Par Susan Radcliffe

Il ya beaucoup d'endroits dans le Royaume-Uni où vous pouvez prendre une pause de la vie. Chaque partie du pays a les spas et les hôtels de charme, mais si vous voulez quelque chose de plus sur votre voyage, vous pouvez choisir une retraite spirituelle. Il ya des propriétés gérées par de nombreux groupes religieux différents et selon différents systèmes de croyance, et la plupart sont ouverts aux visiteurs de toute la foi. Voici une sélection de partout dans le Royaume-Uni.

St cUthmân de

Cowfold Road, Coolham, West Sussex, RH13 Angleterre 8QL

Cette retraite offre un lieu de paix et de réflexion. Il est tenu par le diocèse catholique d'Arundel et Brighton, mais il est ouvert à toutes les religions et celles de rien. La maison de campagne édouardienne a des éléments d'époque comme de belles poutres en bois et lambris et il ya un logement pour les couples ou les individus dans les chambres, qui sont décorées de façon chaleureuse et simple. Il n'y a pas de programme à suivre et vous pouvez choisir de manger en silence dans la salle à manger, ou dans une conversation avec d'autres clients, dans la véranda. Le silence peut également être dû à la chapelle ou à la bibliothèque bien garnie. A l'extérieur, il ya quelques hectares de lacs et 20 de jardins, de terrains boisés et de prairies, où vous pouvez trouver un endroit isolé pour la contemplation ou l'observation des oiseaux, car il s'agit d'une zone naturelle désignée du Royaume-Uni.

Retraite Seren

Bryncoch Farm, Gower, Swansea, au Pays de Galles SA2 7LB

Il s'agit d'une retraite pour l'Ayurveda, le yoga et le nettoyage. Le programme quotidien comprend une séance de carrosserie ayurvédique, yoga et la méditation, des repas sains et ayurvédiques et des démonstrations culinaires, avec des produits venant du jardin biologique. Vous pouvez faire une promenade dans les 23 motifs acre ou apaiser le stress dans le bain à remous et un sauna. Le logement est de 4 étoiles standard et lit le petit déjeuner. Il ya 4 chambres à coucher, qui peut être double ou lits jumeaux, et des lits supplémentaires peuvent être mis en pour accueillir les familles. Il ya aussi une aire de jeux pour les enfants.

Dhanakosa

Balquhidder, Lochearnhead, Écosse FK19 8PQ

Il s'agit d'une retraite bouddhiste situé dans le parc national de Trossachs, sur les rives du Loch Voil. Vous pouvez explorer les chutes d'eau et des terres boisées dans ses 16 hectares de terrain. Un large éventail de programmes sont proposés avec enseignement de la méditation introductive, y compris le yoga, la randonnée, le Tai Chi, des Arts et des thérapies alternatives. Il ya aussi des cours de méditation les plus avancés. Le logement dans la ferme est un peu basique, mais vous auriez choisi cet endroit pour apprécier la beauté de la nature environnante et de se concentrer sur votre vie intérieure.

Launde Abbaye

Launde abbaye, de l'Est Norton, Leicester, en Angleterre LE7 9XB

Il s'agit d'une retraite anglicane terme et vous pouvez assister aux liturgies dans la belle chapelle de l'abbaye du 12ème siècle. Il est, cependant, est ouvert à quiconque veut aller sur un voyage spirituel. La retraite est fixé à 450 hectares de parc et dispose d'un jardin victorien clos où une grande partie de la nourriture pour les clients est cultivé. Il ya 45 chambres dans la maison principale, dont certaines parties remontent au 16ème siècle. Il est rempli de caractéristiques historiques, des cheminées et des antiquités. Il ya plusieurs cours différents à choisir, y compris les retraites individuellement guidées où vous prenez part à la réflexion personnelle ainsi que des sessions quotidiennes avec un guide spirituel, ou d'autres cours qui comprennent des activités telles que la peinture, la prière ou des groupes de discussion.

Writer Bio

Susan Radcliffe est un écrivain britannique et chercheur TV, avec des connexions à plusieurs villes à travers le Royaume-Uni. Elle a une ascendance irlandaise et du Nord est né en Écosse. Elle a ensuite vécu à York et Sheffield avant de s'installer à Londres. Elle aime voyager et d'explorer les nombreux endroits magnifiques à travers le Royaume-Uni et à l'étranger. Elle aime partager ses découvertes et d'être en mesure de recommander les hôtels et hébergements, sites touristiques et attractions pour les visiteurs d'autres. Elle écrit actuellement pour sletoH.com , un site de comparaison de prix où vous pouvez réserver hôtels au Royaume-Uni ainsi que des hôtels dans plusieurs autres pays.

Un Lady in Waiting: Une explication du complexe Avebury

Il ya 4500 ans à ce qui est maintenant connu sous le nom Avebury dans le Wiltshire, l'homme du Néolithique a érigé un vaste cercle de pierre (le Grand Cercle) plusieurs fois plus grande que les plus médiatisés de Stonehenge vingt miles au sud. Autour de l'extérieur de ces pierres 100 ou si sarsen est un énorme partie envasées abandonner une trentaine de pieds de profondeur ainsi le classer aujourd'hui comme un site henge. Donc, grande était le cercle que la plupart des village moderne-jour de Avebury établit au sein de sa circonférence des quatre cinquièmes d'un mile. Pour dire que c'est seulement impressionnant, c'est sous-estimer sa grandeur.

Inscrit au grand cercle étaient deux doubles rangées de pierres dressées connues aujourd'hui sous le Kennet de l'Ouest et les avenues Beckhampton. Le West Kennet Avenue était près d'une demi-miles et en longueur, mais le point maintenant tous disparus, mais la résiliation Beckhampton Avenue est actuellement inconnue, bien que croit avoir été la même longueur.

À l'autre bout de l'avenue de West Kennet et relié à elle, est le site d'un aujourd'hui détruit un ensemble de cercles de pierres et de bois connues sous le nom du Sanctuaire et ce trouve sur la colline du côté de Overton la plus ancienne et la plus longue piste à sens unique dans les îles britanniques - le chemin de Ridgeway.

Les trois quarts d'un mile au sud de la Great Circle a été construit l'énigmatique Silbury Hill, la plus grande colline artificielle en Europe avec un énorme fossé entourant 20ft profonde maintenant principalement envasés. Couvrant une surface au sol de cinq acres et demi, il est de haute 130ft avec certaines estimations qui prétendent qu'il a fallu quelque 18 millions d'heures à construire en utilisant rien de plus que des pioches et des bois les omoplates de bœufs et des outils en bois. Du nord au sud, de Avebury Avebury est le flux de Winterbourne qui se confond avec la rivière Kennet au sud de Silbury Hill.

Aussi juste en dessous de Silbury Hill se trouvent les ressorts Swallowhead où le principal de la rivière Kennet monte. A quarter of a mile further south on the top of rising ground is the West Kennet Long Barrow, a chambered Early Neolithic chambered burial tomb believed to have been in use some 1,000 years prior to the construction of the other megaliths in the area.

These combined man-made structures are known collectively as the Avebury Complex and it has been classified as a World Heritage Site such is its importance. However, even after many excavations have taken place at the Great Circle, the Avenues, the Sanctuary and Silbury Hill, no practical or tangible theories or understanding of why they were built and what they were used for on completion has been put forward – until now that is! They had remained as much a mystery as when the first known official excavation began back in the 17 ^th century.

After some 30 years investigating the Complex, stone circle researcher Roy Goutté has reached some amazing conclusions that he says will change our understanding of Neolithic man in Great Britain and their beliefs for ever if correct. No longer will the Great Circle at Avebury, or Stonehenge for that matter, be seen as 'stand alone' structures, but part of huge complexes. It is by reaching this understanding that we can now begin to decipher their true meaning.

Working systematically through eight individual man-made or natural parts of the Avebury Complex as he sees it, he has now intrinsically linked them to show that they were all interconnected to form a huge hitherto unrecognised Female Earth Figure laid out over hundreds of acres of the Wiltshire countryside and has written a book on his discoveries. The Work is titled 'A Lady In Waiting' and clearly shows that this figure was designed and built in the Late Neolithic period. Roy Goutté firmly believes it was built with one aim in mind… to lead the Souls of the Dead into their Afterlife and his book guides the reader through the various stages of the Neolithic transition from this world into the next!

Contemporary with the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza and the Egyptian belief in the Afterlife, Roy Goutté has been able to show that it wasn't just the hierarchy of its time that benefitted from the promise of an Afterlife at Avebury, but everybody, for he believes that the Earth Figure was built by the people, for the people . How it functioned and how it all worked in the mindset of Neolithic man is clearly shown by the intricate layout of the figure and how it used the natural waterways which ran through the figure's body to bring it 'alive' to them by representing its Lifeblood.

The Swallowhead Springs were a representation of the birth canal with the New Life emerging from the womb which was itself represented by Silbury Hill with its water filled ditch symbolically representing the 'waters' around the unborn Spirit while awaiting its emergence into the Afterlife. The Stone Avenues were the arms of the Figure and the Sanctuary at the conclusion of the West Kennet Avenue the Gathering Hand alongside the Ridgeway Path where the burial ground, mortuary house and drying-out platforms were situated and from where the Afterlife journey began. The Ridgeway Path was the route that led directly to the Sanctuary and would have been witness to much sadness as dead or dying people were carried or walked to their last earthly resting place prior to beginning their journey into the Afterlife.

The Great Circle was of course the Head of the Figure and the two smaller stone circles within it the Eyes. It had a Mouth which ringed a Sacred Well that is still in evidence today.

In all it is an astounding discovery and the actual layout of the Figure showing all the relevant parts can quite clearly be seen on the overdrawn map within the book or on the Lady In Waiting website along with over 50 photographs of those component parts. In all, the book is innovative and groundbreaking and more importantly, very plausible if one reverts to a way of thinking not seen since Neolithic times.

Roy Goutté concludes his book with the words:-

'Nearly everything that should be there still is – the only things really missing are the people and their beliefs'.

And he's right and I'm sure that after reading this book you too will think again about the true meaning of the Avebury Complex.

More details about the book can be found at the Lady In Waiting website:- http://aveburyaladyinwaiting.co.uk/

À propos de l'Auteur

Roy Goutté was born in the Channel Island of Jersey, but now lives in Cornwall on the edge of Bodmin Moor with his wife and their two sons.

His interest in the past began as a child when growing up in the south-east of the island where many of his early boyhood days were spent playing around such important sites as the passage graves at La Hougue Bie in the parish of Grouville; La Pouquelaye de Faldouet in the parish of St Martin; Mont Ubé at St Clement and the gallery grave Le Dolmen du Couperon at St Martin. At the time they were just places to have fun in on days out, but as he matured he began to take more interest in them for what they really were and not just as playgrounds.

After leaving Jersey he became a regular visitor to Stonehenge and Avebury as his interest had moved to mainly investigating stone circles. Access to Stonehenge then became so limited that he felt it restricted his investigations there, so he concentrated solely on Avebury. He had been working on a theory that both Stonehenge and Avebury were not 'stand-alone' sites like many thought, but part of huge complexes, so this gave him good reason to investigate Avebury fully and without distraction.

Working alone, his dedicated research into the Avebury Complex has resulted in this – A Lady In Waiting - his first archaeological style book investigating an ancient wonder that has captured the imagination of people since the days of such notable antiquaries as John Aubrey in the 17 ^th century and William Stukeley in the 18th.

Roy Goutté is also the author of eight previously published books in the Principal Lines series on the bloodlines of the Border Collie in various disciplines – and an Obedience dog training book – Get It Right .

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