The Smoke Shed

In 1996, a man I had only recently met sat with me in a smoke shed and told me my future.

His name was Colin. He had a mullet, long blonde-grey hair, and the kind of intense blue eyes that made you feel he was looking at something slightly beyond you. He looked like a surfer. He spoke like a poet. He carried himself like someone who had lived many times before.

He had recognised me the moment he saw me. The full story of how Colin knew me before we met belongs to another telling. What matters here is what he said in the smoke shed that day.

He spoke quietly and with certainty. He told me I would go to Cornwall, England. That I would stay for three days. That the second day would be important, and I must rest on the third.

He told me about water. About trust. About a ninth door I would face alone.

And he told me that Bernard was a messenger from heaven. The Bernard I knew at the time seemed an unlikely candidate. I have wondered ever since which Bernard he meant.

I wrote it all down. I was 27 years old. I had no idea when, or whether, any of it would come true.

Thirty years later, I booked three nights at Camelot Castle in Tintagel, Cornwall.

I didn’t plan it. The northern lights didn’t work out.

The Arthurian world found me long before I went looking for it.

At primary school I was a reader — the kind of child who disappeared into library shelves and came back changed. Somewhere between the ages of eight and twelve, I found The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. It’s a story about a boy who discovers on his birthday that he is one of the Old Ones — ancient guardians who have existed across time, standing against the rising dark, carrying knowledge the ordinary world has forgotten.

I didn’t read it as fiction. I read it as recognition.

Around the same age, I had a waking vision in the backyard of our home in Katoomba, at the edge of the bush. I was walking out to see our rabbits when it came. I saw the Earth held inside a conical flask, being observed by vast beings in white lab coats. I was inside the flask — but I felt connected to the beings outside it. Not trapped. Participating. Observed and observing at once.

Years later I would learn that a friend had the same vision independently, unprompted, without knowing I had seen it too. She had thought she was going mad. When I told her what I had seen as a child, something settled in her. That is part of why I write these things down.

In my early twenties, living in Sydney in a shared house, I went to a friend’s place for dinner. His parents had bookshelves covering every wall of their lounge room. I was in heaven. I moved along the shelves until one book stopped me. I hadn’t read the title yet. I hadn’t read the back. I simply felt something shift when my eyes landed on it — almost reverent, the feeling of picking it up.

It was Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I borrowed it that night. Read it. Then went and found my own copy in a second hand bookstore — I always preferred books that had been loved before me. I have read it many times since.

The character I couldn’t stop returning to was Morgaine — the woman who holds the old knowledge while the world moves on without her. Who sees clearly. Who is misunderstood. Who keeps going anyway.

I recognised something in her I didn’t yet have words for. She was the first in a line of women I would find myself drawn to across history — women who saw truly, and paid a price for it.

In May 2023, just before waking, I saw a woman rising slowly from our swimming pool.

She wore a white shift. Her hair was long and pale auburn. She rose without urgency, as though the water was simply returning her to the surface after a long time underneath.

My first thought was clear and immediate: the Lady of the Lake is rising again.

There was no awe. What I felt was recognition — and something close to excitement. As though I had been waiting for this without knowing I was waiting.

Around the same time, my mother mentioned she was reading a book called The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory. I read the description. The woman in the story had met Joan of Arc. I noted it down. That is how synchronicities tend to work — not loudly, but in clusters, quietly confirming each other.

Then in July 2024, something different arrived.

I woke with words in my awareness — not a vision, not a voice, but information delivered cleanly, the way a news bulletin arrives. Detached. Factual.

Scientists were certain they had uncovered the tomb of King Arthur.

That was all. No images. No feeling of personal significance. Just the announcement, and then the ordinary morning.

I wrote it down and sat with it. A tomb uncovered suggests a cycle closing. Something that had been buried, now found. Something complete.

Let me show you what was always there, before the dreams arrived.

In galactic astrology, asteroids are understood as representatives of lived Earth experience — the soul memories we carry into each incarnation, the themes that keep resurfacing until they are integrated. When I began placing Arthurian asteroids into my natal chart, looking for what I might find, I was not prepared for what was already there.

Labrum is a fixed star in the Crater constellation — the cup given by Apollo to the raven to fetch water. It doesn’t move like asteroids do. It forms the permanent backdrop, the stage on which the play runs. For what it’s worth, my in-game name in the game I play is Raven. I didn’t choose it for any reason I could explain at the time.

In esoteric tradition, Labrum is associated with the Holy Grail — not the physical cup, but the quest itself. The search for the integration of the masculine and the feminine, leading to spiritual wholeness. The thing that draws you forward without ever being fully grasped.

Labrum sits at 26 Virgo in my chart, within orb of the base of my Yod. The Yod — sometimes called the Finger of God — is formed in my chart by Jupiter and Neptune at 28 degrees as the base, with Saturn at 27 degrees as the apex. Labrum sits just inside that base, part of the foundation of my soul’s central mission.

Palamedes — a knight of the Round Table punished for telling the truth — sits conjunct Neptune at 27 Scorpio, the other point of the Yod’s base. I had never encountered him before I began this search. I found him by accident, placing Grail-related asteroids into my chart one by one, and there he was, prominent and unavoidable. That is how this work tends to go. You go looking for one thing and something unexpected surfaces that reframes everything. If you are curious about your own chart, I encourage you to try it.

And then the wider landscape.

Merlin sits conjunct my Midheaven — the point representing public destiny, what you are here to be seen doing in the world. The great initiator, the one who holds the long view, sitting at the apex of my public path.

Guinevere sits conjunct and between my Sun and Venus, square my Moon in Capricorn. The queen at the heart of identity and values, in tension with the emotional body.

Lancelot sits at 9 degrees Scorpio in my 10th house, directly opposite Excalibur at 9 degrees Taurus in my 4th. The knight of impossible devotion facing the sword across the axis of public life and private roots. Both square my Ascendant at 11 Aquarius — the tension between them doesn’t resolve quietly. It pulls at the structure of identity itself.

And Camelot sits in Pisces in my 2nd house, opposite Pluto in Virgo in my 8th. The kingdom of ideals meeting deep transformation. Always in dialogue. Never finished.

I did not place these asteroids in my chart. I found them there. The Arthurian world had been encoded at birth, waiting for the moment I was ready to look.

On the night of the Lady of the Lake dream in May 2023, the asteroids moved against this permanent landscape with precision.

Arthur was at 12 Gemini, activating my natal Vertex at 14 Gemini — the fated point, the degree of destined encounter. And Merlin was at 21 Gemini, unaspected — present in the story, watching, but not intervening. 12 and 21. A mirror. Arthur must walk the path; I often understand the pattern before I live it.

Palamedes had moved to 29 Gemini — the anaretic degree, the final breath before completion — squaring my natal nodes at 0 degrees Aries and Libra. The truth-teller at the point of finishing, activating the soul’s karmic axis.

Guinevere had moved to 25 Aquarius, in tight conjunction with the transiting Point of Fortune at 26 Aquarius. The queen arriving exactly where life works when you stop forcing.

And Excalibur had moved to 0 Pisces — the threshold degree, the beginning of a new journey. The sword leaving one cycle and stepping into the next.

The King Arthur dream arrived differently — detached, informational, a bulletin rather than a vision. And the chart reflected that quality.

Arthur himself had moved to 1 Virgo — the very beginning of the sign, as though stepping onto a new path. The same Virgo arc through which Osiris and Isis were moving toward integration in the OS series. A thread running across two seemingly separate stories.

Arthur’s position conjunct Mercury in the 3rd house — the house of communication and messages — explained the nature of the dream itself. Not a vision. An announcement. Delivered through the house that governs how information arrives.

Camelot had moved to 0 Cancer in the 1st house. The kingdom no longer mythic. Re-entering the human, feeling realm.

And Excalibur had been moving all along.

At the Lady of the Lake dream it stood at 0 Pisces — the threshold of a new journey. At the King Arthur dream it had reached 21 Taurus, still travelling. On the day I arrive in Tintagel in 2026, it will be at 28 Virgo — conjunct my natal South Node, and within one degree of Labrum, the Grail star, at 27 Virgo.

The sword has been moving toward the cup since the Lady rose from my pool.

It arrives when I do.

In 1996, Colin told me I would go to Cornwall for three days. That the second day would be important, and I must rest on the third.

In 2026, thirty years later, I will walk into Tintagel with my husband, stay three nights at Camelot Castle, and find out what the second day holds.

I didn’t arrange it. I was looking for the northern lights. They simply didn’t work out.

The story opened itself, as it always does.

The sword arrives when I do. The story is still opening.

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