The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘pan’

 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.

Saturday – not Sunday – doh!

For about a month my calendar had a red-spot on Sunday 28 Feb with a note to the effect that this was a full-moon day and thus Gwas and I would be venturing forth. Then out of the blue two days prior to our set date Gwas revealed complications for the Sunday and offered up Saturday as an alternative. Unfortunately Saturday was completely booked for me, however not wanting to miss the moons energies and a sacred site visit to boot I hastily re-organised my time table and with fortune playing a final “good” card we were on our way for 12:30 on Saturday.

The long road

As a curiosity we decided to follow the sat-nav instead of going our usual route and boy did that take us the “long” and boring way round. So it was that an hour into the journey and we were only half way there rather than being near our destination.

A energised feeling

Even though it had been raining almost all the way on our journey to Derbyshire by the time we got out of the car the rain had stopped and although Gwas kitted himself out with a raincoat (not boots as he twice reminded me) I decided (as usual) to trust in nature providing me with weather suitable for my attire and left my raincoat behind.

Almost as soon as we stepped off the road I began to feel a deep-seated energy, freshness and a wonderful sense of playfulness. As we got closer to Nine Stones Close this feeling erupted into physicality and I was running, prancing and skipping up the hill and through the fields. Think “Little House on the Prairie” and you won’t be far wrong.

Little house on the Prairie

Welcomed by the great Oak

As we approached the Oak and Nine Stones Close circle both Gwas and I felt a great sense of welcome. Whilst Gwas busied himself around the circle I went over to greet my “old” friend. I really have to say this again: Me and Tree seem to have created a fantastic bond. In moments I was up on the separating wall and in amongst the great oaks branches.

Oak and Circle

Dancing with the energies

The location was quite popular with visitors this day and so we were a bit hampered initially, especially when a group of kids descended upon us and stayed to take photos and “temperature” measurements. Whatever floats your boat, right?

Anyway I was busy in a “long” hello to the Tree so wasn’t too concerned with what was going on behind me. During this hello, my feelings went more and more energised and “youthful”. Until when the field had cleared I found my self so full of energy that I started to skip. The skipping turned into dancing and whilst Gwas amused himself in observation I was happily dancing and prancing under the Oak tree for a good fifteen minutes.

Of course we were here to dowse (technically I did have my dowsing rods in my hands whilst I was dancing, does that count?) so I took up some simple questions to be going on with.

Alignment with Saturn

Since I had performed some healing of the oak trees aura last year, like all good Dr’s should I checked on the health of my patient and was gratified to see (dowse) that le grande oak was in fine auric health. Indeed that oak was acknowledging my friendship with friendship. Wow!!

Meantime Gwas was exploring the energetic alignment of the site and called in my assistance. He had found that the site was aligned to Saturn and no other planet. Interesting…

Intuiting the Pan connection

I began to confirm his findings and got a yes for Saturn too. Then for some reason I found myself asking whether the site had a connection to Pan. Where did that come from? My only reference point was my dancing and prancing…but its a big leap. You see reader you have to know that we don’t talk about pantheons and such like often. In fact I could go so far as to say that until that day “Pan” had never come up in conversation. And yet as plain as day there he was. Gwas did some ancillary dowsing to confirm that this site had a connection with Pan and that his hmmm energetic presence had left the site some 1500 years ago. Due (we dowsed to find) to the lack of belief in him!

Pan

Saturday -> Saturn -> Pan

As is the case so very often, we go out and explore the energies only to return and find so much more meaning in what we did. Let us look at this day. To begin we were supposed to go on Friday but ended up going on Saturday. Then I couldn’t make an earlier time so it was going to be a set off time of around 2.30 – which would have left us scant time for investigation and “play”. But then as “luck” would have it my time became free and we ended up arriving at the site around 2 instead.

Step 1 : we find that the site has connection with Saturn. Now we didn’t ask whether this was a permanent reflection or not. We didn’t think of this at the time but when I returned home and did some research I immediately (and now it seems obvious) that Saturn is related to Saturday! Let me quote Wiki…

Saturday is the only day of the week in which the English name comes from Roman mythology. The English names of all of the other days of the week come from Germanic polytheism. In India, Saturday is ‘Shanivar’, based on Shani, the Vedic god manifested in the planet Saturn. In the Thai solar calendar of Thailand, the day is named from the Pali word for Saturn, and the color associated with Saturday is purple. The Celtic languages also name this day for Saturn: Irish ‘an Satharn’ or ‘dia Sathuirn’, Scottish Gaelic ‘Disathairne’, Welsh ‘dydd Sadwrn’, Breton ‘Sadorn’ or ‘disadorn’.

Source: Wikipedia

Wow eh! What a connection to have had. Then I wondered if Pan was connected with Saturn too. So of I went digging away. This investigation immediately led to the information that one of the moons of Saturn is called Pan. OK that wasn’t what I was looking for really so I dug deeper. Here is one reference I found which brought hope…

… Ficino alludes to with discretion, is that Pan has an even higher station – that of the “highest” God. Elsewhere in Ficino’s work he holds that Pan “corresponds to Saturn, the prime intellect and highest God” …

Source: This site.

A further connection can be made thus: Saturn according to many beliefs and perhaps in origin too was the God associated with agriculture, feasts and harvesting (see here).  Pan also is connected with fields, fertility and nature.

Perhaps this is stretching it a bit, but I don’t “feel” it is. Here is an interesting statement…

Pan is connected to the season of Spring. Source: Wikipedia

I find this interesting because we are approaching spring and also we got an indication (see Gwas’s post) to return to 9 Stones in Spring.

To get back to the dowsing and what happened at the site. I felt that my dancing had a real connection with Pan and also felt that that had an impact in re-awakening the site (see Gwas’s post on that). Both Gwas and I had a feeling that perhaps we had gone some way in returning this sprightly spirit to the world.

Saturn

Dancing with  the energies – lovely

Kal

Stanton Moor and Eagle Tor, Derbyshire, February 27th, 2010.

Our little adventure in the Derby shire hills began on the first day of the Full Moon. Both Kal and I had felt its influence the previous night – for me it meant a sleepless night and a tight head. I love the Moon but it makes me pay for being so sensitive to it! Apart from the Moon we were astrologically unaware of what was around in the sky. All we were aware of was that  it was a Saturday, there was a full moon today, and we had an intention to awaken the energies of an ancient site.

Muck and Pandemonium

A brisk walk up the hill past Robin Hood’s Stride brought us into sight of the four remaining stones that still form Nine Stones Close. There never were nine stones, by the way. We got asked that by some passers-by. There were five, maybe as many as seven. I am sure that there is a stone missing on one side (opposite from the tree), but the tree side was very difficult to determine – the rods were “hazy” on that, which is a most unusual and disconcerting response. I think the word “Nine” is a corruption of an older word relating to “Noon”, or the high point of the sun. Given our findings at the site this day, it may well represent the low point of the sun too. But we’ll come to that soon enough.

When we arrived the first thing I noticed was that the field has been spread with manure – the stones were covered with it! Nice. And we had already struggled through patches of mud to get there too. Roll on Spring and Summer, I say! Terra firma is required, and some warmer longer days too, please!

A misty day

The first thing I did, after waiting for truckloads of schoolchildren to traipse through, was to go through some of my dowsing checklist. I think of it as a kind of warm-up exercise now (almost literally this cold misty day), as well as feeding into the Sacred Sites section of this site (eventually). Here are my findings for this day:-

• The site is energised by the position of the Sun at particular times of the year, for example Summer Solstice.
• The site was energised by the peaks of the Moon too, so was nearing a maximum again on this day.
• The site has an energetic alignment with Saturn – which signifies transformation.
• There is no Genius Loci at this site – it is devoid of external spiritual activity

Looks like we had times our visit right going there at midday on a full moon, but what of Saturn? On my return I decided to see what significance Saturn had. I started by looking at the celestial events around that time. Notice, from the quote below, that Saturn is making itself prominent in the sky on March 1st,

Sunday, February 28

 Full Moon (exact at 11:38 a.m. today EST).  

Monday, March 1 This evening Saturn shines left of the great big rising Moon, which is just past full and just past perigee. By dawn Tuesday morning they’ve shifted way over to the west-southwest, and Saturn has turned to the Moon’s upper right.

The exact wording about the position of various bodies is not what struck me. What made me jump was that we had spent the weekend discovering that Nine Stones Close was being influenced by Saturn, and here was Saturn about to loom large in the environs of The Moon at its peak. Energetically, I felt this was significant, influential even.

Preparations for Pan

So I look around and Kal is jigging about beneath his favourite oak tree. He invites me to record him on his phone doing this, so to humour him I do so. Right. Er…is that normal? I enquire as to his state of mind. “I feel the urge to dance. This site is invigorated by dancing energy.” he states. Of course it is, I think to myself, of course it is. And continue with some preparations for my real purpose at this site today – to awaken the site’s energies. This has been the theme of the Imbolc to Spring Equinox period – to awaken the energies of the sites through human intention.

My preparations involve placing my ash staff in its proper place to focus and collect the energy generated, and for me to place four sticks of incense at appropriate power centres on the inside of each of the four remaining stones. There are more power centres at this site (six – which leads me to think there were originally six stones) – but the other two centres are not required for this awakening. Then I place my hand over four of the cup-marks in the Key Stone (as I’m calling the cup-marked stone).

Kal looks over at me as I break off from this ritual declaring it complete and says to me simply, “Pan!” We make a connection between the dancing, the Trickster god so beloved of Kal and the return of Nature spirits to the newly awakened site. Interesting! I dowse to see what this means and come up with the idea that a Nature spirit, a Pan (not THE Pan – they are multitudinous) is preparing to return to the site. We wonder when this will occur but don’t dowse for a date – it doesn’t seem appropriate to do so.

Kal ignores tricky questions concerning his certifiable behaviour

Saturn, Pan and the Solstices

As if by magic, Saturn appeared! What I mean is, having dowsed for the energetic influence of Saturn I researched the associations. Pan is associated with Saturn because Pan is the name we have given to one of Saturn’s moons. OK, interesting coincidence, but what did it mean for Nine Stones Close? We had prepared the way for a Nature Spirit (Pan) to return to the site. There was once a genius lociat Nine Stones Close but it left over a thousand years ago because no-one believed in it any more. When I say “believed in it”, I think I mean, “maintained its presence energetically” – a process of feeding human energy into the site through intention in order to attract and retain the presence of a Nature Spirit. This is a more intense relationship that “worship” which can be done without any knowledge or interaction with The Other (the Nature Spirit) – more intense because it involves purposefully giving energy to maintain the correct ambiance.

Saturn, in mythology, is the god of agriculture and vegetation. Well, here we were in a field, recently manured, expecting the return of vegetation and in the midst of agriculture (surrounded by farmland). Nine Stones Close is particularly linked to agriculture, as it stands in a currently worked field. Not a stunning link, but a link. Saturn is also associated with the astrological sign Capricorn, and thus the Winter Solstice. My dowsing results showed that the position of the Sun was significant to the energies of the site, so I could see how the Winter Solstice position would be a significant time. Oddly, when I dowsed for an astrological symbol, I couldn’t find one. I don’t know why.

Stones covered in cow crap

The final piece of interesting information was dowsing for a sigil. Despite the fact that I knew there wasn’t a genius locihere (yet) I asked whether I could dowse for the sigil that used to be here representing that spirit. The answer, fortunately, was YES, I could. So I asked for the best location to do that and was directed to an area right next to my power centre. The shape that emerged was this double spiral shape, also called the Cornu spiral:

The sun sigil, or Cornu spiral

I have seen this spiral before – it is the double-headed spiral that is engraved on the entrance stone at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley in Ireland, and many other megalithic sites too; some well beyond these isles. According to one researcher, this double spiral represents the pattern that is traced by the path of the Sun as it moves across the heavens in relation to our Earth. It is a kind of universal pattern that emerges out of the patterns of Nature herself. It is Pan’s symbol.

Newgrange entrance stone showing double-headed spiral

Having prepared the way for the return of a Nature Spirit we left for the next site in high spirits. We had only intended a fleeting visit to Nine Stones Close, but again it had delivered a mystical and profound experience. Next, to a new site for us – Doll Tor stone circle on the hill opposite Robin Hood’s Stride.

Gwas.