Coming Home About the Glastonbury Camps and OakDragon Project and the birth of the British 'Camps Movement' part one by Palden Jenkins   Click here for part two of this story Click here for pictures of the 1987 OakDragon camps

This is a story of the founding of an energy-stream of deep learning experiences, generally known as 'The Camps' – and of the prototype Glastonbury Camps and their successor OakDragon Camps in particular. While the general public is largely blissfully unaware of this phenomenon, these events have played a major role in the lives of thousands of people of many walks of life. The views recounted here are my own. These camps are unique, to my knowledge, and they have the potential to grow from small beginnings outlined here to playing a marked future role. And for many people, the camps have been 'just like coming home, back to the real world'.

Glastonbury Gatherings

In late summer 1983, Jamie George, director of Gothic Image in Glastonbury, asked me to help him organise a special weekend gathering for people interested in Earth Mysteries – ancient landscapes, remains and metaphysics. We had a brainstorming session together. Suddenly, an unpremeditated design of the gathering flooded out. Unbeknown to us, this was going to turn out to be a new model of education, gatherings and larger group-work, and the development of a new kind of 'mystery school' or educational-initiatory process for the modern day.

The blueprint which arrived that evening has, with adaptations, continued to this day, emulated with varying degrees of success by many people and organisations. I believe it has not yet attained its full expression: it has an immense potential for resolving communication, co-creation and empowerment needs in large groups, as the world goes through its changes and develops the need for truly democratic interactive processes and, literally, for collective miracle-working. In retrospect, this 'idea-arrival' was a classic case of downloading or implanting of a holographic idea from higher realms into the world of humans, or of the translation of a potent thought-form from the superconscious into the conscious. It came through two unwittingly available 'servers', Jamie and me. We didn't just think it up ourselves – it was beyond our reach in terms of our then experience – yet it came all the same. Exciting! We took a plunge.

Jamie and I put out signals and organised the event. Around 100 people attended the November gathering in the Glastonbury Assembly Rooms (a birthplace of many initiatives), and it was an exceptional success. It involved a 'silent circle' at the beginning of every stage (the whole group holding hands and going within for some minutes). Then we used a form of circular group communication and sharing we came to call powwow, plus smaller groups examining different issues and subjects, and also some workshops taught by experts in their own fields. And there was invaluable informal cafe-intermingling during breaks – this always constitutes one of the richest areas of contact and exchange. The strength of this complete interactive model was that it drew on the accumulated knowledge and experience of everyone present, pooling it into a group energy which built up over the weekend.

The high point of the weekend came when we spent 20 minutes sending meditative support to forty or so Glastonbury women who, that weekend, were at Greenham Common USAF base on a major protest action against cruise missiles. The meditation seemed profound. Later that day, Lydia, one of the women, returned to report that the Glastonbury women had instigated a tearing down of the perimeter fence of the base. It turned out they had started doing this spontaneously at the very time that we had sent our meditative support. No one had planned this symbolic offensive – it had just arisen. This demonstration of synchronicity was a confirmation of the power of groups and of the realistic dynamism of collective psychic solidarity – a positive shock to us all. We realised we were in business, not just playing mind-games.

Having been so successful, there had to be more gatherings. We held another gathering in May 1984 to mark Beltane – again, successful. I later organised a Community Gathering for the local Glastonbury alternative community, leading to the publication of a magazine, Glastonbury Communicator – though not much more came of this event. Another gathering in late May 1984 for astrologers set off a new trajectory in astrological research and evolution, spawning a stream of astrological events which continue to this day. The high-point of this Living Astrology gathering came when, at the close, we climbed Glastonbury Tor, landing up in a massive group hug, humming and swaying with eyes closed for a seemingly interminable time – then, when we opened our eyes, a bright double rainbow stretched over us! We were being blessed. However, it became clear that participants were but warming up by the end of such a weekend, when it was time to go home. The question arose: how could we gather people together for a longer period without having to charge them enormous fees?

Glastonbury Camps

As a former Venture Scout, mountaineer and conservationist, I thought of running a camp. However, I then instinctively shied away, knowing this would entail much organisation, innovation and risk. I was aware that we would lose a few people, for whom camps and outdoor living might be excessively challenging. Yet being outdoors, in a temporary world without walls, is liberating in itself – it simplifies life-issues and introduces the fluctuations and wonders of nature into the transformative equation. The energy-field could grow unimpeded by ceilings, inflexible architecture, electromagnetic dissonances and the constraining habits of 'civilised behaviour'.

The idea would not go away. After one month, I accepted that a camp was inevitable... but it would have to be next year! Too much organising! Two weeks later, I gained the sneaky feeling it had to be this year, 1984 – and I cringed! It would take miracles to make it work. Two weeks after that, while attending the Glastonbury CND festival and observing the milling mayhem of energies and crowds there, I arose one morning just knowing the envisioned camp had to happen – and that very day I planned it all out. This kind of rush of inspired energy was not new to me – I had felt it when involved in the LSE 'disturbances' in 1970-2, and had similarly been pulled into co-organising a home-birth movement in Sweden in 1977, arising from the birth of my first child Maya. Here came that feeling again: I felt both fired up and scared witless – 'treading on the tail of the tiger'.

One of my then house-mates, Diana, asked me what I was brooding over. I told her I needed somehow to find the right people to help me with this crazy scheme. Within hours, Diana was mobilising her friends from the Dove Workshops to organise catering (not a simple matter!), and Sue, my other house-mate, committed herself to running welfare operations. That evening, I visited John, a wizard logistics man, and lo, I had a site manager – with a special gift of manifesting things cheap or free. We had lift-off! My soul-sister Atharva came in with encouraging noises and an uncanny capacity to arrive at any hour bearing simple solutions to problems which had just arisen. All suddenly went forward hell-for-leather: by late August, 120 souls were camping under the ancient Gog and Magog oaks beneath Glastonbury Tor at the first Glastonbury Living Astrology Camp – and it was an enormous success. Everyone agreed there had to be more. I was in a state of awe!

I had virtually fallen into all this. Not unwillingly, but neither intentionally. Offers of organising support arrived, but that support evaporated over wintertime – everyone was busy with other things. By February 85, it rested on me to decide whether or not to go further. I felt an intense aloneness. I paced around, thrashing within. I cried my eyes out and came to no answer. So I resolved to climb the holy Tor, to say my prayers and commit to the outcome. No answer came for a while. Perhaps I was kidding myself. Perhaps over-idealistic – after all, in Thatcherian Britain, most people were busy covering their asses and filling their pockets. I decided to look for omens.

Asking for signs, I meditated, then opened my eyes. I was immediately overflown by seven birds in formation, heading straight for the site of last year's Astrology Camp. Hmmm, interesting. Perking up, I heard a child's voice lower down the Tor, exclaiming "Daddy, it's wonderful! I'm so happy!". Now smiling, I stood up, turned around, and found myself bathed in deep red sunlight shining through the portal of the old church tower. I laughed aloud. The deal was done. 'The Management' wanted these camps to happen. I went home to my then-partner, who implied "Of course – how could it be otherwise?"

The Glastonbury Earth Mysteries Camp, held at Butleigh at Beltane 1985, featured a visible lunar eclipse. It was momentous for everyone. People were deeply moved – something far greater than any or all of us was birthing itself. A stirring ceremony took place over the eclipse, including a women's dance performance about the four faces of the lunar goddess – which itself was the beginning of Kathy Jones' unforgettable mystery plays which were staged in Glastonbury in subsequent years. A historic video of the camp was made by Mark Walters, capturing priceless cameos arising at the camp – children in the hot-tub, campers at early-morning T'ai Ch'i with master D K (Devakirti, now deceased), circle-dancing in a downpour-swilled marquee, people stacking a great fire with logs, and Sig Lonegren, an American archaeological dowser, recounting that this was exactly what he had come to Britain for. Then there was a coincident NATO exercise, during which some 20 items of aerial war-technology buzzed us daily, pretending we were a guerrilla outpost – we decided to bless them and pray that their planes would never be used for their deadly purpose. Moments of enchantment and awakening, archetypal scenes of humanness, joy, difficulty, debate, concentration and peace.

Yet a shadow reared its head. After everyone had gone home, I was summoned to an extraordinary parish meeting in Butleigh (apparently the largest for a decade), seemingly on trial. I was accused by the vicar of fomenting black magic! This was a shock, since my motivation and the outcome of the camp were clean and clear. It took three months to sort that out, drawing in the Bishop of Wells and implicating Canterbury. The vicar was gone in a year, and a new bishop was installed – later to become the Canterbury Archbishop who first ordained women priests. After this, I realised that such fierce opposition from vested interests reflects the degree to which one's positive efforts for change are effective and potent. Later, there was more opposition to come, even within our midst.

Yet the extent of background support from 'Upstairs' and from supporters was B and affirmative. Even the local authorities and police were happy, since we were making legitimate arrangements, had small numbers and played no loud music – which was refreshing for them in comparison to new age travellers and rock festivals. There was no money in this game (it eventually cost me and some others thousands), but the non-financial payoffs were overwhelming, and I was happy that the camps were economically accessible to a wide range of people. "It's not what you get for it, it's what you become by doing it" – John Ruskin's saying helped a lot.

That summer, Colin Harrison the circle-dancer and I, with the team of forty or so people who dedicatedly did the hard work of running the camps (site management, catering, children's facilities, welfare, gate, admin, teaching) teamed up to stage the Glastonbury Music and Dance Camp. It was triumphant, pioneering, innovative. Belly-dancing, Sufi chant, jam-sessions, enormous circle-dances, bagpipes, drumming, voice workshops, the big top crammed with shining, interweaving dancers winding around John Cartwright and his impromptu dance band: this camp spawned numerous other music and dance camps in years to come. Few who attend these popular Music and Dance camps know of how they started.

The second Living Astrology Camp was a hot-house of new developments in therapeutic astro-drama, inner journeys and interactive astrological processes – each afternoon 150-odd astrologers would assemble inside a large central circle of fluttering zodiac flags. We would subdivide into twelve groups, to explore the actual living experience of having Mars in Leo, Taurus rising or Saturn in Libra. To beginners and veterans alike it was an awakening to a new astrological experiential realism, 'taking astrology off the shelves and into our hands'. For astrologers, who are accustomed to snooty ridicule, it was a great relief to talk astrologese without constraint in the workshops, group processes and the Pie in the Sky camp cafe – and under the nighttime stars.

Then came the most consequential camp of all. There had been difficulties organising the 1986 Beltane Earth Mysteries Camp: it wasn't working. We were heading for crisis. One day, I awoke from sleep, troubled, knowing that this was the day to commit or to cancel. Cutting through the collectivist committeeism which was stultifying things, I phoned four key helpers to check their commitment. They were on for it, relieved someone was taking the initiative. I found a site for the camp that very day, in a beautiful spot on Pennard Hill, east of Glastonbury. The wagons started rolling.

One mystery remained: usually I had a clear inner sense of the underlying theme a camp would have – but for this camp it was not there. All I had was a blank space with no inspiration or ideas – and a knowing that it had to happen. We all went forth on faith and moved onto the site – like an army operation of trucks, trailers and people – and set up the camp, wondering what would happen. The answer came on the campers' arrival day: on their car radios, while driving to the camp, the news had broken that Chernobyl had blown up. This was a major shock. Was this the beginning of the end? Was this it? No one knew – there were no precedents. This fear rumbled threateningly through the collective unconscious of the world. The people at the camp – all Earth-lovers – were riddled with shock, dread, fear and helpless frustration. No hope left. What a downer!

There was but one major option: to powwow the issue, to process it through amongst the 120-B group. Powwow was the name I had given to the circle-working process instigated in 1983, which by 1985 had (on the recommendation of Sun Bear, a visiting native American medicine teacher) adopted the talking stick. The idea of powwow had come to me through observing Maoist China and through my experiences in Gestalt therapy, even though I chose a native American name for it. Using a talking stick, the rule is that only the stick's bearer may speak, while all others in the circle undertake to give complete attention without interference. The stick starts at the centre of the circle, to be picked up by the first person moved to contribute. Therefrom, it proceeds round the circle so that everyone may contribute and be heard. It goes on until such time as everyone agrees the process is complete. Participants may speak, sing or be silent, spontaneously and without forethought, and without any obligation to follow on from earlier contributions.

What happens is remarkable. It's a phenomenon both ancient and futuristic. Once the stick has gone round awhile and once participants have aired their personal stuff, the consensus shifts into something transpersonal, archetypal, gripping and immediate. Individuals find themselves expressing things on behalf of others or of all present. At times, a form of group channelling arises, oracular, healing and prophetic. A timeless and potent energy builds up, sometimes taking hours. The changes and issue-resolution which gradually emerge are profound and far-reaching.

This is real hundredth-monkeying, working within the world psyche, changing inner patterns of history – as well as infecting those participating. When a powwow is well run, people make unparalleled leaps forward and the sheer humanity of the situation overwhelms all ego-inflation and defensiveness. Though powwow is not easy, its results are exceptional. However, it is tricky to convey its value to people without their experiencing it personally, and many have attempted to run such processes without full regard to procedures or implications, with a resulting weakening of its potential – and sometimes people have thereby been deeply hurt. The power and potential of this technique is immense, not to be underestimated.

Tears rolled, and rage, resignation, insight and strength were expressed. The nuclear threat was upon us – literally raining isotopes on our camp. Some who habitually allow others do the talking were coming out with gems of rumination, great gifts to the group. Pontificators and customary dominators were levelled down, obliged not only to listen, but also to fully hear. A boy of nine, William, stood quietly with the stick for ten long minutes, holding everyone in stillness, like a samurai holding a great sword of destiny. Wow! It's a meditation in which everyone grows into an elder. After some hours, some wanted to stop for a rest, but no one could break the circle of intensity: "Pee in your pants then!". Another social taboo was overcome, and the pasture was duly fertilised! It didn't become a habit though!

Later, a man approached me to say he was taking his family home, since he didn't feel good about exposing his family to the radiation. I wished him well. Yet that evening, at dinner, he and his family were there. What had happened? "We drove fifty miles, and we realised that if we were going to die, we'd prefer to die with you all, not alone at home". We hugged each other and cried. Ian later became a director of the OakDragon.

At one point, a sweat lodge and meditation focused on supporting the emergency work at Chernobyl to gain control of the disaster – it was found, after the camp, that the workers had regained control of the disaster at about the same time as that meditation. Hmmm... One evening, around a bonfire, we drummed, danced and catharted our doomy feelings, to emerge with an immense joy and hope, a feeling of empowerment to go forward, come what may. The world was perhaps beginning its times of tribulation, and we accepted there would be many more such threats before our and others' prayers for a new world could be fulfilled. These are but some of the moving snippets from the 'Chernobyl camp' – a corner-turning initiation for all present. From then on, I was committed to creating further energy-spaces where such things could happen – and growing numbers felt it themselves, and have acted on it.

That summer we did a Ceremony camp, an Astrology camp and a Music and Dance camp. But by now everyone was getting weary. We had karmically collided together, giving our time, hearts, money and commitment spontaneously, and these camps were beginning to become a fixture. Many positive spin-offs had come: businesses, careers, music groups, other camps, relationships, even babies. The camps had been so moving that many were becoming joyfully burned-out. This couldn't go on – the energy was so momentous. Something had to shift. The pace was hot, and there was a risk we might break apart in tragic disarray. Such an ongoing intensity was not feasible to sustain – we humans have our security needs and our personal limitations. I had anticipated this – for I had my own needs and limits too, and I was feeling them acutely.

Re-envisioning

In March 1986 I had gone to my wilderness hideaway, a mountain valley called Cwm Pennant in Snowdonia, Wales, to say my prayers once again. There I was, alone up a mountain by a waterfall, stripped naked to render myself vulnerable under the pouring rain, crying my eyes out over the wonder and the bane of it all. After all, all this had kinda landed on me – though not without my own complicity. It certainly hadn't been thought through as a long-term fixture, and it earned nobody a living. I was running low on funds and energy, yet I felt I couldn't back out now – we had gone too far to turn back. Still, we couldn't carry on the way we had been going. The accent of the times was on financial viability and manifest issues, and it wasn't paying off to just plaintively hope for better times. I prayed deeply, offering myself up, asking for clues, pitifully shivering with a saturnine dilemma, with the sharp double edge of a choiceless choice. The rain fell mercilessly.

"OakDragon". That's what came up. What? "OakDragon". Long silence.

"Camps. OakDragon. Nationwide. Education, empowerment, initiation. Family and clan. Reach out to people. A university on the green Earth. From now until the 2020s. OakDragon project..."

Words to that effect. Much more came too, in no logical order. A new picture was forming.

It was like a virtually instantaneous snapping-together of a thousand threads, stretching between the past, the timeless and the future. I saw it, in a trans-dimensional moment of compressed probability. I was to start a new project, which might have the capacity to last and to prevail. By the time I was beclothed, striding soggily down the mountain, I felt like a grounded ET on an exacting mission. And I was looking forward to a warm log fire and some resuscitating food! It had all come clear.

I saw the possibility of a large committed family, a tribe of people with shared aims, gathered serendipitously from all walks of life and many beliefs, running camps and drawing in increasing numbers of people. People would be able to rise to their full stature through such an involvement, through carrying out such service. Some would come to run the camps, some would teach, others assist, and some would live and work together, creating a network of abodes and workplaces, building up a mutual support system and a shared life, developing other services and businesses too as spin-offs and fund-raisers. How long this might take was unspecified, but I guess I hoped it could happen faster than it has. It was a big dream – and in this vision-manifesting game, I was still a junior (though I didn't know it at the time!)

The aim of all this was to evolve new organic social, educational and business structures, to educate and to learn by doing it, creating learning environments and a community infrastructure. The key issue was the learning, the evolution and the process. We would neither seek sheltered perfection nor to hide from the world in a rarefied bubble. It would be a noble experiment in social and spiritual unfoldment, reproducing itself molecularly by osmosis and precedent. A mighty vision.

I thought it all through. OakDragon was to have three pillars: an organisational structure, a family of people committed to social invention and to staging initiatory learning events, and a clan of supporters dotted throughout society who would act as a support network and a bridge to the mainstream world.

When I later presented this grand idea, some lit up, some thought I was crazy or megalomanic, some thought it had little consequence and others sought to hijack it. Little did I know that when the idea of a clan was broadcast, many people would underestimate the time, process and bonding this would take. Some would join for what they could get out of it. It was a fire-cracker. In retrospect I should perhaps have held back, quietly beavering away at it as a background, longterm possibility. But at the time I was driven by a dream, a sense of urgency to contribute to world change.

Over the years which followed, this vision faded into memory, as complexities, mistakes, power-wranglings and financial difficulties trampled it into the mud of late 20th century society. People who later joined the OakDragon never heard of its staring vision, nor even of its founder. Perhaps this was just as well, since we humans are unused to working steadily with vision and working to fulfil a sense of history – we tend either to crusade for or to corrupt our dreams. Yet at the time this vision and possibility seemed so potent, even inevitable. Even now, in the mid-1990s, the picture still hangs there in the ethers, awaiting further developments. For phase one – gathering people into a bonded soul-clan and forging a survivable organisation – is now almost done. The OakDragon, though I am no longer a part of it, still goes on.

The dragon, an ancient symbol of the soul of Britain (and of China) and of the subtle energies coursing through the landscapes of our planet, is a rugged entity to take on. It guards treasures in the dark depths, yet it also flies high in the heaven-worlds, where the light and the panoramas are immense. Yet this was an oaken dragon: oaks are ancient, stable, forbearing, protective and grandparental, carrying wisdom accrued from watching and remembering. Some people thought I was finally losing my marbles when I spoke my vision, though others saw what it implied. OakDragon was a potent energy-symbol, and it has worked well. Though what has mattered has been the embodiment of this image, through the long hours, months and years of work invested by so many good souls, working away come rain or shine, come success or crisis, in growth and in service. Many have been cooked in the fiery breath of the OakDragon.

It was necessary to start an organisation with its own identity – no-one's property – with a group who would run it and a circle of folk who would join in such a deeply shared experience. People bond when they go through it together. At the Glastonbury Music and Dance camp of 1986, I called an initial meeting of interested people. By late summer, we met in South Wales at Ros' woodland, and found our first capital, our first core of people and our first plan of action. A tryst was made – and while storms have buffeted it, OakDragon survives to this day.

That winter, we founded our HQ at Ferngrove Farm near Castle Cary in Somerset, instituted a company, arranged publicity, raised more capital, roped in people, bought equipment and planned a series of seven camps for 1987. We arranged a season of camps on Earth Mysteries, Healing, Astrology, Arts and Crafts, Music and Dance, Celtic Mysteries and a Clan Gathering. We were plunging in the deep end. Had we been more 'sensible', we might have started it in 1988 – things may have been easier, less of a roller-coaster. But a driving force was propelling this forward: we just had to do it. We aimed to take on the Harmonic Convergence of August 1987 – and in doing so, we mounted a bucking bronco!

The Glastonbury Camps, undoubtedly a blessed gift, were over, after three seasons and seven camps involving some 1,500 people – all of whom had searched each other deeply in the eyes, held hands and taken a mighty step together. Many still tell me this was the turning-point in their lives. One, a manufacturer of missile components who turned up at the first Astrology camp, sold his company, joined our site crew and later became an international kite-flying demonstrator. Another, a City financial analyst, eventually became a horticulturalist. One, a former convicted criminal, 'owned up', changed his life, met his Kiwi wife-to-be at a camp and now is a family man in New Zealand. My own turning-point had been a near-death experience in 1974 in North Wales, followed by some years with Tibetan Lamas, and I knew what the feeling of total turn-around was like. Without such experience, I could not have catalysed such changes in others. In such turn-arounds there is no longer any going back – it's a turning deep in the seat of the soul. We were widening this process from a personal to a social phenomenon: it was a microcosmic taste of the transition the whole world must go through if humanity is to survive.

OakDragon!

The first season of the OakDragon camps was both brilliant and traumatic. We took on so many new matters at once. We started with mostly new people – since most of the courageous Avalonians who had nurtured this seed had given of their all and needed a rest. So did I, but I couldn't accept this – I felt driven.

Invoking a dragon – albeit oaken – invited a dragonesque response, with no half-measures and lots of raw truth. It roared! Launching our project in the decisive year of 1987 (the days of Gorbachev, freedom and democracy and recycled everything) was risky, but with hindsight it was invaluable. These camps were to be educational in every possible way – we were to learn more than we bargained for! It was sink or swim.

The first OakDragon camp took place in West Penwith, the granitic Atlantic toe in the far west of Cornwall, at Beltane, May 1987. It was mostly camp veterans who came, and we enacted the birthing of the OakDragon in full ceremonial form. There was a handfasting in the centre of a labyrinth we had laid out under Sig's guidance, and we made group pilgrimages to stone circles and ancient healing wells.

One powwow went on for hours: we moved into such a mighty consensus, in which everyone became each other's spiritual teacher, that we lost track of time, and nobody wished to close the circle – even though we were damp, cold and hungry, and the kitchen crew up-field were fretting over the uneaten dinner! It was like a group-psychic channelling, as if the whole world were represented, as if we were radiating light globally. The weather was windy and cruel, bringing out our determination and concentrat ing our minds on achieving what we had come to do – to overcome the inertia of comfort and normality, to 'lay up treasure in heaven'. It reminded me of stories our fathers had told of vivid moments in World War Two, when people risked life and limb to expose themselves to the immensity of Life in all its dreadful and challenging glory.

Things went well at first that season, but then complications arose. Sid, bless him, the then 'King of the Convoy', had sought shelter in the Glastonbury Camps in the controversial days of the 'Battle of the Bean-Field' near Stonehenge, and now he was with us in the OakDragon. I had not wanted him, but I was overruled by others. It seemed to me he was driven by an urgent force, anti-authoritarian yet Churchillian in style. His driving force met mine in a growing clash. Over time he coalesced a body of opinion against us, inviting in friends and proxies who challenged us severely. I never found out how much this was intentional or unintentional – like me, he drew people to him. Amongst the OakDragon organisers we did our level best that summer, with degrees of success and degrees of failure, yet we found ourselves under divisive attack from a vociferous caucus of dissenters.

Added to this, members of a therapeutic community from Ireland came to one camp carrying their own emphatic and explosive agendas. Other individuals swooped and rattled around with a spectrum of callings, obsessions and objectives, adding to a rich array of curdling interests and unconscious dynamics which altogether were proving to be too much. Sharing, mutual trust and growth were turning into weariness, bitterness and acrimony – though many campers had a fine time, hardly aware of these background frictions.

Things got complex. Many people were sliding out of their depth. In the end, it was a no blame situation – we were all bravely swimming in the deeps, and no one had a clear overall grasp of what was happening. In the OakDragon core-group we were overstretched. I was wearing too many hats, and others in the core-group were in crisis-management mode. Wires were getting hot and tangled. However, the camps of that season were still remarkable. What amazed me was how varying different people's perceptions were – our critics were offering us entirely contradictory statements, as if critique were more important than realism. I was having to learn how to distinguish between projections and genuine useful feedback. Energies were spicy, rising to a crescendo at the Harmonic Convergence in August, in the middle of our largest-ever camp.

Miracles were happening too. This Music and Dance camp, attended by some 450 people, took place in front of a wonderful old mansion in mid-Wales – Nanteos, the valley of the nightingales. I had found the location in a magical way. When searching for camp sites, I had gone to the Cotswolds, finding a site near Prinknash Abbey – this eventually fell through. I searched further in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, finding a site aside the tranquil Llanthony Abbey – this eventually came to nothing. On an earlier tip I hadn't followed up, Ros and I went to Nanteos in mid-Wales, calling in at Strata Florida Abbey on the way. The owner of Nanteos welcomed us, and happily gave us a site for the camp. What relief! The site was perfect, with soft green grass, majestic trees, a river and lily-pond, and a very atmospheric feeling.

She then told us a story of an old chalice which had been kept at Nanteos since the 1500s – it was now in a bank vault somewhere. Some suggest it was the chalice of the Last Supper. On the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1560s, this chalice had been secretly brought from Glastonbury Abbey by four monks. Get this: their path had gone to Prinknash, to Llanthony, to Strata Florida and then to Nanteos! What the actual significance of this is, I have never found out, but I took it as a sign that we were on the right trail!

The high moment of this camp was the appointed day of the Harmonic Convergence. We had designed the camp in a large six-pointed star shape, marked out by marquees at each point, with smaller geodesic domes marking an inner hexagon. Most people were there at the centre that afternoon, under the roasting sun, in a large circle of at least 250 souls, all singing. For hours we sang and swayed together. We came to sing a song which went: "...I am a circle, I am healing you. You are a circle, you are healing me... Unite us, be one. Unite us, we are one...". It went on like this, trance-like. It was a B invocation. People were transfixed, entranced. I opened my eyes and looked around. There, amongst us, I saw a miracle. Despite our invocation of the power of the circle, we were actually standing in an exact and perfect hexagon! The site layout had worked! Amongst other things, this was an object lesson that what one thinks is happening (a circle) is not necessary what actually is happening (a hexagon). Nevertheless, to organise 250 people into forming an exact hexagon is a miracle – especially when no one asked them!

By the end of the season, things were complex. We had staged some remarkable camps, and yet there was dissonance. We were tired too. We had not done well economically – returns had not reflected our planning estimates, and costs had, as always, been higher than expected. Our 'listening bank' (Midland) had let us down on our loan arrangements and our financial controller had suddenly dropped out at a critical stage, leaving us adrift – he later formed his own camp organisation. Many people had caught on to Sid's rousing "We, the People" speeches – as if I was some sort of Stalin or Louis XIV – yet behind this were concealed personal power issues hiding in egalitarian collectivist ethics. Others acquired hurts which weren't possible to process properly in the cacophonic melée of the time. Our valiant organising team was worn out and battered. Ros and I landed up holding the centre, and we were under attack. The final assault came on the very last evening of the season.

We needed time, understanding and perseverance to sort out all the complex strands of difficulty which had arisen. Objectively, the camps had largely been successful, yet there were crucial glitches needing attention. Criticism and dissent had taken root and a jostling dance for influence had arisen. In the core-group, differences over financial matters had come up – the new money-managers decided on cut-backs, and the HQ was to be closed down, to save money. I was to be made homeless, and much of the organising team was to be, in effect, deposed.

Then 'We the People' called a powwow on that fateful last evening. The accused were Ros and myself, found guilty of a heinous abuse of power. We were surrounded: some fifty people, some of whom were close trusty friends, seemingly agreed that we two were wrong. Ros and I, tired, spoke up for ourselves: clearly we were being misunderstood. That day, we could not make big decisions over OakDragon's future – we wanted to go home, to work at it over wintertime. The kangaroo court eventually ended, unresolved. 'The People' went off to party.

I was furious. Ros was hurt. Before the 'closing circle' next morning, many people apologised, implying they had got carried away, but bombs could not be unthrown. A shadow had fallen over the OakDragon. 'We the People' decided it was their right to take over the OakDragon – though weeks later I heaved myself out of my sick-bed to tell them they could do this over my dead body only. They faltered. As a result they formed the 'Rainbow Circle', to run competing camps. Nominally, it was to be organised by a free and democratic tribal circle of people. Tragi-comically, but few landed up holding authority, and in later years they were found to be committing the same 'crimes' as we. But that's another story!

Devastation. However, 'The People' took away with them many of the people we did not want – travellers and freebooters who, like wasps to honey, crowded us out in 1987, seeking safe havens rather than spiritual breakthroughs. The honey was now elsewhere – OakDragon was regarded as a goner. The Rainbow Circle achieved success in its own anarchistic way, and Sid their figurehead scored both triumphs and failings, as we had. My only regret was that they had breach-birthed their organisation, nearly killing OakDragon in the process, and neither was necessarily helped by this. Perhaps, if OakDragon had started up a year later in 1988, all this might have happened differently. Yet it happened as it did, and time has brought its forgiveness, learning and truth. Ros and I were now on our own. Many supporters had fled the storm, and others went quiet, drifting off.

I was by now exhausted, and I had lost my home and livelihood. I landed up in hospital, to be treated for internal poisoning from a tooth abscess which two dentists had failed to deal with – I was within days of brain damage. As I went into the operating theatre, I offered myself up once again, visualising myself resting in the open hands of the mother-goddess. I prayed that I may learn from my mistakes. The consultant visited me afterwards, glad about the successful operation: "I knew you were special, and I wanted to help you". That was deeply moving.

Later, I went to USA on a lecture tour and for a break. I landed up one day on San Diego beach, in hot January sunshine, watching the pelicans skimming the waves. I was anguished within. It took four years to throw off this gloom, though it was a fruitful soul-searching in the end. After all, I had set in motion something far bigger than me, and I had beaten a path into new ground. Thanks and rewards are not necessarily to be expected. The politicking had hurt deeply: this was not what I had bargained for. But then, to quote John Lennon, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans!

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© Palden Jenkins, 1992-1997. All of these articles are copyright. They may individually be copied and shared with others in a spirit of knowledge-sharing and fair play, but they may not be sold, printed or reproduced in quantity or changed in form without the permission of the copyright holder. Magazine and other editors may e-mail me for permission to reprint. E-mail: