A massive fire

Thinking of the Paasvuren, the bonfires they still make in spring in the fields in Drente, the east part of the Netherlands, I decided to make my own Paasvuur and, with the upcoming house move in mind, to burn my diaries. it's a great thing to do! So  at the edge of the sea and dunes of Findhorn, with a friend together we sang, shouted it out and danced around the fire. I did a ritual to bless our past with all its experiences of joy and pain and release it together with the old books while we threw them and threw them in the fire. Our memories will stay with us, they are enough.

Deep down inside me, an even bigger fire is burning. A huge fire of anger, outrage, grief, and also of compassion for the suffering. Its flames, spitting out tentacles, trying to claw at my energy, feed on me and overwhelm me.

It has been said that you can only mourn if you can love.

Once, during the preparation for a ritual at Findhorn to shed our tears for the suffering of the Earth, environmental activist Joanna Macy said: “It takes courage to fully live in a fear-phobic culture. The dominant system cannot tolerate the raw feelings of grief and anger about what has been done to our Earth”.  I’m sure it means the anger and fire in me, in you, cannot be seen as only our private pain − to deal with in hidden one to one therapeutic sessions − but as part of the collective (un)consciousness.  The fire in me is for the ancient forests they’ve put to the flame to clear soil for cattle grazing. The fire in me is for the memory of being burned at the stake for the knowledge we had as women about the healing properties of plants, trees and stones; for the rituals we held to honour Mother Earth.

The fire in me is not a cosy barbecue or gas-lit fake wood-burning stove. I want to make a real fire to release my useless old, walk over the hot ashes, and burn away the skin, become raw alive again, renewed.

My fire is huge and it needs attention and to be tended by a real fire-woman.

Blog 36 Photo & text: © Adriana Bijman, April  2015 

El Camino de Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela

Over the last weeks I visited Santiago de Compostela for its university. My study Spanish this year included one residential week at this prestigious university, which is known to be one of the best of Spain with over five centuries of history. I imagine it attracted philosophers, searchers and thinkers amongst the peregrinos, the pilgrims on their Camino. Santiago became a ‘highway of knowledge’ a diffuser of the great cultural and artistic movements that emerged in Europe some centuries ago.

Imagine, until the ninth century, this town was all forest, named Libredón. In its middle was a Roman Sepulchre and there, in the ruins of its primitive burial, it is said the remains of one of Jesus’ apostles, Santiago, were discovered. The today majestic Santiago de Compostela Cathedral was build on top of it and the town became one of Europe’s most popular places of Christian pilgrimage.

Not for Christian reasons, but for my own personal and spiritual quest, I walked my one-day stage of the Camino. From Santiago de Compostela through the old oak groves towards Finis terrae ‘the end of the world’, on the Fisterra-Muxía Way. The weather was hot, the landscape mountainous and my untrained body struggled with diarrhoea. 

But it was great! It was quiet on the Camino with twenty-two whole kilometres to contemplate. Then, when I thought I was lost, I met a wonderful woman and helper, as happens on the Camino.

During the sleepless night afterwards I was reminded of another Spanish route I had taken some years ago. With the sweet memories of the relationship that followed, the poem below came up. Just before my travel I read about Cheryl Strayed’s thousand miles hike, and I agree with her when she writes in her book ‘Wild’ “There ‘s no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What causes what to flourish or take another course….”
 

I still see her

walking towards me

in the old olive grove

Ripe and juicy like the new green harvest and

mysterious as the wild trees themselves in their

being, coming from another realm

It was somewhere down south

I saw her again

This time she came from the north

walking towards Fisterra (fini-tierra) like I did

A peregrina

Each step of her 800 kilometres carried by her maternal guru

we shared a part of the camino

sparkles on the path of our lives

reaching these green valleys of paradise

‘¡Buena suerte con tu vida!’

(Lots of luck in your life!)

Photos and text: © Adriana Sjan Bijman, 2014

Burn the Clavie!

“BURN THE CLAVIE!“

“BURN THE CLAVIE!“

old barrel wood and oil and tar

blackness

on fire !

shouting primal chanting men

and we answering

our screams HOYA

“FIRE !”

flames

hissing spitting gripping tearing

“BURN THE CLAVIE!”

swept by the crowd pushed carried

away by the flames

the red fire that

called the pagan woman in me

yelling hissing spitting

a fire being

more tar more oil more

red and orange

then black clouds filling

our skies our earth

We burn the clavie!

Coal smears in our hair

Our bodies still filled

with fire

As we see the ghost leave

And the sky lifts

And later we go home to our clan

with a half burned barrel wood

which will bring us luck

for a full year

Happy new year!

Each year the New Year old pagan fire ritual is held at Burghead in the north-east  of Scotland: The Clavie.