Here I am on top of Carn Ingli last autumn. Carn Ingli means ‘Mountain of Angels’. It’s the name of the mountain I lived on in Wales.
This poem began as an expression of my magical encounter with the spiritual dimension of Carn Ingli, which occurred gradually during the years of my retreat. Carn Ingli has, for me and for others who have spent deep time there, a holy presence and distinctly feminine energy. I relate to it as ‘she’. And I relate to ‘her’ as Goddess.
Subsequently, meeting Amma and spending time in her ashram, I realised that my experience of Amma was very similar to my encounter with the mountain. The two became one in my imagination and understanding, embodiments of the Goddess here on Earth, and I reworked the poem to incorporate elements of my experience of Amma within the imagery of the holy mountain.
Ultimately, this is a poetic sketch of my ongoing mystical dance with the Divine Feminine:
A dragon’s back
Vast as space,
Alone amidst the diamond dust of worlds.
Dangerous,
Mysterious,
Self-shaping
And luminously dark,
She is the black of all colours,
Pixelated rainbows scintillating through the void.
Wise as Time,
Everywhere awake,
She is the vital substance
Of every dream.
An Iceberg of fire
Standing ablaze
Inside the sky,
With the sky inside her,
She is made of pure solidified light,
This woman before me,
This Mountain of Angels.
She is made of love.
I bow down before the holy mountain,
Divine body of the Infinite.
I walk her shining pathways.
My bare feet caress her skin,
Kindling with the holy fire
Until my body burns and flares,
Ecstasy rising like smoke.
The world dissolves,
And with it
All gravity,
All causation.
Flying now
Without wings.
Falling
Without end.
Like music,
Having neither inside nor outside.
I lay my bones gently down upon the mountainside.
My flesh becomes moss, heather, bilberry bushes.
My eyes become ravens,
My mind, the sky.
Within the bluestones, silence.
Within the silence, moonlight.
Dancing without moving,
My heart becomes a city of light.
At its centre
I disappear.
Where I end
Begins the mystery.
Closer than breath,
Closer than light and thought,
There before the beginning
Of both day
And night.
Where I end begins the mountain,
These words just mountain mist
Gathering in the constant dawn.