The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘Dowsing’

The Hedge Druid blog has reached 300 posts! Thanks to those of you who are reading our posts regularly, everyone who has contributed to the comments section, and to casual visitors who may just happen on by. We hope you are enjoying the journey along The Path. Our experiences seem to resonate with many of you.

Since late 2008 we have delivered three hundred almost-believable, sometimes vaguely interesting pieces of information to you all. For Kal and I the blog began as a means of recording our experiences whilst out dowsing, and for me particularly it was a means to record the cross-over that I was experiencing with my newly-emerging interest in druidry. Since then we have developed spiritually and the metaphorical goal-posts have shifted somewhat.

It has been to my personal delight that you have followed our progress in increasing numbers. Good on you, but shouldn’t you be out in a field kissing a flower or something? Only kidding. It’s great to have you here, and we hope that our exploits inspire you to try some of the unusual things we get up to for yourself. You’ll notice we often leave the detail for you to work out for yourself? That’s deliberate.

Two years after we started blogging we have hit a major milestone. I feel like we readers of this blog are a small band of Spartans facing the hordes of rationalist unbelievers in their many guises and poking them sternly in the eye with experiential evidence. Of course, we’re all mad. We need to acknowledge that, If anyone asks, you don’t believe a word of this, right?

Over that time we have indeed covered many esoteric and “flaky” subjects: crop circles, crystals, healing with energy, earth energy lines, coincidences, elemental spirits, ghosts, power centres…and many more that I can’t bring to mind but which make me muse and ponder. We aim to test them all in time.

Over that few years we’ve been spending less time dowsing and more time on energy work/magick. Dowsing has currently (and unfairly) been relegated to an aide to our other work. In the near future we’re going to go back to re-investigating the dowsing principles because we think there’s more to learn from that. Expect some updates to the Sacred Sites page with its map of energies. Expect some new ideas to emerge from our findings.

Here is just a flavour of some of the topics we will be covering soons:-

• Lammas – what it means to me and what I will be doing
• Crop circles – our ideas about where they come from and who’s making them, and how they are made, and what their importance might be
• Stone circles – are they schools for passing on mystical information?
• The newly-discovered wood henge near Stonehenge – our first dowse of it
• The power of numbers : five, seven and eleven

Hope you’ll stay with us for the next three hundred. Charge!!!!!!

Gwas.

Sunday 23rd June, 2010 – Caerleon, Newport, South Wales.

On our way back from Glastonbury, having stopped off at the pretty village of Priddy (actually, it was more like a bare triangle of grass, but..) we headed for Caerleon. The damned cheap SatNav I was using on my phone got us totally lost and we ended up having to double back some 20 miles to get here. Add to that the rather confusing one-way system in Caerleon itself, and the roasting hot day, you’ve got a sense of how glad I was to get out of the car and get my feet on the ground to try to find the South-Western ley line that I believed came from Arbor Low down through Caerleon.

Ley Lines in Caerleon

Just to remind you, I was at Arbor Low one day taking compass bearings of the various radial lines that Kal had found in the centre of the site. My compass probably wasn’t very accurate, and neither were my readings (all done with line of sight). However, at least one of the end points has recently been verified by one of this blog’s readers (thanks, Serpenteer – see our comment stream at the bottom of this post) who actually visited Lindisfarne Priory and found our northerrly line. In the same spirit I wanted to see whether my South-Westerly line could also be verified.

The search began at the car park on Cold Bath Lane, a lane so-called presumably because the Roman baths are very close by. As is the Roman fortress that was supposedly the site of King Arthur’s court, as mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Arbor Low to Caerleon

We found the line some two hundred yards further on from the edge of the remains of the roman fortress. It emerged into a playing field used by the local rugby club, and they were in the middle of a training match when we arrived with our rods. So, not conspicuous at all then! We took some surreptitious readings with the dowsing rods and I got out my iPhone to try to get a compass brearing. Strange things began to occur. While in the ley line taking a compass reading we couldn’t work out why it appeared to be 20-30 degrees out from what we expected. We took other dowsing readings but none of them explained why the reading was out. Then my iPhone switched itself off – the screen went blank and no buttons worked, despite having a full battery. I resorted to the rods, and they showed SSW as being where we expected it to be, not where the iPhone had indicated. When I walked out of the ley line the phone started working again.

Possible ley through Caerleon

I have often found that Roman structures rarely lie upon ley lines. They are usually off to one side, safely off the line itself. So-called Roman roads, actually built upon the old corpse roads of much more ancient times, are often built upon ley lines however. It seems that the properties of a ley line is compatible with movement, but not with residence. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case here too.

Another possibility is one which I first speculated about when I discovered a ley that ran from the Isles of Scilly to Italy. At the end of that line the ley seemed to curl into a spiral (or at leats – that’s the form which best linked the place names I was tracing). I wonder whether the fortress at Caerleon also forms a spiral terminus point. It’s something I will have to go an test. It’s only an idea at the moment.

When I got back home and adjusted the line to align my “on the ground” results with my Google Map of this line several more places whose names ended in “ley” began to surface. I now need to go along the line verifying the locations of the points I suspect have ley lines, and then verifying the exact angle of the ley line, possibly using other navigational aids other than the iPhone! I also still do not know where the line ends, and whether it continues outside of Caerleon.

More soon when I have some better correlating evidence.

Gwas.

The Llangernyw Yew : April 19th 2010

After our visit to The Druid’s Circle at Penmaenmawr we sidled off into the sunset heading inland cross-country to Llangernyw. I had a few random items on my agenda to work on, whereas I knew that for Kal this was the main reason for his visit. He was at an important juncture in his life and was looking to his old friend the archetypal “Tree” for some guidance. Having made contact with this helpful entity via the ancient yew tree at Llangernyw before, he was confident that he could do so again.

Late evening yew

For me, I had been guided recently to carve a symbol into my staff. I knew not why, yet. I’m sure that will become clear soon enough. For now, I wanted to confirm which symbol that should be before I started carving. On previous occasions when I had dowsed for this information it had been indicated that it should be the Dinas Bran sigil. This evening, as the sun was setting, I approached the ancient yew tree with respect and asked if I might dowse for some answers. I got a positive response and so began to do some dowsing.

I dowsed at the edge of the tree’s canopy, on a flat section of ground indicated as a good place by the dowsing rods. I asked which symbol I should carve and began to follow a spiral pattern around from one side to another, in a familiar pattern. Was this like the ‘Bran the Blessed’ sigil? It was like that but the head was upside down! In fact it resembled the Arbor Low sigil too.I asked the rods if this was correct several times and they repeatedly said yes. When I sought an answer to this I got the impression that it was a symbol that was personal to me yet a reflection of both places, even literally a reflection in the sense of being upside down in parts.

Inside the mighty yew

You may remember from my recent posts that I had been trying to draw together the four elemental forces of Nature in order to assist me with my coming work this year? There was one that I had not managed to re-engage with and that was the fire element. On this lovely sunny evening as the great fireball dropped slowly over the hills of Penmaenmawr I decided to try to resolve that oversight. I walked to the side of the church where I knew my power centre to be, but oddly I walked straight past it without a second glance, and went to stand before the two pillars of stone that seemed like an entrance or exit portal for something. I began to dowse…

Were these stones and entrance or an exit? An exit. Were they for some form of energy (thinking back to Druid’s Circle) to be directed through? Yes. Was that energy spirit energy? Yes. Was it earth energy? No. Was it the energy of the yew tree? Sort of – the rods came together slightly, but not firmly. Was it the spirit of the place that passed through this portal? Yes. Was this a good place for me to regain my fire energy? A strong yes.

With that affirmation I went to go and sit on the flat tombstone behind the two stones, and immediately got a sharp pain in both kidneys. I took this as an indication that this was not a good place to sit! I stood between the portal stones, looking due west, and drew down the fire of the setting sun, as the saying goes in such circles. The rods confirmed what I felt – that this had been done successfully. Now I felt more ‘complete’ – like I had access to all the powers of Nature (except spirit, or aether, the fifth element).

An energetic exit portal

Whilst I was stood between the two energetic stones I felt like I could use that energy to get another burning question answered. I had one that was uppermost in my mind., The final task of the time between Spring and Beltane was to learn how to connect to the earth’s own energy grid. So far I had not one clue how this could be done, other than perhaps to be stood somewhere that neutral energy may naturally emerge, or something like that. I decide to seek some guidance, any clue at all.

I asked the yew tree to help me to imagine what I should do to link to the neutral earth grid – and I was shown several places very quickly that I couldn’t make out because they were too quick. Then I was shown an image of me nestling into the bosom of the earth – literally two small humps of grass between which I was curled in a foetal position, soothed and sleepy. I was to find a place where I felt that comfortable and then bathed in warmth and comfort I could connect to the earth’s own energy system and draw upon the neutral energy – the pure energy of the earth. I was amazed at the wonderfully intuitive way the information was given to me, and extremely grateful to have been shown this vision. Now, all I had to do was to find such a place….

The warning place

I thought I was finished for the evening – hey, hadn’t I got everything I came for and more? I certainly had. Kal popped around looking pleased with himself and his exploits, which I intended to ask him about as soon as we were on the road again. “Have you finished?” he asked me. “Let’s ask the rods!” I quipped, expecting a ‘yes’ response. I got a ‘no’. Apparently, there was more! I asked the rods to take me to the place where I could find out about this other information, and soon I was walking along the side of the graveyard, past gravestones, until the rods swung back on themselves to point to a grave close to the edge of the path the surrounds the lower site.

There was an inscription on the gravestone. I read, “Oft in danger, oft in woe“. i thought this was very unusual inscription, as I had never seen anything like it before! It was the inscription that was important. It took me several minutes of narrowing down the field before I hit upon the relevance of these words: it was to do with me not putting up energetic protection when I visited sacred sites. I had become too complacent and trusting, relying on my intuition to warn me of potential problems. So far I had been lucky and had visited sites when no-one else was around which has prevented problems so far (apart from one episode that really stuck in both our minds of an encounter at Llandrillo). Now, as I moved into the warmer lighter months I was being warned that other people may cause me problems unless I protect myself appropriately when I go out in the near future. Memories came flooding back and I felt I knew what was being suggested.

I asked if that was all? No, there was more. Again I let the rods take me on a little wander, this time only ten or fifteen feet away from where I was. The rods swung dramatically again to point at what seemed like an ordinary grave of a couple. Again it took me several minutes to divine the answer through a series of questions and response. The couple had been “energetically aware” people, but had died due to some misfortune brought about by an encounter with some form of deviant spirit energy. This was a stronger re-enforcement if I needed it, and I will heed the warning and will be more careful from now on, especially in the presence of other people, whether they mean harm intentionally or not!

All in all, a strange end to the evening for me. For Kal, however, the evening had been highly positive. He had received advice from the yew tree that he should ride out his current issues without trying to resolve them for himself. They would all, apparently, be taken care of – despite how impossible that seemed at that time. A week later everything righted itself against impossible odds and in quite incredible circumstances. Never would we doubt the power of this tree, or its influence over this churchyard!

Gwas.

The evening of Thursday 8th April seemed like as good a time as any for me to venture forth on the second of my investigations into the nature of NEUTRAL subtle energy. The air was relatively warm, the sky was clear, there was barely a breath of wind, and hardly a cloud in the sky – surely we would not fall foul of the curse of Arbor Low this time – a curse which guaranteed that no matter what the weather was like anywhere else on the planet that Arbor Low would somehow manage to minimise our time there by conjuring up the most adverse weather possible, be that wind, rain, sleet, snow or hailstorm? Surely, on a day such as this, such a thing would not be possible, even for Arbor Low?

Ley Lines and Hubs

We arrived with our dowsing rods and a pack full of handy gadgets intent on obtaining some useful information. Kal perhaps even harboured thoughts of having a snooze and a daydream in the late evening Spring sunshine as we arrived, seeing as there was nary a cloud to be seen. We were in high spirits as we walked up, throwing our customary tribute of £1 into the tin laid out to pay for ice cream for the farmer’s kids, or whatever it goes to. We paid our tithe, noticing that now there was an additional purchase available – a pamphlet on the history of the circle –  and strode up to the earthwork ring that contains one of the most fascinating places in Derbyshire. We wondered whether the pamphlet would mention any of the things that we knew about the place – the alleyway entrance, the site guardian and its sigil shape, the three energetic entrances, the power of the central stones to heal and commune, the power centres we knew of, and the fact that it was the hub of six strong and wide ley lines that all joined at this point.

The fact that, for us, Arbor Low is a hub for ley lines was perhaps the primary reason that I was here this evening. If ley lines were neutral energy, as I believed then to be, then perhaps there was more neutral energy here too for me to learn about? I was to find out more than I could have hoped I would!

In the diagram below you will see two cardinal lines passing straight through the site on a North/South axis, and an East/West axis. That makes two lines. Then you will see four more lines emanating from the centre. These lines are individual lines oriented on their own unique courses. These four, plus the two cardinal lines makes six ley lines of neutral energy that we had identified previously.

I began by confirming the orientation of these existing lines. They were all found again, on exactly the same courses as found last time. Nothing had changed in respect of those lines, and that was quite reassuring, because it confirmed my suggestion that these lines are in some way pinned in place by being connectors between particular sacred sites that occur along their direction of travel. The most interesting of these lines is the one that travels SSW and passes through the ancient town of Caerleon, known to be a very special place – a place of Kings, and a seat of Arthur in times long gone and now mythological.

Kal had wandered off on his own course of investigation, as was usual. I wanted to keep moving around now because a slight wind had arisen that was bringing in a very cold stream of air that made standing still feel quite the wrong thing to do if you wanted to stay warm. I decided to find out a good place for me to be within the site, and was expecting to be directed to a particular spot or somewhere that had been identified before. I was quite surprised to be taken on a continuous tour of the inner ring of recumbent stones, walking round and round until I realised that it wasn’t going to stop. I was being told that there was a band of energy that encompassed the inner ring of stones, and it was this energy ring that was beneficial for me this evening. I took that as a good sign to obtain some more information!

View of Arbor Low's inner ditch and stones

I went on to obtain some more information about the nature of neutral energy, some of which was confirmatory, other findings were new to me. Here is what I found out:-

1. Neutral energy is same a ley energy
2. Neutral energy naturally travels in straight lines
3. It can be formed into other shapes by animals, plants or human activity and interaction
4. It shares some of its frequency range with male and female radiant energies
5. It is not compatible with male and female earth energies
6. It can be a container, but cannot itself be contained
7. It cannot be attracted or repulsed by any material
8. Neutral forms of subtle energy can be created by and strengthened by the input of radiant energies

Read the rest of this entry »

When I get a call to go to Moel-Ty-Uchaf then I know that I have to go. Sooner or later I have to go. It starts, as Kal has explained in other posts and so have I, as a coincidence, then becomes a niggle, then a constant presence, and finally a nag. For me, I woke up with the words ‘Llandrillo’ going around my head constantly like a stuck record. There’s only so much of this you can take before you do something to appease a plea like that. Let’s face it – it’s always a plea that brings some kind of reward, even if the damned effort of getting to Moel-Ty-Uchaf stone circle should be accompanied by a medal ceremony and full brass band.

As I walked up in the darkness of the night I remembered my last visit – the stars, the Milky Way, the spectacle of the incredibly clear but moonless night…Tonight was the polar opposite – the moon was hidden somewhere behind the veil of clouds and I could feel its presence. There was nary a star to be seen except three bright stars that almost formed a line. Initially I thought they might be Orion’s Belt, but later I realised that they weren’t. It was difficult to orient myself astrally that evening.

As I walked higher up the steep slope I was somewhat surprised to come across the remnants of the previous week’s snowfall. Somehow I hadn’t been expecting to see any, and its appearance reminded me that I was going to be high in the hills of Wales tonight, and that it might get cold. I added gloves and a scarf at this stage, before pressing onwards and upwards towards the circle. Despite the backlit darkness I knew my way by now and picked my path carefully. Clearly, tripping and spraining an ankle alone in the darkness with no phone coverage was not an option. I trusted my welfare to Nature’s guiding hands.

Some questions answered

I reached the top of the hill and spent a few moments recovering my breath. This stone circle always makes you work hard for your rewards, and I was paying in sweat again – a sweat that was congealing quickly in the penetrating cold night air. Hanging about dithering wouldn’t help me tonight, so I quickly took the reins and set about my work. What was my work tonight? I reminded myself that it was to activate the energies of this circle. I confirmed this with some quick dowsing:

• Was that a suitable thing to be doing this evening – Yes.
• Was I ready and able to do it? Yes.
• Did I have permission to do so? Yes.
• Was that the purpose of why I was here? Yes.

Always worth checking, or I would have been forced to simply sit there and meditate to find another reason for my journey. Of course, I am always fully prepared to do that – but that was last year’s direction – to sit and wait to discover the purpose of such visits. This year I had been forced into a situation where I had to know my purpose before I visited, and it seemed to be working out just great. I was getting good confirmation that this was the correct course of action. Not only were the dowsing rods confirming this for me, but everything that happened was seemingly occurring in just the right way – things were being done easily, and there were confirmatory signs accompanying the work. This is good ‘intel’ that the right methods are being employed, and I am ‘on the path’. The right path.

A slight philosophical diversion at this point. It seems to me that we spend much of our lives wondering why the forces of Nature are against us and why ‘Fate’ is working against our plans. We wonder why we cannot achieve the things we believe we want – why unseen forces work against us, unpicking our plans, making us look and feel stupid and clumsy in our efforts to make progress. We (sometimes literally) stumble around, tripping ourselves up, then looking for the culprit who tripped us. I have found that once one acknowledges one’s place in the flow of the way of being, the flow of the forces of Nature, and takes on the rightful role of making one’s life flow in that same direction, then the walk becomes easy. 

To work in harmony with that flow and acknowledge our own humble place in that all-encompassing scheme of the flow of time and destiny that IS Nature’s movement in the Universe is a right and fitting goal to life. Things click into place. Help is at hand. The struggling is eased. The work is still hard, don’t get me wrong. Harder than ‘normal’ life even. But the rewards are endless, proportionate, useful, purposeful and beneficent. If your life is a struggle for fruitless progress, then perhaps it may do you some good to take yourself out of that flow that you are currently in, take time for yourself to examine your place, and commune with Nature to ask her to show you how you might make some changes to re-align yourself with a truer purpose – your true purpose in this life.

Amazing things can occur on a daily basis. This is what I have found, and since I have, my only goal is to keep making those right and true choices, because life is so much more fulfilling ‘in the flow’ and ‘on the path’.

I stood at the King Stone of the circle, an outlier some forty feet from the main circle. I could see the stone circle of Moel-Ty-Uchaf outlined perfectly, like a set of ragged teeth against the deep blue misty backdrop of the night sky. I decided to do some dowsing first. Where was the aura of the circle tonight – this might indicate the strength of the energy that I would be working with? It was close to the King Stone, some thirty feet from the circle – twice as wide as my last visit, or any other time I had tested that. Was this strength related to the position of the Sun? No. To the Moon? Yes. To the position of Venus? No.

I continued asking about Venus, since I had discovered that this circle was aligned to and energised by Venus when I had read that the circle’s design was based upon the number five, and that it was once dedicated to the goddess Venus. Was this circle influenced by Venus? Yes. Was it designed based on the number five? Yes. Was Venus influencing the energetic state of the circle tonight? No. Was this aura’s size a product of the Moon’s energy alone? Yes.

Well, that was as much as I needed to know at that stage. Something was tugging at my attention trying to make the dowsing stop – a sudden sharp gust of icy wind caught my attention and broke my dowsing concentration (or rather, ‘un-concentration’, a totally different type of focus is required to dowse). Some form of bird made a loud call in the still chill air, and a sheep joined in the noise too. I was aware that I was being ‘told’ to get on with my purpose, so I put the rods away and went back to pick up my staff from the King Stone. Time to go to work.

Flowing and knowing

I stood with my staff and relaxed, attuning myself in a similar way than I would if I were dowsing, but to a much deeper extent. This was more meditation mind than just ‘zoning out’ and not letting rational thoughts bubble up. This meditation involved projecting myself outwards, upwards, downwards and inwards in cycles of shifting attention, moving my energy around and through the earth, the site and the celestial objects around me. Soon I was introducing myself again, stating my name and purpose – preparing myself and the site for the energetic interchange I hoped would take place, although the exact workings of how that would be done are never planned – I just let them occur as they will. They have their own paths, just as I have mine. I am simply working to a directive, but I never insist upon the direction. I am an actor in this play, not its director.

I entered stage right, through the gap in the site’s aura and the gap in the stones of the circle. This I felt for, rather than dowsed. By now I was working with my senses and intuition, feeling the gentle subtle edges and flow of the site’s energy fields, and how they flowed and interacted, ebbed and spun. I have good druid teachers to thank for realising this: every sense should be used to take in and respond to Nature’s information: sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing. But especially the sixth sense of intuition – that unified sense of knowing.

However, saying that, I still have moments where I need ‘real’ confirmation. I do not yet totally give myself over to intuition, I don’t totally trust it yet. It’s a weakness I feel, and I’m working on it. I needed some guidance about how to proceed: where was the best place to stand? I followed one dowsing rods in a circle as it led me to a place that I recognised – this was the same power centre that I had identified on previous visits. Damn. I should have known that. Right, could I use incense to help me create the right ambiance to awaken the energies? Yes. Was incense a necessary component? No. Would incense help me to do the work? Yes. How many sticks would I need? Six. Hmmm…not five, I noticed. I dowsed for the places to position them, and was led around the inside of the stone circle from my power centre inwards in a male clockwise spiral. As I neared the centre of the circle the incense sticks got closer together until the last one was directly in the middle. I lit them all in the order I had placed them (with my windproof lighter, although there wasn’t a breath of wind to speak of).

I began one final question with the rods, but by this time I already “felt” the answer. Which direction should I face, I asked. The rods moved around until the faced down the valley to the north-east. I already knew this, for some reason. I put the rods away for the final time tonight. They were of no use now. I was attuned and things were becoming known. I could feel a strong connection with the circle and revelled in the sweet smell of the incense as I sat on my female power centre, offset from the middle of the circle. I realised I was facing the powerful female flat stone in the northern side of the stone circle and my attention was drawn to it no matter where I looked. Clearly, this was my starting point.

Awakening the energies

I traced a path of energy coming out of the female stone, and spiralling clockwise around the inside of the circle, following the line of incense sticks glowing in the darkness. Their inwards spiral drew the energy down into a sink-hole in the centre, down into the earth. My eyes moved to the outlying King Stone. Here I felt the energies re-emerge, to re-join the outside of the stone circle, again clockwise, and travel around and into the ‘entrance’ gap in the stones. The trail of energy then went through me, and joined to inward spiral again to form a complete circuit. Around and around I traced this path, over and over, each time it became more definite, more self-propelled, needing my input less and less. This energy path was being defined for itself. These energies were now awake, I felt, working for themselves.

As I detached slightly from the process, simply sitting in their flow now, a thought struck me. These energies had emerged from the female stone. Why were they then flowing clockwise? Shouldn’t they be flowing anti-clockwise, I wondered? I decided to see what would happen if I tried to get an anti-clockwise flow going. I concentrated again on the female stone and drew out more energy, trying to trace a counter flow to the existing circuit. My eyes traced only a few feet when it all felt wrong – and the energy got swept up into the clockwise flow again. How odd! Clearly, this was not the right thing to be doing! I got the dowsing rods out again. I walked from the outside of the circle dowsing the ‘flavour’ of the energy – it was male as it came out of the King Stone and flowed around the circle, then as it crossed the entrance it changed to female energy inside the circle, disappearing into the centre. How odd! Something similar to this had been found at Bryn Celli Ddu one time, when the flow went male-female-male-female all around that ancient mound, much to our puzzlement. Something similar was at work here – male then female as it flowed around, then inside the circle.

I felt I needed to do one last thing. I walked around the outside of the circle, pushing the energy along as I went. With each circumperambulation of the stones I felt the flow’s speed increase, and with it the strength of the cold night air increase from a whisper to a roar! Yes, the wind was increasing in proportion to my walking! This was truly astonishing. On my third time around the energy had a flow all of its own and I stepped out of the subtle energy flow knowing that I could do no more. I listened to the increasing sound of the wind blowing across my ears, and watched it begin to bend the grass and blow my coat with more and more strength. Amazing! Literally a minute before there had been utter stillness and silence.

The circle has been woken – the energies were alive! As I stopped walking something caught my attention. I could clearly see every blade of grass – why? I looked up and saw that The Moon, close to full, was shining through a tiny gap in the blanket of clouds illuminating the site. I couldn’t help a huge smile and sigh at that point. Job well done!

 In this time between Imbolc and the Spring Equinox I had now awoken several sites – stone circles, mounds, trees, all sorts. This felt like the most right thing to be doing at this time. What I still didn’t know was – how many more would I have to do before I moved into the next phase of the year, and what would the purpose of the next phase be? All in good time. The Spring was rapidly approaching, even if the snow still lay on the higher ground.

Gwas.

 Eagle Tor, Derbyshire – 27th February, 2010

This is part two of our Derbyshire adventures. In part one we visited Nine Stones Close and had an encounter with a Pan Nature Spirit. In this part we visit a new site for us – Doll Tor – reputed to be in a lovely woodland setting, and so it turned out to be. It was  bit of a bugger to get to though. I think we probably came in from the wrong direction, because we had to hack our way across rutted fields at peculiar angles to reach the narrow strip of woodland that the GPS unit was insisting housed this new stone circle. Rarely have I been quite so relieved that modern technology saved me (mainly from the perishing cold).

Doll Tor: Mist and Mysticism

Having gone through such an ordeal I thought there was unlikely to be anyone around. I was wrong. Two ladies were perched on adjacent stones in the circle as we arrived. We exchanged pleasantries, but I was keen not to disturb their peace, even though I knew that even being there had already done just that for them. I was apologetic for that but Kal was less so, indicating that we were probably enlivening the atmosphere. Er, yes, quite. I’m sure we were.

 I set about dowsing the circle, essentially buying some time while the ladies inhabited the space. I would do my thing when they had done theirs. Kal went off hugging trees and generally making a holy show of himself. He was acting very strangely today. I mean, stranger than usual. I kept one eye on him while I dowsed around. There was some negative energy to one side of the small stone circle – down the slope, beyond an inlaid stone that had some engraved words on it:

Renovation engraved inlaid stone

The stone was marking the renovation of the site in 1993, apparently re-erecting a stone. The negative energy source was an engraved stone at the side of the circle. Well, whatever they had done something was amiss with the energies from the plaque downwards. There was a wide pool of negative energy hanging around. I decided that I should do something about this straight away, especially as people were there and using the site. I asked all the appropriate questions such as “May I?”, “Can I?”, “Do I have the ability..?”, “Is it the right time…?” all with  positive response. I got my incense out and began placing the five sticks that I had dowsed for. I knew it was a temporary measure, but I still wanted to do it.

Then a funny thing happened. I know the light wasn’t great, but the space was quite intimate and there were very few paths. Yet, somehow, I counted out five sticks, planted five, then could only find four of them when I came to light them in turn. The ladies watched me in amusement. “Lost something?“, on asked with a wry smile. “I thought I’d laid out five sticks, but I can’t find one now…”, I complained. One of the ladies said, “Why don’t you try putting one there?” and she pointed to a space at the edge of the circle, in the negative zone, which had a ribbon tied to a branch hanging over the spot. I dowsed warily….but the rods turned strongly at that point! I was more than a little surprised, but placed another incense stick and began to light them all. I thanked the lady for her keen ‘observation’ and she waved it away as though she did things like that all the time. Don’t you meet some interesting people at stone circles?

Lovely site - a staff, some mist, a ribbon

The ladies took their leave at this point and we have the place to ourselves as the sun began to make a more rapid descent towards the horizon. It was still light, however, but the mist was cooling us quickly, although Kal was hopping all over the place keeping warm. I decided to engage him in the process and asked him to dowse for the name of the Genius Loci. His initial objections melted away as he realised that I wasn’t joking. There are nine letters in the name, I stated, helpfully.

With that information, and the knowledge that we were dealing with an aether spirit (using Jaq D Hawkins’ definitions) I began to ask about the reason I had come: when should I have the first carved sigil on my new ash staff done by? The answer that came back through my meditations was not what I had expected – it was quite poetic and a little cryptic, and yet because of the style of language used I was able to understand it in terms of pictures rather than words. I was shown pictures of daffodils and saw them dying, accompanied by the phrase, “…by the time the daffodils disappear.” Er…end of April kind of time? Beltane? Anything else about it? I saw the Sun and Moon in the sky together – strong and vibrant – and knew that this meant a specific time of the day, month and year – when the Moon is full and the Sun is high – noon on a Full Moon day!

What other instructions could I glean whilst this information was flowing so easily and vividly, I wondered.  I felt that each of the elements should be involved in the carving process (somehow), perhaps with a call to them to participate in being bound into the shape being carved. But what should the shape be? I should be the sigil of this site, came the answer. The combined powers of this site, my energies, my staff and the elements will all go into the carving of the staff. OK, very strange! Here’s the shape I dowsed after experiencing this:-

Doll Tor stone circle sigil

After experiencing this I felt quite “spaced out” and had to spend the next few minutes jut coming back to full consciousness, despite the impending gloom, mist and cold which ought to have revived me quickly. Kal had disappeared down the hill and was busy exploring. I waited for him to return and dowsed for whether I had had any effect upon the negative energy area – it was mildly changing, and slowly, but would return to its negative state shortly after we had left. Ah well, this was obviously something that was going to take quite a bit more work when we had more time.

Some people had hung ribbons on the positive energy side of the site, possibly in similar attempts to “ward off” the negative energy. They had constructed stick figure mobiles too, which looked quite sinister in the gathering darkness. It was all very “Blair Witch Project“!

 In the enclosing mist the site felt cut off from everywhere else. We could have been the last two people on earth. It was quite magickal, and we should definitely come back here in late Spring to finish what we had started. I have some carving to do before then!

Gwas.

I have been spending some time writing an article for the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids web site: www.druidry.org. They graciously invited me to write about any subject I wished, so long as it related to druidry, and I chose to write an article about the crossover between dowsing and druidry, as I see it.

For the month of March the article is available for reading on the OBOD forum called “Discuss Druidry” : http://www.druidry.org/board/dhp/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=35441.

As soon as the site archives the article next month I will add it to the Articles page on this site. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts on the subject of the inter-relationship between dowsing and druidry.

Gwas.