Reflections by Olivia Robertson

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I do like unexpected sychronicity. What a mysterious drawing I created in dream-like way - I love art. It was the opposite of my art called the dolmen, as a bed of Grainne, used for lovers in cheerier pagan days in Ireland. While the sun in good aspect gives joy and passion, the moon can have a very weird effect, especially in Ireland. When Minette Quick, Archdruidess, saw my picture, she exclaimed: "The White Sister!"

The White Sister is my description of the predicament of our Irish nuns at the moment. I like it. But then I adore both sun and moon energies. Those who follow the sun too much become rich, powerful, with lots of passions - they do seem a bit like that, my English relatives. But we in Ireland are under the Moon Goddess. We can become very weird - even if we start British. I have to adjust my set when I leave Ireland for England. I give up telepathy, try to please people, covering up undesirable thoughts and being psychically insensitive - psychically sensitive I mean. I become honest, open - often too open. I speak my mind on every occasion.

© art Olivia Robertson, courtesy Minette Quick

Anyway, here is my interpretation of my picture. It shows a dolmen, and a dolmen has in it what I thought was a beautiful rendering of the ancient Irish, sort of circle - you know, what would you call it - a spiral. It showed a head, a spiral head done delicately in with dots, staring eyes belonging to the ancient Ireland, and mouth and nose. And as it was lunar, it just tailed off into a little squiggle. I thought that looked splendid, the rising moon coming through a dolmen. She did have a rather odd expression.

Anyway, I began to think of the moon following a spiritual path. We indeed, we in Ireland would rather be meerkats, with respectable lives, rather than apes you see. We don't like all this stuff of being 98% chimps, speak for yourself. But among too high, obedient, poor, humble and chaste, we may end up like this figure. I mean she's high, obedient, poor and humble and chaste, just as St. Francis recommended - obedience, poverty, chastity, with three knots in her veil. But in this picture, where is the rest of her? She's all head.

This haunting image of the White Goddess ruling Ireland, Inis Fail, Land of Destiny, is best exemplified in the legend of the White Lady that haunts the Preseli Mountains in Wales. It also illustrates the strange relationship of sun and moon that presets off two islands, both astronomically and mythically. Whenever the full moon is seen from Preseli in Wales, gliding over the Mt. Leinster mountains and falling into the sea, the next day a total eclipse of the sun would follow. Our Welsh members watched this before the great millennium eclipse. Our member asked the oldest inhabitants, she declared an old woman told her the place where Ireland could be seen best across the Irish Sea was haunted by the White Lady. She was harbinger of death.

Therefore the query as to why the builders of Stonehenge created their first stone circle from blue stones from Preseli, may provide an answer. Why bring those indescribably heavy stones all the way from Wales to the middle of Wiltshire in England? Stonehenge, unlike Avebury, place of the living, was dedicated to the death and rebirth of the sun - but who killed and resurrected the sun? No less than his own consort I think, the pale-faced white Goddess moon.

Ireland is believed to be on the edge of the abyss when the sun sank in the Atlantic Ocean. Legends told of the lost continent of Atlantis buried there. In Ireland it was the domain of the Land of Spirit, the Sidhe. So now we may disentangle the legend of the White Lady and her mysterious myth. She is the sacrificed Virgin, the Nun. In her power aspect, she is the Queen of Splendid Beauty, who causes the deaths of husbands and lovers - we have plenty of them in Ireland and Irish mythology. The Moon goes through three psychic phases, Virgo, Lovers, Enchantress.