Introducing a long testimonial story that includes a Rosslyn tour
I would like to place this message from Christiona in its entirety as it is difficult to edit. I think that this generous-hearted being is typical of the unique clients I share Rosslyn Chapel with. Enjoy!
It starts with gratitude
There are moments in life when gratitude feels too large for ordinary words. This letter is my attempt to express what your guidance made possible, because what you offered me was far more than a tour of Rosslyn Chapel. You helped me complete a journey that had been quietly unfolding for more than a decade. I hope you’ll allow me to tell this story as a spider weaves its web—strand by strand—because only in looking back have I begun to see how every thread was connected. What once appeared to be unrelated experiences, chance encounters, and unexpected detours over the past few years gradually converged into a single pilgrimage to Rosslyn Chapel and the living landscape that surrounds it. My friend and I had set out to visit the lands of our Scottish ancestry, yet the journey became something far more profound than a return to our roots.
Divine Timing
More than anything, I hope this letter conveys how deeply your presence mattered within that journey. You entered it at precisely the moment when years of seeking, learning, and quiet preparation were ready to become something lived rather than simply understood. Only now can I connect the threads and understand why it was so important for me to walk the land surrounding Rosslyn Chapel, its glen, and the villages that gently led us there. Looking back, every step seemed to narrow our attention until everything converged upon a single place of extraordinary significance.
To me, Rosslyn Chapel is far more than a remarkable medieval building. I have come to experience it as a temple to the primordial sea—not the physical ocean, but the vast ocean of divine consciousness itself. In the language of Jewish mysticism, I would describe it as a place devoted to the indwelling Presence, the Shekinah: the Divine Feminine that animates all of creation.
My own journey toward that understanding began in an unexpected way. In September of 2014, nearly twelve years ago, I suffered a devastating cervical spine injury. My life came to an abrupt halt. I could no longer work, and for a time I could scarcely walk. Looking back, I now recognize that injury as what I lovingly call a “hard pivot”—a profound redirection through which Nature, my higher self, or Divine Providence gently dismantled one life so another could begin. I do not remember that chapter with regret. Everything that came before shaped me, forged my discipline, and cultivated the discernment I would later need. Yet when the time arrived, my attention shifted toward an entirely different path—one rooted in healing, consciousness, and humanity’s relationship with the living world.
In many ways, I was returning to something I had known long before adulthood taught me to question it. As a little girl, I felt deeply connected to trees. I believed in fairies. Forests, rivers, and stones seemed alive with a quiet intelligence that I accepted without question. Like many children, I experienced the boundary between imagination and reality as remarkably thin. I sensed that my thoughts, intentions, and inner life somehow participated in a larger conversation with Nature.
Self-healing
Over time, those perceptions were dismissed as childhood fantasy, and I gradually learned to set them aside. Yet they never disappeared entirely. They waited quietly beneath the surface until life invited me to remember them again. As I healed, my studies led me into birth psychology, where I trained as a doula, became a practitioner in pre- and perinatal psychology, immersed myself in somatic therapies, and eventually began studying energy medicine and the human biofield. Again and again, I witnessed that the deepest healing occurred not simply through physical intervention but when people reconnected with something greater than their symptoms—with their spirit, their essential nature, and the deeper intelligence that organizes life itself.
Through these experiences I found language for intuitions I had carried since childhood. Hermetic philosophy speaks of the causal plane—a realm in which consciousness precedes manifestation. Every thought carries substance. Every act of creation begins first within the invisible world before it takes physical form. Nothing humanity has ever built existed until someone first imagined it. A home begins as an idea before it becomes an architectural drawing. It becomes stone and timber only after it has first lived within consciousness. That simple realization transformed the way I understood healing.
I began to see that our modern world has become remarkably skilled at understanding the physical body while often overlooking the invisible dimensions that give rise to it. Science reminds us that our eyes perceive only a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. There is vastly more occurring than our ordinary senses can detect. Across many spiritual traditions, the pineal gland has symbolized another way of perceiving—not necessarily something supernatural, but an inner faculty capable of recognizing dimensions of life that cannot be measured by physical sight alone.
As I reflected on this, an old saying returned to me: when someone stops believing in fairies, a fairy dies. To me, this has never truly been about fairies. It speaks to something far deeper. When we cease nourishing wonder, reverence, imagination, devotion, and our relationship with Spirit, we slowly lose our capacity to perceive those dimensions of life. That inner landscape withers through neglect. I began wondering whether much of humanity had gradually forgotten this way of relating—not because it had disappeared, but because we no longer practiced it. These questions naturally drew me toward sacred landscapes.
Ley Lines act as the nervous system of Gaia
As my studies deepened, I repeatedly encountered references to Rosslyn Chapel and the extraordinary network of ley lines that many traditions associate with it. As a bodyworker, I couldn’t help noticing the resemblance between these sacred landscapes and the human nervous system. Just as the brachial plexus gathers and distributes information throughout the body, these places seemed to function as nodal points within the greater body of the Earth. Whether understood symbolically, spiritually, or ecologically, I became fascinated by the possibility that ancient peoples built sanctuaries not simply as monuments, but as places that helped human beings remember their relationship with the living world.That realization gradually became the heart of our pilgrimage to Scotland.
Although we were returning to lands connected with our ancestry, this was never intended to be tourism. It was preparation. For several years I had been walking a disciplined path through the Tree of Life, studying Hermetic philosophy, teaching Kabbalah, and engaging in a daily practice of meditation, contemplation, and prayer. Through that work, I came to feel that when the time arrived, I would need someone who understood not only Rosslyn’s history, but the deeper relationship between landscape, symbolism, consciousness, and spirit. So I prayed. Working daily in what I experience as a living relationship with Nature, angels, and the unseen dimensions of creation, I simply asked to be guided to the right person.
Understanding Rosslyn Chapel
Within seven days, the answer arrived in the most unexpected way. I discovered your work through a question I posed to ChatGPT, are there any women authors about Rosslyn Chapel? Your name came up with a link to your website. As I explored your writings, everything resonated: your years in Ireland, your devotion to trees, your understanding of sacred landscapes, your decades of study with Admiral William Buehler, and your work with Scotland’s ley lines. Rather than convincing me intellectually, your work awakened a quiet recognition.
Nature
I found myself thinking, “She carries keys.” Not because I expected you to provide answers, but because I sensed that walking the land beside someone who had devoted her life to listening to it would awaken understandings that had long been waiting within me. So I wrote to you from Virginia. I shared a little about the Flower of Life Foundation and the work we have begun here: helping people restore relationship—with their bodies, with one another, and with the living Earth itself. I explained that our own community had begun quietly tending the land, honoring watersheds, and cultivating practices that encourage humanity to remember its place within Nature once again.
I hoped to learn from your understanding of Scotland’s sacred geography. What I could never have anticipated was how profoundly your presence would shape everything that followed. By the time I wrote to you, the Flower of Life Foundation had become the outward expression of everything I had been discovering inwardly. Our work is devoted to helping people remember that human beings are not separate from Nature—we are an expression of it.The more I studied the body, the more I began seeing the same patterns reflected everywhere around me. Rivers resembled circulatory systems. Mycelial networks echoed the branching intelligence of our nervous system. Trees, watersheds, ecosystems, and human communities all revealed the same underlying principle: life flourishes through relationship.
Water gradually became the heart of our work. Not only because every living organism depends upon it, but because I came to experience water as a symbol of relationship itself—always flowing, always connecting, always seeking balance. Across many spiritual traditions, water has represented the living current of consciousness, and I found myself increasingly drawn to the image of the Divine Feminine as the vessel through which life is continually received, nourished, and renewed.
Over time I began understanding healing less as the correction of illness and more as the restoration of relationship. When we lose our relationship with the Earth, we often lose our relationship with ourselves. When we lose our relationship with ourselves, we begin searching for fulfillment through achievement, power, distraction, or control. Yet when we become deeply rooted again—in our bodies, our emotions, our communities, and the living world—something remarkable begins to happen. The heart settles. The nervous system softens. Compassion becomes more accessible. Creativity returns.
Pilgrimage
Modern science now speaks of heart-brain coherence, describing the remarkable state in which our physiology begins functioning in harmony. To me, this coherence creates the conditions in which imagination, intuition, and creativity naturally emerge. History remembers individuals whose lives radiated that kind of coherence—whether we think of the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, or countless unnamed mystics whose quiet presence transformed the people around them. Those ideas became the foundation of the Flower of Life Foundation, but they also became the foundation of our pilgrimage.
When I first contacted you, the path ahead was still revealing itself. My traveling companion and I often joked that we were simply two soul sisters following breadcrumbs. Yet beneath the humor, we shared a quiet intention. We hoped to become willing participants in what felt, to us, like a much larger unfolding. Within our own symbolic language, we imagined ourselves helping to reopen the “living waters”—not as a literal event, but as an act of remembrance. It became a way of expressing our hope that humanity might once again rediscover its relationship with the Earth, with consciousness, and with the sacredness woven through ordinary life.
For several years before traveling to Scotland, members of our small community had been quietly walking landscapes throughout the United States. Whenever one of us traveled, we would spend time walking the land, sitting in silence, offering gratitude, and holding the simple intention of blessing the places we visited. We never imagined ourselves changing the world. We were practicing changing ourselves. Over time those small acts became a discipline of attention. A way of remembering that every landscape deserves to be encountered as a relationship rather than a resource.
As I reflected upon the history surrounding Rosslyn Chapel and the traditions associated with the Knights Templar, I found myself drawn less to questions of historical certainty than to the enduring symbolism of pilgrimage itself. For centuries, men and women have crossed great distances seeking places that awaken remembrance.
In many ways, our own journey felt like a continuation of that ancient impulse.Only ours would unfold in reverse. We would travel from the West back toward the East. Before visiting Rosslyn, we would spend nine days sailing through the Outer Hebrides, allowing each harbor, shoreline, and island to become another opportunity for quiet ceremony, gratitude, and contemplation.
Throughout the pilgrimage, the Tree of Life became our inner map. Beginning with Malkuth—the Kingdom, the Earth, and the indwelling presence of the Shekhinah—we allowed the landscape itself to guide us northward. Long before reaching Clava Cairns, I had experienced a recurring image during meditation. The ancient stones appeared as immense interlocking gears. Within the symbolism of the Tree of Life, they reminded me of Yesod—the sphere associated with foundations, hidden processes, and the unseen mechanisms through which creation takes form. I carried that image with me throughout the journey, wondering what the land itself might reveal when we finally arrived.
As we traveled north, the landscape itself seemed to deepen that contemplation. Driving alongside Loch Ness, I became increasingly aware of water as more than scenery. The great depth of the loch invited reflection on everything that lies beneath the surface of awareness—the unconscious, memory, mystery, and the creative potential that so often remains hidden until it is stirred into movement. Many traditions have imagined dragons dwelling beneath the Earth or beneath the waters. I came to understand those stories less as tales of mythical creatures and more as enduring symbols of the immense creative forces that move quietly beneath the visible world. Whether we call them dragon lines, telluric currents, or simply the living energies of the Earth, they reminded me that life is continually unfolding beneath our ordinary perception.
We spent time in Inverness, walking the harbor and the place where river and sea meet. As we often had throughout our journey, we entered quietly into meditation, offering gratitude to the land and allowing the landscape to become part of our prayer.
When we finally stood within Clava Cairns, I found myself returning to the image that had accompanied me for so many months. The ancient circles no longer appeared to me simply as archaeological monuments. They became symbols of movement. Of hidden processes slowly awakening.
Working with the crystals I had carried from Virginia, I placed them gently among the stones and entered into meditation. In my imagination, the great gears began to turn—not because I believed the stones themselves had changed, but because something within me had. The image became one of living waters flowing once again between heaven and Earth, like an old waterwheel returning to motion after years of stillness. Whether understood as imagination, prayer, or contemplation mattered very little.
The symbolism itself had become transformative. Leaving Clava Cairns, our journey gradually curved southward, tracing a winding path that often reminded me of a great serpent moving through the landscape. Along the shores of Loch Ness we paused again, this time near Boleskine. Beneath an old willow tree, we spent time in quiet reflection. The willow has long been associated with water, flexibility, grief, and renewal. Standing beside it, I found myself contemplating how new life so often emerges from places that first appear broken or unsettled. Seeds germinate in softened ground. Floodwaters leave fertile soil behind. Even disruption can become the beginning of renewal.
Those reflections remained with me as we continued into Glencoe. Few landscapes have ever affected me as deeply. Its beauty and its sorrow seemed inseparable. Rather than trying to understand either, we simply allowed ourselves to be present with both. From there we made our way toward Stirling and the monument to William Wallace. It was there that I found myself returning to the image of Scotland’s chained unicorn—a symbol that continued unfolding throughout the pilgrimage and one that gained even greater depth after our conversations together.
Your reflections opened new dimensions that I continue to contemplate. For me, the unicorn gradually became a symbol of primordial creative potential—not something to dominate or unleash recklessly, but something that enters into relationship with wisdom. I found myself thinking of the Magician in the Tarot. The Magician does not command the elements through force. He learns to stand in relationship with them. Creation arises through cooperation rather than control. Again and again, that same lesson seemed to echo throughout the pilgrimage. Whether in forests, rivers, standing stones, or ancient chapels, the invitation was never to master the landscape. It was to enter into relationship with it. Looking back now, I realize that this simple shift may have been the greatest teaching of all. The land was never asking me to change it. It was patiently changing me.
One image from Scotland has continued unfolding within me long after returning home. It is the image of the unicorn in chains. As we spoke together, your reflections on Scotland’s national symbol opened new dimensions of meaning that I continue to contemplate. For centuries the unicorn has often been depicted as chained. Yet the longer I have sat with that image, the more I have wondered whether its deepest symbolism is not about restraint through force, but about relationship through wisdom.
A horse can rip loose unbridled wildness and even run so fast and far it can blow up its heart. When reigned in by a human steward, the horse can be lovingly guided, it is not diminished. Its strength becomes purposeful. Its freedom becomes creative rather than destructive.
The Unicorn
I found myself imagining the unicorn not as something imprisoned, but as a magnificent wild presence gently held within a sacred enclosure—much like the medieval tapestries of The Hunt of the Unicorn, where the creature rests peacefully within a garden surrounded by fencing rather than being conquered by it.
That image has become a metaphor for my own understanding of consciousness. The primordial forces of life are not meant to be suppressed. They are meant to be cultivated. Discernment, compassion, and coherence do not extinguish our creative nature; they give it form. Just as a potter shapes clay without destroying it, the heart gradually learns to bring order to the immense creative potential that already exists within us. That realization remained with me as we continued our pilgrimage. Can we in this new era think of a better symbol than chains, which invoke slavery? Or perhaps something other than a chastity belt? I leave that for more contemplation.
Earlier in our journey we had learned that bears had disappeared from Scotland generations ago. Ecologically, that loss is significant. Symbolically, it touched me even more deeply. Throughout our travels the bear had quietly accompanied me as an inner guide. It came to represent wisdom, protection, and humanity’s forgotten kinship with the living world. Standing before the sculpture of the wolf and the bear at the William Wallace Monument, I found myself imagining a future in which both might once again belong to these landscapes—not only as restored species, but as reminders that reconciliation with Nature is still possible. It became another silent prayer entrusted to the land.
From there we continued through Stirling and across Scotland’s magnificent countryside. Every meadow, valley, and ancient grove seemed to speak of gentle abundance. I found myself experiencing the landscape as an expression of the same nurturing Presence that Jewish mysticism calls the Shekhinah—the quiet indwelling life that sustains all creation.
The Event
The following morning, we finally arrived to meet you. Although I already knew from our correspondence that you possessed an extraordinary understanding of Rosslyn’s history, nothing prepared me for the generosity with which you welcomed us. You had carefully read my lengthy letter describing the intentions behind our pilgrimage. Even more thoughtfully, you had gathered articles and research from your own decades of study that spoke directly to the questions I had carried with me across the Atlantic.
Then you smiled and said something I will never forget. “I think you ladies would like to spend some time with the trees.” In that single sentence, I knew I had found exactly the guide I had hoped for. Before we entered Rosslyn Chapel, you led us into Rosslyn Glen. Looking back, I cannot imagine a more fitting beginning. Before entering a sanctuary built by human hands, you invited us into the sanctuary that had always been there.
We wandered beneath ancient branches, listening to birdsong and allowing ourselves to settle into the quiet rhythm of the forest. As we descended toward the arches near Rosslyn Castle, a profound stillness came over us. Whether one calls it presence, Spirit, reverence, or simply the quiet intelligence of old forests, each of us felt something that moved us beyond words. Tears came effortlessly. It felt as though the Glen itself had welcomed us into relationship. Throughout the walk, what impressed me most was not simply how much you knew, but how you knew it.
You moved through the landscape as one greets old friends. Every path held a memory. Every tree carried a story. Nothing felt rehearsed. Your relationship with the land invited us into our own. Later, you guided us beyond the familiar paths to two magnificent chestnut trees near the ruins of the Dowager’s House. That quiet moment remains one of the deepest gifts of our pilgrimage.
For many years I had carried several crystals that had accompanied me through seasons of prayer, meditation, and healing. Beneath those chestnut trees, it felt natural to leave them there. Releasing them into that place felt less like leaving something behind than returning something that had completed its work.
It was simply an offering of gratitude. Later still, you brought us to another landscape several miles from Rosslyn—a place I never could have found without your guidance. There I returned a crystal egg that had traveled with me from Virginia throughout the pilgrimage. For me, it had come to symbolize possibility, renewal, and the quiet hope that humanity might continue remembering its relationship with the living Earth.
Leaving it there felt like planting a seed whose flowering I may never witness. Throughout the day, gentle synchronicities continued gathering around us. Two white horses. Small moments that, taken individually, might have seemed ordinary, yet together formed a quiet conversation that encouraged us to remain attentive. By the time we entered Rosslyn Chapel itself, something within me had already changed.
No photograph, no book, and no lecture could have prepared me for experiencing the chapel through your eyes. You never reduced it to architecture or chronology. Instead, you revealed relationships between stone and landscape. Between history and symbol. Between devotion and the generations who continued listening long after the builders were gone.
When we descended into the crypt, I quietly sang a single tone—a word that had unexpectedly come to me during meditation only days before arriving in Scotland, while you toned as hell. The heavenly vibrations resounded throughout the chamber.
In that moment, something within me became wonderfully still. Not because every question had been answered. But because I no longer needed answers. I understood that pilgrimage is not about certainty. It is about relationship. Looking back now, I realize that none of what unfolded would have happened in quite the same way without you. Your scholarship is extraordinary. Your knowledge of Rosslyn is remarkable. But neither of those is the gift for which I am most grateful. Your true gift is your way of being with the land. You never told us what to experience. You never asked us to adopt your interpretations. Instead, you created the conditions in which our own relationship with the landscape could awaken.
As I returned home to Virginia, I realized that this is precisely the kind of sanctuary I hope to cultivate through the Flower of Life Foundation. Not a place that offers answers. A place that helps people remember how to listen. To themselves. To one another. To the land. To the quiet intelligence that has always been speaking beneath the noise of modern life.
Jackie, I began this letter believing I was thanking you for guiding us through Rosslyn Chapel. Now, after retracing the journey through these pages, I realize that isn’t quite true. You guided us into relationship. With the land. With silence. With history. With trees. With water.
And perhaps most importantly, with a way of seeing that had quietly accompanied me since childhood but had often been overshadowed by the demands of ordinary life. The deepest guides do not tell us what to see. They help us remember how to see. That is the gift you gave me.
It is already finding its way into every corner of the sanctuary we are now creating in Virginia, where my hope is to offer others the same invitation you extended to us: to walk slowly, to listen deeply, and to rediscover their own relationship with the living world.
Thank you for becoming part of that story.
With profound gratitude,
Christianna