The Orbs At St Cubys Church Tregony

In yesterday's post Keeping The Devil Away At Veryan Cornwall I mentioned that we visited Veryan in Cornwall. Before we arrived there we stopped off at another village, Tregony, and wandered around the grounds of St Cubys church  (photo above). Unfortunately the church itself was locked.

On leaving the church grounds I took another photo (below) and, on looking at this, there appears to be four globes, orbs - or whatever you might wish to call them - towards the top of the picture. One is a very vivid blue and another less so, plus there are two smaller, brighter orbs. No idea how they would have got there as there is nothing like this on any of the other 40+ photos I took that day.

Either side of the path to and from the church are old gravestones, some as far back as the late 1700s, though most from the 1800s. The one below is from October 12th 1738.

St Cubys church has a strange figure's head above the porch entrance, together with a sun dial - which is still working okay. Not much to go wrong, I guess.

There are lots of old buildings in Tregony, the one below going back to 1646, an old alms house. The date is on a plaque on the wall.

Going back to the orbs. I know many are very sceptical about such things and put them down to digital cameras, dust, condensation and so on but, it's odd how only one photo has these out of 40+ taken on the same day. And it was a spooky graveyard with lots of old burials and ... Perhaps I'm getting a bit carried away but, whatever, it was an interesting visit.

Keeping The Devil Away At Veryan Cornwall

After weeks of overcast grey skies there was sunshine today so we went in search of something interesting. Well, at least for my wife and I!

We set off, with no destination in mind, and found ourselves heading for the small village of Veryan in Cornwall. A lovely little spot, especially as there were amazing blue winter skies.

On entering the village the first thing of note are the round houses or cottages - there are five in total. These thatched cottages were built in about 1810 by the local vicar, a Parson Trist, for the use of local labourers. He also thought that they would be a decorative feature for the village. Records show they cost £42 (about $60) to build - inflation has a lot to answer for!

They are a strange design, being round, but there is said to be a reason for this - to keep the devil away! Both from the cottages and from the village itself. Maybe not away, as such, but there are no corners in the cottages where he can hide. For extra protection a cross was placed on the top of each thatched roof.

The round houses of Veryan are now privately owned. The one in the photo at the top of the post, known as the Right Round House, does bed & breakfast for visitors to the area.

The next photo is a view of the back of two of the roundhouses.

There are other thatched houses in the village, the one below at Veryan Green.

After Veryan we drove into the countryside ...

... and then to the small fishing village of Portloe to eat our packed lunch while overlooking the sea.

All in all a very pleasant day - and not a sight of the devil anywhere!

Further Cornwall Posts:
The Mystery Of The Cornish Roche Rock And Hermitage
The Cornish Mystery Of Trevethy Quoit Stones
The Spirit Knockers Of Cornish Tin Mines

Photos: © Mike Perry 2012

You Can Feed People With Love

I've often thought and written how good it would be if we all did something every day to help others.  Must be from my old Boy Scout training, where we could tie a knot in our neckerchief if we had done a good deed that day.  Mind you, I didn't stay long with the Scouts once I fully realised there were girls in the world! But Cath Webb has put the theory of helping others into action, and has taken on a mission to do something every day to help the needy.

Cath, from Hale in England, is making a sponge cake for someone every day.  And she's been doing this, without fail, since the 6th of April 2011.  She set out to do this as a one year 'mission'.  So the homeless, hospital staff, the needy and so on have benefited.

It all started from when a good friend was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She wasn't sure what to say to her so she made her a Victoria sponge and left it in her friend's porch, together with a note.

Her friend's reply by text touched Cath deeply. It simply read: "You can feed people with love."


Cath has a job as a teacher, a husband and three children but nothing has stopped her to date from completing her daily task. She said, "My husband was typically grumpy about it to start with, he kept moaning about how much it was costing with ingredients and he's had to do all the washing and ironing for months because I haven't had time."


"But on days when I've felt like giving in - like the time I sat in the kitchen and felt like weeping because I had come home without any sugar - he has stepped in and gone out in the dark to the shops for me, or helped deliver cakes."

Cath even baked her cakes while on holiday in Cornwall over a camp fire!  There's always a way if we really want to do something.

The mission will end after baking 366 cakes.  She says about this, "I won't feel relieved. It's been a really incredible, uplifting experience and I will be very sad when it comes to an end."

The side effect of doing something for others is that it usually reaps benefits for us, as individuals or groups, as well - though this shouldn't be the aim of our efforts. It's just good to feed people with love.

Further Reading:
Woman Donates A Kidney To A Stranger
How Thoughts Become Things
Did You Bring Joy?

A Premonition Saved Carole's Life

Bad Premonition by Kazimir Malevich

When we read of any tragedy - think of Aberfan or the Titanic as well known examples - there are often people who have been saved by premonitions - the following is another such case.

Carole Davies well remembers what happened when she was sixteen years old in the 1970s.  One evening she had gone with her friends to visit an amusement arcade in London:

"While standing looking into the night, I had a sense of danger. Then I saw what looked like a picture in front of me showing people on the floor with tiles and metal girders on them.  I realised that this was to happen here. I began to shout at people to get out. No one listened."

Carole did, however, convince her friends to leave with her and they went to a nearby cafe where they ordered coffees and sat at a table.  After a while they heard the sound of sirens coming from the street outside.

Carole continues: "We all ran down the road to see what had happened.  It was just as I had seen.  A man I had shouted at was being pulled out of the debris."

It appears that there must have been a weakness in the amusement arcade's structure which caused the walls and roof to collapse.  For some reason Carole was forewarned that this was about to happen and so saved herself and her friends from serious injury or maybe even worse. Unfortunately many others failed to listen to a teenage girl.

From time to time we all get premonitions, most of them are probably ignored, which sometimes we later regret. The strange thing is that, once we start listening to our premonitions or hunches and follow them, they become more and more reliable - and could well save / alter our lives.

Further Reading:
Dreams And Precognition Of The Aberfan Disaster
Titanic Coincidence
Famous Precognitive Dreams: Abraham Lincoln

The Answer To If Is The Answer To Life

If is an important word in our lives. If we hadn't have been at such and such a place, at a specific time, we may never have met our wife / husband / business partner and so on.  There are probably many such examples within our own lives of ifs that have brought us to wherever we are now.

These ifs may have allowed us positive benefits or the opposite.  But imagine if certain people had never lived, or had died young, then our world may well have been a very different place to what it is today. Okay, all of us effect or influence the world in some way, but some much more than others. Take Adolf Hitler for example.

In Passau, Germany it is known that a young Adolf Hitler, who couldn't swim and needed glasses, was saved from drowning when only four years old. The story has recently come to light again from a German archive.

It appears that in 1894 Hitler was plucked from the icy waters of the River Inn in Passau.  There is a story from the Donauzeltung-Danube newspaper that verifies this, though describes Hitler as a 'young fellow' rather than by name.

The report describes how a 'determined comrade' (it was a very left wing publication!) went into freezing water to save the four year old boy after he he had fallen through thin ice on the river.  He would otherwise have drowned.

It has since be suggested that a priest, Johann Kuehberger, was the man who saved the terrified young Hitler.

Stories like this raise all sorts of almost opposing questions.  If Hitler had drowned would there have been a second world war?  Or was the 1939-45 conflict destined to happen regardless?

We often read stories of how someone lives against all the odds, when perhaps others have been killed.  I've always though that this person was saved because they still had a purpose to fulfil on Earth.  Others will say it was a pure chance coincidence.

I also wrote a post about how there may also be a time to die: Is There A Time To Die As Well As A Time To Live?

But what determines who dies and when?  Maybe it's dependent  on what our life's purpose was pre-ordained to be. Were we destined to be a tyrant or a hero? Or more likely something in between, in varying degrees.

So who controls all of the ifs which brought us to where we are now? Is it some higher power or our own mind, or unconscious, interpreting our individual thoughts, deeds and actions?

I guess it's up to us as individuals to form our own answers to the many questions of life. We'll have all sorts of influences as we meander through life but our own conclusions are the ones to trust.  If we don't think for ourselves there is a danger that someone else will do this for us, and our personal freedoms will disappear - and then we'll be left with if only ...

Coincidences And The Portuguese Rooster of Barcelos

I was at Darren's blog Just Watching The Wheels Go Round where he has written a post titled 'Number 23 ..???'.

As I read the post I noticed a few coincidences. Darren said his birth date is on the 23rd, so is mine. He mentioned a Portuguese Rooster ornament he has. I have one too though slightly different. I brought it back from Portugal a few years ago, and it has a red heart on it's chest, as does Darren's. And last year I also wrote a post about the number 23: The Mystery And Enigma Of The Number 23. Oh, and my son is also called Darren.

So a few connections there.

The photo shows my Portuguese rooster, which is in a cabinet with some of our travel souvenirs.  The stone figure at the back of the picture was hand carved in Morocco.

I remember buying the rooster as our son was with us.  There is a story to go with the ornament, which is very popular in Portugal. It's called the Rooster of Barcelos

The story goes that back in the 17th century, though some say 15th, lots of silver, including silver cutlery, had been stolen from a prominent landowner in Barcelos. The search was therefore on to discover who had committed this crime.

Conveniently suspicion fell upon a man from nearby Galicia. He seemed as likely as anyone, even though he immediately pleaded that he was completely innocent, and was only passing through the town on a Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Despite his pleas he was arrested and condemned to hang.

He demanded that he should be taken to see the judge who passed the sentence. The wish was granted and he was taken to the judge's home where a banquet was being held. On the table was a roasted rooster ready to be eaten by the guests.

 Again the man insisted he was innocent. He pointed to the rooster and said, "It is as certain that I am innocent as it is certain that this rooster will crow when they hang me."

All of this didn't sway the judge's opinion and the man was taken away to be hanged.

As he was being hanged the rooster - remember he had been roasted! - suddenly stood up on the table and crowed. Needless to say this is very unusual.

The judge was shocked and realised he must have made an error. He rushed out to save the man and was surprised by what he saw. The man was still alive. Somehow the knot in the hangman's rope had miraculously came loose as the trap door was released.

The man was set free to finish his journey of pilgrimage. Years later he returned to Barcelos to sculpt a cross of the crucifix dedicated to the Lord of the Rooster.  This can still be seen and visited at the Archeological Museum of Barcelos

I remembered this story at Christmas when, as there were thirteen of us at dinner and me the only vegetarian, I had to look at a turkey carcass.  I thought it would have been amusing if it had crowed, might then have got a few more veggie recruits!

The Words Of The Goddess Of The Land

Walk with me in the world of appearances,
Mossy velvet green covers the forest floor of memory
But I know where wisdom waits.
Ragged juts of truth like paths of limestone
Make solid steps between the worlds.
What lifts my foot up from the crevasse
But the salmon of wisdom leaping from that world to this?
I am a bird, I drink the air.
I am a fish, I eat the sea.
I am wisdom.
Taken from 'I Know Where Wisdom Waits' by Dr Maya Magee Sutton, joint author of Druid Magic: The Practice of Celtic Wisdom.