The Secrets of Ingwe.

 

The Holy White Stone of Ingwe

Certain secrets linked to the God of the English - Ingwe - can be found in a curious non-Christian poem about a 'Christian' saint - Saint Cuthman. The White Stone of Ing stands in the porch of the Church of Saint Andrew and Saint Cuthman in the village of Steyning in West Sussex. The poem is taken from a small booklet found inside the church. The Legend of Saint Cuthman is the Legend of Ingwe, I have shown this many times before. 'With this Mysterious Earth...'

"Will that be true of the wisdom

of the people who knew the Earth,

and sensing the power of the ley-line

close to where it starts

sets on it the altar of this church

on its journey to distant Chartres..."

This is a modern poem, but from one who upholds the idea of the 'Ley-Lines' or 'Dragon-Lines' that criss-cross the lands. Perhaps the writer of the poem was a dowser, since the altar is said to have been built on the starting-point of a Ley-Line that runs to Chartres Cathedral in France. We have to remember here that the church was originally Anglo-Saxon, but much was added on by the Normans, who erased the name of Saint Cuthman from the records. So who built the altar there I cannot tell. 

"And it is not every journey

that follows the straight-line track:

the labyrinth turns us about to see

what once was at our back.

Stretch across the thin division

that appears as Time and Space..."

The turning labyrinth has different properties than the straight track, since it allows the past to be seen. "For perhaps we're closer than we knew, in mind as well as space". The labyrinth overcomes the limitation of Time and Space. Another symbol that appears in the poem is the Tree which is "shaped and sculpted by evolutionary law - and more?" The poem quotes Hopkins who recognises the 'essence' or 'inscape', the core of every living thing, and Wordsworth who sensed the 'presence' of living things. The poem ends thus -

"Straight Line, Tree and Labyrinth,

new dimensions beyond, within,

granted blessings from good Saint Cuthman

let our pilgrim's journey begin."

In a sense this poem seems to try to awaken the Legend of Cuthman in a very subtle way. The Tree seems to awaken us to the 'inscape' or 'essence' of the Legend of Cuthman, in that it holds the secret of a Heathen God hidden within the guise of a Christian Saint. The Labyrinth image tells us to look back to the past, not just to any time in the past, but to the origins of our Folk through the God known as Ingwe. The Straight Line suggests the Straight Way mentioned by Tolkien, the means to see the Invisible World - the First Earth. This would take us back to the Land of Scandi - the Land of Thule-Hyperborea. 

In the story of Saint Cuthman he struggles to get the 'main roof beam' into position, and this represents the Central Pillar or 'Central Tree' of the church. This is hinted at through the image of the Tree in the poem. The Tree is 'shaped and sculpted by evolutionary law - and more?' The idea of evolution is introduced in regard to 'Saint Cuthman' - Ingwe. The Sacred Tree represents the Sacred Centre, in which case Ingwe is here linked to the Sacred Centre or Spiritual Centre.