The unquenchable thirst for Knowledge that excites the Soul

Dwina Gibb admires Kristoffer Hughes’ stunning new nail varnish

I asked our patroness Dwina Gibb if she would say something at the Mt Haemus Gathering we held recently. Dwina read out such an inspiring text she had written the night before, I thought you’d like to read it here:

My ‘Say Something’ for the Mount Haemus 2016 Gathering:

It is the unquenchable thirst for Knowledge that excites the soul and surpasses class, colour and creed. It is beyond the mortal coil.

Like music and poetry it transcends all the spheres and pulls us towards our origins. Whether we search deep within our own meditations or explore the outer regions of space, the zest and enthusiasm is the same for both.

The passion and love of learning is inspirational and a joyous experience for any child of awakening intelligence. It takes the innocence and purity of the child’s sense of wonder and intuition, coupled with the ancestral quest of the sage’s wisdom, to create a scholar and a shaman.

The Muse is always inspiring, often archetypal and not necessarily corporeal, and may come in any guise at any time.

The scholars and shamans of today who have honoured OBOD with their works and their alchemical knowledge of the marriage of science and wisdom have devoted precious spiritual time and energy to produce the Mount Haemus lectures for the past sixteen years.

The great Poets and Bards, Ovates and Druids all succumbed to the inspiration, love and passion of the Muse. It is the enquiring mind and soaring spirit of the ecstasy of Divine Knowledge that unlocks the iron fetters of the gross mind. This takes souls on a journey through personal enlightenment to world enlightenment. Each new discovery in our origins has a catalytic or a cataclysmic effect on universal consciousness.

So we should honour and respect those pioneers who have the will, and who dare to soar with their minds, to unlock the sacred Knowledge. It is a solitary journey of exploration, even with friends and family and clan around. But the journey is always with a Divine Muse, and this is not undertaken lightly. The time and effort for research is a period of self-sacrifice to higher wisdom.

The Mount Haemus Award was set up to assist with this quest, and is named in honour of the story, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not, that there was a Druid group in Oxford in 1245. This particular Grove would have existed at a time fraught with dangers of dogmatism and corruption (not that different from today). There were great thinkers, theologians, philosophers, lay persons and scientists, also Franciscan brothers linked with this, including the influential minds of Roger Bacon and most likely his mentor Robert Grosseteste who was the first one to use an astrolabe in this country to measure the distance between stars. His philosophical and scientific works were numerous at the time, and his influence as Bishop of Lincoln and as Chancellor of Oxford University knew no bounds. Very often these scholars and teachers wore different cloaks at different periods in order to conceal and preserve esoteric knowledge.

The old adage of: ‘To Will, To Dare, To Know and To Be Silent’ ensures secrecy and safety on a physical level but the Silence also refers to the contemplation within the deep stillness of the soul-mind wherein lies sacred Knowledge, that Well of the Muse known to Hermits, Saints and Poets, and there for us all.

Dwina Gibb 2016

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