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In the tradition of the Grail Keepers.
Margaret is deeply saddened by the damaging impacts of human activity on Gaia - our Mother Earth. She advocates a 'custodial' relationship with the land and the waters of the Earth in preference to the 'un-conscious' exploitation so prevalent in our time. We have much to learn in this regard from native peoples.
Ancient Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (who far preceded the early Celtic peoples of North Eastern Europe) must have had a profound affinity for the landscape in which they existed. They lived in harmony with nature for a long period. They were a matriarchal culture which honoured and celebrated the Mother Goddess energy that sustained them.
Paleo-archeologists conjecture over the spiritual significance these people may have invested in their immediate surroundings by analysing cave art, rock carvings etc. What we do know is that at least 7,000 years ago these hardy survivors kept a record of the cycles of the moon by carving counting marks on bone. Their knowledge of the regular passage of the sun, and therefore of the seasons, permitted them to follow the migrating animals on which they depended for their sustenance. Much as the Plains Indians of North America did in following the buffalo herds.
The later Neolithic agrarian peoples (the megalith builders) had a sophisticated knowledge of the movements of the heavens. They tracked the cycles of planets and stars with the aid of their beautifully designed 'cosmic clocks': Stonehenge, Newgrange & the like. (See Sacred Geometry)
The alignments of their stone circles & chambered tombs enabled accurate prediction of eclipses, the Precession of the Equinoxes & other celestial phenomena requiring complex mathematical knowledge. They cared for their landscape & carefully sculpted it to enhance their observations. The massive scale of their earth works - huge mounds & ditches; alignment notches in distant hills etc., - would have required a stable & suitably motivated populace to carry out the necessary labour.
Neolithic people must have had some environmental impact, as they were the first wave of humans to start removing the forests to meet the needs of their lifestyle and the growing population. Yet never, it seems, did they destroy, denigrate or exploit the land as modern peoples do.
Early Celtic peoples together with many indigenous folk had great reverence for water, investing it with mystical significance. These days pioneers in the study of the metaphysics of water such as Dr Matsumo Emoto have done much to remind us of what our ancestors surely held in the highest of regard - the magical healing quality of water. It is water specifically which now brings us to the subject of the Grail story.
