Rushing to Eva

a Pilgrimage in Sarch of the Great Mother

A review by Anne Mossop

Down-to-Earth Books

Ashfield, MA 01330

3rd Edition, 1992.

 

 

I've just devoured Rushing to Eva and loved it for various reasons. I realise how seldom I make the time to sit and get lost in a book and it was just so lovely to sit by the fire last night and read until very late - it's something I miss and almost feel guilty about doing as I seem to put reading for myself on the back burner. I really enjoyed your journey and the way you write and brought it all to life.

 

Lots of little things have stayed with me - most of all the adventuring in search of places and the something more, those who love travelling but not the package tour or fancy hotels, are looking for. It's the enjoyment of the unexpected small things that happen and that you give the flavour of a place.

 

So there are two, really three, journeys going on at the same time, the journey through England, Scotland, France, Italy and Greece taking us to ancient sacred sites connected to the power of the earth as Mother, and all the serendipitous small events and encounters along that route that make those two strands so real. Then there is the third journey of the inner life of the traveller that weaves in and out adding a whole other dimension without taking over from the delights of the first two.

 

I think I felt a strong kinship with your way of travelling, taking the chances fortune brings along, turning up late at night but always getting somewhere to stay and then you manage to make your journey more than a travel book, also an inner journey without becoming heavy. I think I like that journeying to the underworld as part of the travelling. I could exactly picture the airport, the journeys through the rain on English motorways and that feeling of gripping the steering wheel so tight.

 

Lots of things seemed to come back to me as I read the English and Scottish parts, as just after I left school I cycled from Glasgow to Oban and through Skye and had all sorts of adventures trying to get ferries but being driven back by wind from the Uists. I was with the one friend I still know from school days - Mich. On the way, we met a young American and the three of us had such fun together and it rained almost all the time. We had carefully chosen the time called 'Hitler's heatwave' early in June when the weather can be sunny but it wasn't. Ron, the American, was living in England or Wales and told us all about sacred places, goddesses, Avebury - and I know he brought the forces of the earth alive so that I can see certain places very clearly in my mind's eye even though I really don't know anything about the ancients. We had funny adventures in Scottish youth hostels, so strict and Puritan compared to Irish ones at that time. Mich and I collected asterisks on our youth hostel cards we only later realised were for grave infringements of the rules.

 

So many observations are spot on, like the compartment in the French train. I know exactly how the French can look one up and down and find one wanting! Yet I love them and also love how coffee or breakfast in each country is just that bit different and the way on trains the unexpected happens. That's what I love about travelling, the unexpected meetings, events and so often wonderful little encounters. I went back to Venice, Chartres and maybe that's one thing I learnt ( I've been wondering just what I did learn and concerned if it's the 'right' thing!) that I have felt something powerful, or something in particular places but never thought about what it was or why. Delphi is the only place I've been to in Greece and it is one of those places I always can go back to in my mind. With Mich, the same friend as in Scotland, we took the train from Belgrade to Greece but it stops somewhere before the mountains and we had to get off and weren't sure where to find a bus, so started walking and a Greek tourbus picked us up, welcomed us, gave us retsina and took us up to Delphi where I had pomegranates from a tree for the first time and felt what a special place I was in.

 

Anyway, thank you for the book and for its riches when you write about the soul. I picked up Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul which I have also been reading, a little at a time, and feel I understood about the 'magic aureole of love (that) descends when no one is looking.' I think I'd like to rush through the journey again for that. Maybe this could be a beginning! I hadn't thought I would say anything except that I hadn't written anything. So Rushing to Eva takes the reader on a journey to sacred sites, special places filled with the presence of the Great Mother, in remote, as well as familiar places in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece. At the same time as witnessing the powerful and ancient sense of place, it is an intensely personal journey on every level.

 

What stands out from the mosaic right now is still the excitement of the start of the journey, the drama of getting or not getting on the plane, the backstreets of London to that little place to hire a car and recognizing that feeling of it being 'home' because you'd been there before, the searches for b&bs or small hotels, some the pits and some radiant because of the open hearted warmth you find, the motorway in the rain, the poignancy of human aloneness and of the stories that could be books in themselves of the Cathars, of Peter, of the fire in Kilburn.

 

It is a book full of the riches of an inner journey of the soul, and journeying to the underworld is part of the travelling. The inner, the mystical and the spiritual interweave with the journeys, lightly and full of joy. Tightly gripping the steering wheel, driving through the rain on English motorways, taking the chances that fortune brings along, turning up late at night, but always getting somewhere to stay. So many quick and clear observations, encounters, the compartment on a French train, the delight in breakfast or coffee, always just that little bit different in each country, and the unexpected, always there around thecorner ready to surprise us.

 

This is a truly beautiful book. It's a journey to get lost in, to enjoy, and memories come crowding in. I think the dedication by Chrstine Downing, author of Goddess, Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University expresses beautifully what I felt - about the sacred within the joyousness of travelling: "...Your account of your journey is very moving - and the visits to Greek and Cretan sites stirred up so many memories of my times in those places....I like so much the simple naturalness of your account - its everydayness - which makes your naming of the sacred dimensions come across as true and compelling..."

 

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