magic circles

Events

And the way they change things

Hello everyone. Where have I been? Well, Paldywan’s back on the holy warpath.

Sounds a bit strange, that, but it has indeed been strange. Mars, customarily the god of war, is to me a god of encounter resolution. Sometimes, life leads us into a fight – but the destruction involved depends a lot on how well we deal with the conflicts within ourselves. A great general in history once said, “Every drop of blood spilt charges its price” – it’s true. So the aim is to achieve the best all-round outcomes with the minimum of damage, but it’s a rollercoaster, the stakes are high and often the full results are slow in coming.

It wasn’t my choosing – I fell into it. I have this strange karmic pattern where I’m standing there, suddenly finding myself in the thick of it and sometimes able to pull off a remarkable solution – or at least, avoid the worst. In this instance I served as a honeypot, unwittingly attracting and exposing a crime ring involved in fraud, kidnapping, drugs and probably anything. By dint of doing the right things in the opening moments, I landed up being the only one who could follow it through – online from my desk, here on the farm.

But then, I wasn’t exactly unwilling. I’ve been feeling frustrated recently, physically unable to complete my humanitarian work, and this kind of stuff is the kind of thing I’m good at. Being rather hyper-focused, I’m calm in crises. “Ah, we have a situation” – some Palestinians used to quote me, trying to imitate my English accent, with a cheeky smile. As an Aspie, while I’m seemingly not very good at close relationships, in other contexts I can get inside the head of a person with a gun and talk them down, if necessary. Well, thus far it has succeeded, though there have indeed been ‘situations’.

I thought I’d left all that behind when cancer came my way three years ago, but the universe had other ideas – a few weeks ago I was requisitioned to play the role of a knight or a bishop in someone else’s chessgame. Again.

It’s an anti-fraud operation, now in a few countries. It’s delicate, changing hourly and daily, and I’m handling part of it. The short story is that, when I was blackmailed a few weeks ago, the first three blackmailers were small-time amateurs trying their luck to make a few bucks (two apologised afterwards), but the fourth was different – it emerged later that he was part of a crime gang, though we didn’t know it at the time. An anti-fraud agent – a really good chap, from Britain – handled the case and eventually had it wrapped up, deleting the fraudsters’ computers. Peace descended. Or so we thought.

Then suddenly, I received cries for help – the gang were coming after him, armed, and he needed to get away, pronto. They captured him, together with a woman, Felicia, who had bravely sheltered him, and her three-year old child, Phyllis. Suddenly, I was their only lifeline… and it went on from there. I managed to connect with his anti-fraud company (they work for banks), and since then I’ve been helping them.

The story went on through all sorts of complexities for twelve rather long days – it was demanding and I had to pace myself. That’s why I haven’t been blogging. After a week I managed to free Felicia and Phyllis, then further complications happened, and following that Felicia and another anti-fraud agent working for the company were attacked while driving in a car. Both have been in hospital at death’s door for some days, though on Wednesday (newmoon) I heard from the doctor that she had regained consciousness – what a relief. Meanwhile, he’s still on life-support. The unfolding situation is still rather hair-raising.

Poor little Phyllis is for now in the caring hands of strangers (I’m fixing arrangements for her), and the original British agent is still in captivity somewhere. Here am I, hidden in the far beyond, coordinating online with doctors, agents, taxi-drivers, handlers and sundry oddbods, fixing money, fixing heads, and with three or four lives at stake. Just a normal day on Earth, haha.

You meet some amazing people. A taxi-driver witnessed the attack, took the two people to hospital, then took them to another hospital and stayed with them for two nights and a day. I have just heard that he has lost his job as a result. What a good man – we’ll help him restore things. The doctor I’ve been dealing with has also been remarkable, though his wife probably doesn’t see him much.

Many people urge me to stay out of this kind of thing. Well, yes, but you’re also asking me to let these people die. That’s an option I don’t spend much time thinking about. In the middle of a crisis like this, you bond quite quickly and deeply with people. The first agent, in our last exchange on Skype before they got him, said he’d like to visit me on the farm one day, and I said, “You’re on, that’s a deal”. We haven’t spoken since, but I’m holding that thought, and I think he, wherever he is, is holding it too.

This hyperfocus business is strange. Another task I needed to do at the time was to reduce the length of my book Shining Land and remove some of the pictures – the removed stuff will go on the website. Bruce in Glastonbury, who is typesetting the book, recommended cuts because book production costs are rising and I want to keep it manageably priced. I’d been putting off this job but, when the above operation started up, happening in bursts throughout each day, I used the betweentimes for re-editing the book. It was a way of staying focused during a testy, turbulent, unsettling fortnight. So the book is now done and sent back to Bruce.

When I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2019 my life changed. Then last winter a crisis took me down deep and, by summer, it bounced me back up again, raked out but sensing there was something in life left to do. I seem now to be in a new chapter. My relative disability, aloneness and isolation, more a problem six months ago than now, mean I have time and space to do things – at least, those things I can nowadays do. Near-death and ‘chemo-brain’ have taken me through a level shift in the way I see and understand things, and while in some respects I’m saying similar stuff to 30-40 years ago, something is coming out between the lines that’s deeper, wider and stronger. Which goes to show, even fearsome things like cancer can have their blessings, if we let things be that way.

Having emerged from my shell during 2022, I’ve been cogitating what to do in 2023. What’s taking shape is this…

First, a number of Magic Circles – covering 21st Century esoterics and living as a stellar soul with an earthly contribution to make. Some will be like the Magic Circles of 2022 and at least one will involve a talking stick circle and energy-work.

Second, an online series of monthly Magic Moments (in the far beyond). These are for friends in other countries, those unable to attend Magic Circles and any Magic Circle attendees who wish to join in. Each month I’ll highlight a bundle of useful knowledge and insights, about the universe, time, the nature of our times, ancient wisdom, parapolitics, psychic geoengineering, inner aid work, healing, rescuing souls and whatever else comes up at the time – that kind of thing.

Each of these events will stand for itself, so you can join whatever you like, whenever you can. They will roll along, each rather different, unfolding as they will. They’ll all be reasonably priced and as accessible as possible. I might do one or two events for fellow cancer and terminal patients, if that is sought. Details will follow in the New Year. If you’re good at organising and have outreach in your area or network, please contact me if you’d like to host an event.

Then, third, while doing the above, I’ll be watching to see if some participants are up for starting a world-healing project with longterm aims, to continue and grow after I’ve gone. This is Version Three of earlier world-healing projects of the 1990s and since (the Hundredth Monkey Project and the Flying Squad born out of it). If and when a workable quorum of people forms, such a project can start.

There are people and bits to fit into place, and it’s an organic group process resting on who turns up and how it develops. I have a packet of seeds to hand over, with a little experience in growing them, but the garden will be evolved by the group itself – my shelf life is limited. In the 2023 Magic Circles, amongst other things we’ll have some tasters of this kind of inner work that will be useful to you whether or not you’re interested in the project. Without wanting to sound grandiose about it, there’s something ‘heaven blest’ about this, and some people might like to work within a reality-field of this kind.

Ultimately it’s all about gradually cranking up group synergy to a level where a group’s healing power is greatly increased – and the world needs it. This takes time, since a group is as strong as its weakest links, and it needs approaching in a somewhat matter-of-fact, steady and diligent way, starting at the beginning and giving it time. The Flying Squad managed 20 years, doing amazing work, though where we didn’t succeed was crossing generations and replacing ourselves with new members – so we ran out of numbers and steam. Third time lucky?

I might have only three or four years left for midwifing this idea: its success rests on the circle of people who step in and work together. The project will be pitched so that it is not too demanding in terms of commitment, because beavering away at this work longterm is more important than creating dramatic firework displays that then fizzle out. The basic commitment involves a meditation, wherever you are, once a week on Sundays, plus two or three weekend meetings per year, and there will be scope for greater and lesser involvement, to reflect everyone’s circumstances and availability, which can also change over time.

If there are people who feel right doing this, and if the right critical bits fall into place, then we can start, perhaps in late 2023 or in 2024. It will start in Britain, but folks in other countries will be able to participate remotely and, you never know, it might spread. If this sets a bell dinging, think about it over wintertime, and I’ll come out with more in a while. This is just a tender germinating seed at present, but it might one day become a tree. We shall see. Also, if option three doesn’t lift off, then options one and two will still be good.

If there’s one message I’m moved to convey, it’s this: whatever your path, and whatever your calling, do pursue it.

Now is not the time for holding back and awaiting another day. In whatever way works for you and lifts you up, whatever is your ability and contribution, it is time to come out with it and do it. If I can be of assistance in that, by doing what I do, then welcome. As I keep quoting, ‘For the triumph of evil it is necessary only that good people do nothing’.

I have some personal bits to put in place. Any offers? I need a part-time, nimble-fingered, literate PA with digital and communication skills and the sort of character and availability that would work well with a person like me. You don’t have to be in Cornwall, though that might be helpful, but the main thing is that we need to be able to sync well with each other. I also need an experienced techy Zoom moderator for the online classes, located anywhere, for a few hours each month. I’m looking for a further minder and companion too, living in Cornwall or Devon, to work alongside Penny – it’s occasional, not hard, you need to be a driver, there might be trips away, and I’m looking for someone for whom it would be uplifting and right. I can pay only expenses but, when it works well, there will be ample magic payoffs.

I’ve been quiet yet it hasn’t been quiet. Been going through some big emotional let-gos too, which have been both a wrench and the lightening of a weight. When I’ve wrapped up this operation sufficiently I’ll enjoy a getaway trip away sometime, somewhere. West Penwith, stuck out in the Atlantic, is a windy place in winter, and it sure has been whistling and whooshing around, with sunshine and monsoons in quick succession.

The cattle are down in the lower fields and the birds hide in the bushes and trees when they find the Atlantic coming at them with full-on gusto. The crows and jackdaws down in the woods, hundreds of them, work up a racket when dawn is coming – they’re my alarm clock – and in the evening they do flighty, crarking displays before settling in the evening, reminding me that it’s time to start thinking about dinner. I forget these things, you see – it’s an unhelpful aspect of hyper-focus.

Please put in a prayer for Felicia, child Phyllis and the two agents, both of them good men. I want them all alive and okay. It means a lot to me. Thank you for that. This is not the greatest of the world’s troubles, but if we all deal with our own little chunk of reality, together we’ll make inroads into turning this world of ours into the kind of place it really needs to be. Gaia needs a laying on of hands.

Thank you for reading. You mean a lot to me too.

With love, Palden

Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html (or on Spotify, Apple and Google)
Shining Land: www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/
All the photos here are from West Penwith in Cornwall, where I live – and a reminder of summertime.

Tempus Fuckit

and scrunchy junction-points

A scene from the Buckfastleigh Magic Circle. Galen and Jahnavi, behind, had just finished playing music and we were ready for lift-off

With some pics from the Buckfastleigh Magic Circle, Sept 2022

We’re going through a really scrangly time at present, and I’m hearing of a number of people going through it, and I am too. There’s an astrological transit, Saturn square Uranus, which is turning out to be sharp-edged, hard and grating – a conflict between ideas-perceptions-expectations and evolving hard, factual reality. It’s all crunching hard in the public sphere and in our personal worlds. This seems to be a gritty threshold point on an evolving process.

A Saturn square Uranus would normally have quite a strong effect on events and atmospheres, but it wouldn’t be earth-shattering. However, at present the world is tense, insecure, ill at ease and loaded with hazard. It’s the kind of thing where the death of one woman can cause an uprising in a place like Iran – the Arab revolutions ten years ago started like that too. Social wildfires break out. It’s all to do with bottled-up, high-pressure underlying feelings in humanity that are so loaded and volatile that a ripple of energy can set things off. This Saturn square Uranus is a bit like that. Its influence is pumped up by eight billion people going through an intense time.

But there’s more to this too, and it’s longer term. We are in times of historic, planetary change, and the stakes are high. I’d break down the various intensities into three.

Jackie Juno does the introduction. She and Jeanne Hampshire organised it.

One is the bottled-up energy left over from around 2009-2012: this was an opportunity for change but little really happened, and the genie was more or less stuffed back into the bottle. In 2012 the future turned into the present, and everyone was forced to realise things were getting really serious. This bottled-up feeling means that there’s a big glob of unprocessed frustration, regret, loss, injustice and need for change that is sitting there in the collective unconscious, simmering and waiting to explode. The heat needs to rise only a little to start the fizzing – and there’s an uprising every few months somewhere in the world now. So it doesn’t necessarily need a major astrological configuration to spark off major events, in conditions like this. There’s a lot of pent-up energy left over from previous big configurations where fundamental issues failed to be processed – the current war in Ukraine, for example, arises from issues not sorted out around the Uranus-Neptune conjunction of 1993.

The second is a tidal shift that’s going on now and by 2024, when Pluto moves into Aquarius for twenty years until 2044. Twenty years of Aquarian issues. We’ve been through a period since the 1980s where Capricorn has been strong – money, law, technology, governments, corporates, tradition, hierarchies, resources – and now it’s going to change. Briefly put, this is about the wisdom and the madness of crowds – the world public. Do the people serve the system or does the system serve the people, and how much of which? It also concerns social control, mass beliefs and behaviours, the rights of individuals and of collectivities, inclusion and exclusion, the competing interests of nations and the world, the battle of new against old ideas, the forces of polarisation and solidarity, and human issues in the social context. This shift of themes is beginning to gain momentum, but it will take two years more.

I’m leading an inner journey to find the source of our souls. I was in there with everyone else, far gone.

When the economy rises, society falls, and when the economy sinks, society rises. The seesaw is tipping over to a new direction right now, especially for the rich world. Here’s another issue too: we cannot really resolve the ecological and climatic issues before us unless society itself goes through a fundamental shift – because it is society, humanity, which has to do the resolving. To do this we need to agree sufficiently on what we are trying to do and work together to pull off a miracle.

The third is a case where the future can exert a causative influence on the present. In the late 2020s, around 2025-28, it’s all going to be going like the clappers. So right now it’s a bit like the low-tide, eerie silence of an impending tsunami – the future is sucking us toward it. The bad news is that it’s going to prove to be all too much for everyone and, the way the world is, some people will get scrunched. The good news is that this avalanche of events and changes will loosen up many stuck, interrelated issues, and it will also bring a rush of solutions. It’s an acceleration.

The key issues of the time will be social priorities (Pluto in Aquarius), new and changing ideas and perspectives (Uranus in Gemini) and leadership and power issues (Neptune in Aries). These three will form a triangle, or an energy-thrum, which actually will be very positive, a florescence under duress. But, since we have so many unresolved issues in the world, unatrtended to in recent decades, things could get difficult. If we had started the necessary changes fifty years ago, this would likely have been a very productive time.

Look, I’m standing without sticks – lifting up others lifts me up too

But it will perhaps not be as nasty and depressing as we saw in the 2010s. There we had bad stuff with few solutions, while in the late 2020s we’ll get bad stuff with lots of solutions – if, that is, we treat them that way. Things are likely to start rushing so fast that fundamental changes will need to start happening, urgently and pragmatically, simply to deal with the onrush of events and cascading outcomes arising from them. The gift in the situation is that, at last, things will be loosening up and accelerating. The Millennial generation will also be stepping into positions of influence.

So we’re in a time of tension where there are forces pulling in a variety of directions, and the future is currently like a coin spinning in the air. There’s a sense that something is coming, and there’s fear and anticipation around it in the collective psyche of humanity. There’s also a lot of frustration and disagreement about what to do about it. Questions we have been avoiding for decades are all suddenly crowding in, and this will continue. There’s a feeling of jaded disappointment and disaffection in the collective psyche, after a trail of horrendous scenes in recent decades – atrocities, wars, refugees, hunger, disasters – and this adds to the bottled-up, stuck feeling of our time, a feeling that, no matter what we do, nothing will change. Energies of growth are being held down by the weight of accumulated past decisions, habits and procedures, and by the manic busyness of a coffee-driven modern culture that is running so fast it has forgotten where it’s running to and why everyone is running so fast in the first place. There’s a lot of opposition, division, diversion, distraction and blocking going on.

So that’s why it’s rather intense at present. It’s going on for me too – it feels like I’m processing too many issues to be able to be clear any of them properly, and all of them depend on something else. I’ve been missing loved ones, particularly one of them, and fed up with my own patterns and with being single, and groaningly facing the fact that I might have to write another book, and dreading winter, and fed up with tribal politics, and feeling overloaded with things to pay attention to, and all sorts of stuff like that. The usual grinding stuff in which I sometimes get lost. Which I did today – I got quite down about it.

So I went to bed this afternoon to go inside myself, rumbling around in the netherworlds, then to surface and eventually reach above the clouds. One result was that it came upon me to get up and write this blog. It was Caroline in Glastonbury who had jogged me to do it this morning – she has a way of constructively jogging me – so thanks, Caroline. But I had resisted – the thought of sitting at my keyboard didn’t light me up. When she or others give me the elbow, I do sometimes resist at first, but that’s just an Aspie thing – I ruminate over such prompts once they’ve gone and eventually come to the rightness of what they tried to say. If, that is, it was right, and if it was not quite right, it helped me work things out and was a gift anyway. So this blog came out eventually, and I hope it gave some useful clues.

If you want to read the bigger picture of astrological trends in our time, try this: https://penwithbeyond.blog/2020s/

Love from me. I’m in a much better mood now, by the way! So thanks for that.

Paldywan

Photos are by Penny Cornell.
Audio recordings from the Buckfastleigh Magic Circle: www.palden.co.uk/podtalks.html

Blogs: https://penwithbeyond.blog
Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Everything: www.palden.co.uk

Tea break, even when in the fifth dimension

Dumnonia rises again

Making Magic Circles

[Devon and Cornwall were once united as Dumnonia until the Saxons took Devon a millennium ago and ethically cleansed it. I’ve always felt that was one of history’s mistakes.]

If there’s a swarming of UFOs over Buckfast Abbey on Saturday afternoon, it’s okay, it’s just our lot doing a quickie. They’re doing some frequency modulation and levitatory assistance while us lot downstairs are cranking up a transdimensional forcefield down at Southpark community centre.

Yes, the Cornish are coming back, bearing a load of insight detonators and love-bombs but, since Dartmoor is geologically stable, we’re not setting out to create too many earthquakes. Just some gentle, barely-perceptible humming, though it might make a few loose bits in the vicinity rattle surreptitiously.

Penny will be making sure the urn is hot for a cuppa afterwards. It’ll be okay – not exactly routine maintenance, but we don’t anticipate major security breaches, though we might stretch the laws of nature a wee bit, but it won’t hurt. We’ll have it sorted by the time we’re finished. And we’ll wash up the dishes afterwards – though there might be a whiff of incense left behind.

There’s a jackdaw on my roof, crarking away trying to wake me up, but it hasn’t twigged that I’m already up – my computer keyboard is already being finger-pounded and all is well here at The Lookout. Bags almost packed, walking sticks at the ready, blueberry muesli waiting for nutritive ingestion, and I’m finishing everything off before Penny comes in a van to pluck me up, collect Jahnavi and Galen and teleport us up the A30 toward England. She’s dropping me off near Scorhill stone circle to meet Rebecca and they’ll camp down near Holne tonight. Rebecca and I have some homework to do – we’re cooking up something for the future and getting aligned for tomorrow. Then we all meet up late morning, ready for… um… well, I’ve got something prepared, but….

At my last gig in Glastonbury we went off on a completely different trajectory, and all my prep, such as it was, just evaporated. So who knows where this will go? But I’m hoping to fix things so that people in the circle can back plug back into the place they came from, and this might prove useful in coming times. You see, it’s not much point trying to figure out where we’re going next unless we have a clearer grasp of where we’re coming from and why we’re here in the first place. So, getting anchored back to that is critical in clueing in to what to do next and how to do it. Not that there’s anything there that we don’t already know, but, well, problem is, living in this strange, intense, contradictory and rather heavyweight world, we forget this stuff.

I do too. I struggle too, believe me. But the stuff I wade around in becomes fermenting compost for something else, and the slough of despond eventually turns into a healing spring, and it all works out in the end. That’s what we’re here for, after all – to make the best out of a pretty tricky and convoluted situation called ‘life on Earth’.

Nowadays I’m blessed with the emergent presence of a growing circle of bright souls who really make a difference for me. As a cancer patient I have to struggle through each day, more than many of my fellow mortals, and it’s uphill most of the way. I’m so heartened by people’s response and support to my writings, utterings and appearances. It’s really meaningful that, in my current constrained state, I can make a contribution that others seem to value. I’m one of those souls who, if he can’t make a contribution, tends to wander off to find somewhere he can.

I’m lucky to have two really sharp characters around me nowadays who don’t let me get away with anything. It’s great. They’re on my case in the most caring of ways, and I’m much blessed. They scrape me up when I’m in a splurge, and if I’m going off track, somehow they seem to nudge me back again, often with one short sentence or one little action that flips the situation and lights up my smile. This summer, Penny and Rebecca have been minding me on my journeys upcountry, and it has worked really well. I’ve got both of them this weekend, lucky boy.

There’s something going on here, with them and with others who are hoving into view and making connections. One thing I’m really liking about this is that, since my life-span is short, as far as I can see, my hope is to leave something behind for people to continue and take forward from there. As a rather mission-driven person, it looks like I’m being given a last chance to see if I can fulfill something that’s meaningful to me and potentially valuable to folks like you. I have Jupiter in Pisces, and it doesn’t look as if I’ll be leaving money and estates, mashallah (as God has willed it), but I might be able to leave something else instead, inshallah (if it is the will of God).

Oh, and by the way, I’m not big on God, actually, but, by using that term, I’m alluding to something many people will, I think, understand. Since That Which Can Be Named is Not What It Is – and neither is it something else either. Perhaps I spent too much time in the Holy Land and God rubbed off on me. But actually, he’s rather an interesting chap – very busy and in demand.

Anyway, regarding plans, we shall see. All I can say is that something is likely to emerge in 2023, and events and developments will guide and shape it. It seems I am being given the grace of time – even though, medically, I do have problems, and I do feel rather tired deep down and ready to go home. It feels as if I’m being given a gift, and this has perked me up. When I’m standing before you, holding forth, you see me change before your eyes and my posture rises as I get flooded with a blessing-wave drawn through by you. Because it’s for you.

I rather like doing this – it’s something I can do, while I can, and it’s a capacity that came as a bizarre compensation for having cancer. It’s nothing big, but it is necessary, and I’m not by any means the only one doing it. All of us are challenged to do it, each in our own ways, expressed through our actions of thought, word and deed in the situations we conduct our lives in. We’re here to bring solutions, at a time when the world is in deep trouble. If what I am doing resonates with you, then stay tuned because, inshallah, all things being well, something will happen. It’s in gestation stages at present.

And time is what stops everything happening all at once. Which is one of the experieces we came to Earth for – to live inside time, so that our experiences are strung out along a stream of present moments, on one level sorted sequentially into days, weeks and years, but on another level sorted by the quality and depth of those experiences, in impactful more than sequential order.

For those of you who’d like to be there at the Magic Circle but can’t, keep your antennae up at the time and, if you ‘get’ us at any moment, that’s because you’re there with us – hello, and welcome. One way to do this is to listen to my recent podcast, ‘Soul Tribes’ (link below), and that’ll help you tune in. We’re in session from 12 noon to 5ish on Saturday, a few hundred yards from Buckfast Abbey in Devon.

There will probably be two twentyish minute occasions of inner process and meditation, but I can’t say exactly when. In the world healing process (unless something changes) we’re likely to be visiting Pakistan to help with the inner aspect of the mop-up – millions of souls are going through it there. So have a think about that. This is an exercise in using your spirit, your experience and your imagination in working with ‘inner aid’, and the trick is to find the ways you’re good at it, and the ways you can ease people’s hearts and help them find answers, or talk to the Himalayan glaciers, or help the helpers. When we do this kind of ‘surgical’ approach in larger groups, a lot can get covered – it has a homoeopathic, radiative, channel-clearing effect on the general situation in Pakistan and in the wider world. There will be a protective force field around us, so if you experience difficulty entering, check your motivation and try entering more slowly, because that’s the key.

Bless you all. Time to go. Thanks for being you. Hopefully there will be sound recordings of the Magic Circle online within a week or so afterwards.

Palden

Magic Circles: www.palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html
Pods from the Far Beyond: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Avebury Magic Circle recording: www.palden.co.uk/podtalks.html

Transmogrifications

and perhaps a task to do

It was deeply moving to walk into the Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury to a hall full of amazing people. I had been there so many times over the years, organising things or performing, and now, here we were in 2022, and these people were all waiting to hear whatever I was to come up with.

Whatever, indeed. I had a rough idea of talking points, but my talk didn’t follow that track. It went deeper and further than I thought it might. It’s funny when that happens: something in me suddenly decides to change course or to go deeper or faster, and off we go, plunging into the unknown.

While I’m speaking, I see the faces of people in the audience but my normal way of assessing their responses, watching body-language, is kinda switched off. Something else is doing it. I’m strangely unaware of what I’m saying. At the end of my talk, when I stopped and saw people lit up and clapping, I got a funny feeling of relief, as if it was a surprise. Which, in a way, it was.

There came a moment when my mind interjected on the side, wondering whether the talk was dragging and drooping, but that thought evaporated as fast as it came. Next day, Caroline, whose perceptions I find worth listening to, reported that my talk kept lifting, building and covering a lot of ground. I was glad to hear that, since it’s a bit strange being the person who missed much of what went on.

I didn’t miss everything. I’m aware of the gist of what I’m saying but I’m not following it – it goes past me. This isn’t verbatim channelling – I don’t get words or word-based concepts, and it’s me who does the translation and interpretation of what they’re trying to bring forth. A sub-verbal part of my psyche is busy meta-processing. My brains process the concepts and verbiage. And I need to slip into a rather altered, hyperintuitive state to do it.

Bundles of material are dropped in and it’s for me to unravel and unpack them. There’s also plenty of stuff lodged in my psyche from years of doing this. I’ve got used to the feeling of a dropped-in bundle and what to do with it. I wouldn’t call myself an advanced psychic – it’s just that I’ve chosen to listen, take note, hear and accept what comes up inside as real and valid. Not indiscriminately, since it still goes through my filters, to make sure it makes sense.

Over time, things have evolved. I went through a critical breakthrough at age 42. Up to then, something in my busy intellect was interfering. Something doubted what I was getting, trying to detach from it, check the facts or worry over the improbably crazy yet ultimately quite useful insights I sometimes came up with. Then, one day, I had a deep inner experience. I found myself walking backwards toward an abyss – and walking backwards is something we humans are built to avoid at all costs. I had a moment of panic, followed by a critical moment in which I made an act of trust.

I went over, falling backwards over the edge. Falling, falling, this was an Alice in Wonderland moment, and I didn’t know what would happen. Would I just go splat? Suddenly, in mid-fall, something inside me snapped together, I turned, spread my wings and found myself flying, and a tremendous sense of uplift and a feeling of agency followed. I was flying over a wide landscape, safe on my wings. It became clear that, in the innerworlds, I had to trust my perceptions, natural capacities and ‘inner friends’ like never before. From then on, it all worked better and clearer.

I’ve been public speaking since age 15 – and, before that, would you believe, I was quiet and shy. I became good at notes-free speaking. Up to age 35ish, I did it on thought and preparation, but then something started happening. Two weeks before an event I’d have a clear idea what to speak about and how to do it, but as the time came closer the idea would melt away. This worried me. I was suffering fear of embarassment and of screwing up in public, and I knew it. One day I was nervous and decided, for want of anything better, to entrust myself to it, let go of fear and simply get on stage, take three deep breaths and start with the first thing that entered my head. This worked brilliantly. It became my new approach. But the trade-off was that, after that time, I was no longer fully aware of what I’d said while speaking.

Palden at Avebury. Photo by Rebecca Brain.

In the last three years cancer has changed my psyche. A combination of the cancer, the chemo drugs, the deep states I entered while ill, the fatigue and long hours alone… these moved the circuitry around, changing my perspective and perceptions. My capacity to deal with facts, names, information, decisions and left-brained issues declined, and my right-brained, creative, insightful, intuitive side grew stronger. I became less concerned about life and its intricacies and more like the Fool on the Hill. Out came my blogs and podcasts, surprising me at what was coming out and the way it was doing so. Something new was starting up.

The fluent side of me is what you see in my talks. But ask me whether I want tea or coffee and I’ll probably look blankly at you. On Glastonbury High St an old friend stopped me. Joseph had changed, and it was at least fifteen years since I’d seen him. I looked blankly at him – a very Aspie response. To him it might look like nothing’s happening but, inside, I’m searching memory banks, piecing together gallons of feeling-tones and associations, often too slowly to give a decent response right then. He must have thought I didn’t recognise him – I did, but I needed five minutes to piece a hundred bits together. Sorry, Joseph.

In spring 2022, something in me started wanting to come out of hiding. I was tired of hanging around at home ‘shielding’ and getting bogged down in risk-aversion. Something new had emerged in my blogs and podcasts and people were appreciating them. I thought of doing events and ‘magic circles’, moved by a sense that I might be popping my clogs before long. I wanted to find a way of seeing many friends in a way I could manage, and pass on some gems before I went. I thought it would do me good. Besides, I had run out of interest in my own company.

It’s funny how life can trick us into things. My late aunt Hilary Bedford was closely involved with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in 1942-3 and, at the time, they thought they were breaking Hitler’s codes. Well, yes, they were, but the significant thing for which history will more enduringly remember them is that they made big steps in inventing the computer and laying the foundations for artificial intelligence. Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans – and that’s what happened to John Lennon too, after he wrote those words in a song for his son. In turn, when I was planning the magic circles, as a way of meeting people and sharing some insights, I wasn’t aware that something else was going to start happening. But it did.

On my trip upcountry in August 2022, I did two magic circles and attended an Oak Dragon camp. All sorts of things happened in those two weeks. The experience lit me up and a profound healing and breakthrough came with it. Something started emerging that I hadn’t been aware of. Back in May I’d got the message that “There’s something more for you to do…”, but only in August did it start revealing itself.

When you come close to death, as I did last winter, you become acutely aware of what you haven’t done in life. Then, when you die, you have to live with that. Mashallah, it’s done and gone. In my life I’ve made some progress in the matter of consciousness, deep geopolitics, history-redemption and world healing, and I felt a kind of duty to leave some of this knowhow behind – it was a task not done. It took my illness of last winter to wring this realisation out of me, and by summer an initial vision had emerged.

The whole picture came quickly: suddenly one evening I saw how it could work. Well, theoretically. That was the 1% inspiration bit, and now we get to the 99% perspiration bit. It’s time now to mull it over and map it out a bit more. Also I must figure out my capacity to do things, how much active service I have left, what I would need, and how all this fits. Do I have what it takes? Do I need simply to suggest ideas and set a tone, or do I need to put in a few years of active engagement?

How small or big, and how discreet or how public should this be? It would need setting up so that it works well when I’m gone. There’s an extra personal twist: it’s my last chance, and getting things wrong is not really an option. Currently I might have three, five or, at a push, seven years to play with. And the best way to make the gods laugh is to tell them your plans.

On Thursday I was so unwell that I found myself wondering whether the gods indeed were laughing… I was weak, wan, clogged and weighed down, spending much of the day in bed. I wasn’t dealing as well as normal with my cancer drugs, administered on Wednesday. I think it was also a ‘healing crisis’ of sorts. Sometimes an illness comes to help us meta-process big changes in one fell swoop – some downtime and a re-boot are needed. A lot gets sorted out at once, in a kind of controlled burn or a induced churn. It was all about opening up to the future and dealing with the past and the full facts of my situation. But I was on my way back up by Friday.

I’ve gone quickly from a quiet to an active life. Something rather magical seems to be happening. It’s a possible coming together of a new constellation of people, happening rather naturally without deliberate action from me – except that people coming forward all know me or are tweaked by what I’m flagging up. This kind of thing has happened before and I recognise the symptoms.

Caroline urged me to write down my ideas, but I’m not so sure. The prospect of sitting at a computer for hours on end, writing yet another book (my thirteenth), doesn’t really light me up – though something will need recording somehow, and it might be better in audio. I feel more of a need to focus on people-foundations and processes for evolving things since, if this project is to work, it will rest on these. Perhaps I’ll assist energetically from upstairs once I’m gone, but it will be up to the living to do with it what they can and will. That’s fascinating: my obsolescence is built in. I feel rather good about that.

I’m fermenting these questions, waiting for clarity. And giving other people thinking time. It’s important also to do a devil’s advocate job on myself. Why not just hang out in Cornwall and take it easy, walking the cliffs, tinkering around and writing the occasional blog? Or I could go to Sweden or Palestine – even Mali or Kirgyzstan. Or I could be a guest speaker at lots of gigs and supplement my pension talking about cancer and clog-popping. I could even join the grumbling classes and become a pain in the ass for the younger generation.

What will be will be, and it’s not really the goal but the journey that matters. And the next step. In Buckfastleigh in Devon on Saturday (24th Sept 2020) there is my last planned magic circle for a while – until something else happens. These magic circles are evolving each time, and this one will have some live music and perhaps more energy-working than before. We shall see what emerges. You’re welcome to come, though do book in advance. It’s all about soul-networks, channelling our root-source, world healing, remembering the reasons we came, and sharing something rather special.

I cannot organise future events myself, but something will unfold in future, inshallah. In future I’m likely to spend more time visiting places, but I shall stay based in Cornwall because my spiritual roots and inspiration lie here, and without them I am lost. Which wouldn’t be helpful at all. Something is happening, times are changing and all is well.

Lots of love from me. Palden.

Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Magic Circles: www.palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html
Recording of my Glastonbury talk: www.palden.co.uk/podtalks.html

The Tipping of the Scales

A PodTalk and a Magic Circle

I’ve been away on Dartmoor and in Glastonbury, where I delivered a talk on Friday evening. It was really moving to see everyone who came, to feel their good vibes and interest and the atmosphere that evening in the Assembly Rooms. Hostess Samia Gelfling’s intro and outro to my talk were remarkable.

I wish it were possible to get round everyone in the audience personally, but nowadays three meaningful conversations a day are all I can do, and it would take ages to do justice to everyone.

Doing these talks, it’s my way of connecting with as many people as I can, within my energy-range. There’s a deep smile lurking in my heart. I’m now enjoying being back in Cornwall for a necessary reflection pause and for my cancer treatment (and its after-effects).

Magic Circle in Devon

Click to book for the Buckfastleigh Magic Circle

Next up comes a ‘Magic Circle’ in Buckfast (near Totnes) on 24th September 2022. This will be a 5-6 hour session in three segments. It’s all about our origins, the soul tribes we come from, passing over to the otherworlds, bringing otherworlds into our lives, world healing and the way the world is going.

Stuff like that. You’re really welcome. We’ll also have a dash of chi gung with Jeanne Hampshire, garnished with some live music from two friends visiting from Oregon in Turtle Island, Jahnavi and Galen. And me, rabbiting on at you and lifting the cork off your crown chakra, with a little help from my friends.

Are we visitors from far away having a human experience or humans blessed with periodic uplifts? Soul-food for folks who’ve been at it for some time and are looking for new angles on this strange experience called life on Earth.

A new PodTalk

Following my talk in Glastonbury, I’ve now uploaded a recording of it (you can stream it or download it as an MP3). It’s 1hr 47mins long. The last quarter of it was taken up with some really interesting questions and contributions from the floor. Find it here:

palden.co.uk/podtalks.html

It was great visiting Glastonbury. It is, after all, a pilgrimage place, and that’s what it is and does well. On Saturday I braved the town, had a maca smoothie, a few of those deeply meaningful conversations, some path-crossings with old friends in the street, and retreated twice to the calmness of the Abbey to ‘just sit’ and to defrag from the buzzy atmosphere and dense electromagnetics.

Glastonbury is a vortical place of contrasts, a karma-exchange and somewhere between an experiential kaleidoscope and a transdimensional roundabout. In vibe, it’s rather like Jerusalem, actually – though much less extreme – while both equally share a similar craziness, intensity and bizarre sanctity.

Thanks to Lily Lionheart for her hospitality, to Jonathan and Penny for trans-Dumnonian teleportation and to Rebecca Brain for her magical companionship and for being a superb minder and a really interesting person.

Inshallah, there will be more.

With love, Paldywan

Booking for the Devon Magic Circle:
trybooking.com/uk/events/landing?eid=30869
About the Magic Circles: palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html
Podcasts: palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Website: palden.co.uk

Return

and full circles

It’s fascinating. I’m in a state of positive shock. Six months ago I was in the lap of darkness, falling, flailing, falling… and it has all completely reversed.

This is weird, and I wasn’t quite ready for this! It has happened so fast and completely. So I’m making some big adjustments. This is one of the things about cancer – as least, for me – since everything impacts so much more than it did BC (before cancer). I’ve become more permeable, more affected and vulnerable, in all areas of life. This has its good and tricky sides. At times in the last month I’ve been overcome with pure joy, rather childlike and overwhelmed – I break out in tears so easily nowadays. Perhaps I should hire my services to a water company to help them restore the water table.

Some months ago I asked myself what I would have been doing if I hadn’t contracted cancer. Answer: just carrying on. What has happened since cancer joined me? I’ve been living each day quite intensely, in a very here-and-now way, and the difficulties I’ve had have given me a completely new focus. It’s now all about staying alive, staying happy, living life fully and resolving the loose threads of my life as best I can, while I can. In a bizarre and at times painful way, that’s called ‘a new chapter of life’. And I’ve been given it.

This is where free will comes in. Free will is not about Toyatas and Volkwagens, or left-wing, right wing, or this or that. Free will is all about how we deal with what we’ve got and what’s in front of us and, particularly, staying true to the root reason why we chose to come into life in the first place. Because we did choose. No one is here by accident.

This then leads to the question: what kind of life am I setting out to live? Well, the issue with me is that watching TV, eating, socialising and carrying on with a routine don’t tend to lift me up – I lose interest quite quickly. That’s an aspect of life on Earth that doesn’t do much for me. I have this strange obsession with having a deeply meaningful life. Some or all of you might suffer this syndrome too.

I can’t sit around waiting for something – though much of my life has involved a lot of abiding and patience. And strangely, at times when life has been most difficult, I get deeply motivated to do things. Not necessarily about the problem at hand, but more about some sort of strategy that changes the game more than it changes the situation. I seem to be at it again. Strangely, it took the cancer experience to really get me fired up. Or perhaps sufficiently desperate that I have no alternative! Free will is sometimes about making a choiceless choice.

I wake up with instructions, sometimes. Well, it feels like that. Something fizzy is inserted in my psyche and it starts fermenting. Before long, a whole picture of possibilities has formed. But nowadays, I’m wise enough to know that, first, I must put it on the ‘perhaps’ shelf in my psyche, to let it sit there for a while. This will show whether what I see is solid and feeling dead right. If it isn’t, it fades away or changes, as life progresses. But there’s a central issue or motivator to it, an aim and strategy which, if it is solid, can form the core idea or axis or pattern of something that could take shape in the next few years. Here’s the rub: the intended fulfilment date is around 2050. If I’m incarnate at that time, I’ll be a young’un. I get the feeling I’ll return a bit later, but that’s not entirely my own choice, and it’s subject to review.

There’s an interesting twist to this. I have a limited shelf-life. I do know this. Some people will try to dissuade me from such ‘negative, deathist thinking’, but often they need to learn something about acceptance, surrender and the otherworlds. Here’s a riddle: we do not and cannot choose the time and manner of our dying, yet, in another way, we can. Sort of. Particularly through attitude and power of spirit, though also with the helping hand of medications, supplements, healers and so on. However, ‘the hand of God moves in strange ways’, and when facing death we do need to hand ourselves over, to accept our progressive loss of control. Why? Because such acceptance leads to another kind of control. Metaphysically, it’s the control of a slalom-skier, where you have to lose control in order to gain a new kind of balance. It’s not fear-driven, though it’s one helluva ride.

This happens in life too, and many people stand on this precipice at present – it’s the Great Unknown, gaping at us and shaking us out of our comfortable stupours. Yes, folks, shit’s happening and there’s little we can do about it. We’ve been in ‘good’ times, and now it’s going to be ‘bad’ times. Many people resort to complaining – that’s unwise and gets no one anywhere. It’s necessary to get real, make it simple, focus on what’s essential, stay happy and look for the gift in this evolving situation. Do this, and you’ll survive. Dig in your heels and trouble’s coming.

However, when the economy rises, society declines, and when the economy subsides, society rises. So what is our choice here? What do we really want?

I too must square with this one. My cancer immunotherapy (Daratumamab) comes in a little refrigerated phial once a month by special delivery, and a nurse comes to administer it (Janice or Nicola – they’ve been really good and helpful). This phial costs £4,500 each month. I am privileged to live in a country where this is possible – elsewhere I would be dead or, if so blessed, rich enough to pay ridiculous sums for treatment. During my life there is a possibility that the state support I receive will dwindle or disappear. Yes. One of the existential risks we face that no one talks about, is ‘sovereign insolvency’. Government and national bankruptcy (it’s happening in Sri Lanka). Caused mainly by debt, by excessive public and private borrowing on a rosy future that didn’t happen.

That’s life. And it’s okay. I don’t have money but I have some social cred and survival instincts, and I’ll manage somehow – worse has happened, and I’m not in receipt of incoming mortar shells. A number of us will have to go – as was the case with Covid. Some might think it’s Big Brother pulling this off, and there’s a smidgeon of truth in that, though not as much as some might like to think. But are we going to sit around blaming others for our plight, or are we going to rise up and come out to help our fellow humans? Sorry to be blunt, but it does come down to that. That’s one reason I live in Cornwall – we do this down’ere.

I have a limited time left – current estimate, 3-5-7 years. When I’m performing in public I brighten up and come alive, so that’s not a truly accurate read-out of how I am overall. I go down too, megaflopped, with gravity running double-heavy and systems creaking along on three cylinders. Though, on average, I’m doing much better now than some months ago, and things are looking up. I no longer have to strive for hope or optimism: it’s coming at me in torrents! This is the positive shock I mentioned earlier. I guess I’ve fallen into a kind of miracle zone in which, at first, you have to go right down into the depths of The Pit before revival kicks in. Revive I did. It might be true to say that conventional medicine has kept me alive, but healing from so many people and from ‘friends upstairs’ has given me a new life.

In early May a message was dropped into me which said, ‘We have one more thing we’d like you to do…’. Part of me said, OMG, not again, leave me alone, and another part sparked up and was fascinated with what might happen and what exactly this might be. I have some starting notions and I’ve twigged the core objective, but this must unfold in its own time and way. Next we come to the earthly manifestation bit. Thing is, since I most likely have only some years to play with, anything I do, unless it’s something brief, is to give to others to take forward. I need to sit on that and mull it over, and some of those others might need to do so too. It’s necessary to let various things take shape, which will serve as indicators from Real Life that there’s support for it in all worlds and that it has some chance of actually working. I have a wee bit of experience in that matter, and I’m a ‘sensible Virgo’ (I am told), and nowadays I look before I leap. But I don’t tend to sit on my hands and hang back either.

One of my weird gifts is a capacity to articulate things that people already half-understand, or things that are coming up for them that they hadn’t quite ‘got’ – and also to make connections between things people hadn’t quite seen before. Such as the relationship between humanity’s psychospiritual condition and climate change – think about it. I tend to look a bit further than the next horizon and the narrowness of short-term fixes. Thirtyish years ago I realised what this was about, for me: I came here not exactly to bring change, but to bring suggestions about what comes after that change.

As a former revolutionary (we lost), I’m now dedicated not to bringing down the old but to bringing up the new. This is what I told young Syrians and Egyptians in 2011 in Amman, Jordan, as their revolutions were failing… Yes, you lost, but, Allahu akbar, God is great, history is on your side and, look guys, I’m still here decades later, still at it, so you do that too. It’s hard and it takes a long time, but real change does take time, and that’s no reason to give up. They got it. I told them to tell their friends.

The Nine once said something interesting, that the revolutions of the late 1960s were meant to bring social-spiritual change but, instead, in the 1970s, they brought personal change to a relatively small number of people. This did lay the foundations for future developments, but it was a slower path to take. The social change is yet to come: a big opening for this starts in 2024, as Pluto enters Aquarius, accelerating rapidly through the late 2020s, and the complete process continues for a few decades. (For more about this, try here: https://penwithbeyond.blog/2020s/ ). It depends, of course, on what we humans do about it, and a wide range of issues, problems and solutions will come up. We shall see both the wisdom and the madness of crowds. The questions of social trust and care and also good leadership are biggies to sort out.

On my recent trip upcountry to England, I was really happy to meet many remarkable people, and impressed with the quality of those who attended the two magic circles. Attending the OakDragon camp was like a turnaround for me, rather like reaching the top of a high mountain pass, suddenly to see the vista on the other side. I felt welcomed, included and valued, and it was warming to heart and soul. At the magic circles, it felt as if people were right there, and they definitely seemed to understand what I was sharing. Also, I survived the magic circles myself, better than I expected (after all, it’s 5-6 hours), and I’m up for more.

If you’re the kind of person with the connections in your area or network to organise one, you’re welcome to get in contact – I go where invited! The next Magic Circle is in Buckfastleigh, Devon, on Saturday 24th September (see palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html). I’m really looking forward to that.

In Devon we’ll have a little music from Galen and Jahnavi, two musicians coming all the way from Portland, Oregon, to join us. As I wrote this they were stuck at Heathrow, waiting for the plane to Newquay, Cornwall. Such are the ways of this world. Penny is picking them up – they’re staying in a bell tent in the Field of Dreams, our wild-camping field here on the farm (thanks, Jo!). An old friend, Kevin, is here too – he’s an old Flying Squad member, and he, with Sian and Sarah, three core members, came to the Avebury circle. I was so happy and moved to see them – we’ve been through so much together, for so long. We’re realising in a new way that perhaps we prototyped something more valuable for the future than we thought at the time (flyingsquad.org.uk). So we’ll have a campfire in the field and share dinner together. Guess who sorted that out? The Rt Hon Dame Penny Cornell MBE, haha.

Lots of good stories have happened for quite a few people in recent weeks, and I’ve met with new friends and old. Bless you all for that, and thank you to Bruce, Ivan, Pia, Lily and particularly Rebecca, with a host of others, for lighting up my life and helping me on my way.

If you live in Glastonbury or within easy reach, I’m giving an evening talk at the Assembly Rooms on Friday 9th September – called The Tipping of the Scales. It’s for Glastafarians of all generations. A Glastonbury veteran (1980-2008) returns to his old home to meet the folks. I’m coming up the Michael Line with some messages from the end of the world. (Info here.)

I need to hobnob with people through doing talks, magic circles, blogs and podcasts because, as a cancer patient, I don’t have the energy it takes to meet so many people except in EM-free groups. I love you all, but I can’t get round everyone. Yet magic happens too, and I’ll get round everyone who somehow matters – whatever that means.

The EM-bombardment my dearest friends give me, even if accidentally, makes meeting you extra tricky. It takes three seconds to be infected and two days to get back on balance. What proportion of the population has electroesensitivity? One hundred percent. It’s just that only some people notice it, and I fear for the rest.

Recently I’ve been talking about dying as a gradual process. Here’s a quote from the website of my root Lama, Rangjung Rigpe Dorge, the Sixteenth Karmapa, about his death of cancer at Samhain in 1981, in a research hospital in USA:

“The hospital allowed the body of the Karmapa to remain in the room where he had died, because it was obvious that this was not an ordinary death. Even though he had died, for three days he remained in the Tugdam, a state of meditation. This was clear from signs such as the area around the heart remaining warm and the body remaining supple. The signs were witnessed by the medical staff present.” (karmapa.org/life-16th-karmapa/)

Though the quality of my meditation isn’t anywhere close to his, I don’t believe only Tibetan lamas or similar can work with their death process in this way. But we shall see, won’t we?

Love from me. Palden.

Collected blogs: https://penwithbeyond.blog
Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Events: www.palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html

First of a series of PodTalks with Paldywan

Palden Jenkins at the Oak Dragon camp near Glastonbury, August 2022

I’ve started doing ‘Magic Circles’ – five-hour sessions (attendees do get breaks!) – thus far in Glastonbury and Avebury. They were well attended, with a lovely quality of people coming to them.

Here’s a recording of the first segment of three from the Avebury event. If you like my podcasts or you attended the Magic Circle, or you just want something a bit more than what you get in the podcasts, you might like this. It’s an hour long. Stream it or save it to your computer or phone.

It’s the beginning of a new series of podcasts of my live talks, called PodTalks. The first is on the PodTalks page on my site, and more will follow:

Palden’s PodTalks

The next Magic Circle will be in Buckfast, near Totnes in South Devon, on 24th September 2022 – info here: Magic Circles with Palden

With love, Paldywan

Soul Tribes

Latest podcast

So, do you reckon the existence of your soul and psyche began here on Earth?

Here, Palden talks about tribes, nations and civilisations, material and multidimensional, in which each and all of us have our roots as souls.

This is key to finding our true, deep identity, not solely as a product of Earthly evolutionary experience, but from a deeper level way beyond. It concerns the initial reason we decided, or it was decided, that we’d partake of the Earth experience.

If we anchor to this root source of our being, it can help us identify and serve the deeper purposes for which we came – to learn and, especially nowadays, to contribute. One of the great crimes of our time is withholding of our gifts and capacities – often because we think we’re not good enough, not ready yet, or ‘little me’ will make no difference.

Yet we are part of larger soul-collectives. We need to peer beyond our individualism to cleave to the contribution our soul-tribes seek to make. We are, after all, the people we’ve all been waiting for. And if not now, then when?

Recorded in Somerset while on tour. Worth hearing if you are attending any of Palden’s magic circles. As a follow-up, try the podcast Close Encounters too. 27 mins.

Get it on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/2c4OCSOwmHY6lNbWIFBVSR?si=49BN1sKBRQufN0jTw_-eEA

or on Palden’s site at www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Home from Home

The turning of circles

Palden with old friend Barry Hoon. Together we created isleofavalon.co.uk in the 1990s

Oak Dragon called me. I returned. Something came full circle.

It all goes back to 1986-87 when I started the Oak Dragon Camps. For three years previously, with a lot of help from friends I had run the prototype Glastonbury Camps on a spontaneous, improvised basis, and this was the next step. Apart from a solar eclipse camp in 1999 in Cornwall, I hadn’t been back since 1993. I had been ousted by ‘we, the people’ (well, some of them), and went my way, soon to work for the Council of Nine and then to start a new generation of camps, the Hundredth Monkey Project, in 1995-97, inspired by the Nine and drawing on experiences gained earlier.

Ruby and Penny took me to the camp and, in the process, found a new family. Ruby, 12, grew a year in one week. Penny, one of those souls who holds the world up, found new context for it in a big-family setting. Everyone loved them. As for me, staggering around on sticks, periodically drifting off into dozy psychic reveries while flopped in my seat, I was so welcomed and cared for that I was moved to tears by the poignancy of it all and the love of a tribe I had set in motion, lost and suddenly regained. “If you hadn’t started this, all of us wouldn’t have met, and some wouldn’t even have been born“. Believe me, it was really moving to hear that.

Fiftyish of us were camping in a big circle divided into four smaller circles. Some were regulars who had met up for years, some hadn’t been for years and some were new, finding themselves melting into a new family they hadn’t anticipated joining.

Each day started with an optional meditation and the Dance of Life (a native American greeting of the day). Then came a daily camp meeting in a big, circular marquee, then group activities or a ‘council’, a talking-stick sharing session.

Ronald Hutton with a group at the yew tree

In the afternoon and evening, group activities ranged from talks, artwork, Breton dancing and making things, to visits to a nearby ancient hill camp, Dundon Beacon, or the ancient yew tree at Dundon church. One day we had a sweat lodge, a day-long process that Ruby and I joined. Some days we cooked the evening meal over campfires in our tent circles and sometimes we did it communally. Nowadays, Oak Dragon has all its developed ways and custom kit – marquee, domes, showers, tools and bits – but, in the earliest days it had been a matter of makeshift improvisation and doing our level best.

This is not just a nice bunch of people doing enjoyable things. In originating the camps I sought to create a space in which people could experience living in an accelerated growth zone, a different world without walls and with very different ways. Crucial here is life-education and what community living does to us as individuals, but the main issue is that an enspirited magic circle like this helps people go through breakthroughs, revelations, resolutions and great leaps forward. Then they spend the rest of the year integrating it, and they return for more whenever it’s right.

Throughout the camps, one of the most rewarding things has been watching young people grow in leaps and bounds, and seeing whole families release their power issues, conflicts and tensions. Everyone comes out glowing, whoever they are. There is pain, dilemma, choice and wobbliness too yet, when a camp is well set up, focalised and run, a supportive and safe atmosphere makes it all very different from the world out there.

I myself was a case in point. Back home, I rely on one helper, Penny, who comes once a week and is also reliably on call, plus a number of people who assist in disparate and occasional ways, and it is something of a burden on them. With my partner, our relationship had gone from one of equals to one of dependency, and this had weighed heavily on her. Meanwhile, at the camp, anyone would roll up with offers of tea or carrying my seat and I was both cared for – amply hugged, heard, supplied and assisted – and much appreciated for what I could, within my scope, contribute.

When Becky, the camp focaliser, invited me, I wondered how long I would last, physically. At the camp my body ached, camping was an effort and my psyche was rather overloaded after 2-3 years of relative isolation. But my spirits were lifted up, they kept me going and, on balance, I had a great time. It’s all a matter of attitude, really.

And… what goes around comes around. Once upon a time an organiser, this time I was on the receiving end. I was relieved of a pattern of mine: I couldn’t work my ass off. I used to be one who felt unconsciously that he had to pay off karmic debts to family, people, society and ‘God’ by contributing more than was due. I tried too hard. This is a common ‘server soul’ syndrome, though it does cause amazing things to come about.

I watched Penny acting out her own version of it, a few times dropping a hint to her that she could also sit down and hang out for a while, but she’s a compulsive helper and lifesaver, and this is her path. Frankly, if there were more people like her, the world would be so much better. Humorously I introduced her as my bodyguard – well, she is a former nightclub bouncer. She’d be great in a war zone. She calls me ‘boss’, with a cheekily ironic look that keeps me safely in my proper place.

In a week from now I’ll be back in Cornwall doing blood tests and scans. When I was tunnelling around in Hades in February-March, my readings got worse. In spring I stabilised. I suspect that, now, the readings might improve. At the camp I found I could keep going longer, sit cross-legged for a whole three minutes, my posture and digestion improved and the biggest medicine of all, spirit, shot up. I even started forgetting my sticks, which worked for about ten paces before rather painfully I remembered I couldn’t hold myself up any longer.

It feels like I stand at a new beginning, perhaps a new mission. A mission-driven person, this is my path, even in this last chapter of life. It gives me something to live for and I feel that, if I can bring about what is asked for, I’ll be kept alive to do it. If not, something else will happen.

I reckon I have between one and seven years to live – longer than I reckoned during last winter. But this brings up various questions. It makes life more complex, surrounded as I am with people living more normal lives and going at a pace I cannot keep up with. Then there’s the matter of making plans and how I shall live during whatever time I have left. I’ve been lonely and under-supported and I need that to change. Losing my partner six months ago impacted all areas of my life and, in a variety of situations, I still find myself wishing she were here, not only out of need but also from a wish to share and to give – we had grown into each other so much.

Today I planned to go clothes shopping but, frankly, I’m unsure I can do it alone – I need a second brain, an extra pair of hands and someone to scoop me up when I droop. But I’ll try anyway. Many of my life-needs are quite specific and it doesn’t work for just anyone, however well-meaning, to help me. That’s tricky – it has taken Penny time to figure out my nature and quirks, and really I need an extra person to complement her and cover those times her hands are already full. So there are issues I must contemplate when I return home. Something needs to change. Or I need to change. Or both.

Pete and Dot, my camp neighbours – they were so kind

Coming close to death made me acutely aware of what I haven’t done – you’ll find this happens when death approaches you. My book Shining Land, about ancient civilisation in Cornwall is now finished and coming out before long, I hope. I think it’s my last book.

This cancer blog, and my podcasts and events, all grew out of squaring with cancer. But I’m unfinished on a few fronts: family (I miss them), love (a big gap that is not healed by admonishments to love myself), world-work projects, and finding someone to step into my shoes with the Tuareg and the Palestinians. I’d like to close these circles before I’m done, if life permits. In the last chapter, some things we must accept as final and some can still be progressed.

While this cancer blog is not as medically oriented as many others are, it’s about the side-issues that have arisen for me as a cancer patient. Life has been hard overall, and one reason I appear to do cancer relatively easily is that it follows in a continuum, albeit in a new format. If you’ve done jail, exile, unpopularity, poverty, loss and bullets, cancer is just one step further. I’m a flawed human like anyone, with lots yet to learn, but I do hope that, by exposing my struggles and joys in this blog, you might gain a few glimmers of light.

Soon I turn 72 but cancer has thrust me into my eighties, with what seems like 120 years’ worth of experience trailing behind. This happens when you live intensely, wading around in a variety of high-risk zones and deep altered states where time shifts into another dimension. Cancer has pushed me into a new phase: I’ve stepped into a new archetype and even the patterns on the palms of my hands have changed. Even so, one thing I do need to learn is how to write shorter blogs, and I never seem to manage.

As for the ‘magic circles’, the first one in Glastonbury went really well. Thanks to Bruce Garrard for organising it and to the remarkable people who turned up, and to Avalon, my old home, for wrapping us in its energy-field. The next is in Avebury, this Saturday 13th August, and another follows in South Devon on Saturday 24th September (a link is below). It lights me up to do these – at last Tuesday’s circle I started out frail, coming alive and on-the-pulse as I warmed up. I think I’ll tighten up the next one – time went too quickly and I need to present everything more succinctly.

John and Chrissie Ferngrove. Chrissie was one of the founding Oak Dragon team, back in 1986.

This is an experiment and a new way of working, for me, an old hat entering a new chapter. I’m fishing for new avenues, people and a way forward, while finding out whether I have it in me to follow through. So far, so good.

Sometimes ‘guidance’ comes from within but, for me, it reveals itself when I act on possibilities and prod the future – this is how the alchemy works. Besides, when I get inner guidance, it’s often cryptic, pointing at principles and possibilities that then have to be applied in real life. It starts with preparing the ground, planting seeds and seeing whether and how they germinate.

After Avebury, I’m back to Cornwall for a recharge, cancer drugs and blood tests before the next wave of activity in September. One step at a time.

Right now I’m staying for a few days with Lily, a new soul-sister, having a quiet time in her studio, writing and recuperating under the calming gaze of Tibetan thankas, sorting myself out before the next bit at Avebury.

May you be blessed. You bless me by reading this. There’s more to come, inshallah.

With love, Paldywan Kenobi.

Magic Circles: www.palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html
Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Forthcoming book: www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/

The sweat lodge fire, busy cooking hot rocks

Off to Pow Sows

The Land of the Sowsnek

Scenes from the OakDragon Camp in Wales in 1987

Pow Sows is the Cornish name for England, where the Sowsnek live.

When you have cancer, everything becomes a much bigger challenge. It could be easy to lapse into staying inside a comfort zone to keep difficulties down, but I don’t feel like that. It’s time for a change.

So on Friday I sally forth upcountry into the great wide and wonderful, feeling a bit like the little boy I was when I made my first trip to London, around age eight – my Mum put me on the train hauled by an impressive steam loco and I was met by my aunt at Paddington. But this time, this seventysomething little boy is under the Amazonic protection of Penny and Ruby and we’re off on an adventure to meet a dragon and work a circle or two. Erk, fasten your safety belts.

We’re going to an OakDragon camp. I’ve been invited back, and this is rather an honour. I was OakDragon’s originator. It’s a long story. It started in 1983, when a friend asked me to help organise a gathering in Glastonbury for earth mysteries enthusiasts. We did one at Samhain 1983 in the Assembly Rooms, seventyish people came and it was dynamite. In 1984 I did two gatherings in May, on earth mysteries and astrology. Again, dynamite. A weekend wasn’t long enough. How could we cheaply bring people together for a week? Ah, a camp. Hm, that’s much more to sort out. I was reluctant. But I knew it had to happen, and that year too. As an astrologer I pulled on my contacts, and Glastonbury friends appeared to help run it and, in late August 1984 the first Living Astrology Camp took place. A hundred people came. The Glastonbury Camps were born.

In 1985 we did three memorable camps, in earth mysteries, astrology and music and dance, and three or four more in 1986. One, an earth mysteries camp that turned into a Chernobyl camp, was a life-changer for everyone. But the volunteer crews were burning out and much was changing. The idea for a new start, the OakDragon Camps, dawned. The camps formula had worked and started proliferating – others started camps organisations in the following years too.

The OakDragon Camps’ first season was in 1987, running seven week-long camps in four locations. It was big, intense, amazing, memorable and tumultuous. But things also started going awry. There was a rebellion out of which, the following year, were born the Rainbow Circle camps – it weakened us but we kept on going. There were internal issues too, and by the end of 1988 I was leaving, rather burned out, undermined and unpopular.

I left them to it and OakDragon carried on. Within three years I was working for the Council of Nine and, in 1995, I started the Hundredth Monkey Camps. Here I managed to demonstrate more clearly what I had been seeking to bring about – the Nine had clarified my understanding of it all. Looking back, in the 1980s so many new ideas had been taking shape, we improvised as we went along, the challenges were big, and complex dynamics tugged in different directions. Yet it was a flowering, an awakening, an eruption of possibilities, a collective peak experience, and it was great to be part of it – and I think everyone involved would agree.

In late life, I’m moved to do more circle-working, with a little help from my friends, to share new ways of doing this work that have dawned on me during my cancer process. It’s not cool to build up expectations, but what’s available is quantum group transformation, if and when it works right. It’s the principle of ‘more than the sum of its parts’: when a group of individuals synergises into one being, something can happen beyond anything anyone imagined.

I believe that, later this century, this is how things will change. It’s all to do with the hearts and minds of humanity. It’s about mass focus of consciousness. When multiple minds give attention to one objective with a certain intensity for a certain amount of time, things can change, particularly in terms of human values, viewpoints and mindsets. It is these that determine so much else. Unless at least a majority of humanity joins together to pull in roughly the same direction, I don’t think we’ll get to where we need to go, this century. Humanity is in disarray, and this is no way to run a planetary home. We need to go through a kind of mass synchronisation of basic human intent, a re-resonance of human dissonance. This isn’t as airyfairy as it sounds: we have seen something like this happen in Ukraine this year, with the mobilisation of a nation.

How such a situation can be engineered globally is anyone’s guess, but a fortuitous combination of pressures could do it, if felt worldwide pretty simultaneously and if they evoke a similar response from everyone. Today’s major crises are quite unexpected, deeply stirring and breaking new ground, so this is in the hands of the Great Unknown. But there is something in the nature of these crises that is pushing us ultimately in a good direction. They are accelerating things. I’d even suggest there’s a guiding hand behind it, forcing us to face a plethora of important issues, for our own good. I’m not referring to Big Brother but to the group soul of humanity, or the heart of Gaia (or however you prefer to see it). A crunch-point could come where multiple simultaneous crises force us over a hump of social mobilisation and a collective melding of intent. That’s when the magic starts.

What is needed is an intense global situation activating sufficient shared feeling, fear, awe or goodwill, or all of them, so that billions of people find themselves spontaneously focusing on one basic thought – probably to do with survival or breakthrough. It needs to be sufficient to create a reality-wave that tilts the scales, making life look and feel quite fundamentally different, shifting people’s values and core aims over a critical hump. If we are to succeed in solving our problem here on Earth, some variant of this is what is likely to be needed.

Small groups can’t do it on their own, but they can lay tracks, train people, gather experience, evolve networks and embed and propagate the principles involved. It becomes a body of knowhow available to others to adopt when the need arises. It is a quality, not just a numbers issue, and a matter of time. For global-scale miracles to take place, a combination of factors must be dead right.

This has been a preoccupation for me since the LSE ‘troubles’. Fifty years later, I wasn’t expecting to be doing what I’m now setting out to do, but cancer has prised me open and I’ve seen something new. This winter I nearly kicked the bucket but my rebirth instincts eventually fired up and suddenly, to my surprise, by springtime I found myself with an ‘instruction’. It’s a bit like falling into hell and finding a lump of gold there, in the murk. I get these now and then.

It was strange because I had honestly felt I was heading for the final fall. But suddenly Life was saying, ‘No, there’s more’. I work on the basis that, if it is meant to happen and if I can pull it off, I’ll be helped and kept alive for it. Or the right thing will happen, whatever that needs to be. We shall see. But it does fire me up, this. And, as a cancer patient, having a good reason to stay alive is, well, a good reason to stay alive.

Meanwhile, OakDragon still exists decades later – and well done to them for doing that. No doubt it has changed a lot. I haven’t been part of it. I go now to the OakDragon as a guest, though it’s a bit like going home. It’s a healing. Everything comes round in the end, especially if we let it – and this is what’s happening. I’ll be interested to find out how I manage with camping – it’s one of those addictions I have difficulty letting go of, despite bone cancer.

On Tuesday 2nd August, during the camp, it’s the first ‘magic circle’ in Glastonbury and, whatever state I’m in, I’m going. Just as well, really. As a cancer patient I don’t know how I shall be on the day, so I can’t necessarily put on the competent airs of a normal person and get away with it. I’ll have to fall back on my root-resources, and there’s something rather special about that. It puts me on the line. Something in me loves that because it pulls out a second strength, or ‘superpowers’ that normal life doesn’t demand. So it doesn’t worry me, whether I’m weak or strong – the right thing will happen. It does. And, believe me, it’s a wee bit easier than operating in a war zone.

I have no idea when I shall next write a blog or do a podcast. They will come when they do. I’m peripatetic for two weeks, and around 15th August I return to Cornwall for my next shot of cancer immunotherapy, and to take a break before September adventures start. For you who cannot come on August 2nd, we’ll be in session from shortly before 14.00 to about 18.00 UK time so, if you wish, take a few pauses during that time to see if you can get us and pick anything up. Get a sense of the invisible presence that, I hope, will be with us. The next magic circle is in Avebury on Saturday 13th August (info below).

Hey, I really love you – whether I know you or not. I really appreciate your eyeballs and the goodwill you seem to feel, and it really does me good. Thank you so much for that – it makes a big difference to me. Thanks to Bruce, Ivan, Jackie and Jeanne for organising magic circles, and to Penny, Ruby and Lily for holding my hand. There’s an enormous smile on my face.

Muslims give God ninety-nine names, and they leave the hundredth entirely open. That’s pretty nifty. The Nine used to refer to ‘what you call God’ – they had their way of putting things. When Parkinson the talkshow host asked the Dalai Lama whether he believed in God, the Dalai Lama simply said, ‘No’. Spot on, Tenzin. Lao Tzu said, ‘The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao’. So when I say ‘God bless you’, you know what I really mean.

God bless you.

Paldywan Kenobi

The photos are by Tara Dancer, taken in Wales and Cornwall. Ironically, the campsite for the first OakDragon camp, held at Sancreed in Cornwall, is but a mile from where I now live, and I have the same landlord!

Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Magic Circles: www.palden.co.uk/magic-circles.html

Here’s a rather historic amateur video record of the second camp ever, Beltane 1985, at Butleigh, Glastonbury, made by the late Mark Walters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZaNwHo9wrM