The Hedge Druid

Carnac, Brittany - Friday 8th May

The 8th May is a public holiday in France. There are loads of them in May, and it seemed like a good day to be heading down to the seaside, so we packed for a trip to the greatest megalithic site of the whole of France – the legendary fields of aligned stones that constituted Carnac. Carnac is a small town on the south-west coast of Brittany, between the towns of Vannes and Lorient. As I checked the map for a route I noticed that almost every village in that area began with the prefix “Ker“. This prefix means ‘horn’ , or the symbol for a crescent moon. It was going to be a two hour drive to the coast at least so I let M have a go at driving to give me a rest, and to allow me to pick the places I wanted to see, and to navigate – badly as it turned out.

The journey didn’t start well. We got diverted almost immediately and my blood boiled at being unable to get us onto the road that would reduce our journey time by half an hour (not yet into the relaxing part of the holiday). Instead we were forced to go miles out of our way. Luckily the rest of the journey was quiet and trouble-free, through small Brittany towns and villages, and down beautiful stretches of toll-free dual carriageway. After two and a half hours we were approaching Carnac and the excitement was mounting (well, for me anyway). We dived into Carnac town and got a site map from the Tourist Information to work from before heading back out to park at the Ménec centre.

Phases of megalithic building in Europe

The fields of stones are effectively divided into three parts – Menec, Kermario and Kerlescan. Each site is bordered by paths through beautiful woodland, and boasts its own particular interesting element in addition to the fields of aligned stones, as if they weren’t enough to be impressed with! 

We started at Ménec near the visitor centre. The weather was threatening to be warm, but clouds kept rolling over the sun spoiling the photographs. Walking into the tiny hamlet of Ménec we were greeted by our first full view of the field of aligned stones and it was a truly amazing sight. Silence. Standing. Staring. Open-mouthed. Into the distance were eleven rows of stones, some ten feet high, most around four or five feet in height. They just went on and on, snaking slightly with the shape of the land into the distance. Now what is to be made of that? It was my mission this day to try to find out.

View along Ménec field

I had read the various folk tales, myths and archeological theories about their presence, but as with so many other sites they were simply nonsense, or had little substance to them other than being quaint stories. The ideas that have been submitted are:-

1. They are Roman soldiers turned to stone by St.Cornelius as he was cornered by them at the coast whilst trying to escape
2. They are gravestones for every person who has died in the area in ancient times, the larger ones being the rich people and the smaller ones the poorer.
3. They are a solar and lunar observatory used as a calendar to mark specific sacred times of the Celtic year

For me these “explanations” mean nothing. They add nothing to our understanding of the value and immense effort that was engendered into the Carnac sites. The idea that literally thousands of stones would be placed in an East-West alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. along a shelf of granite simply to act as a calendar is laughable, and even more so when you’ve actually visited the site. A simple stone circle would have achieved such a calendar function if that was what was intended. It’s clearly only a mere fraction of the site’s purpose. However, I’ll come back to the purpose of the site later. It suffices to say at this stage that these myths do not take into account the energetic intention of the construction. I, on the other hand, had this uppermost in my mind as I strolled along the fenced perimeterof the Ménec field.

Don't fence me in!

Guerilla Dowsing

Yes, fenced. It was all fenced off. Like Stonehenge, apparently we simple souls can’t be trusted to keep our sticky mitts to ourselves and would be hacking away at the stone for souvenirs if we were allowed to, or we would be clambering all over them and felling them left, right and centre if we were permitted access to them. Only a guided tour at specific times of the day (and considerable cost) would allow anyone access to the stones themselves. However, I had not come a hundreds of miles to this place merely to walk along the edges. It was time for some Guerilla Dowsing, i.e. dowsing in places where you were clearly not encouraged to do so and may be arrested for trying to. I did so. I picked a quiet spot, then hopped the fence with my rods and began to take some readings.

Here’s what I found out at Ménec:-

• Two lines of energy run in and out, and in between the stones. One is a MALE energy flowing close to the stones in the usual way, i.e. not deviating much from the most direct course between stones. The second line is a FEMALE energy, as one might expect this energy deviates wildly between the stones, sometimes going up to several feet away from the alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. of the stones. The female energy will also often miss out flowing around one of the stones in the row and be pulled back into a path around the next stone. This is unlike the male energy, which seemed to flow regularly past each stone in turn (although my sampling of this was limited to the occasional sneaky raid over the fence).
• There are 11 rows of stones in each ‘field’ (Ménec, Kermario and Kerlescan) and the energy paths of the male and female energies flowed in one direction down one row, then in the opposing direction for the next row. So, if the alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. is East-West the first row flowed West to East, then the next row flowed East to West, then back to West-East, and so on across all the rows of stones.
• Some stones were MALE (pointed shape) and some were FEMALE (flat-topped stones). The male stones were drawing down SUN energy and transforming it into the male energy lines that I had dowsed between and around the stones. The female stones were drawing down MOON energy as well as drawing up female earth energy, transforming them into the female energy that I dowsed flowing more vigorously along the aligned rows of stones.

That was all that I dared to do at first because there was a constant stream of visitors walking up and down the path that we were on, and I felt guilty about breaking the rules. I didn’t want to be escorted away from the site at this early stage, so I bided my time until I could find a place that was a little quieter. Next time I will book a guided tour, although I’m not convinced the tour guide would appreciate having to stop every few minutes for me to dowse around! Having got to the end of the first field of stones I was eager to see what the next set looked like.

The sun was alternately popping out and back in again behind clouds, which threatened rain, but we walked across the main road towards the next part of the Carnac site – Kermario. As we crossed a stranded field of stones made me wonder how much the roads and the traffic were affecting the power of the sites, but it was too dangerous to dowse whilst dodging the cars!

Gwas.

Following rows upon rows of stones