Sacred farmers

Thor is the protector of agriculture and the land. In ancient times, farmers honoured Thor as their god. Thor is the god of farmers and fertility of soil. Farmers are important because they maintain crops, vegetables and animals, they provide food.The ancient people for a long time regarded farmers as with the same kind of divine authority as a priesthood. What farmers did was almost considered magical and close to the gods, developing fields of plenty, crops to feed a vast majority of people and caring for the livestock. Farmers are the ones who pushed humanity forward into civilisation. So the link with Thor, the thunder god, bringing rain and storm gives breath and life to the roots and seeds of the land. He blessed farmers with the wisdom of harvesting, production, domestication of plants and animals and even knowing the weather. Thor gave farmers insight into the language of the earth. Farmers realised how to make and grow the best quality of food and make bread.  There is a lost art to ancient farming but even today farmers are valuable and deserving of respect.   

Moon, stars and planets

January has seen a rare event in the sky with planets lined up in the week of the year's first full moon. The moon is bright and a January moon is called "wolf moon".
It's the coldest time of the year, with a severe spell of winter storms, floods and chilling snows in the Northern hemisphere, but drought and fires in the Southern hemisphere.
As the winter of ice and fire enters the transition of linear planets across the night sky. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter visible in an alignment, a row of five luminous planets during twilight.
We've lost many great people including "Ziggy Stardust" David Bowie (who appeared in The Man Who Fell To Earth and Labyrinth) and Alan Rickman (who played Professor Snape in all of the Harry Potter films).
And we watch astronauts such as Tim Peake live among stars on board ISS, inspiring a new generation of children.
There's been discoveries including Planet Nine and finding alien DNA in humans.



 

Todmorden

Another mysterious dark place in England is Todmorden. Located in the green Upper Calder Valley of West Yorkshire, northern England, near the Pennines and River Calder. Calder, an ancient Celtic name for "violent water," referring to River Calder. Yet the name Todmorden comes from variations of Anglo Saxon words such as Totmerden. It means means "death woods".
It was a place of human sacrifice in prehistory. Digs found Bronze Age relics with decapitated human skulls. Since the Middle Ages, the area became farmland and later in the Industrial Revolution, a rise in mills and producer of cotton as well as deaths. There have been records of murders there, and is wealthy in hauntings. It's where the last public hanging in Britain took place. In recent times the location of the serial killer Harold Shipman, an infamous doctor who killed his patients.
 Also cases of UFO sightings and abductions, including the story of Zigmund Adamski who was missing for five days. A policeman named Alan Godfrey found the dead body of Zigmund Adamski beside a railway track in Todmoren. A coroner concluded that Adamski died of a heart attack but there were some burn marks on him but his clothes were undamaged. Scientists could not identify an ointment on his body leading others to believe that he was abducted by aliens. Yet some conclude that he was probably murdered by bitter relatives who he had fallen out with earlier. The coroner was "mystified" by the case itself, and further investigations into the death of Adamski were closed.
The policeman Alan Godfrey, later witnessed a UFO following him, and he experienced missing time. Under hypnosis, he recollected that he was abducted by aliens. The so-called aliens looked like robots and there was a large spectral black dog present inside the UFO. His wife also had similar experiences and became pregnant during this time.
Beside this famous case, there have been many UFO sightings. Todmorden is home to legends of a pack of demonic black dogs who howl at the moon and search for people to kill. Bacup Road is a sighting of an unusual ghostly cat. There are too many ghosts and spirits to list but that site is a paranormal hotspot.
It's ancient features include a ring cairn, Blackheath Circle on a hilltop in Todmorden. The site has legends of fae folk, but in 1982 a woman saw strange lights up there and experienced missing time.

Links:

Todmorden on Wikipedia       
Todmorden "UFO alley"
The Northern Antiquarian - Todmorden 

Cannock Chase

The region in England, Cannock Chase, is stuffed full of herbs, fauna, roots of magic, spirits and moisture. One of the most "land locked" places in England, bang in the centre, considered the Heart of England. It's one of the most eerie, supernatural and spookiest with a dense history and famed for legends of monsters, UFO's and bloodshed. It can be regarded as a portal area. People behave bizarre, at times, using extreme violence, sadism, mass murder, and indulging in weird sexual practices. The psychology effected by the sheer amount of intense paranormal energy vacume possibly.
Sightings of mysterious big cats, wild men, Bigfoot, werewolves, black dogs, black eyed kids, demonic entities, communities of ghosts, UFO reports and witches centred in the deepest part of England's "green and pleasant land". Much of this has become urban legend, folklore stories, dreaming and make believe, adding to the vibrant and horrid reputation of death.
Cannock Chase is a beautiful dense forest with hills and ruins. It attracts tourists as well as wild animals and birds. Fertile and noisy of life, it's also like a miniature jungle of the cold north. However, Cannock Chase was originally too hard and stubborn to grow crops, with sand, rocks and massive trees. In Medieval times the wilderness of Cannock Chase was bought by the church and owned by royalty. By the 16th Century, the ancient forests were chopped down leaving a bare barren miserable grey blight that was then Cannock Chase, until the 1920's when fresh soil and trees were planted. This Cannock Chase was made into a reforested zone in particular to act as a military training ground with large camps. During WW2 the R.A.F. pretty much owned the area.The place now has a military graveyard.


Links
Cannock Chase Creatures
video of spectral figure at Cannock Chase
Paranormal hotspot Cannock Chase
Article on Cannock Chase ghosts and aliens 
Book "UFOs, Werewolves... - Cannock Chase" by Lee Brickley
UFO 2015 Cannock Chase
Cannock Chase UFO and Missing Time
Paranormal Cannock blog