find. I know that as I explore the seed in the coming days and weeks, I will be able to express it further. I also know now that it was no accident that I didn’t get to go to Uni but instead set myself up to work and learn on a bunch of farms this summer. I’m even thinking about adding a few more farms to the end of my summer trip that are specifically focused on permaculture so I can learn as much as possible before I leave.
I might think that this revelation was just fantasy or my own ego boosting my sense of self importance; to think that I could possibly do anything to save the whole planet. The fact that as I descend the Holy Mountain, I head to Jan’s house to help her with her Quest of healing the land by spreading the holy water through the different communities let me know that it’s real. If I came up here on a solo quest and came down with solo realizations and then went home that would be one thing. The fact that my quest lead me into a community of artists who are focused on doing healing work to help this part of the living earth is affirming. I know this whole thing has been a magical, divine plan. I know that the inspirational spirit of Merlin has moved my heart to get me motivated to find this place and be healed. It’s all happening and it’s all real. The Holy Mountain is not just a dream. Like Daniel said, I have the photos to prove it.
