Not long ago, I had a life altering event. Nothing will ever be the same again.
My friend Lucas, an incredible bard and artist, gifted me this profound painting to commemorate the experience when I was at Gobeckli Tepe in Turkey recently. He captured the spirit of what happened to me.
This description might not make any sense when one observes the outward form of my life, unless you know me really well or have gone through some form of soul encounter yourself.
I had been to a place where all light had been extinguished. It was darker than a moonless night, darker than hell itself. But there was no inferno in this abyss, it was cold and only despair kept me company. The beauty of the world was no longer visible as I only saw a landscape of apparitions and hellish monsters. Spiritual knowledge, or even past experience, availed me nothing. There was no longer a path to be followed. Even the prophets and poets had abandoned me. I was resigned to the gates of hell closing in on me. Perhaps, not in this life time Benjamin, you will have to learn to fly in another.
In a split moment of lucidity I sent out a mayday. A message in a bottle was released as I drowned in a sea of unmanifested creativity and self-loathing. My soul had asked for a white knight and he came. The battering winds and hail of the tempest abated long enough for this man to embrace me in unconditional love and without judgement. He told me that it is possible to come back from the dead. And my soul believed him.
My essence was released from this most horrid and repulsive prison. Both jailed and jailor disappeared.
Days later, I sat on the sand dunes at West Shore on the edge of the Conwy estuary. In my mind’s eye I could see a tombstone. Written on it was “Benjamin J Butler Incorporated”. There lie that corpse of a past life: self-hatred of past actions, self-disgust for dishonouring the soul, the anxieties of not uncompromisingly living true purpose and the hopelessness of unlived dreams.
Out of this corpse flew a beautiful buzzard, swirling and wheeling in the sky.
The buzzard embodied graceful mastery of all the elements. Touched by the cauldron awen (poetic inspiration) and born out of the soul waters of life, it glided majestically on the thermals of the air. It was both forged by fire and radiated an unworldly luminosity and love. As it soared across the skies it had perfect vision over the lands: a hare in a verdant valley, a stag in a grove in the forest, a salmon in the chalk stream and a wolf lurking on the craggy mountains. And whilst it danced in the heavens, it still never forgot it was also of earth, a beloved child of Gaia.
I returned to my body and the saw the energies of any residual toxins removed from my heart - the poison of anger, resentment and ignorance came out like black soot. Why had it even been there? Why had it entranced me so?
And there I sat in grace with tears streaming down my face. I had met my beloved and never would I let her go again.
The Buzzards
“When evening came and the warm glow grew deeper
And every tree that bordered the green meadows
And in the yellow cornfields every reaper
And every corn-shock stood above their shadows
Flung eastward from their feet in longer measure,
Serenely far there swam in the sunny height
A buzzard and his mate who took their pleasure
Swirling and poising idly in golden light.
On great pied motionless moth-wings borne along,
So effortless and so strong,
Cutting each other's paths, together they glided,
Then wheeled asunder till they soared divided
Two valleys' width (as though it were delight
To part like this, being sure they could unite
So swiftly in their empty, free dominion),
Curved headlong downward, towered up the sunny steep,
Then, with a sudden lift of the one great pinion,
Swung proudly to a curve and from its height
Took half a mile of sunlight in one long sweep.
And we, so small on the swift immense hillside,
Stood tranced, until our souls arose uplifted
On those far-sweeping, wide,
Strong curves of flight, — swayed up and hugely drifted,
Were washed, made strong and beautiful in the tide
Of sun-bathed air. But far beneath, beholden
Through shining deeps of air, the fields were golden
And rosy burned the heather where cornfields ended.
And still those buzzards wheeled, while light withdrew
Out of the vales and to surging slopes ascended,
Till the loftiest-flaming summit died to blue.”
Martin Armstrong
The Artist
Lucas is an author, conservationist and artist who lives in the heart of the mountains of North Wales. Lucas draws inspiration for his art both from his fascination with this ancient land’s ancestral, shamanic and mythological past, as well as from a deep love and compassion for its wildlife. As can be seen from his work, Lucas’s love for nature not only extends to those creatures who currently inhabit this landscape, but also betrays a nostalgia and longing for those many wild creatures, once common, but now sadly lost. His skillful mastery of realism combined with a unique, minimalist “chiaroscuro” style, powerfully captures both the soul of his subjects whilst evoking an intimacy not often found in contemporary art.
Let me know if you are interested in his work.
Well done chief! For me recently it was the owl in a darkened forest.