What are “The Ancestors”? I’ve been percolating on this since my father died and was buried in the foothills of Mam Tor in the winter of 2013. This is the land of his – and my - Ancestors. The light is shimmering, a womb of ancient trees surround us. My dad had a green burial, so only a tree marks his grave. It’s the end of August holiday, and I’m laying on the grass on top of the grave of my father, held in the awesome presence of Mam Tor “Mother Mountain” – an ancient Dragon Mother mountain, which was occupied thousands of years ago by those who followed the ways of the Goddess. Once it was the Devi’s Vagina – the life-death-rebirthing passageway of the Goddess. The magnetic darkness is so terrifying to the modern world, the cavern entrance is now called “The Devil’s Arse” by both locals and guidebooks. The sacred passageway into Peak Cavern is magnetic, it pulls you. Peak cavern beckons, the Womb of the earth mother, distilling the deep darkness like a witch’s brew. The ruins of Peveril Castle perch high above on the crag, with a dramatic cave entrance gorged out below. Locals call the stream “Styx” - the name for the mythological river, which marks the boundary between earth and the Underworld. Tiny stone cottages cling to the edge of a wide stream flooding out from the belly of the hill. Winnats Pass, with its creviced gorge, dramatically descends into the Hope Valley, a sacred heart of the Peak District, with its rolling shires and heather-filled moors. On the hill a ruined castle stands, once given to the forbidden son of a long-ago King, and now slowly unwinding its sentry over the village of Castleton, passing it back to the Spirit of the Land, and the Ancestors. The cool summer night is throbbing with energy and memories, the stars spelling out secrets like braille in the sky. I am returned to my Ancestral homelands in the north of England, and an energy is uncoiling in the DNA of soil and bone and soul and home, reminding me how the winding path of our life is always rooted in its beginnings, where treasures lie. I can almost believe I slipped through a fissure in the dimension of existence and am back someplace so old time is not yet invented.

The 350 million year old mountains surround us, silhouetted in the dark, like the mammoth spines of mythical dragons, resting in the flesh of the landscape. The night is velvet-dark like treacle, as if the black sky is pouring a magical substance into the world and rooting it back to the earth after dusk sets.

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