GORDON STRONG

Sea Priestess of Somerset

The Mendip Hills extend from Cley Hill in Wiltshire to Brean Down on the Somerset coast.  Along the summit of these peaks once ran the Roman trade route that took lead from Charterhouse to Uphill, a port in those ancient of days.  From there, this valuable metal was shipped to Rome to be used to line the aqueducts of the imperial city.

Brean Down, a promontory into the Bristol Channel surrounded on three sides by water, has a majestic presence.  Dion Fortune in her novel The Sea Priestess described it as ‘…shaped like a couchant lion with his tail into the sea.’ [1] From its highest peak Brent Knoll dominates the view, yet Glastonbury Tor can be clearly seen in the distance. In 340 A.D. the Romans built a temple upon Brean Down, probably upon a site revered in Bronze Age times. It is thought that even earlier settlements existed in the Ice Age.

Halfway across the waters to the Welsh coast can be seen the Viking Island of Steep Holm.  It is the people of Wales who gave Brean Down its name, for Bryn means ‘hill’. The Celtic connection is strong, for once Irish pilgrims beached their coracles on Brean shore.  They founded the church of St. Bridget a little way inland, beyond the sand dunes.  Both my grandfather and my great-grandfather were its incumbents. Did Mrs. Penry-Evans[2] take tea with the vicar?   

Dion Fortune must have known Brean Down in the 1930s when the Victorian Fort had been converted into tearooms for day trippers. The magical drama in her novel is played out beyond the battlements at the very tip of the rocks. In a cave, its entrance appropriately facing West, is the secret abode of the Priestess.

It is certainly a potent place, one akin to the Celtic consciousness, a race who considered any place where the elements met to be a gateway to the next world.  At Brean Down the winds of the Air swirl about the rocks of the Earth, and the Water of the tides embraces them also. The Fire of the Sun plays upon the scene, animating all with the energy of Sol. But it is the water that dominates, as Dion Fortune describes,

…the currents and tides took charge, everything broke up into a welter of foaming roaring water, with squirts and boilings where the sunk reefs checked the rush.[3] 

The Goddess energy is an unceasing, infinite power overseeing creation and dwarfing all that is mortal. Healing, calming, nurturing, but always has the Goddess a hint of sadness about her - that is Awen.  Her music is in the sea,

…there was a rhythm, and my ears began to pick out the tremendous orchestration of the storm; I could hear the deep-toned roar of the surf under the cliffs, and the clangour of the waves on the outlying rocks of the point, and the tenor of the roaring gale and high piccolo notes of the wind…[4]

At the centre of creation is the unspoken promise that one wave will follow another in an endless cycle.  It has always been so, and will always be so.  At Brean Down, the sense of being is so strong that it gradually changes to a state of non-being - a feeling that nothing exists, nothing has ever existed, and nothing will ever exist.  Only understand this and you will know where resides the essence of magick.

Retain such a moment.  Let your soul return to it when your being needs reassurance.  The might of Creation is a realization that every individual is entitled to be themselves and the gentle gift of life allows this to be.  At Brean Down the throbbing rhythm of the Goddess energy can be seen in the sensual abandon of the sea. 

The goddess is there always, in the moonlight when her hair is aglow with silver stars…at Dawn, with the sun reflecting gold in her eyes, her features translucent, made of cloud and sky... Dion Fortune knew the beauty and majesty of the Goddess, and in The Sea Priestess she recorded her magical vision of Somerset and Brean Down. 

~o00o~