Sacred Space and Sacred Time Beyond the Veil

(A paper written following the Wisdom University intensive at Chartres on Sacred Geometry)

Introduction

In Greek there are two words for time and two words for place. Chronos refers to linear time as we experience it in our waking states and Kairos refers to non-linear time where synchronicities happen in more of a magical or dream state. Topos referred to the physical place that we can see with our eyes and measure with our mind, and Chora referred to the energy of a place that one experiences with our inner senses (Devereux 2000). In his first framing talk in Chartres, Jim Garrison said that a theme for him during the week would be “Nature likes to hide”. He then went on to say that the Greek word translated here as “hide” actually means to hide from the mind. So the nature of reality that hides behind the veil of Isis cannot be accessed by the mind, only by the more intuitive senses. Chronos and Topos are accessible by the mind, but Kairos and Chora are hidden behind the veil, only to be found through the non-rational senses. This paper is a story of a glimpse beyond the veil into the worlds of Kairos and Chora that I was given in Chartres. Where buildings like Chartres cathedral bring our visible world as close to the veil as we can get due to the sacred natural geometry of their physical form, we actually have to slip into another dimension to experience what lies beyond.

An early sign

It was January 2011. I was listening to the preparation call for the Chartres intensive having just signed up. As I listened I got the idea to check what earth energy lines ran through Chartres . I noticed two minor lines, which was interesting, but what grabbed my attention was a major crossing point of many lines about 35 miles due west of Chartres. When I zoomed in to that point, I saw a most remarkable thing. Imprinted into the earth was the form of a cathedral (without the wings). I had a very strong feeling at that point that I would need to go out and visit this place. It felt significant that I had discovered this while being held in the field of Chartres and the upcoming intensive that the team for the call had so consciously created with us.

Arrival

A couple of weeks before departing for Chartres I was contacted to see if I would be willing to share a double room with Calen Rayne as there was no triple room available as I had requested. It was an intriguing question, because when I had originally scanned the list of faculty at Wisdom University, Calen had been the one that jumped out at me most. So with a little knowing smile that fun was in store, I accepted gratefully.

Arriving at the location in Chartres, I went up to my room. Calen was there. The first thing I asked him was if he knew of a car we could use. As one might expect, he asked why, I told him about the imprint of the cathedral that I had seen and showed him a print out. He pulled out a pair of dowsing rods and announced that this place was spinning at the same frequency as Chartres Cathedral but as a mirror, suggesting that where the actual cathedral was an earth point, the imprint location was its equivalent cosmic point, and that somewhere in the middle was a creation point. That connected closely to a concept I was working with in my systemic energy tuning vocational training, and we were off…

The dance unfolded for the rest of the evening and week. It was like being moved as one piece in a large multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle that was forming itself. All the pieces of the formal program of the week and all the conversations and insights in the informal time seemed to flow together as one unfolding story. This was kairos time penetrating our normal chronos world, a magical journey of synchronicities and synergy that wove its way through the linear week that we spent together. In that toroidial tapestry of time, the chora of place beyond the veil was about to reveal itself.

The Winged Cathedral

I had got to Chartres a day early in the hope that I would be able to get out to the location of the imprint before the week started. Calen joined me in that intention, but try as we might, we were not going to be given access to a car that Sunday. So we let go of that and planned on heading out one early morning to be back before the main program started. We rented a car the day before, two women who Calen knew showed up to join us, and at 5 am on Tuesday morning we headed west.

At least that is what we thought as we walked to the car. Then we noticed that the main gates were shut and locked. I couldn’t believe we might be blocked by such a basic thing and was about to call the concierge when one of the others ran to tell me that the gate had been opened. I stlll don’t understand quite how he managed it, but somehow Calen had got it unlocked. And we were off.

It was an hour’s drive. The sun was coming up. On the way Calen asked me at some point what date the image I had taken of the place from Google Earth was from. 2006, I said. The silence in the car made me smile. Who knows what might be there now? Indeed…
I mentioned the presence of stables and my expectation that the oval form we could see around the imprint was an exercise track for the horses. Calen immediately made a connection, saying that having horses running round and round the site would keep it active. Horses were particularly significant as they were the first means whereby humans were able to travel with their feet off the earth.

As we approached our location, we were driving through the nearest village when a sign flashed past my eyes. I couldn’t quite believe what I had seen, and was just telling the others about it when a second one appeared very clearly in front of us. This village was twinned with Castle Cary in England. Castle Cary is a village in the South-West of England and hosts the train station where one gets off if you are going to Avebury and Glastonbury, two of the most sacred sites on our planet. I then also realised that the landscape had a strong echo of the landscape in that part of the world – gently rolling hills with wheatfields and woods. I could feel the energy and expectation mount in myself, and just had to laugh at the kosmic comedy of this kind of synchronicity.

Our loyal TomTom took us right to the spot. We noted with a smile that the stables there were called Pegasus. Pegasus flew the muses to the Mount. We parked up at the head end of the cathedral, where the track ran down to the farm and a small cluster of other houses. We could see the place through a gap in the fence. It was private land and I didn’t feel like trespassing, but at the same time I didn’t want to go knocking on doors at 6 o’clock the morning. I wandered down the track to see if anyone happened to be aroundalready. Halfway down, right at the apex of the cathedral, at the location where the reserve sacraments are kept in the real cathedral, I came across a long, metal, silver spiral rod stuck into the ground, just outside the fence of the property (see photo with rod in red box). What this told me what that someone else knew that this place was a special energetic location. The spiral rod, according to Calen, would be a conductor for energy to come in.

However, there was no-one to be seen. We walked down the side of the field on the road, and about half way down came to a gap in the hedge where you could see in. There we could see a large mound that would be at the place that the labyrinth is in the cathedral in Chartres. When Calen and I dowsed it, we both came up independently with an energy frequency that was way beyond normal. Calen’s sense was that under the mound was a dolmen that was connected to a dolmen under the Chartres cathedral. I had already dowsed the area where the altar would be and it came out at the same frequency that you find at altars in real cathedrals . The mound was an even higher frequency than that.

At that point one of the women came up to us and said that she had found an entrance into the field. As “chance” would have it, it was where the entrance to the Chartres cathedral was too. The ditch was filled in and the fence had been lowered making it easy to climb over. Given the sense of invitation this held, I felt alright about going on to the private property from here – and we couldn’t be seen from the farmhouse. Our friend had found a spot that felt strong. Calen went there, sensed it to be an earth energy point and set up his array of energetic instruments that was designed to connect the energy of this place with the cathedral in Chartres. Meanwhile I moved back to the corner with the woman who had found the entrance. Not really knowing each other that well, she apologetically let me know that she just had to put her forehead on the ground. She stayed there a while and reported feeling strong energies running across the space and building.

Meanwhile, Calen had got his kit set up. He was to go round his 600-year-old singing bowl 33 times, which reflected the number of sacred geometry cards that were in the layout, with 33 being the divine human. When he got to 27 rounds the bowl suddenly seemed to empty of energy and for the last 6 rounds it didn’t emit any sound. 27 was the card of the sacred proportion Phi, which was at the core of our week’s Sacred Geometry intensive. Calen explained that at 27 the connection had been made and the channel for the energy had been established. What he had felt was the energy of the place being released and sent on its way to Chartres.

As soon as this was done, my friend with her head on the ground sat up and told Calen he needed to come over. There was a burn mark on the ground where she had had her head. She told him he had to ring the singing bowl over her head. When he did so, I felt the whole place light up. When I go into numinous places, I sometimes literally experience it as a very bight place, and my eyes respond as if I need to put sunglasses on. This is what happened at that moment. The place literally lit up.

Feeling our work was done, we headed back towards the car. On the way, I looked up at the sky and saw in the clouds the shape of a huge winged bird pointing towards Chartres. We took that to be a sign that all was well.

Meanwhile, back at the Cathedral…

When we got back to Chartres, we headed off to class. Part way through, Calen received an urgent note from someone who had just been in the Cathedral. She had felt called to recite a druidic chant that she had been practising over the year. This is what she wrote:
“I felt really really strong pull down to wells and standing stones [under the cathedral], but tremendous shaft of bright light over altar and cathedral seemed to rumble like a rocket taking off. Then it seemed like it was lifting off, ascending into the sky, so I ran out and came to find you but you were in class. I couldn’t stop trembling so much power!”
Our sense is that what she had done was to open up the cathedral in Chartres for the energy to enter that we had released from the power point. When we told others this story later on, one woman told us that she was in the cathedral early that same morning, and experienced a bright light around the altar. She shared this photo with us.

Various people shared experiences of the cathedral feeling different, a particularly strong experience in the labyrinth afterwards, and many other stories that could be related. When working in this dimension, my sense is that one cannot talk of cause and effect. Due to the fact that time in kairos is not linear, it is more as if it all emerges at once and as one.

One other source that we got strong affirmation from was the dream group. In dreams, we are also working in kairos time and the subtle realms. A number of people in the dream group had reported dreams of a green hill flying through the sky to land on the cathedral mound. Others saw images of the cathedral returned to its original druidic grove. Somehow there was a story unfolding beyond the veil in parallel to our experience in the waking realms.

Conclusions

This experience marked for me a significant step forward in my engagement of the non-rational senses and explorations beyond the veil. It felt like the quality of work we were doing with our rational minds as we attuned to the natural beauty of sacred geometry was bringing that side of ourselves into a high enough resonance to enable us to work more with the other dimensions.

I leave this intensive with a sense that sacred geometry is pointing to how we can bring the physical manifest world into as strong a resonance as possible with life. In doing so, we enable the energies from the other side of the veil to flow more fully into form, thus creating greater coherence between our manifest world and the sacred. Quite literally, bridging heaven and earth. At the same time, nature will always remind hidden from the cognitive mind, and it is only by stepping into our non-rational, intuitive and instinctive selves that we will be able to access the world beyond the veil. That I feel is what this transition is calling us to.

Bibliography
Devereux, Paul (2000), The Sacred Place; Cassel & Co, London