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The village of Great Hucklow is named after an ancient burial mound and sits beneath an even older hillfort. It is a tiny place, with no more than a hundred inhabitants in a handful of houses. Once it was a more prosperous community and boasted a theatre. Now, I often wonder if the villagers wait for April to see what strange shenanigans we will get up to this time.
They have, it must be said, seen some strange things over the past few years as processions of robed figures have flitted through the dawn mists onto the hillside. There have been cloaked, medieval and Egyptian figures… notably the golden winged apparition binding Osiris that almost caused an early motorist to end up in the hedge. He can’t have been a local…they are used to us.
This year we might be a little less flamboyant… well, most of us anyway. But even so, folk are converging upon the village now from across the world and we are getting ready to begin. As far as preparation goes, we are out of time… and ‘out of time’ is where we will be sending the weekend.
Drawing upon the presence of some of the ancient sites in the area, we will step back, outside of time to a time of which little is known. There we will weave a story of life and death, love and loss…and the survival of an ancient wisdom that lives today in each one of us through our physical ancestry and our spiritual lineage.
As the shadows draw in, we will journey back in time to a place of wisdom and tradition and witness its fall into silence, as it seeks to preserve its lore for future generations in stone and spirit.
We are also ‘out of time’ because we have chosen to step outside of it… away from our daily lives for a moment, to focus our awareness on something different. There will be old friends to greet and new ones to meet, stories and laughter to share…many hugs… and time to breathe a different air. And, if all goes well, there will be magic…
France & Vincent 