The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘Hedge Druid’

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 30th May – Hill of Slane 

In the latter half of what had been a busy Sunday (and a full weekend, really) we were on the hunt for two final places to visit. The first needed to be somewhere suitable for working on the third eye chakra (or ‘brow’ chakra as it is also known) and then we would go back to Tara to work on the crown chakra. I say “we”, I mean “me” because Kal had his own quest to do, and that didn’t really involve working on the chakras. I’m sure he will explain in good time. For me, the third eye chakra symbolised the concept of mystical vision, whilst the crown I believed to be linked to higher intelligence. 

As we had found before with Four Knocks, sometimes our dowsing took us to the right area (town, village) but not the exact location. Same here. We were directed to be in Slane (even though we had visited it the previous day and vowed never to return because it had nothing we wanted to see, or so we thought). The dowsing rods, combined with the iMegalith app on the iPhone [get me - I'm a  techno-pagan!], took us back to Slane. It directed us to a small barrow (or ‘souterrain’) in a field. We parked, took one look at the “leprechaun hole” that we would need to squeeze through (thorns, hedge, barbed wire) and gave each other a knowing look. Oh no! Not that again! Lesson learned on this occasion. We retreated back to the car to see what else was around the area. 

I found a web site that mentioned Slane Abbey but we couldn’t find any directions. Oh well, let’s just drive up the lane we were on and turn around and maybe go somewhere else entirely. So, we drove a few yards up the hill and within ten seconds we saw Slane Abbey sitting on top of the hill as it opened out before us. How convenient! 

Approaching Slane Abbey

The information on the Mythical Ireland web page included information about how the monastery was once the kingdom of an Irish King called Slaine, a Fir Bolg (giant warrior). Other sites recount the written description of Slaine as an Irish King of the domain of Leinster:

“Slaine, whence the name? Not hard to say. Slaine, king of the Fir Bolg, and their judge, by him was its wood cleared from the Brugh. Afterwards, he died at Druim Fuar, which is called Dumha Slaine, and was buried there: and from him the hill is named Slaine. Hence it was said: Here died Slaine, lord of troops: over him the mighty mound is reared: so the name of Slaine was given to the hill, where he met his death in that chief abode.” (Source: Edward Gwynn – Metrical Dindshenchas, vol 3. Published, 1925)

Note “the Brugh”, as in the “Brú na Bóinne“, the name of the surrounding Boyne Valley area which incorporates the Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange sites among many others. From his perch atop the Hill of Slane the King had an unparalleled view of his kingdom for many miles around.

The Slane Abbey tower

 OK, history lesson over. Slaine was an ancient Warrior King who was reputedly one of the race of giant Fir Bolg who are supposed to have been an early invading race that conquered Ireland. That sets the scene quite nicely for what was to come. None of which I knew about before it happened, by the way. All I knew was that the place was supposed to be the home of some bloke called Slaine, former King of Ireland. I didn’t want to read the information board’s detail – this chakra work was supposed to be using the third-eye chakra! Surely intuition was the order of the day?

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Sunday 20th June, 2010 – Glastonbury, Somerset.

This is the fourth in the series of Summer Solstice posts, and by far the most ….important, astonishing, profound? In previous posts I have detailed my quest to finish off my tasks for the previous eighthpart of the year, and then to discover the purpose of the next eighth-part. Bothof these were very successful, and involved working with the heart chakra to bring about a harmonisation and integration within me. Then I had been posed a riddle to solve that would be the key to the next phase of the year from the Solstice to Lammas. With that safely determined, I could relax (could I relax any more?) and just “be”. I would say I was in a state of “openness” at this point, and ready to chill out in the lovely Chalice Well gardens, given that it was a fantastic sunny day. So, off we went down the Tor in a state of contentedness.

If there’s one place in the whole of Glastonbury that I appreciate more than any other it’s the tranquil space and beauty of the Chalice Well gardens. Its serenity is such an oasis from the hubbub of the Tor and the High Street, sandwiched as it is between the two. As we approached the ticket boothour thoughts were already turning to the “mindlessness” that such a place engenders and were were both quiet in preparation. The bearded man in the booth looked us up and down and then commented on the beauty of my ash staff. Thus began a special moment in my spiritual journey – I met Brian Conquer, ArchDruid of Glastonbury, for the first time.

The beauty and tranquility of the Chalice Well gardens

How To Inlay A Staff

The conversation with Brian began with him asking about how I came across the staff. I told him the story that it had asked me to rescue it, how I had heard its call, revived it and how now I wanted to decorate it. Now we were inseparable companions, the staff and I. Straight away I felt as though he understood what I meant, which rather surprised me, but hey – we were in Glastonbury and people must hear comments like that all the time. Brian began to explain how I might decorate the staff usinga particular technique involving twisted copper wire, superglue, a soldering iron with a square head, and some sandpaper. It sounded like it was just the piece of information that I had been waiting for because I had been holding off from carving the staff for a while now feeling that this was not the right thing to be doing, and having dowsed that the marks I was making needed to be more distinct. Here was Brian telling me exactly how that could be achieved!

Brian’s technique for inlaying the staff in copper was firstly to burn a shape into the wood using the soldering iron. Then, twist the copper wire, glue it in place, and use the sandpaper to cause heat via friction which blends the copper and glue until the finish is smooth. Well, it sounded simple enough, and I said I would go and practise that. He commented that he would be holding a workshop on how to do exactly that in late August here in the Chalice Well gardens. I made a special note to leave a space in my calendar. This was just the guidance that I needed to complete my “side quest” of transferring the shapes I am dowsing, the sigils of the genius loci of various sacred sites, and putting them onto my staff. Here was a man who was experienced in just that technique.

There was even more information on offer too, though. Brian informed us about the red spring (female water) that emerged from under the Tor and had been enshrined here in the gardens. Over the road in the white spring, the male quality of the water was surfaced, channeled and enshrined.  So, on either side of the road that separated the White Springs from the Chalice Well, the two qualities of water were available.

Another nugget of information was that there was an old yew tree with special qualities in the churchyard of St.Andrew’s church at Compton Dundon nearby. Brian reckoned that the yew tree was around 1500 years old, but also that it was the home of a friendly female dryad – a tree spirit. Having met only male dryads so far I made a mental note to go visit this should I get the chance. Some other arrivals at the gardens overheard this conversation and took an avid interest as well. Mr Conquer was holding court to a rapt audience!

Nooks and crannies in Chalice Well gardens

Meeting The Goddess

Kaland I thanked the old man for his effusive and passionate display of knowledge. He had given us so many ideas to play with in such a short time that we felt we needed to spend some time in the gardens now to assimilate it all! Kal went off doing his thing (he loves the gardens) and I went off following a dowsing rod to find the best place for me to be. I started by asking if there was anywhere I could re-energise my healing ash staff – this was, after all, the quintessential healing place. I was lead to a sun-drenched circle of sawn tree trunks through a narrow archway that overlooked the main running spring water. ‘Idyllic’ is barely an adequate word! Perfect for re-charging – in terms of sunlight, the geometry of the space, and the quietness. I felt perfectly fine leaving the staff there whilst I went off elsewhere to find my own perfect spot.

After spending time on a fruitful trail moving from beneath various types of tree – beech, then willow, then rowan, and finally yew – I wandered down to where Kal was playing into the channeled spring, observing its flow. It looked like he was doing something akin to Schauberger’s principles of flowing water, but he didn’t elaborate. Seeing he wasn’t finished I didn’t interrupt, but began to wander aimlessly. That was when Brian nipped out of the ticket hut to shout some advice across to me: “Why don’t you try standing between the yew trees facing down the hill, groudn your staff and calling on the Goddess?“, he suggested. I had already been between the yew trees on my last visit, and again on this one, but his additional instructions made me think he knew something I didn’t, and beside – how the whole garden was watching to see what I would do! Nothing like a bit of pressure!

I stood in the centre of the two yews and asked them if they minded me doing this little experiment. I got a pleasing feeling, and so I thanked them and carried on. There was a lady behind me who seemed to be taking a very keen interest in this procedure, but I did my best to screen everyone out and followed the instructions. I faced down the slope, unfixed my attention and then struck the earth with my staff. At that precise moment I sent my attention up and down into the earth and sky. Once I was connected above and below I looked into the middle distance and called mentally upon the Goddess to visit me in this place. Would anything happen? Or would I just look foolish?

Two yews and a thorn tree in Chalice Well gardens

A gentle but powerful force arrived surrounding me in a maelstrom of whirling energies- a veritable vortex of coiling charge built up around me. I could feel my aura expanding and pulsing in and out in slow and very strong heartbeats. The American lady behind me, whom I had completely forgotten about, so awed was I by this ‘visitation’, was saying things like “Whoa – I’m being pushed backwards – now I’m moving forwards again!”. I continued feeling like I was in the centre of a storm and couldn’t imagine what it must look like from the outside – did people see this swirling vortex of subtle energy like I was feeling it?

I had a question I wanted to ask my visitor. I guessed she might be able to help me with this one. I asked if I might ask the question, to which the winds increased in strength momentarily. I imagined my question to her: “What was the nature of the dragon that I had to awaken? Was it a hill, an energy, a skill, a tale, or what?” The answer came back immediately, “It is the serpent fire within you. Can’t you feel it?” she whispered witha strong hint of humour. Of course I could! It was swirling all around and through me now! I was happy with that clear guidance, and thanked her for helping me. I released my mental grip, re-focusing my attention back into the present world and the winds around me began to ease off. As they did so I thanked the visitor for the experience – the single most powerful and exhilarating experience of that nature that I have ever had.  The American lady behind me looked equally shell-shocked and could only say “Thank you! Thank you for that – that was amazing!” over and over again as she walked away, wide-eyed. I smiled and looked over at Brian in his wooden ticket office. He winked at me and smiled too. He seemed to know what that had been like for me.

I returned to Kal again and he still seemed to be busy meditating. I suddenly noticed that there were lots of herbs planted along one side of the garden’s walls and I wandered over to stroll amongst them – touching and smelling each in turn. I had never paid any interest at all to herbs before, but suddenly they it seemed to me that they were very important, and that I should learn their properties. I have no idea why this suddenly seemed so important, but since then I have been buying herb seeds, studying their lore, and have designated a space in my garden ready for planting them! Most odd. Or maybe just a natural progression on this druidic path?

As I wandered around Brian appeared again with a conspiratorial wink, and handed me a small wrapped hand-sized package. “A present from the Goddess.” he winked and smiled before chuckling to himself as he walked away. I thanked him as he retreated, and I unfolded the paper – it was a large prism of clear quartz. A present from an Archdruid? A treasured possession already! I was very humbled.

Gwas.

A bit of a break from the reports of visiting ancient sites and dowsing. In this post I want to tell you how I found my own sacred grove. As a fledgling druid I have got to a stage in my training where I want to be free to experiment with the suggestions that I am reading and hearing from other people. I have my own ideas about what it means to be a druid too, and now I need somewhere that I can be free to try these things out. A place where I can feel totally alone, uninhibited and yet within a protective space. I’m looking for my Nemeton, my sacred grove. Yesterday I found it. Here’s how that came about.

For many months I have been driving past a hill on my route to work. It has been catching my eye many many times. Sometimes I have not been able to ignore this impulse, and I have had to stop off on occasion to go for a walk, either away from the hill, or up past the hill where there is a defined path regularly used by walkers. No-one seems to go up the hill, however, because it if fenced off with barbed wire, and covered in bracken and undergrowth. I too have been content to wander all around it for several weeks. It “just so happens” that I have been spending more and more time in that area for “no apparent reason”.

Yesterday, on the way home from work I felt an urge to stop off. Occasionally, and particularly when the sun is out and the day is fine, I get these urges to stop off. Usually I go dowsing some question that is in my mind, or a topic that I am working on at the time. This evening I stopped the car at the usual place and wondered if I should take my dowsing rods. “Not tonight” came the response in my mind.

For some reason I walked up the side of the hill, along the path taken by walkers. I passed a field in which I knew there was a solitary stone that emanated bad energies, and I made sure I walked around its area of influence before I got up onto the side of the hill that provided lovely views over my local area. I stopped, admiring the view, then began to look for a way into the fenced off part of the hill. I soon found an animal track, and noticed that the wire was a bit looser where the animal track entered the hill’s sparsely forested side. Squeezing myself carefully under the barbed wire I began my ascent through swathes of bracken, climbing upwards all the time towards the summit. I found it was easier to follow the animal tracks – clearly they knew the best way!

I got to the top of the hill and found an old oak tree with a long low branch that was positively inviting me to sit on it. So I did. There was no view to speak of here, because the trees all around obscured it. So, I thanked the tree for offering a seat to me, and I pushed on, heading towards the heart of the hilltop. Only a few minute’s walk and I was in an area that was both wilder and yet lighter than the other parts of the hilltop. A vaulted canopy was created by some very old oak trees whose top branches formed the slightest roof. Beneath this canopy was a wide space, almost like a natural church aisle. I stopped to look at it, resting my back against an oak tree that formed the ‘font’ of this natural church. I marvelled at this formation, and began to wonder if this was a place where I could find some freedom and peace? The Sun was behind some clouds at this point, and there was no wind, so it seemed incredibly peaceful.

I stood up. I projected the thought out into the wood, “Am I welcome here?” – to which a crow in a nearby tree top cawed a response. “Would I be permitted to use this place as my sacred nemeton – my place of free expression?”, I asked to the trees and any nature spirits that might inhabit the area. A wind blew up out of nowhere and rustled the tops of the trees in response to me. I have become more accustomed to the signs that Nature gives now. I knew this was a positive response, but I wanted more assurance. I called out to the elements to confirm this, asking them to show me a sign if they agreed with the trees. A gust of wind blew stronger now, visibly shaking all the trees on the hilltop, then going completely silent again. At that moment, as I looked up imploringly to the sky, the sun moved out from behind a cloud. A shaft of sunlight streamed through the trees and threw a spotlight into my ‘church’ illuminating its length, and then the sun faded behind a cloud again. There was no delay between the asking and the receiving a response – it was within seconds, that was what was so astonishing.

I had my answer. This was my place to work with druidry and natural magick. Permission had been granted. I thanked the trees, and everything that had got involved in that decision, and I followed a more natural path down the other side of the hill. Going home I felt utterly contented now. I had a special place to work, one where I felt I could be truly free in Nature. Let the summer days be long and fruitful!

Gwas Myrddyn.

Fledgling druid.

Saturday 29th May - Four Knocks, County Meath

On the morning of Saturday 29th May I roped Kal into one of my crazy ideas. We would spend the next two days on a modern pilgrimage, just like we had done at Glastonbury the year before. We would find a starting point and then let the dowsing rods direct us from site to site. For me, I would set my intention for this pilgrimage to be to work on each of the seven chakras and to see what came out of trying to do that. For Kal, he would just do what he does – see what happened at each place and go with it. So, with the help of the iMegalith iPhone application and my SatNav system we trekked off to the starting point, which I had determined would be a henge and mound close to Four Knocks.

We didn’t get very far trying to find the henge and mound. The mound was visible in a farmer’s field, but the supposed henge had been… well, let’s assume it was removed and ploughed out of existence! Not a good start. Was there anywhere else we could pick up the quest? Our dowsing showed that nearby Four Knocks would be suitable. As soon as we got the rods crossing we kind of knew that this had actually been the right place all along, but something had been preventing us from dowsing that from afar. We sort of had to be in the area to zoom in on it. Perhaps we had prevented ourselves from ‘finding’ Four Knocks prior to actually being there because we knew you had to obtain a key in order to get in? Who knows. We obtained the said key (by the way – the directions are not very clear – but we found the house eventually and got the key by leaving a small deposit with a nice lady) and went to discover this famous mound’s secrets and begin a quest.

Entrance to Four Knocks

We opened the iron door up (iron – aaargh!!) and began to settle in. I needed some stuff from the car that I had forgotten, and by the time I got back to the mound it was swarming with a minibus-load of tourists from various parts of the world – America, Japan, Australia….all over. Their guide had clearly gone off to get the key without realising that we already had it. Ten minutes later he was in the mound beginning his guided tour of the place, which I earwigged into, of course. Hey – it was free for me to listen!! And jolly interesting it was too, although I could see Kal twitch every now and again, and I was biting my tongue at some of the speculative leaps the guide was making to fill the gaps in the archaeology with fantasy and pure imagination. He was very careful to preface everything with “My guess would be...”, or “Perhaps they might have…”, and even in the dim light I occasionally caught Kal swinging his dowsing rods behind the guide, shaking his head as though to say, “Nope!” It’s funny how dowsing can sometimes make you feel quite confident about being able to find out hidden knowledge, and yet later in the day that confidence would be completely reversed, but we’ll come to that in a later tale.

I don’t know if this is the traditional position but at Four Knocks we have the female on top and the male underneath. Yes, on top of the rounded mound there was female energy all over it. All around the outside of the mound was a male energy line, waving and running around in a sunwise direction. Kal was spending quite a time outside, pacing around and around, working something out, but I decided to get myself inside to take some pictures of the rock carvings and to try to work out what I might have to do to work on my Root Chakra – the first part of my modern pilgrimage. That was the intention, but instead Four Knocks had its own agenda for working my chakras!! I will explain in a moment.

Inside there was more than the usual amount of decoration. Many of the swirling circular shapes were familiar to us, but there was an abundance of zig-zag lines and lozenge shapes carved into the lintels of the recesses in the mound that seemed to be quite unique to this particular chamber, or at least rarely seen in such quantity elsewhere.

Zig-zag lintel decoration at Four Knocks

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Once upon a time, when I was a small boy growing into his own sense of identity, I went through a phase of what can only be called “gang mentality”. I was living in urban Nelson in Lancashire at the time, and my only thoughts were to have fun with my small coterie of friends. Our idea of fun was to race around, shouting, running through gardens, knocking on doors then running away, smashing found glass bottles, throwing stones at things, and anything else that could be classed as “small boy mischief”. We took delight in egging each other on to fresh heights of stupidity and crassness.

One incident in particular I remember for its utter simplicity. It’s devastating effect upon me would only be felt many years down the line and remains with me still. It’s a really inane thing, but this is what happened. My gang and I were walking down the main street in our neighbourhood and we had just bought some sweets. We were busy walking, eating and unwrapping the sweets as we went, and we each threw the sweet wrappers into the street, onto the pavement. A boy slightly older than us, but who had a look of being a ‘nerd’, or at least not as socially popular as we thought we were, he stopped as soon as he saw us doing this. He watched us with scorn in his eyes – with disbelief as we merrily discarded the waxed paper wrappers all around us.

I caught the look in his eye and so did my friends. We smiled at each other – instantly recognising that we all had the same idea, and we threw more wrappers down. Then the older boy did something that we didn’t understand. Without a word, he began to pick all the wrappers up and put them into his pocket. We looked at him in disbelief. He must be a simpleton! We could have some fun here! It was one thing to disapprove, but here he was cleaning up after us! We couldn’t miss this opportunity, so we began to test how willing he was to do this again, walking on a little bit then wilfully scrunching another wrapper, eating the sweet and throwing the paper onto the floor. He turned around and began to follow us, a few feet behind, picking each wrapper up silently!

This continued for far longer than was fun for us. He wouldn’t go away. Whenever we dropped a wrapper he’d pick it up. We walked for miles (having three big bags of sweets to play with) and still he silently followed us, mopping up after our disgraceful littering. That incident has stayed with me all my life. Now, thanks to that episode, I abhor littering.

Last night Kal and I were discussing the idea of “picking up the litter” of one’s life by making some form of retribution, or an act of kindness or service. Kal had already been through this process and explained the cathartic effect it had had upon him. I said that I felt like I needed to make some kind of gesture of service, but at the moment that was a nameless, placeless and faceless platitude that I was sure I would “get around to” one day soon. As we parted I mentioned that I might be going out the next evening, “on a dowsing mission” but that I didn’t know where yet. He wondered whether to come, but I responded “It will be wet!” observing the dark clouds above, and he shivered and declined to follow it up.

This evening I dowsed in my house for a direction to travel in – south. South? I never went south. It was all city, town and concrete to the south. East, West or North were beautiful, and all points around, but South…I had never been dowsing to the south of my home. South, the rods said. How far, I enquired. Four miles, just under. Where the heck was that? Mentally I scanned the area, knowing it well, but couldn’t see anything. I decided to drive four miles away to the south and see what happened.

I got in the car and drove the requisite four miles whereupon I reached a roundabout and instinctively turned left. Then I tried to turn into a cycle path thinking it was a junction on a dual carriageway almost causing a pile-up behind me. Waves of apology to all other drivers. Something had wanted me to turn in there, so I followed my hunch of keeping turning left in an ever-decreasing spiral. I ended up parking in a small village that I didn’t even know was there, just outside of the nearby city. As I got out of the car I noticed that at the end of the road there was the dual carriageway I had tried to turn off. Aha – this was the right place to start then. I found a quiet place and asked the rods for directions – my next turn will be….right, and after that it will be…left. Then I would walk one kilometre and I would arrive “there”, wherever “there” was!

I turned right up the main village road. Would I find a footpath going left? No, the next left was a small road. I walked the road for about a kilometre until it was about to cross over a motorway. But wait! There was a service road alongside the motorway with an open gate…. I asked the rods to guide me in. They swung along the service road, so I followed. Immediately they swung to the right, and I walked through a gap in the hawthorn hedge…to reveal a stunning sight – a small pond, surrounded by old willow trees and sitting by the side of a beautiful field carpeted by buttercups and wild flowers!

I had directed the rods to take me to a place where I could integrate all of the lessons I had recently learned in Ireland. Here was the place, I knew this, and it didn’t get any wetter than this – a pond! I sat on the edge of the pond and thought about why I was here at this place. As I gazed into the pond I realised what I was looking at – the willow tree opposite, and in the only bit of clear water in the whole pond, from this exact place I could see the tree’s entire reflection! I understood immediately that this was the image I had been seeking – the integration – all that is above the water line, and all that was below it in perfect symmetry – the very symbol of integration!

I meditated for a while hoping for some sort of inspirational message, but I on;y got one thought. To complete this integration, to learn my lessons, I had to clean this pond up. I had to come back and remove all the litter, the cans, the wrappers, everything that bespoiled the site. That was my mission. That was how I would finally erase the memory of that litter-bug incident – by an act of pure selflessness. I, and I alone would clean this pond up.

I will report back when the work is done. A Hedge Druid’s work gets harder every day!

Gwas.

CropCircleConnector – the site that I trust to deliver sensible and timely information about the location and circumstances of the latest crop circles – has posted pictures of the first 2010 circle to appear. Yet again it has started in Wiltshire, and again the location is significant to those of us who watch for such things. The bigger question though is – what does it signify?

That has been a difficult question, but not one to which I have placed much of my attention, time or focus over the last year as I casually observer their appearance, and equally casually admired their form. This time, however, the formation seems to be particularly relevant to my researches at this very moment. Timely in a spookily coincidental way – the kind of coincidence that makes me prick up my ears and have a good sniff of the flow of consciousness as it passes.

Here’s what it looks like (courtesy of CCC’s site):

Old Sarum's consciousness map

What this means to me

My reading of this formation is entirely personal, and I urge you to make your own reading to suit yourself. This is in no way relevant for anyone else, but in case you’re interested, here’s what it means to me. Remember that this eighth part of the year I have recently found to be concerned with the study of how to investigate, understand and utilise the seven chakra energies that can be produced from the white light of neutral light energy? There was also the suggestion that I work at uniting the two energy centres of the lower and upper energy stores in order to work towards this understanding of the seven energy powers.

So, I look at this picture and I see the eye in the lower half – the observant eye – the eye that is looking at the seven circles – the seven vortices – the seven chakra points. Above it I see the upper wider eye symbol, which I take to be the third-eye – a stylised and symbolic eye, more perfect and with wider vision than the lower “real” eye. Through that third-eye flows five lines of energy, that may either be passing through, emanating from the power point, or flowing into it. Perhaps all three directions at once?

I think the five energy streams are five levels of consciousness through which I have to pass as a result of working with and understanding the seven forms of vibrational energy form that can be diffracted from the white light energy source of the neutral energy form. That’s about as mad and esoteric as it needs to get, right? Clearly, I’m cracked and ought to have voted Monster Raving Loony. But there’s one more thing…

The formation is reputedly laid out on the ley line that Danny Sullivan documents in his book “Ley Lines” on page 199, and which he credits to Sir Norman Lockyer and Alfred Watkins, calling it perhaps the oldest identified ley (by modern man). He names this as being the “Old Sarum Ley”.

It passes through the following sacred sites:-

1. Durrington Down tumulus [link]
2. Stonehenge [link]
3. Old Sarum [link]
4. Salisbury Cathedral
5. Clearbury Ring [link]
6. Frankenbury Camp [link]

That’s a lovely North-South line, and it comes close to a line that I identified as passing through Arbor Low as it travels further up north. I will see whether I can get anything more about those five lines of consciousness change. I have a draft post that I was already preparing about the numbers 7 and 12. Well, I don’t need to point out to you that 7+5….. Things just keep knitting together in this line of work!

Gwas.