The Hedge Druid

Castleruddery Embanked Stone Circle – Thursday 27th May

Ruddy hell – it’s Castleruddery! Now that we had the Active10 GPS unit loaded with the correct level of detailed map information finding Castleruddery [map] was not a problem. In fact, again, it turned out to be not far from the main N81 road and the Piper’s Stones that we had just visited – a short jaunt up a small hill. The day was warming up now – the gaps between the clouds were widening like a flock of tired geese unable to keep their tight formation, and this allowed us to bathe in sunlight for long and lingering moments. I thanked my wife aloud for the GPS unit which saved us so much time once we worked it out. A “godsend” really, and if you’re thinking of travelling a similar path to ours in Ireland then you have two choices: either stick to the main signposted sites, or buy a really good map or GPS system! One could waste a lot of time in search of errant sites on high level maps.

Stunning setting for a small circle

We read the information sign briefly before approaching the site. Apparently Castleruddery is quite a rare kind of site – one which has an embanked earthwork ridge surrounding the stones. Despite being close to a number of working quarries whose earth-shuddering roar and rumbling can be heard constantly in the background, the site itself is very picturesque and especially beautiful in May due to the five hawthorn trees being in bloom. I was very struck by it. However, you may notice in the photos that AGAIN there are pylons going right over this site. I thought the Irish cared about their history? Please, people, don’t place electricity pylons over your sacred sites – it’s like putting a toilet over your water supply!

As I approached it, instinctively walking around to the right-hand side in order to enter what I felt to be the ‘correct’ entrance for a moon-aligned person such as myself, a strange feeling came over me. I felt like I owned the site! I was ‘boss’ here. I was in control of what happened. It was MY site in a strange and long-forgotten genealogy that I could neither reason or fathom. Nevertheless I was instantly comfortable and at ease, striding into the site and looking around to assess the situation (whatever that might have been). This was an unusual feeling considering that I am usually humbled and in awe of such places.

Usual helpful info about Castleruddery

As usual, one of the first things that Kal did was to determine whether there was any energy work required at the site, and whether it should be done by himself or by me. Predictably it was me. We determined that the overhead pylons that ran over one edge of the site had weakened the circle’s energies substantially. It felt to me like the trees that ringed the site were asleep, numbed into a torpor by the continuous drip of the crackling electricity passing through one edge.

How to Heal Electrical Interference

A rather pompous little title to this section, but that is in effect what I managed to do with the following actions. You may be able to do something similar at other sites where you determine such interference from electricity pylons is interfering with the normal function of the site. Up to you. I chose three large rose quartz crystals to assist me with the task of blocking and re-directing the subtle field created by the passing electricity lines. I placed them in a triangle shape at the affected side of the circle and then sat under one of the May Trees that dowsed as being a useful power centreA place where a person of a particular 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. (see ‘Alignment’) feels particularly comfortable and empowered. The place is an energetic centre where a particularly beneficial combination and formation of energies is formed into a pattern that is harmonic with the person for whom it can be called a power centre. for this work, and to which I was in a compatible alignment. There were five May Trees all around the embankment, and a stunted old ash tree too.

A helpful May Tree at Castleruddery stone circle

As I sat under the tree, gently dropping into a trance-like state of mind, my staff was yearning to be elsewhere. I could feel it mentally tugging at me to be somewhere else. Cheek! Did I feel slighted? No, of course not. There must be some purpose for it to be elsewhere, so I looked around gently waiting for my head to “feel” the right place for the staff to be. My head stopped turning at the stunted old ash tree on the embanked ring of the circle. I stood up and took the staff to the tree where, to my surprise, I found a hole where a branch used to be that perfectly fitted my ash staff! I placed it there and returned to my centre under the May Tree.

When I sat back down under the tree I felt much ‘better’…er..how can I describe it? I felt empowered again, ‘in charge’, and I used this feeling to good purpose. I began to imagine the movement of energies around the site in an anti-clockwise direction. I felt like there was a circulation of energy going clockwise, in the male direction, but that the female direction was ‘dormant’. I pushed the energy around using my own impetus, and once it was happily circling away under its own momentum (!) I began to enlist the help of the ring of trees to perpetuate the movement for me. As the energy flowed through and past them I felt the trees getting involved and taking over from my own movement of the imaginary circling energy field.

With my staff now propped up inside the ash tree, and the two setting up a circuit of drawing in and feeding out healing energies (for that is what my staff has been filled with whenever I get the chance to re-charge it), I began to draw a stream of healing energy from the ash tree and to add this positive stream into the circling energies being sustained now by the May trees. In my mind the healing stream was a different colour – a white streamA flow of positive energised and healing subtle energy. The white streams usually emanate from a source of good energy such as a holy well, a sacred site, a power centre or a place of worship of good intent. We have found that white stream energy consists primarily of male and female energy combined in a balanced and harmonious blend, such that the two streams “play” with each other, warping and wefting in a dance that invigorates and enlivens everything that comes into contact with it. If a human stands in such a stream then they will feel positive, happy and energised, warm even. – glowing and differentiated from the mundane circulatory energy forms. As the healing stream reached the first rose quartz crystal’s location I envisaged it flowing to the crystal, and then linking the three triangularly-positioned crystals, like blood coursing across a pointed arrow’s head. The crystals seemed to respond to the idea, and glowed in my mind, re-enforcing the shape and the path down which the healing white energy was now directed. Then the energy re-joined the main flow.

The final touch was to imagine the white flow picking up and transporting the electrical energy from the pylons, and then directing it down the point of the arrowhead, to let the energy flow out into the field beyond, dissipating into the earth rather than accumulating across the stone circle. I finalised the flow’s momentum in both directions, ensuring that both male and female flows made use of the ash tree’s white healing energy to transport the negative electrical field and let it flow away harmlessly into the environs. Moments later I was on my feet and had no need to dowse as to the effectiveness of this task – it was so, I knew. That confidence again at this circle – where did this come from, and why at this place in particular? Perhaps the trees, I wondered as I went off to see what Kal had been doing.

Castleruddery's healing ash tree

Kal had been lazing around in the late afternoon sun, thinking about this and that, doing a little bit of dowsing, and some stuff that he will talk about in his own good time.Little did I know as we walked back to the car and hopped over the stile that I had left something precious behind. Oh yes, I had indeed left my beautiful ash staff propped up against the old ash tree within the circle, and it would be the next day before Kal asked where it was, causing me to practically have a heart attack when I realised! How could I forget it? How could I not realise it was missing? Well, stranger things were to happen than that once we went to retrieve it, but that’s all to come.

For now we headed up past Dublin to reach the area around The Boyne Valley where our hotel was located – the delightful Annesbrook Hotel near Duleek. Our only thoughts now were of getting settled in and wondering what we might do next. As it happened, we couldn’t resist one of the special places nearby once we arrived. No stopping us, I can tell you!

Gwas.

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