A Modern Mystery School
Books by Silent Eye Writers
Blog – personal views from the Directors of the School
The School – The correspondence course, what it is and how it works
Brochure – PDF download
Teaching – About the Silent Eye, the course and methods.
The Enneagram – What is it and how do we use it?
Coffee with Don Pedro – A fictional encounter with a mysterious man by Steve Tanham
The People – Who are we?
The Journey So Far
My Spiritual Journey by Steve Tanham
Spirit y'all? – Stuart's journey
Are we there yet?… Sue's journey
EVENTS: New Workshops, talks and events 2019-2020
Previous Events – Take a look at some past Silent Eye workshops and talks
River of the Sun – the Silent Eye Weekend Workshop 2015
The Light and the Eye of the Cobra – River of the Sun 2015
The Birthing – A vision of the birth of the School
Walk and Talk – a glimpse of one of our informal events
Land of the Exiles 2014 – a vision of the hillside ritual
"Find the path and stay on it…" – From the Harvest of Being weekend 2014
Gallery – photos from Silent Eye events
The Feathered Seer. Weekend Workshop April 2017
The First Time… What is it like to attend your first workshop?
Contact The Silent Eye
Esoteric Psychology
'Aye' of the Unicorn: Tower…
July 14, 2019 July 14, 2019 | Stuart France
To complete our pentagrams
we returned to our
core principles and considered the shadow.
The setting was not the swiftly flowing Spey
but a quitely progressing brook
which arced in a crescent
around the space in which we chose to work.
Out text saw the Queen of Witches,
Hecate, admonishing the Weird Sisters
for tampering with the modalities of time.
A fitting end to conclude our adventures.
The child outgrew the shadow
filling the limbs
and head of the pentagram
before climbing astride
the Unicorn
and bounding away…
With thanks to Dean Powell and Steve Tanham for organising the weekend…
and to all those who joined us in Scotland for making it a great one.
If you would like to join us for a weekend, exploring the inner, spiritual landscape, within the Living Land of Britain, please see our Events page.
'Aye' of the Unicorn: Circle…
As the weekened progressed
we were to work our way around 'the limbs'
of an elemental pentagram.
Two sites from the region
were given over to each element.
In the first we would consider the element in question
with the help of a conducive environment and our core text.
In the second we would construct and walk our pentagrams,
again in a conducive environment,
whilst examining notions of our magical self
in relation to the element and its inner psychology.
Mid and late Saturday morning,
we considered and worked with the element of water.
Which all turned a bit weird.
For one thing we abandoned our core text
and instead considered the information board
to the Holy Well at Burghead.
There was no disputing that the place
was ancient and held to be sacred,
but some of the uses to which it had been put
caused rumblings in the assembled ranks of the Companions.
These only increased as the steep steps
down to the cavernous well head were traversed.
There seems to have long been an ancient connection
between skulls and sacred waters.
Symbolically, this combination relates
to accessing the pool of ancestral wisdom.
A 'baptism' in these waters would be an acceptance
of this higher source of being which reaches beyond the circle of time…
As if in confirmation of such a notion
when we reached our second site
for the element of water
the tide had come in!
'Aye' of the Unicorn: Enneagram…
July 5, 2019 July 4, 2019 | Stuart France
Mid Saturday and Sunday mornings
we considered and worked with the element of earth.
Our character Macbeth is given reason
to believe that he has the potential to become king,
but his treacherous manner of achieving this desire leads to all sorts
of trouble both for him and his soon to be acquired kingdom,
and when he finally gains access to the crown he discovers
that to be king is not all it is cracked up to be!
Like a castle sinking into the earth
his kingdom, his sanity,
and ultimately his life slips from his ignoble grasp.
It could have been so different,
had he only sought integration
instead of dominion.
'Aye' of the Unicorn: Whirligig…
On Saturday morning and afternoon we
considered and worked with the element of air.
Our character was Lady Macbeth who displayed
her own inner boundaries by acting as Super Ego
and inciting her husband to commit regicide
before turning insane with guilt and taking her own life.
What did we not want to become in our magical self?
Master of the Universe.
Instead, we shall blow where the spirit listeth…
'Aye' of the Unicorn…
With almost prescient clarity
we commenced our summer workshop in a graveyard!
Except, not quite, for before we entered the graveyard,
we stood by the swiftly flowing waters of the river Spey
and entered into a guided meditation.
The Unicorn of Spirit
sailed down the Spey
disembarked from its boat,
and invited us all astride its back
for a tour of the elements…
Somewhat unsurprisingly then,
our first pentagram was that of Spirit,
which could be called the 'parent' of the elements.
Have the bodies buried in the earth,
hereabouts, had their constituent parts
returned to spirit?
One might well hope so!
In Macbeth, the Bard uses the three witches
to represent the spiritual realm.
As with a lot of things he wrote
this is simultaneously;
a joke,
a reflection of characterised psychology,
and can also allude to something far deeper…
Where Beauty Sleeps ~ The Silent Eye Annual Workshop 2020
May 19, 2019 May 13, 2019 | Sue Vincent
It is a familiar story. Both gifted and cursed at birth, a princess grows within the safety of a castle. Reaching adulthood, she is cast into sleep in the most inaccessible tower, surrounded by walls of stone and a hedge of thorns… waiting for the brave prince to cut his way through the briars and awaken her with the kiss of true love…
There is a lot more to fairytales than the wide eyed child understands, but we seldom question them as we grow up and tell them to our own children. We are so very familiar with them that they simply 'are'.
Take the Sleeping Beauty story, for example, but in place of the princess, think of that essential Self we call the soul.
We are born into a magical world, where our childhood is peopled with fairies and wonders. We are given gifts and talents, yet we must grow within our bodies, like the princess in the castle… this is the place we inhabit and come to know as home. As we reach adulthood, the magic fades, or more precisely, our awareness of it fades, clouded by the small doings of everyday, by logic and necessity. Like the princess, something within us falls asleep; we are lost to the song of the soul as the 'curse' takes hold… waiting….
Around us the thick, thorny wall of ego grows and separates us from the world, holding us prisoner within its bounds. It may bear roses, it may bear fruit… it may sustain a whole ecology of other lives… yet the thorns are there making any passage through them, from the inside or from afar, fraught with difficulty and pain.
The princess' sleep continues until the prince becomes aware of her and braves the thorns, cutting his way through the briars. Her plight touches his heart and calls to him and in turn he searches until he finds her. It is a quest of love. He has only rumours to guide him, yet he is called to the task.
There is a turning within that calls us too at odd moments, like the whispered rumour of a sleeping princess heard by the hearthfire. We sleep, yet there is something that pulls us, knowing we can wake. Our dreams reach out across our inner landscape and call the kiss of awakening to us… in turn the hero within each of us journeys through the maze of thorns in search of the truth that lies sleeping.
We cannot see what waits beyond the thorns; there may be dragons and ogres… there may be nothing more than a fairytale… or beauty may lie sleeping there in truth. But it is Love that calls us to the quest. We are both Prince and Princess in our own stories and through the reaching out from within, may find that something reaches out to us in equal measure, waiting to awaken us with the kiss of Love. Then, like the phoenix, we can be reborn from our own ashes…
But that is another story…
"What dreams may come…"
From the Big Bad Wolf to Pinocchio, from Ogres and Giants, to the Pied Piper and the Wicked Witch… Have you ever wondered what happens when Beauty sleeps?
Join us for a weekend in heart of Derbyshire to find out…
Awaken the beauty that sleeps within.
What lies beneath the surface of familiar childhood tales? How do these old stories relate to our own lives? What can we learn from the archetypes and recurring themes? What can they teach us about ourselves?
Our workshops are open to all. Using techniques both ancient and modern, we explore the spiritual journey through symbolic stories, meditations and fully scripted ritual drama. No prior experience is needed, just come along and enjoy the weekend!
The weekend runs from the evening of 17th April 2020, to the afternoon of Sunday 19th. Fully catered accommodation is included in the workshop price of £240 – £265. An electronic copy of the workbook for the weekend will be supplied prior to the event, with paper copies available to purchase if preferred.
To read what it is like to attend your first workshop with the Silent Eye, click HERE.
Bookings are now being taken for the Silent Eye's Annual Workshop 2020.
Click below to
Download a Booking Form – pdf
For further details or to reserve your place: rivingtide@gmail.com
Where Beauty Sleeps
Great Hucklow, Derbyshire
17-19 April, 2020
The Quest for Immortality: Anomalies…
May 16, 2019 May 16, 2019 | Stuart France
Given that much of the Epic of Gilgamesh
has found its way into the Hebrew Book of Genesis
in a somewhat garbled form…
Why, we may wonder,
is the flood story re-told almost word for word?
We say 'almost' because there are some intriguing discrepancies.
Unlike Utnapishtim, Noah is in no sense regarded as immortal.
The rainbow, as a necklace and love gift of Sky to Earth,
is infinitely preferable to the covenant
of a contrite and remorseful God,
and is also highly poetic.
Yet, as a reason for implementing the 'catastrophe'
in the first place, noise and godlessness
can be regarded as equally arbitrary?
The institution of Patriarchy seems already well established
in the culture that produced the Epic…
The only Goddess to remain on the Divine Council is Ishtar,
although it is apparent that the Moon God,
Nanna, was once also feminine.
Be that as it may a number of Gilgamesh's titles
still appear to be ironic?
With this in mind, in the final analysis,
perhaps, it is not Lords, nor indeed Ladies,
of the Deep which are needed
so much as disseminators of its wisdom,
and that task falls to all those who receive it…
Our thanks to those who could not make it but tuned in anyway.
Our heartfelt thanks to those that did make it.
See you all next time!
Lord of the Deep: Taking root
One of the questions people don't like to ask is whether or not our ritual drama weekends serve any useful purpose. It is all very well coming along to share the fun… and they are always fun… or enjoying a shared experience that is outside the norm for most of us. It is good, too, to meet and work with people from widely different backgrounds and with varied beliefs and approaches to the spiritual journey; the group dynamic augments personal experience, creating something far greater than the sum of its parts, and people also feel less isolated, for the spiritual path can sometimes seem a lonely one to walk.
We use the ancient format of ritualistic drama to open the doors of the mind, letting imagination lead the way to levels of awareness and understanding beyond the surface mind. But does any of what we do ever filter through into everyday life?
We, who organise these weekends, can see the changes in our own lives. On the outer levels, such changes can be rationalised by the growth in confidence that comes with standing up in front of a group to speak, crafting a long and detailed script, and the organising and presenting of a complex workshop. The changes that we have each felt within our own inner lives and attitudes may be profound, but as we are the ones organising these events, anything we can say is of little value to people wondering what benefits, if any, our weekends may offer.
Only those who have attended can paint a true picture of what the events have meant to them, and each person will take away something different. We are lucky in that, after our events, some of the attendees will write of their experiences and allow us to share their stories. Those are the testimonials that matter.
This year, I have been in the unique position of watching at close quarters as some of the seeds sown at the Lord of the Deep weekend took root. My son came along to be our Technician and take care of the music for us and, as such, was better placed than most to simply observe and listen. He came along to the presentations and watched the story of Gilgamesh unfold. Since the workshop, I have been quietly watching as one of the major symbolic themes of the weekend seems to be growing in his life.
During the workshop, the 'Quest for Immortality' was approached through two primary avenues. One was the story of Gilgamesh, whose ego sought immortality through the illusions of worldly success. He wished to carve his place in history…which, in spite of everything, he did; his name lives on in the ancient Epic from which we were learning. The other strand concerned the 'Herb of Immortality'. This part of Gilgamesh's story was not mentioned until close to the end of the story, yet we had built the symbolism of the Herb into the weekend… depicted as a Tree of Life… right from the very first moments, but without highlighting or explaining any of it.
The temple itself was dressed in reds and orange, with twin Trees as a backdrop, reminiscent of the two Trees of Knowledge and Life in the story of the Garden of Eden. During the welcome session, we had given each of the Companions a wooden bracelet bearing a charm incised with a Tree, telling them that this was their Key to the temple, but with no other explanation. The twin staffs we dressed with the veils representing the colours of life were both natural tree branches, gifted by the trees themselves. The two tokens each Companion carried beyond the Veil bore the images of trees.
Then, in the final ritual, Shiduri, the ale-wife, guides Gilgamesh on his journey to find the Herb. Lorraine, who took the role of Shiduri, also most appropriately, focussed on trees for part of her presentation on the relationship between Man, Nature and Spirit. She spoke from a Druidic perspective, but drew upon the latest scientific research about the consciousness of trees… something we are barely beginning to understand, but which has been part of many sacred and legendary traditions since time immemorial. She also suggested ways we could attune to the life and energy of trees.
My son took little notice of symbolic details, he simply followed the story and was focussed on getting the music right. Trees were not mentioned at all when we discussed the weekend afterwards. But he is having to have his garden ripped out and rebuilt as it has become unsafe for both feet and wheelchair.
The cost of making the garden safe and durable is prohibitive, so all our thoughts are on creating the hard-landscape. Plants…in which my son has absolutely no interest except to look at them… will have to be salvaged from the existing garden, so our now-daily trips to the various local garden centres have all been about aggregates and slabs. Knowing me to be a plant-addict with a very empty garden, he even banned me from looking at anything green and growing… until something caught his eye.
Instructing me to push him through all the plants to this one bit of foliage, he promptly fell in love. It was an acer, a Japanese maple, of a variety named Inabe Shidare, which was close enough to Shiduri for me to take notice straight away. Its red leaves echoed the colours of the temple; it was glorious…and would cost a 'mere' six hundred pounds.
Reluctantly leaving the tree behind, we ended up looking at every acer that we could find, in every garden centre and online, from the tiniest bonsai to young saplings. Being slow-growing trees, a sapling would take a very long time to reach the maturity of the huge, potted tree with which he had fallen in love, but gardening and patience go hand in hand.
As this was the first time he had ever evinced any interest in plants, let alone an all-consuming passion, I really wanted to be able to find something. And, on one rain-battered trip to the last garden centre in the area, I spotted a distant patch of red.
A young Inabe Shidare, its slender stem standing six feet tall and beautifully twisted into a spiralling column, wept deep red leaves at the back of a display. A bit of rummaging and I found a price tag… an affordable fraction of the expected price… and it was soon on its way home.
That would have been odd enough, but by next day, my son had not only researched everything about caring for the tree, decided where it would be planted when the garden is done and purchased specific acer food, he was also talking about it as a living being, not 'just' a tree. He checked on its well-being continually and even launched himself across the room… bearing in mind he cannot walk unaided… when he heard something outside that made him worry for the tree's safety.
His passion for this tree spilled over and he began taking notice of the other trees around his garden, which, until now, have been no more than a green backdrop… and from there, the needs of Nature and his own response to them have begun to change the way he sees the world around him, in a quite dramatic fashion.
In the grand scheme, it may seem a small thing perhaps, but something has completely changed one man's awareness of the natural world and its creatures, opening his mind to a new way of looking at Nature with conscious love and respect.
We cannot know where the motivation came from, what level of mind and heart were awakened to the life of trees, nor where that awakening was born, but it does seem a little 'coincidental'. And, were the experiences of the weekend to achieve no more than that, I think we could say it had served a useful purpose.
Gilgamesh descending (8) ~ Steve Tanham
The portal through which all the others have passed – except ghostly Enkidu and forlorn Gilgamesh – shimmers and fades. My brother – his twin – fades… And he and I… and then only I am left alone in the middle of the most threatening inner space I can imagine…
There is the dominating sense of 'nowhere else to go'; and yet I know that there is only 'me' in here… until I look at the walls, made gently visible by the light that is not light in this atmosphere of total darkness.
The feeling of 'shimmering outline' comes again, as it had when I chased Shamhat through the labyrinthine passageways. In the dimness, I can see carved images in the stone all around me. The recognition of these strengthens their form, and I can make out that they are the figures and faces of the Divine Council of Elders of Uruk… Those whom I scorned as 'effete' only a short while ago.
Continue reading at Sun in Gemini
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Writings from the Temple III ~ Briony
Death and the Salesman
Writings from the Temple II ~ Briony
Seeking a light…
Rifts in reality?
Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 7 Final) Face to Face with Macbeth
Three Days of the Oyster-Catcher (Part 6) Beyond the Blasted Heath
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