Does Connecticut connect? Folks from Connecticut have a reputation for practicality, and the state’s position does link New England to the rest of the East Coast, but connection has nothing to do with the name. Connecticut comes from the Algonquin (Mohegan) word Quonehtacut, meaning “long tidal river.” Connecticut Yankees, the same pragmatic sort described by Mark Twain in his iconic story A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, have also been called “nutmeggers,” so clever that they could sell wooden nutmegs and get away with it. (Sailors who hailed from Connecticut did carve nutmegs out of wood to sell as souvenirs.) Underlying this pragmatic foundation is a warmth of soul that is rich with Native and natural history, sacred sites with many layers of story, repositories of ancient knowledge, colorful characters, and ancient trees… you just have to know where to look.
Enchanting Emblems
Connecticut shares the garnet as a state gem with New York and Idaho, but this particular variety—the almandine—has some unique features and ancient history. The thirteenth-century scholar Albertus Magnus (for whom a college at Connecticut’s Yale University is named) called it granata. Thanks to the iron content that gives the stone its red-orange hue, it’s also been called a carbuncle because it looks like a glowing coal. Connecticut is one of the world’s best sources of almandine garnet, and while the color and clarity make for some lovely jewelry, it has, in true Connecticut fashion, a more practical use as an abrasive. Ground fine, the almandine garnet was and still is used as a component for grinding and sandpaper. Tap into the practical spirit of Connecticut with an almandine garnet: carry one with you to wear down resistance or give one as a gift to smooth over misunderstandings.
Connecticut politicians didn’t want to waste time designating a state flower, but when 3,000 women signed a petition to do it, one senator pointed out that “it would be wise to agree with them.” The mountain laurel was made Connecticut’s state flower in 1907, sharing it with Pennsylvania. Connecticuters later found themselves fighting to protect the evergreen, as its wide leaves were in demand at Christmas as a local alternative to pines and holly for wreaths and garlands. It was such an issue that stealing a laurel bush was a criminal offense—a law that was on the books until 1969. Laurel wreaths denote victory, and coupled with Connecticut’s history of the plant, it can be seen as a symbol of the victory of the Son or Sun reborn in December.
The royal charter granted by King Charles II in 1662 legitimized Connecticut’s independence, but when Charles’s son James took the throne he wanted to revoke the charter, so he sent some folks over to the colonies to steal it. The charter, however, was hidden in a white oak, and the colony remained autonomous. The tree, called the Charter Oak, became a symbol of America’s independence. This arboreal secret-keeper, which sprung to life before Columbus came to America, lived until 1856, when it fell in a storm. Today a plaque marks the spot where the tree once stood at what is now the corner of Charter Oak Avenue and Charter Oak Place in downtown Hartford.
If you can manage to get into the governor’s office or the United States Senate Building in Washington, DC, you can see wood from the actual tree: the governor’s desk and the senate president’s chair are fashioned from salvaged Charter Oak wood. Colonists were not alone in venerating this particular white oak. By Native American accounts, the tree had been planted by a sachem (shaman) in a ceremony of peace, and the site became a meeting place for area tribes. They begged settlers clearing the land to preserve the tree, as it had guided them through the changing seasons for generations.
Bewitching Tidbits
It’s called the Tomb for a reason: it’s silent and secret and full of dead things, if the rumors are to be believed. But anything about the inside of the Skull and Bones Tomb is speculation unless you’re a “Bonesman.” Founded in 1832 from a dispute over a debate award, Skull and Bones members were given mystical nicknames and developed a penchant for stealing macabre memorabilia and stashing it in their windowless, Egyptian-style brownstone building on High Street in New Haven. Some speculation as to the trophies in the Tomb: skulls (obviously—and including Martin Van Buren’s), paintings of some of the more famous members such as former president Howard Taft, and a skeleton said to be Madam Pompadour’s.
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Ravenclaw to Skull and Bones’ Slytherin, the Scroll and Key Society (formed in the same vein as Skull and Bones) keeps their tomb on College Street. From this Moorish revival building, the Keys have dispensed scholarships, endowed the founding of Yale University Press, and count among their membership baby guru Dr. Spock, Doonsbury creator Gary Trudeau, and songwriter Cole Porter.
Fantastic Festivals
As the summer wanes, come to Connecticut for the Harvest Gathering hosted by the Connecticut Wiccan and Pagan Network. Held since 2008, this Lammastide weekend features workshops, rituals and magical fire circles.
• www.cwpn.org
Poor Mama Wolf. She’d lost all of her toes to traps and all of her pups to her reputation for killing livestock—seventy sheep at least, and countless chickens—and generally terrorizing the town of Pomfret. The year was 1742, and, according to witnesses, Israel Putnam (who would go on to become a Revolutionary War hero but at the time was just a disgruntled farmer) plunged into the woods, determined to rid himself and the rest of the town of this dire menace. He tracked her to a cave where he followed her in and made an end of her. That is the sad tale of Connecticut’s last wolf.
The Wolf’s Den is a shallow cave formed by natural rock formations deep in Mashamoquet Brook Park, a public space that is part of the National Heritage Corridor called “the Last Green Valley,” where preservation of natural spaces and the wildlife and plants they support is key. Visit the Wolf’s Den with an offering of forget-me-nots or rosemary for remembrance—then be inspired to do something more. View the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species list at www.fws.gov/endangered to see what animals need protection where you live and what you can do to preserve and maintain them.
Move over, Hound of the Baskervilles—at least in Connecticut. In 1939 an item in the January 21 edition of the Nebraska State Journal reported that the town of Glastonbury was under attack from a “strange animal” that howled but looked like a “big cat” and left “large tracks with long claw marks” wherever it went. Its name is just as legendary as it is. Not knowing what to call the creature, an editor at the Cape Codder came up with this compilation: Gla (Glastonbury) + wack (wacky, for the obvious) + us (official-sounding scientific suffix) = Glawackus!
Some say America’s most famous witch trials took place in Salem, but the first happened in Connecticut. The hysteria started in 1647 with its first victim, Windsor resident Alyse (Alice) Young. There are no records of the specifics of the charges against her, but there may have been an epidemic in Windsor around the time she was accused. The fact that she owned property and had no son to inherit it may have added to making her a target. Besides Alyse, ten more women and men, some married couples, were executed. The trials were brought to an end through the good offices of Governor John Winthrop Jr., who also happened to be an astronomer and alchemist.
There is a body; all the legends agree on that. Who he was and how he got there is a different story. To the Quinnipiac he is the hero Hobbomock, and the lumps and bumps that rise and fall against the Hamden sky are the outline of his body—but asleep or dead is still up for debate. Formed from volcanic eruptions that occurred nearly 200 million years ago, the two-mile range called “the Sleeping Giant” was used as a quarry during the industrial age. Now a state park, the giant of Native American creation myth is returning to his natural state.
Many stories are attached to the mountain. According to the Quinnipiac, Hobbomock was a kindly giant, and he, along with his twin brother Moshup, were guardians of sacred sites. Both brothers were killed in a battle with Thunderbirds, Moshup drowning, his body becoming what is now known as West Rock, while Hobbomock fell after being hit with a barrage of lightning arrows. His body is the Sleeping Giant.
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Living a magical life requires a lifelong love of learning, as well as a life of activity. Learn more about the Quinnipiac by becoming a neetompaog (a friend) or gechannawitank (a guardian) of sacred sites.
Visit the Quinnipiac Nation’s website at www.acqtc.org/Organization/SocNeetompaog and www.acqtc.org/Organization/SocGechannawitank for details and contact information.
Magical Monuments
Alyse Young, the first person in the United States to be tried and executed for witchcraft, rests—hopefully in peace—in the Old Congregational Burying Ground in Fairfield County.
Many of the nineteenth-century city parks of the Northeast—including New York’s Central Park—are the work of Frederick Law Olmstead Sr., whose final resting place is in Hartford. His son, apprentice and successor Frederick Law Olmstead Jr., resides in the same plot.
In 1812 Christ Church expanded, building over a portion of its churchyard. Rather than move the bodies or the headstones, a crypt was created. Besides the headstones, it’s estimated that there are at least 1,000 unidentified bodies resting under the church. Inside, wind your way around the well-preserved markers dating back to the eighteenth century. Outside, admire the church (now called Center Church on the Green), its architecture based on London’s St.-Martin-in-the-Fields, and the green’s pathways, which are somewhat pentacle-ish.
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Take a ten-minute stroll from Center Church up to Grove Street Cemetery. Enter the necropolis through the brownstone Egyptian-style gates to visit lexicographer Noah Webster, historian Mary Wright (she was the first woman to become a full professor at Yale), and inventor Charles Goodyear. Charles’s vulcanized rubber would revolutionize the automobile industry, but first it was used as a cheap and durable material to produce mourning jewelry (except it was called by the much more elegant name of vulcanite).
Along with his wife, Lorraine, demonologist Ed Warren sought out the supernatural. Lorraine continues to maintain a museum of the artifacts they collected and contained (including the haunted doll Annabelle) with her son-in-law, Tony Spera (www.warrens.net). Ed’s gravesite, which also honors his service as a veteran, is in nearby Stepney Cemetery.
Heiress Sarah Winchester née Lockwood was told by a psychic in Boston that her family (of Winchester rifle fame) was cursed because of all the deaths that occurred—and continued to occur—through their business. If she wanted to avoid the fate of numerous relatives, including her husband and daughter, she would have to move out west and build a house that would accommodate the disgruntled spirits. Eventually, this is exactly what she did. What started out as an eight-bedroom farmhouse in San Jose turned into the Winchester Mystery House (http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com)—160 rooms, 10,000 windows, and 50 staircases, some of them leading nowhere. Sarah rests (finally, hopefully) in her hometown of New Haven.
The median that sits between Broadway and Park Street at 7th Avenue in New Haven is home to a small but elegant Civil War memorial, but behind this monument is another—humbler but just as poignant. Under a tree near the Park Street side of the island is a small pile of stones. Look closer and you will see that each has been inscribed by hand with month and year and the number of military and civilian deaths from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, hailing the many unsung and unseen travelers of our time. Called “a Memory in Stone,” the memorial is the work of Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice, a spiritual collective dedicated “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God” (http://www.reclaimingthepropheticvoice.org).
Sacred Sites and Magical Spots
The Pamela Colman Smith Gallery at Gillette Castle
The actor William Gillette brought Sherlock Holmes to the stage in the late nineteenth century, and wild success allowed him to acquire property, including a parcel of land on the Connecticut River, where he personally designed a retreat for himself. Built from local fieldstone and fitted and furnished with white oak, Gillette Castle is set in a sprawling park filled with paved paths that wind into the woods.
Tucked away in one of the castle’s upper galleries is a collection of original drawings by a cousin on his mother’s side, Pamela “Pixie” Colman Smith. Devotees of the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot will find this permanent public display of her art—the only one in the country—a worthy pilgrimage, though none of the drawings, paintings, and watercolors depicts tarot imagery.
A set and costume designer in a theater group that included luminaries of the Golden Dawn such as William Butler Yeats and Bram Stoker, Pixie envisioned Gillette’s Sherlock in costumes, sets, and ephemera. The work and signature are unmistakably hers, and shine with her interest in occult and folklore—can you see the robes of the Empress in Sherlock Holmes’s dressing gown? The lines and softly muted colors give insight into her vision only hinted at in the many reproductions of her work in print.
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Travel nine miles from Gillette Castle to see the potholes of Chapman Falls. They’re perfectly round and incised into the stone so precisely that it looks like a drill was used to make them. They were formed when water from the falls dashed onto the stones and became trapped, causing it to turn like a whirlpool, shaping the holes like a potter’s wheel—the Eightmile River, the artist’s hands.
Filled with water, these natural chalices and cauldrons—some of the openings are feet wide—become mirrors, and so gateways into other worlds. Peer into the depths of a water-filled stone. What do you see?
Gungywamp
In the woods of Groton among the trees and tumbled stones is a collection of structures that at first glance is archeological-geological soup: glacial erratics, stone structures with astronomical alignments, colonial foundations and root cellars—or are they? The Gungywamp complex is one of many such sites throughout New England’s woods, a place that encompasses multiple layers of history and spirituality. Why and how did it come to exist?
One theory purports that colonists, frustrated with New England’s rocky landscape, upped sticks to farm elsewhere, leaving their hard-won dwellings behind for the forest to take over—but then there are those stones that are astronomically aligned…
Native American artifacts have been found on the 100-acre site, along with stone circles, standing stones, chambers, and petroglyphs, some carbon-dated to 2000–700 BCE. There are building foundations and enclosures that might have been animal pens. Boundary walls line the site, one of which points true north. One of the stones in this queue is carved with a bird that might be Eagle, king of the skies, or just as easily the trickster Raven. The name “Gungywamp” offers little insight as to a purpose for the site. It’s been translated as “place of ledges” in Mohegan, “swampy place” in Pequot, and “church of the people” in Gaelic.
There have been suggestions that some of the structures resemble ones found at ancient sacred Celtic sites, but there is no hard evidence to prove that Gungywamp is Celtic. The calendar chamber, a beehive structure suspected to be Celtic in origin, captures the path of the sun against its western wall at both the vernal and autumnal equinoxes—like Ireland’s Newgrange. When light passes through the little window at the back of the chamber, it illuminates another, smaller chamber off to the left. A possible use of the chamber was that seeds were stored here, waiting to be blessed by the light of the sun at the equinoxes, for growth at spring, and for protection in the autumn.
Be inspired by the calendar chamber at Gungywamp. Make a promise to grow something green. Lay your seeds out where the light of the vernal equinox can touch and bless them when the sun rises. At harvest time save seeds from what you’ve grown and let that same light in its autumnal stage bestow blessings of protection as you store them through the colder months.
Lantern Hill
Sailing past the town of Mystic, Connecticut, sailors of old beheld a wondrous site from their boats as they bobbed about on the Atlantic Ocean. Seven miles inland the ground rises up nearly 500 feet above sea level, shining like a beacon reflected by the sun: Lantern Hill.
The stone that gives the cliffs their glittering face is no facade. It’s 238 million years old, an early formation of the Atlantic Ocean; Lantern Hill is thought to be one of the bits and pieces of New England that was a part of the continent of Avalonia, a land mass that broke apart 150 million years ago. The walls of the hill that rise up are milk white and veined with black and ochre deposits, and in some places covered with moss. The stone is white quartz, also known as snow quartz or frozen light. Like all quartz, white quartz is a conductor of energy—massive here—but as it is opaque rather than clear, it projects a feminine energy that’s nurturing and healing.
The Mashantucket Pequot Nation of Connecticut calls this site the Sachem’s Seat. In the nineteenth century the land was worked as a silica mine, but the Pequot were able to reacquire the land in the 1980s and are in the process of returning it to its natural state, undoing years of damage done by industry.
Fantastic Festivals
Get to know the Mashantucket Pequot firsthand by attending Shemitzun, their annual green corn and dance festival held in sight of Lantern Hill each August.
• http://www.schemitzun.com
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Formed in 1974, the Westerly Morris Men are one of the oldest Morris Dance groups in the United States. They’ve been performing the traditional ritual dance of fertility and abundance atop Lantern Hill every year at sunrise on the vernal equinox since 1987. A burst of song, squeezebox, and tabor pipe welcomes the rising sun and the return of spring with waving handkerchiefs, clashing sticks, and ringing bells. See the dance from the comfort of your home at the following YouTube link:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4CaWGqjikA
• www.westerlymorrismen.org
Whale Watching
Whales are mammals of depth, perception, and community. To encounter a whale is to travel not only to another place—the ocean—but in time; these creatures are steeped in ancient history and lore.
Connecticut’s state animal is the sperm whale, reflective of the whaling industry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when whale oil was a valuable commodity. In 1975, when humanity became more enlightened and the whale was designated as an endangered species, the industry took a different turn and people flocked to towns such as New London and Mystic to watch whales.
Whales are most active off the coast of New England April through October. The first thing you’ll see is what appears to be a cloud of fluorescence under the surface of the water. The glow turns quickly into a bright island of flesh that suddenly sinks—and then the flip of a tail! Visit www.vistnewengland.com and www.discovernewengland.com for whale watch touring options in Connecticut and throughout New England.
The Granby-Dewey Oak
In a letter to his publisher, J. R. R. Tolkien said that he was “in love with trees,” a belief that transcended his fiction. He believed that trees were sentient beings and had a method for communicating with them. According to his friend Lord Halsbury, who witnessed it, Tolkien “stood up to the tree, put his forehead against the bark, put both hands on either side of the bowl of the tree, and was absolutely silent with his eyes shut for a little while.” Afterwards, he relayed the “message” that the tree had given him—one that Halsbury kept in confidence.
There is a tree in Connecticut with stories to tell: the Granby-Dewey Oak, who has been quietly watching the changing seasons for the last 450 years. Its limbs, thick, heavy, and long, trail along the carpet of grass—or snow or blood-red leaves, depending on the season—and into the field beyond. Roots bubble up from the ground like knees—like this ancient old man of a tree could just stand up and walk if he wanted to.
While the Charter Oak no longer stands, the Granby Oak, also a white oak, still does. It has survived storms and auto accidents, disease and lost limbs—and still produces acorns. Primordial trees are sacred. They are the grandparents of the earth; they’ve seen much and have their own stories to tell, if we are willing to listen. Try Tolkien’s method for talking to trees when you visit the Granby Oak (or any other old or favorite tree). Lay your hands on its bark and feel its healing powers.
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About ten miles from the Granby Oak, in the town of Simsbury at the base of the Talcott Mountain, is a bit younger specimen—as trees go—at a mere 300 years old: the Pinchot Sycamore. Sycamores can live 500 to 600 years and have the unique quality that at 300 years the trunk can hollow out naturally (the tree still being very much alive), making them natural shelters. Many a traveler has found a safe haven inside a sycamore; a full-grown person can fit inside. Collect fallen sycamore leaves and seed pods as talismans for comfort and protection.
Find an Ancient Tree
The National Register of Big Trees is a resource committed to documenting the oldest trees in the contiguous states. Trees are awarded points based on trunk circumference, height, and crown spread to be considered for the list. Champions are added every year. Visit www.americanforests.org/our-programs/bigtree/ to see a listing of trees and access measuring guidelines to add a candidate for inclusion.
The Beinecke Rare Book museum and Manuscript Library
The ultra-modern cube of a building betrays nothing of the intricate, the delicate—and sometimes the indecipherable—that waits inside. The experience is immediate and awesome: six stories tall, a tower of books soars up before your eyes. And despite the glass cases, the place smells of old books—of worn leather and aged paper—like every library should.
A library’s purpose is a sacred one: to preserve and represent all branches of knowledge. We may not understand everything contained between the pages of the various collections, but that is why they are there—to be waiting for us when we are ready to explore them. Those in the Beinecke Rare Book Museum and Manuscript Library, the non-circulating research library of Yale University, are ancient. It is the largest library of its kind in the world.
The building itself is an architectural wonder. Seemingly solid from the outside, the walls are constructed in such a way that light penetrates from above, making the walls glow like stained glass, illuminating the gilded spines of the books in the stacks. Entering this library is like entering a cathedral or a temple, and for all those who love books, it is.
Circulating exhibits are open to the public, while the texts and books on literature, science, art, philosophy, spirituality, and other topics are available to Yale staff and students and scholars who apply for access to them. The library also houses objects and art, including a fifteenth-century Visconti Tarot deck and eleven paintings by Pamela Colman Smith in the Georgia O’Keefe Archives—unsold paintings that were exhibited in Alfred Stieglitz’s Gallery in New York City.
The Beinecke is home to many rare books, but perhaps the most mysterious is the Voynich Manuscript. Called “undecipherable,” the 240-page vellum book—determined by some scholars to be incomplete—has been carbon-dated to the fifteenth century. It was acquired by the library in 1969 and named for Wilfrid Voynich, the book’s penultimate owner. But what is it? Filled with drawings of plants, anthropomorphic and human figures, and cosmic charts, the text tells nothing, and the illustrations less.
Is it an occult grimoire?
An astrological treatise?
An herbal reference?
It could just as easily be someone’s—albeit over-the-top—doodle book.
The book has been linked to John Dee, occultist and astrologer to Elizabeth I, who “couldn’t make it out.” Can you? All of the pages are available to view online at http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597.
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Will we ever know the mysteries and potential of the mind? Physical, mental, and spiritual, the brain is a marvelous organ and one that we are always trying to understand. It was certainly Victorian neurosurgeon Henry Cushing’s obsession, a part of which he left behind at Yale. Cushing’s brain collection resided in a subbasement of the med school dormitories for decades, where it became a rite of passage for students to join the “Brain Society” and visit the underground collection. Today they can be viewed by everyone at the Cushing Center in the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.
Like many institutions of higher learning, Yale has its own collection of museums that serve as university as well as public resources. While you’re on campus, see—among other ancient treasures—a walk-in shrine to Mithras at the Yale University Art Gallery. Also worth a stop is the Hall of Minerals at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. The collection was originally organized by Benjamin Silliman (for whom Sillimanite is named) and James Dwight Dana, who is considered the founder of modern mineralogy.
Fort Shantok
Aquay reads the greeting at the entrance to Fort Shantok. It means “welcome” in Mohegan. You are on a reservation, and what is left of this language—whose last fluent speaker, Fidelia Fielding, passed in 1908—is carefully preserved wherever possible. Xantok, the Mohegan word for this place, is where the Creator, whom they call Mundo, resides.
The reservation encompasses 800 acres, but it is here that the “Wolf People,” a clan of the ancient Lenape, first settled in Connecticut. The town is named for the Uncas, the chief and sachem who established them here. Today it is their burial ground and ceremonial site where respectful visitors are welcome.
A conical stone wigwam pays homage to Uncas, but further in, toward the river, more personal memorials take over. Headstones, some carved with Native art, stand side by side with others that were set into the ground before. Ancient, broken, leaning, they nevertheless are a presence, lining the land and reaching to the sky, ever watchful. Remember where you stand; it is all sacred ground.
Note: Fort Shantok is located south of the Mohegan Sun casino in the town of Uncasville off Route 32 on Fort Shantok Road.
Fantastic Festivals
As the summer wanes and the corn grows tall, the sounds of drums and bells fill the air at Fort Shantok for the annual Wigwam Festival. Native American culture is celebrated around a central fire, and the public is welcome to share the experience as traditions are passed from one generation to the next: music, dance, art, and craft.
• http://www.mohegan.nsn.us/press-roo/site-events-information
Experience Mohegan culture firsthand at the Tantaquidgeon Museum. Opened in 1931, it is the oldest Indian owned and operated museum of artifacts in the United States.
Stop By for a Spell…
Peter Leibert is a founding member of the Norwich Arts Council and in the past has served as its board president. He is an independent artist in clay, mixed media, light metals, and photography. As a professor of art at Connecticut College for 37 years and department chair for 16 years, he was designated by the college as Professor of the Year in 2004. He founded the Westerly Morris Men in 1974. The group continues to perform traditional English Morris dancing and is one of the longest ongoing groups in the United States. As well as founder, Peter is dance master and musician. He also performs as a solo musician and calls traditional Anglo-American dances for families and interested groups. He plays concertina, button accordion, and the pipe and tabor, and has been known to sing.
Winter is flu season in Connecticut (and most of the Northeast), but the real trouble is that you never know when it will strike. In 2008, for the first time since 1987, the vernal equinox arrived at Lantern Hill but the Westerly Morris Men didn’t (according to the headline in the local paper) because of the dreaded infection. I wrote a letter to the editor of the paper with an apology and a promise of something special for the following year. And so each vernal equinox since 2009 we’ve begun our dance with this incantation, sung to the tune of the traditional ballad “The Farmer’s Boy.” If you can’t make the journey to the hill, face the rising sun wherever you are and sing along:
The sun comes up behind yon hills across the dreary moor
When poor and lame, some men they came through Lantern Hill’s broad door.
Can you tell me if here it be that I can find great joy
I’ll dance and sing, do most anything, to be a Morris Boy.
Well known for fame, a team they came to dance for one dance more
Yes, ’tis Westerly that comes this day to make your spirits soar.
The time is right, should be late night, to carry on our will
To climb and trudge up through the sludge way up on Lantern Hill.
And when the sun has fully come, our dance and song must end
Our souls and spirits are complete, our lives are on the mend.
So down the hill we all must go, revived with what we feel
Back next year to greet the sun way up on Lantern Hill!