It’s been a crazy week for me, dancing between work and play, so let me tell you about the play.
My husband and I contrived a return visit to the city of Winchester for one day! You may remember that we visited Winchester Cathedral for Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2020. It was wonderful, but we didn’t have enough time to do everything we wanted—partly because we had a dog with us.
So when we had the chance, we went back!
This time we got a good look at the magnificent statue of King Alfred (“Alfred the Great”) that graces the edge of downtown. It is inspiring! No wonder everybody thinks it’s a statue of King Arthur. The size and pose certainly convey “legendary.”
A myth claims that if a female virgin at least 16 years old walks around the statue three times in a clockwise direction, Alfred will lower his sword.
We returned to the cathedral and toured the upstairs museum that we didn’t get to last time, plus stopped by many of the locations we remembered from visiting before, just to take them in again. Winchester is a remarkable cathedral, with an abundance of lovely features.
We then managed to visit the Great Hall at Winchester Castle, where we saw the famous “Round Table.” For a long time this was rumored to be the round table of Arthurian legend, but that link is being voided now that carbon dating puts it at the 13th century, far too recent to have anything to do with whomever the “real” King Arthur might have been.
Still, it was a thrill to finally see it—I’ve seen images of it for so many years.
Following Winchester, we popped into quite a few churches and had some rather magical experiences over the next few days. I was particularly taken with this effigy of a Templar knight, which captured my imagination.
The effigy is Sir Nichols de Valers, who assisted in the building of the All Saints’ church and later fought in the Crusades while his wife stayed behind and looked after the villagers. The carving details of the effigy are magnificent, but are hard to see in this photo.
Yesterday we landed in Kenilworth, which will be our next sit. I’ll tell you all about the cat we’re looking after next time, plus all the great sights we’ll be taking in here. (It’s nearly overwhelming how much there is to see and do from this location.)
If I were to link this to typology, which I always like to do, I would claim that this kind of sightseeing is a great creative stimulus for our imagination, our introverted intuition. Whether it’s being awed by Alfred, or charmed by a round table or having fantasies about a templar knight in a country church, there is plenty here to keep our imagination stirred. We are deeply grateful to have an opportunity to enjoy the world through this angle, plus it also feeds our extraverted sensation hunger—to see the sights and hear the sounds of the world in real time! This is how we do our soul work in the world.
Are you doing your soul work? Do you know how to go about that? I’d love to help you with such an aim if you’d like to talk things over, or I can guide you through Type Discovery to find your unique, particular approach to soul work. Contact me and we’ll get started right away.
warmly,
-Dr. Vicky Jo