Michael de Rupe, Brentor Tor, Dartmoor

video of St Michael de Rupe – Brentor

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Standing on an an ancient tor which was once a volcano with amazing views over Dartmoor and West Devon is one of the world’s most stunning and best located churches. The church of St Michael de Rupe stands within the Dartmoor National Park in Devon. This church takes in some amazing views including Dartmoor and West Devon. Cornwall, the sea around Newton Abbot and Exmoor can also all be seen in the distance. The church was founded in 1130 and is the fourth smallest parish church in Britain. It also claims to be the highest church in England which is still in use. The church which can be seen today dates from the 13th and 14th century however it is built on the original 12th century foundations. Brentor Village’s main church is a more recent 19th century building with the dedication of Christchurch which can be found in the village however St Michael De Rupe Church still remains the parish church with the parish of Brentor being bordered by the parishes of Coryton, Lewtrenchard (by a margin), Lydford, Mary Tavy, Lamerton, and Milton Abbot. Although there is this church (which is much more easily accessed), Brentor Church is still in use for services. Brentor Church is 37 feet long and 15 feet wide with a tower containing five bells of a height of 40 feet. This church is truly amazing and definitely is worth a visit, even if you’re not on Dartmoor. Music by Adrian Von Ziegler –

You tube music is in the link below the image

https://www.youtube.com/user/adrianvo

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After watching the Brentor You Tube Last Year, I dearly wished to visit St. Michael de Rupe on Dartmoor. Our journey began in the market town of Tavistock on a quiet Sunday afternoon, taking the easiest route through the tiny villages of Peter Tavy and Mary Tavy towards the vast open moorland. It’s an enchanting route through narrow lanes lined with wildflowers, trees and quaint old houses, and occasional picturesque pubs.

Dartmoor is entered through wide wooden gates, where sheep graze carelessly beside the road without a thought to the traffic. The famous Dartmoor ponies graze nearby. These beautiful creatures show no fear of cars or visitors; some are tame enough to allow you to stroke them. The colour of the ponies are varied from all black, to black and white, brown, or brown and white or all white. Extremely pretty, with long manes, thick eye lashes, woolly tails, that sweep the ground, they are much beloved by everyone that visits.

Lost on Dartmoor

Brentor in the far distance

Dartmoor

The entrance to Dartmoor from Tavistock

Down the road some two miles, we come to an old gate and sign that marked the entrance, official one that is, to Brentor church. It’s baffling because the climb up to the little ancient church looks easy, but it is deceptive. It can be dangerous if you take a wrong turn and I did.

So anxious was I to begin the climb up to the church, I left my handbag in the car but grabbed my camera. Entering the old gate, a couple were walking toward me.They stopped to talk. They said the climb was easy enough, to just follow the upward stone path, “It’s no sweat”, they smiled. I took their advice, stopping along the way to take photos but that was my undoing. By not concentrating on the path, I found myself on the shadow side of the hill. I knew I had lost my way when I saw the large rocks and boulders in front of me. The daunting prospect of climbing over those made me want to turn back but the church looked so near! I continued on but an eerie feeling came over me, for I was circling the Tor where no path existed. Which way to go was now something to consider. It was late in the afternoon.

Finally reaching the point just below the summit, a faint path appeared before me. Phew! What a relief! Then the church came into full view once more so I trudged on. But then, between me and the church’s refuge, more giant rocks stood tall and foreboding. I had lost the path again! In the distance, I could see several people walking along the church boundary, but they were too far away for me to call to. The wind was pretty high at this level and my legs ached. I sat down on a rock to catch my breath. The views all around were awesome.Certainly, I lost no time in taking plenty of photos. The photos below are from there.

looking up from my rock seat to the church, i was never to visit

looking down over the moors

the church again just as I turned to climb down

the descent

The gorgeous views kept me captivated. Then the sun rays disappeared behind the church -and it occurred to me that “late afternoon” was turning to dusk. I didn’t want to leave but leave I must. So I got up from my rock seat, shook myself down and began the descent. But the strangely compelling beauty of the moment kept my attention on those views, again I found myself far from the entrance from where I had begun my climb. Instead, I found myself in a bog-filled field that stretched out for miles.

So here I was – lost again! Time was passing fast, the thought of being left out on Dartmoor away from anyone, filled me with dread. I trudged on for half an hour when a road came into view. Not only a road, but a white house appeared in the distance! Now I had a landmark. So with as much speed as I could muster, I walked in that direction. But I took a wrong step and slipped into a shallow bog and lost my shoe! Recovering it was not easy; the soggy mud stuck to the shoe. ‘Darn it!’ I thought to myself but managed to slip it on. With a very uncomfortable gait I walked briskly on. Eventually, I came to a farmer’s gate. Ahh! at last a way out and onto the road!

The gate was locked! Darn it! The area was anything but safe for curious tourists and a firm ‘no entry’ sign was clearly visible on the road side. What to do? The thought of climbing over the gate came to mind but by now exhaustion had set in. Then I struck lucky. The old lock was one I knew and when I pressed my thumb onto the steel spring-loaded lock hard enough, it gave way. Freedom at last! Yay, I was back to civilisation! A ‘B’ road where surely cars would pass. None did, but the white house appeared just ahead.

The bog field

The church from the road

The house was quiet – no answer came from my relentless banging the door. But as luck would have it, a car approached and then pulled over. “Are you okay?” A kindly man asked. Breathlessly, I answered that I was not. He said, “Lost? Where is your phone?” I told him I didn’t have one, nothing but my camera. A look of alarm crossed his face but then came a kindly smile. “Never mind, jump in. I will take you back to the church entrance.”

This is where I had left my husband who now anxiously waited with a search party. What a day and what memories. It was all worth it.

On the walk to the white house,me and my shadow

Until later Eve

The Nativity – A Beautiful Light Within

 

What has become of Christmas? With the true meaning lost within the busy quest for self-gratification, there is little time to read of study the real meaning of Christmas, yet our very survival on this planet depends on us elevating our hearts and soul to another level, one where ME becomes we….The soul of man today dwells in unrelenting noise that drowns out all contact with that blissful inner harmony that can only be found in inner silence. This inner and mystical silence wherein the purest spiritual state can be achieved is the Silent Night…”

 

beauty of the arts

The Nativity

In the Christian story of the “Nativity”, the King of Kings as the Son of God is born in a stable among the beasts of burden. This most noble and glorious of Beings is depicted as being born in the most lowly of abodes. His room is a manger fit for animals, his bed is made of straw, his source of heat is the very breath of the beasts that so very wilfully share their quarters with him. The stable is not a castle or a mansion. The Shepherds are not noblemen and there are no servants waiting on him. Why does this most glorious, exalted and long awaited wonderful event transpire through such humility, modesty and lowliness? Why this event is called the Silent Holy Night?

This image of the divine child is a most beautiful symbol revealing very profound principles and truths. The stable sheltering the beasts represents the material aspect of our beings as that which belongs to the body, form and matter. It is that which belongs to the physical self, which houses the animal appetites and the desires of the senses. It corresponds to that which is the lowest aspects of our being, that which binds us to the earth. Just as the blooming of the beautiful sacred lotus flower on the surface of the waters has its roots below the surface anchored in the mud underneath, so too our highest spiritual understanding is rooted in that which is the lowest in us.

The comforting warmth given off by the breath of the beasts is allegorical of the alchemical fire of the vital force resident within every cell in our body. It is this fire that incubates the divine child within us. The darkness of the Holy Night represents the unconscious mind that has begun to be illuminated by a star which the Magi seek to behold and follow to the manger. If we meditate on this beautiful picture of the kings of the East adoring the Divine Child, we realize a beautiful image. The stable is no longer perceived as something lowly when divinity has found abode within it. The radiance of this infant as the unfolding and birthing of a man-god reveals the consummation of the alchemical wedding of heaven and earth. What a beautiful and sacred temple our lowly stable has become as we realize a most wonderful presence within its simple and humble manger! What a blessed and sacred temple the body of man truly is!

The soul of man today dwells in unrelenting noise that drowns out all contact with that blissful inner harmony that can only be found in inner silence. This inner and mystical silence wherein the purest spiritual state can be achieved is the Silent Night. If we keep vigil, and we receive the higher grace of God, then we will become conscious of that Holy Night, where we will perceive the star of the Magi and follow it to its crib in the manger as the inner depths of our beings, and there behold the new born Divine Infant representing our birth into a new and higher spirituality. In this way we will realize our own divinity as our inner master reveals himself and manifests his light into the world.

Merry Christmas and All Best Wishes to all. ~ Steven Kalec

 

Christian Mysticism – Philosophy/Religion

~ Essence of  Love by Kiernan Antares ~

Lit up from
Within
I am

Free
Empowered
Whole
I am

Stars aflame
Soul on fire
With passion
I am

Birthed anew
Radiating a light
A force
A Source

…

FOR reasons that are not too clear, thirteenth-century Europe represents the single greatest flowering of mysticism in the West. It was also a time, nearly unique in Western history, for the extent to which feminine voices were raised, tolerated, and even revered. In the following article, Jake has generously given us many unknown facts, certainly unknown to me, and to which I offer my gratitude. Having read and enjoyed books on Christian Mysticism over the years, I cannot find the language to do them justice. Jake does. (Jake Murray graduated from Oxford Uni. He works as a Freelance theatre director, teacher and writer. )

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What is Christian Mysticism?

by Jake Murray

Christian Mysticism is probably the least known and least understood Mystical Tradition in the world. Indeed, most people, including most Christians, would be astonished and shocked to learn that there was such a thing as Christian Mysticism at all. Since the Reformation it has been viewed with enormous suspicion, especially among the Protestant Churches who traditionally have disliked the idea of a body of knowledge available to an elite and, with the defining doctrine of Sola Scriptura, have, by and large, not liked metaphysical speculation or mysticism as part of their discourse. This is not to say that there have not been important Protestant Christian Mystics – Jakob Boehme, William Blake, Jane Leade, Valentine Weigel, Emmanuel Swedenborg for instance – but they have always tended to run into trouble with the authorities. Blake was very much a lone gunman, Boehme was forced to promise never to make his books public and Swedenborg was put on trial. Within Catholicism Mysticism was actively encouraged for many centuries and then became badly entangled with fears about heresy and the Reformation, when even major figures like St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, were hugely harassed. As a consequence, Mysticism has largely died out in the Western Churches. In the Greek and Eastern Orthodox Churches it has never gone away, Mysticism always being a key aspect of their experience of Christianity. But we in the West are very ignorant about the Orthodox Churches, so for us that Mysticism, much of it deeply ecstatic, has also been kept from us.

Another reason for the relative obscurity of Christian Mysticism, especially among those who are interested in Mysticism in general, is the hostility so many people feel towards the Churches. To most people Christianity is one long litany of misogyny, intolerance, persecution, oppression, control of minds and sexualities, corruption, child abuse, conformism, Inquisitions, anti-semitism, religious wars and so on. The idea that it has had anything to offer on a mystical level is almost unthinkable to many. For many spiritually-minded people the emphasis on Sin, Damnation, fear and general anti-life doom and gloom are things one has to get away from. As a consequence the hidden tradition of Christian Mystical thought has been all but lost to us compared with, for instance, the sublime wisdom of the East – Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism – or even Western traditions such as Kabbalah, Sufism and Hermeticism, all of which seem to be far more liberating and all-embracing than anything Christianity has to offer. The very imagery of Christianity is associated with enormous negativity to many. The terminology is off-putting, to such an extent that for most people, reading the core texts is almost impossible without centuries of accrued meanings that may not even be there.

There is an enormous amount of truth in all of this. The negative historical karma of Christianity is there for all to see. But it is far from the whole story of the Tradition, and a great shame, as Hidden beneath all the rubble is a vast reservoir of rich mystical literature of the most astonishing visionary quality, much of which has a great deal in common with all the other Traditions mentioned above. It has often been said that, for instance, Meister Eckhart would have a great deal to say to the Buddha were they to meet (indeed there has been a famous study of Eckhart by the Zen Master Suzuki). Orthodox Christianity has an extraordinarily spiritual, all-embracing, take on Christianity, a vision shared in the Western Churches through a mutual connection with the Neo-Platonic tradition drawn from St Dionysius the Areopagite.

Early Christianity was much simpler, far more diverse and far more mystically-orientated than it is now. We forget, for instance, that until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, rather than being a persecuting religion it was an entirely persecuted one with a profound revolutionary, as well as ascetic tradition. An accepted, indisputable, rigid canon of Scripture such as we find now in the modern editions of the Bible was not even established until midway through the 4th Century, and then only after vigorous debate, with books like Revelation, responsible for so much confusion since, only being included at the last minute. Early Church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St Augustine and others freely acknowledged other authorities as having insight – Plato, Plotinus, even Hermes Trismegistus. Reincarnation was not denounced as a heresy until the 6th Century in the Catholic Church and as late as the 7th in the Celtic when it amalgamated with Rome. We forget also that until the fall of Constantinople in the 15th Century the centers of Christianity were Meditterannean  and Middle Eastern – Alexandria, Carthage,  Rome, Syria, Greece – all of which had rich esoteric traditions. In terms of misogyny, the New Testament itself suggests that women had as much of a role in the early Church as the men (see Romans 16), and even after that it is a curious feature of Christian Mysticism just how much of a massive contribution women’s voices had to make.

No other spirituality or religion in the world has had so many women Mystics – St Teresa of Avila, St Clare of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Hadewijch, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Marguerite Porete and a host of others. The fact that so much of this has been lost is mainly to do with the reasons mentioned above. The modern, impoverished view of Christianity, apparently so militant and so reactionary, in which a highly complex set of ideas have been reduced to a simple set of answers revolving around Sin and Redemption, is a sign of Christianity’s rejection of its own mystical roots. The decline of Christianity as a progressive cultural force can be seen with the beginnings of its own suppression of its Mystics during the time of the Middle Ages and Reformation. In spite of revivals during the Counter-Reformation and the Renaissance, by the 17th Century Science, Philosophy and the Enlightenment were starting to take over as the main means of understanding existence. Its taken until now for Christian Mysticism to start to be uncovered again, in part kick-started by growing interest in Christian Gnosticism, which has caused many people to reexamine Western spirituality.

St. Francis – dancing

St Gertrude

Carmelite Monastery