Epona

P.D. MacKenzie Cook was born into a deeply pagan and matriarchal Celtic family, very much in tune with Nature and the Sacred Feminine. It was his grandmother who first began to nurture his love of the Goddess, teaching him to feel the divine in the caress of water, sun and wind, in the soft quiet of the night. He was also fascinated by the beauty and power of the women in his life, and often stayed up late into the night to watch and listen as they talked together in the firelight. While still very young, his mother (an initiate of several traditions) introduced him to the realm of faerie, and later, after his grandmother had introduced him to divination and the uses of healing herbs, his mother gave him his first crucial lessons in the polarity dynamics of the Tree of Life. These powerful childhood experiences were strongly reinforced and deepened by Peter's father - a war-hero with healing hands who had saved lives by dismantling bombs and mines - who set a constant example of chivalrous and deferential reverence for women, and later passed on spiritual teachings he had himself received from his own mother. At seventeen, Peter answered an inner call to Britain where he trained with a druid shaman, and studied astrology, tarot, mythology, sacred geometry, Kabbalah and Hermetic philosophy. He later focused on healing, and began a nine-year apprenticeship in natural medicine. Pursuing graduate studies in history and philosophy of medicine, he discovered the healing alchemy of the ancient Goddess-centred Mysteries. Realizing this was a living, though well-hidden, tradition, he was fortunate enough to meet a young Priestess who led him into a deeper personal relationship with the Goddess, helped deepen his appreciation of the Sacred Feminine, and inspired his quest to know more about Epona. Now, at sixty-four, Peter is firmly rooted in the ancient healing discipline of the Goddess and continues to learn her "deeper secrets".