by Carol Ohmart Behan

The tradition of pilgrimage has been a time-honored practice in virtually all cultures beyond recorded history, its popularity undiminished to this day. Regardless of the goal,

a basic purpose of a pilgrimage is to make a special journey to a site that offers a unique connection with the sacred, the supernatural, the mysterious or the extraordinary in some way. The journey’s destination brings the pilgrim to a place “where the physical world meets the spiritual world.”

Religious pilgrimage is no doubt the most familiar kind and nearly all faiths encourage their followers in such journeys. For millennia Christians have aspired to visit the Holy Land of Jerusalem or places where Christian saints lived and performed their deeds. The annual Muslim pilgrimage, the Hajj, calls pilgrims to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to circle the Ka’Ba, the square, black-shrouded structure that houses the sacred Black Stone. The veneration of this sacred stone, thought now to be a meteorite, actually predates the formation of Islam. Hindus travel to the Ganges River in India seeking spiritual purification and believe life is incomplete without bathing at least once in its waters. In their eyes the river is a goddess, Ganga ma, (mother Ganga) who offers renewal and salvation.

Pilgrimage journeys are often undertaken for purposes of healing, be it of body, mind, or spirit. The destination may be humanmade such as the shrine of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre in a little Canadian town of the same name just outside of Quebec. The miraculous healings that have occurred there for several hundred years attract more than a million people every year. People stand in awe before ancient monuments such as Stonehenge in England, its towering, silent stones erected by our ancestors. It attracts over 800,000 visitors per year and several thousand gather on the summer solstice to watch the sunrise at this ancient and mystical site. Visitors from a variety of religious backgrounds have reported a strong sense of mystery and spiritual energy there.

On every continent Earth’s natural wonders also are points of pilgrimage offering their stunning beauties and grandeurs as balm for the spirit. A very few to mention are the Grand Canyon, the towering plume of Old Faithful’s geyser in Yellowstone National Park, and sacred mountains such as Mt. Fuji in Japan and Mt. Shasta in northern California. Ayers Rock in Australia, its native name, Uluru, like Mt. Shasta is considered a place of mystical power by native peoples and New Age practitioners alike. And circling all the continents is the Ocean herself, a source of inspiration and renewal for those of us who dwell inland.

On a smaller scale, a labyrinth is very much a place “where the physical world meets the spiritual world.” The labyrinth’s gently curved path leads the walker on a quiet, contemplative journey to its center. In my work with labyrinth I have witnessed people utilizing the labyrinth’s pathway for something that can well be described as an “inner pilgrimage”. So much of modern life urges us to focus on the outer world, but more and more people are seeking ways to explore “inner landscapes”. In my view, this yearning accounts in part for the resurgence of interest in the labyrinth, an ancient spiritual resource. I invite you to read my article on this at www.GoldenSpiralJourney.com

Other means to pursue a personal pilgrimage of our vast and unexplored inner world can be through meditation, journal or poetry writing, and seeking places of quiet and silence where “we can hear the soul speaking”.

Pilgrimage has always been and is still “work of the soul” from the planning, to the traveling, to reaching the journey’s destination. If you do not come from a religious or cultural tradition of pilgrimage, the call is sometimes more subtle. The poet Mary Oliver poses the question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?” There is an ever-increasing desire to live our lives from a deeper place, to spend more of our time “being” and less in “doing.” Oliver’s question beckons us to step outside the confines of our consumer focused, ego-driven culture. For those seeking this more conscious and spiritually-focused way of living, a pilgrimage journey offers abundant support in searching out this larger, more holistic life.

My own experience of pilgrimage came when I entered my fifth decade, wondering what I might do with “the rest of my life”. Some truly marvelous synchronicities (a good sign you’re on the right path) brought me to Glastonbury, England, and to its evocative and mystical energies. It has been a place of pilgrimage for a thousand years and more as early peoples came to drink and bathe in the healing waters of the two springs issuing from beneath the brooding hill or “Tor”. Of Glastonbury’s many myths, one is that the Holy Grail was brought here by Joseph of Arimatheia who is said to have founded the first Christian church in England. It grew into a fabulous and famous Abbey that drew devout pilgrims for hundreds of years. The legend of the Grail grew to encompass the mythical life of King Arthur and Guinevere, the energies of that story woven into all the rest. Down through the centuries, the Chalice Well at the “red spring”, sacred to the Divine Feminine, maintained its presence not far beyond the Abbey walls. In the summer of 2001, just another New Age pilgrim, I set foot on Glastonbury’s streets and climbed the Tor to find my own revelations.

The Chalice Well, set within its beautiful and peace-filled Garden, continues to draw people from all over the world in quest of the healing energies of its red-tinged waters, rising ever rising from its deep hidden source. During a visit there one summer afternoon, I saw a Spanish pilgrimage group clad in white outfits performing a healing ritual in the shallow bathing pool. Observing them, I was struck by how timeless this scene was and how all of us in the Garden that day were following in the footsteps of countless generations of pilgrims.

What one finds on a pilgrimage is often ineffable, and while I can only speak for myself, beyond a doubt my annual pilgrimages to Glastonbury continue to enlarge my life. I invite you to explore this ages-old pilgrimage destination by visiting my website. And since one article cannot possibly cover this tremendously large topic, I encourage you to explore further. Wonderful resources are just a mouse-click away on the World Wide Web. Enjoy your journey and Bright Blessings!

Carol Ohmart-Behan is a certified labyrinth-facilitator, pilgrimage leader, and published novelist. Details of her annual pilgrimages to Glastonbury and Southwest England (as well as information on her other work) can be found at www.GoldenSpiralJourney.com and www.MagdaleneGrailCircle.com

Six-thousand-year-old ancient temples (http://www.otsf.org/index.html) are giving up acoustic clues for modern scientists. Intriguing new research on ancient temples in Malta and highlighted by the Old Temples Study Foundation is resonating through international archaeology (http://www.otsf.org/Institute.htm)and interdisciplinary classics research. Reaching beyond the scope of traditional archaeology, a multi-disciplinary approach has opened a new dimension for the study of the ancient world.

“We may be hitting on one of those ‘lost secrets’,” says Linda Eneix, President of The OTS Foundation, dedicated to archaeology research and education related to the ancient temples (http://www.otsf.org/index.html) of Mediterranean Malta.

Located south of Sicily, the islands of Malta and Gozo are home to megalithic structures that were created by a highly developed people more than a thousand years ahead of Stonehenge and the pyramids. The monuments, including ancient temples, represent free-standing architecture in its purest and most original form. Design features including corbelled ceilings, are mirrored in subterranean mortuary shrines that have been carved out of solid limestone. (In architecture, corbelling is a system of a row of stones oversailing the one below it, reducing the area of the ceiling with each row upward and distributing its weight.) Malta’s Hal Saflieni Hypogeum provides the most extraordinary example. A multi-leveled complex of caves and ritual chambers, it is a gem of archaeology (http://www.otsf.org/Institute.htm) that lay undisturbed until workers broke into it accidentally in 1902.

Science Officer at the Hypogeum, Joseph Farrugia describes unusual sound effects in the UNESCO World Heritage Site: “There is a small niche in what we call ‘The Oracle Chamber’, and if someone with a deep voice speaks inside, the voice echoes all over the hypogeum. The resonance in the ancient temple is something exceptional. You can hear the voice rumbling all over.”

As anyone who sings in the shower knows, sound echoing back and amplifying itself from hard walls can do unusual things. That effect is magnified several times over in the stone chambers. “Standing in the Hypogeum is like being inside a giant bell,” says Eneix. “You feel the sound in your bones as much as you hear it with your ears. It’s really thrilling!”

After catching a film about the “Sounds of the Stone Age” on a flight from London, Eneix jumped on the chance to explore further and sought out the principals.

A consortium called The PEAR Proposition: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research are pioneers in the field of archaeo-acoustics, merging archaeology and sound science. Directed by Physicist Dr. Robert Jahn, the PEAR group set out in 1994 to test acoustic behavior in megalithic sites such as Newgrange and Wayland‘s Smithy in the UK. They found that the ancient chambers all sustained a strong resonance at a sound frequency between 95 and 120 hertz: well within the range of a low male voice.

In subsequent OTSF testing, stone rooms in ancient temples in Malta were found to match the same pattern of resonance, registering at the frequency of 110 or 111 hz. This turns out to be a significant level for the human brain. Whether it was deliberate or not, the people who spent time in such an environment were exposing themselves to vibrations that impacted their minds.

Sound scientist, Prof. Daniel Talma of the University of Malta explains: “At certain frequencies you have standing waves that emphasize each and other waves that de-emphasize each other. The idea that it was used thousands of years ago to create a certain trance — that’s what fascinates me.”

Dr. Ian A. Cook of UCLA and colleagues published findings in 2008 of an experiment in which regional brain activity in a number of healthy volunteers was monitored by EEG through different resonance frequencies. Findings indicated that at 110 hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shifted, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language center and a temporary switching from left to right-sided dominance related to emotional processing. People regularly exposed to resonant sound in the frequency of 110 or 111 hz would have been “turning on” an area of the brain that bio-behavioral scientists believe relates to mood, empathy and social behavior.

Although archaeologists had not found an explanation for such sophisticated engineering suddenly blossoming nearly six thousand years ago, Prof. Richard England, a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, sees an evolution: “. . . a gradual growth, from the cave to the tomb. The idea of continuity comes from an underground architecture. Gradually from these ovular rock-hewn spaces, man moved above ground, and above ground he fashioned an architecture of the living which followed the form of an architecture for the dead.”

“Once you know what you are looking for, you can see these same ceiling curves in natural caves in Malta.” Eneix observes. “It’s logical that the ancient temple builders observed the echoes and sound characteristics in the caves and came up with the idea of recreating the same environment in a more controlled way. Were they doing it intentionally to facilitate an altered state of consciousness? There is a lot that we are never going to know.”

Acoustics may well have been part of a widespread religious tradition. Old photos in an early edition of National Geographic Magazine show the discovery in securely dated levels of the Malta temples, of conical shaped stones bearing a distinct resemblance to the Omphalos or “belly-button” oracle stone at Delphi, used much later in time by ancient Greek priestesses who listened to the voice of the earth for guidance. The Omphalos became an Umbilicus when the Romans took over the concept and spread it over their empire. The timeline places the ancient Temple Builders at the head of a long chain of “coincidence.”

Research about Malta’s Temple Culture has been documented on a DVD available from the foundation at http://www.otsf.org/Legacy.htm. This captivating documentary details how inquiry into ancient temples in Malta mirrors the evolution of a discovery, branching beyond archaeology to become a multi-disciplinary fascination.

by Michael Berman

Though hard to believe as you walk down Kilburn High Road today, (in the suburb of London where I have spent most of my life) back in the 18th century taking the local medicinal waterous used to be a highly popular pastime and attracted many people to the neighbourhood.

Kilburn grew up on the banks of a stream which has been known variously as Cuneburna, Kelebourne and Cyebourne, which flows from Hampstead down through Hyde Park and into the River Thames. It is suggested the name means either Royal River or Cattle River (’Bourne’ being an Anglo-Saxon word for ‘river’). The river is known today as the River Westbourne. From the 1850s it was piped underground and is now one of London’s many underground rivers.

The name Kilburn was first recorded in 1134 as Cuneburna, referring to a priory which had been built on the site of the cell of a hermit known as Godwyn. Godwyn had built his hermitage by the Kilburn river during the reign of Henry I, and both his hermitage and the priory took their name from the river. Kilburn Priory was a community of Augustinian canonesses. It was founded in 1134 at the Kilburn river crossing on Watling Street (the modern-day junction of Kilburn High Road and Belsize Road). Kilburn Priory’s position on Watling Street meant that it became a popular resting point for pilgrims heading for the shrines at St Albans and Willesden. The Priory was dissolved in 1536 by Henry VIII, and nothing remains of it today.

The priory lands included a mansion and a hostium (a guesthouse), which may have been the origin of the Red Lion pub, thought to have been founded in 1444. Opposite, the Bell Inn was opened around 1600, on the site of the old mansion.

The fashion for taking ‘medicinal waters’ in the 18th century came to Kilburn when a well of chalybeate waters (water impregnated with iron) was discovered near the Bell Inn in 1714. In an attempt to compete with the nearby Hampstead Well, gardens and a ‘great room’ were opened to promote the well, and its waters were promoted in journals of the day as cure for ’stomach ailments’:
Kilburn Wells, near Paddington.-The waters are now in the utmost perfection; the gardens enlarged and greatly improved; the house and offices re-painted and beautified in the most elegant manner. The whole is now open for the reception of the public, the great room being particularly adapted to the use and amusement of the politest companies. Fit either for music, dancing, or entertainments. This happy spot is equally celebrated for its rural situation, extensive prospects, and the acknowledged efficacy of its waters; is most delightfully situated on the site of the once famous Abbey of Kilburn, on the Edgware Road, at an easy distance, being but a morning’s walk, from the metropolis, two miles from Oxford Street; the footway from the Mary-bone across the fields still nearer. A plentiful larder is always provided, together with the best of wines and other liquors. Breakfasting and hot loaves. A printed account of the waters, as drawn up by an eminent physician, is given gratis at the Wells. ”
-The Public Advertiser, July 17 1773.

In the 19th century the wells declined, but the Kilburn Wells remained popular as a tea garden. The Bell was demolished and rebuilt in 1863, the building which stands there today.

The following information on the waters was found in The Domestic Encyclopaedia Vol 4 by A. F. M. Willich, which was published in 1802:

Kilburn-Water, is a saline mineral fluid, obtained from a spring at Kilburn-well, about two miles from the end of Oxford-street, London. This water was formerly in great repute, but is at present seldom employed. Nevertheless, it promises to be serviceable in cases of habitual costiveness, where powerful laxatives would be productive of dangerous consequences ; as it may be used with safety, till the intestines have recovered their natural tone. It may farther be advantageously taken by persons of sedentary lives, who are peculiarly subject to hypochondriasis, indigestion, and other disorders arising from relaxed habits. The dose is from one to three pints, which should be drunk at short intervals, till it produce a purgative effect : and, as its operation is very slow, it appears to be eminently calculated for persons, whose stomachs are delicate or impaired.

The only evidence that remains today of the existence of the former Wells is a commemorative paving stone, on the corner of Belsize Road and Kilburn High Road.

The following extract from Edward Walford’s 1878 publication Old and New London: Volume 5. throws further light on what the neighbourhood used to be like. It also shows how complaints about the frightening pace of change in the modern world are actually nothing new, for people were making them in the last century too:
… Such has been the growth of London in this north-westerly direction, within the last half-century, … and such the progress of bricks and mortar in swallowing up all that was once green and sylvan in this quiet suburb of the metropolis, that the “village of Kilburn,” which within the last fifty years was still famous for its tea-gardens and its mineral spring, has almost become completely absorbed into that vast and “still increasing” City, and in a very short space of time all its old landmarks will have been swept away.
… Kilbourne … took its name from the little “bourne,” or brook, … rising on the southern slope of the Hampstead uplands. It found its way from the slope of West End, Hampstead, towards Bayswater, and thence passing under the Uxbridge Road, fed the Serpentine in Hyde Park. The brook, however, has long since disappeared from view, having been arched over, and made to do duty as a sewer.
… before the end of the sixteenth century, and even perhaps earlier, near a mineral spring … there arose a rural house, known to the holiday folks of London as the “Kilburn Wells.” The well is still to be seen adjoining a cottage at the corner of the Station Road, on some premises belonging to the London and North-Western Railway. The water rises about twelve feet below the surface, and is enclosed in a brick reservoir of about five feet in diameter, surmounted by a cupola. The key-stone of the arch over the doorway bears the date 1714. The water collected in this reservoir is usually about five or six feet in depth, though in a dry summer it is shallower; and it is said that its purgative qualities are increased as its bulk diminishes. These wells, in fact, were once famous for their saline and purgative waters. A writer in the Kilburn Almanack observes:-”Upon a recent visit we found about five feet six inches of water in the well, and the water very clear and bright, with little or no sediment at the bottom; probably the water has been as high as it now is ever since the roadway parted it from the ‘Bell’ Tea Gardens, not having been so much used lately as of old.” “Is it not strange,” asks Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth, “that, in these water-drinking times, the wells of Hampstead and Kilburn should not come again into vogue?”
From: ‘Kilburn and St John’s Wood’, Old and New London: Volume 5 (1878), pp. 243-253. URL: www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=45234 [accessed: 02 September 2009].

Unfortunately, however, the wells never did. And these days, as you struggle to make your way through crowds of shoppers heading for Sainsbury’s, Primark, Poundland and the like, it is hard to imagine they ever even existed. What you can do, though, is to drown your sorrows at the passing of an era in the rebuilt Old Bell (pictured below).

Well dressing is the art of decorating (dressing) wells, springs or other water sources with pictures made of growing things. This ancient custom, still popular all over Derbyshire, is thought to date back to the Celts or even earlier. The church banned it as water worship, but the tradition refused to die. The wells are dressed with large framed panels decorated with elaborate mosaic-like pictures made of flower petals, seeds, grasses, leaves, tree bark, berries and moss. Wooden trays are covered with clay, mixed with water and salt. A design is drawn and its outline pricked out onto the surface of the clay. The design is then filled in with natural materials, predominantly flower petals and mosses, but also beans, seeds and small cones. Well-dressings are beautiful and delicate and take a lot of work to make, and yet they only last for a few days. After the well dressing is erected next to the well it is blessed in a short outdoor service. In towns and villages that have several wells, a short procession from well to well is carried out during the blessing of the wells. The well dressing season spans from May through to late September. And, who knows? Perhaps there was a time when the Kilburn Wells were dressed in this manner too.

Michael Berman BA, MPhil, PhD, works as a teacher and a writer.
Publications include The Power of Metaphor for Crown House, and The Nature
of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story for Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Shamanic Journeys through Daghestan and Shamanic Journeys through the
Caucasus are both due to be published in paperback by O-Books in 2009. A
resource book for teachers on storytelling, In a Faraway Land, will be
coming out in 2010.

As for his work in the field of religious studies, although Michael
originally trained as a Core Shamanic Counsellor with the Scandinavian
Centre for Shamanic Studies under Jonathan Horwitz, these days his focus
is more on the academic side of shamanism, with a particular interest in
the folktales with shamanic themes told by and collected from the peoples
of the Caucasus. For more information please visit
www.Thestoryteller.org.uk