This is an additional post to the previous Day 13 – it’s about my visiting the Burgos Cathedral.

Having previously visited the Cathedrals in Leon, Santiago and Burgos, for me Burgos is the most magnificent. It’s up there with Chatres, The Notre Dame, and St. Paul’s. Celebrated company, I know, but as Cathedrals go, it’s a cracker.

My wife and I had been there two years earlier, and happened to visit during the induction of a bishop or something. It was morning, and i remember the light was shafting down in golden beams, and the cathedral was full of beautiful organ music and the colour and pageantry of religious ritual.

Something to remember.

When I went in yesterday, it was quite late in the day – it was dark, there were tour groups clumping everywhere, and it seemed like a different place. Also, when I’d bought my ticket I was told I only had about 45 minutes before they closed. So I felt rushed. The Burgos Cathedral is the kind of place where you need to take your time.

I wandered around, avoiding the tour groups, and walked into a large alcove off the main chamber. A kind of chapel. Immediately I stepped into that space, I sensed there was something going on in there that I didn’t quite understand, but that it would be my reason for visiting the cathedral.

I was the only person in there, and I was facing a huge and high wall of religious iconography and imagery – sculptures and paintings. In front were two large marble tombs.

But at the base of the tombs was a star, on the floor. It was patterned out of white and black paving stones, and looked like it was centuries old.

I’m always fascinated by what’s on the floors of major religious buildings. I remember a particular stone in the floor of the Angkor Wat temple, in Cambodia. The stone was the spiritual centre of the whole extraordinary temple, and when you stood on it, you felt the energy of the place course through you.

So I stood on this star.

And I felt a similar thing happen.

I looked up, and right above me, directly above me, way way up, was another star, and it was letting in light from the very top of the cathedral. It was focusing energies down from the cosmos through to that star on the floor.

I felt it enter my crown chakra and go straight through me. And then I knew why I’d come to that Cathedral. It was extraordinary. I just stood there, eyes closed, and let that energy swirl through me.

And then I turned away and left. Because that was why I’d come. To stand on that star.

Here’s the thing – we can step on that star whenever we want, in our day to day lives, if we know how. I don’t. I have to walk 300 kms with blisters and sore knees to get there.

A side note – and personal –

Two years ago, when my wife and I were visiting Burgos, we had dinner in a beautiful little restaurant overlooking the Cathedral. Last night I went to that same restaurant, went to the same table, ordered the same meal, then got the waitress to take a picture which I then emailed back to my wife.

My wife was suitably unimpressed, of course.

Why didn’t you go to some place cheaper, she said.

(The view from “our” table.)