This fantasy diversion is not as carefully researched as the rest of the castle, and is only a bit of (time-consuming) fun, but I've enjoyed just going with the flow rather than planning too carefully...
GOGMAGOG: The Earth Chakra
The cave for the Earth or Root Chakra is made from tiny stones and fossils I've collected since I was a child without knowing why. I wasn't sure whether the human skulls made this too much of a crypt, but when naming it, I wanted to use names of giants as they are often associated with the origins of ancient features of the earth. Gog and Magog, the two biblical giants who now guard London (heraldically speaking), seemed to provide a good London-based name for the ancestral skulls in the crypt, and for the shrine itself.
SULIS: The Water Chakra Shrine
Behind the cave is the Water Chakra's grotto, made from shells collected over three generations by my Granny, my Mum and me. I don't think any of us thought they would end up sorted by colour, shape and size, and then stuck in a miniature grotto!
Five shells have pools of water flowing between them, representing the pentagram of Venus, whose bronze statue rises from them as the myths say she was born - from an oyster shell at sea. The waterfalls were made from transparent plastic wire (the kind used to tag labels to clothes), brushed repeatedly with varnish and held in place with metal rods whilst drying (see below). Seven in number, they represent chi flowing between the seven chakras.
The entrance to the grotto is a mock Roman Temple facade, and the green man like face in the ceiling is from the Roman Baths of Aquae Sulis (originally an oddly male and Celtic Gorgon, possibly Neptune, within the temple's pediment, surrounded by snakes for hair). Of less erudite interest are the two frogs, the terrapin and Aladdin's lamp, all recycled beads.
ATEN: The Third Chakra Egyptian Chamber
Leading up from the spiral staircase by the grotto is an Egyptian chamber filled with golden artifacts. I couldn't think how to represent the third chakra, except that it's symbol is a pyramid. So here it is.
The other entrance to this chamber is via a secret rope ladder, made from skewers and string, hanging beneath the effigy of Paganus Trenchard in the chapel. The Egyptian figurines have to be placed just out of teach of the tomb effigy as it flips up to reveal the secret passage!
The Heart Chakra
Facing East, in the eyeline of the effigy of Paganus is a gothic window to a tiny chamber containing a statue of the Virgin Mary with a modern stained glass window behind. This figure was bought in Glastonbury when I was a kid and I kept it for twenty odd years, always intended her to be in the castle's chapel. So here she is, the figure of the Divine Feminine in the chamber of the Heart Chakra. She has two windows each side of her, one connecting her to my dead Ancestor, Paganus, the other connecting her to you, the living viewer.
GUANYIN: The Bellfry
For the throat chakra of communication it seemed appropriate to include a chapel bell. I was thinking of using an old plastic Christmas decoration but then I found a small Buddhist bell, a souvenir from a trip to China, and that seemed to fit the overall polyreligious theme.
The third eye, centre of wisdom, is here the nest of some wise barn owls, raising their young in the beams.
And I had to have bats in the Bellfry too, so I thought, as they are a symbol of mammals' evolution from land to air, like birds are to dinosaurs, that they could represent the final chakra of the body, the crown, with its associations of transformation from the physical world to the ethereal.
And there you have it: a crazy sequence of seven sacred shrines, or chakra chambers, hidden in a cardboard wall three inches wide!
Looking at the shrines later I realise that each shrine is inspired by a different stage in the history of human religion, from its roots in the earth's landscape; through Celtic and Greco-Roman amalgamation of deities; the beginnings of monotheism and resurrectionism in Egypt, leading to Judaism, Christianity and Islam; to Buddhism ringing out its long-suffering bell in the belfry. Perhaps not so crazy as I thought. I often find my instinct for creating something can be explained thematically after the act of creation.
