We take it for granted, we are surrounded by it daily, we unconsciously absorb it, we love it if it’s pleasant and smooth we hate it if it’s harsh and loud. Sound is all around us, beautiful noise.

Yesterday I wrote a post about my upcoming (and very last-minute – I only decided to do it YESTERDAY!!) 10-day 200+ mile run across Islay and Jura which I am starting on Monday 26th July. This is a very late addition to my Help For Heroes fund raising “portfolio” (you can track my progress here ) but I think it’s showing all the signs of becoming one of the most significant elements of my quest. I’m not sure what its significance is yet: but I am sure I will learn its meaning whilst I am actually running on Islay and Jura.

I didn’t know which picture to use for the post but as I was scrolling through my album, one made me smile – so I posted it (and I’ve used it again today because there seems to be some magic in it ;-) It was taken last summer in Donegal after rock-climbing at Malin Beg and swimming in the Atlantic. I was blissfully happy. I had just met the man with whom I was about to fall in love.

The best myths prevail because they sparkle with archetypal energy, holding timeless truths which speak to both listener and tale-teller. Similarly, the magical tools that survive are the ones that are flexible, and user-friendly; and demonstrate to an apprentice very quickly that they do actually work.
And if that makes it sound like myth and magic are things outside of ourselves, with an intelligence and existence of their own, then - good! Now we can begin exploring the concept and visual pattern of the labyrinth, and its fragmented user guide, the Minotaur myth.
Cropping the myth down from its many authors’ contradictory accounts into a single sentence, is really hard to do: but here is the ADHD version of the Minotaur myth. Every few years a set of youths and maidens from Athens were demanded by Crete, and placed inside a huge maze-prison built by brilliant inventor Daedalus, in which lived the son of the King and Queen of Crete, Minos and Pasiphae, a half-animal half-human creature called the Minotaur.

Have you ever wondered why you dislike someone you’ve only just met and don’t even know? You may have known them in a past life but it’s more likely they reflect part of yourself you choose to deny.

I used to be a pharmaceutical scientist, and with a PhD in chemistry I spoke in the same way most scientists do when there’s talk of astrology…..‘Pseudoscience’, ‘Nonsense’! But I don’t think that way any more. In fact, after lots of research and much contemplation I am convinced - 100% - that the stars, the planets, the Sun and the Moon influence our lives.

The effect comes in 2 main ways. Firstly, the Sun sends constant streams of charged particles towards the Earth. This is known as the Solar Wind and it rattles the magnetic part of our atmosphere, causing what we know of as the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. Sometimes there’s not just a steady stream, though, but a burst of particles from the Sun. When this happens, which it often does, we get more rattling and the result is a magnetic storm. And here’s where it gets interesting. Magnetic storms have now been shown to affect our biology. Already scientists have measured the effects of magnetic storms on the heart and on the hormone melatonin, and there are undoubtedly more effects that we haven’t even begun to start looking for yet. And guess what heavenly bodies can cause, or affect magnetic storms? Yes, you guessed it. The planets and the Moon!