The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘stone circles’

We chose Cumbria’s southern circuit of megalithic sites to be our venue and host for the Spring Equinox of 2010. The area had just the right balance of sites – waterfalls, stone circles, beaches, and hill forts – all of which we wanted to visit for a special purpose on this day. This Sunday 22nd March I was going to attempt to reconnect with the four elemental forces of Nature and thus kick-start my year’s energy work by doing so.

I had other agendas too: I wanted to find out the significance of the time between Spring Equinox and Beltane – did it have a particular activity associated with it that I should be involved in? Finally, I wanted to get understand what the Spring Equinox itself might mean in terms of energy.

Birkrigg Circle

The morning started brightly as we approached Cumbria’s southern fells, but there was a light cloud cover over the area once we actually got off the main southern road and began to approach Birkrigg Moor – the scene of our first encounter – the small stone circle of Birkrigg. Birkrigg circle is also known as The Druid’s Temple, but we won’t go into that! Recent scholars have argued the point that the creation date of these circles far predates the arrival of any known druid culture, but there does seem to remain a mythical attachment of the druids to the stones, in legend, lore and fable. I suppose people like me are only re-enforcing that view now that we are in some small way reclaiming these sites for our own usage, and are performing acts of natural magick there.

We had parked a way away from the circle and had to tramp across the bleak moor to find it nestled overlooking Morecambe Bay and the southern tip of the Lake District. At one point we considered using the dowsing rods to find it, but instinct led us there before we needed to resort to that.

It took us a few minutes to work out that this was actually two circles one within the other. The inner circle was obvious, but the outer one was demarcated only by embedded recumbent small-ish stones. Quicker than that Kal felt an affinity with the site and began to absorb the atmosphere, mentally preparing himself for communing. I, on the other hand, was totally indifferent to the place. Sure, I wanted to dowse the energetic properties, but for all it being called a Druid’s Temple I was prepared to stand aside afterwards and relax for a bit.

Here’s a summary of the energetic findings and properties of this stone circle:-

1. The circle is at its energetic peak at the Summer Solstice
2. It is most suited to those who are sun-aligned people [something you can dowse to check - what do you mean you haven't done it yet? ]
3. The size of the stones and their placement were significant factors in forming the energetic qualities of this site
4. There was no astrological significance to this circle
5. There was a genius loci (a site guardian) for the site, and it has a sigil that is the ‘sun sigil‘ (see recent Nine Stones Close post).

I sat and watched as Kal began to do some work with the energetic qualities of the site. I dowsed to find the most energetic place for me to sit whilst Kal did his thing. I was just drifting off minutes later into a kind of far-away thousand-yard stare when I became aware of a movement in the corner of my eye. I looked to the centre of the stone circle expecting to see a dog running across it or a wandering sheep, perhaps. There was nothing there. I unfocused my eyes again, and there it was again. A movement. I concentrated on trying to describe the movement – it was a spiral, moving from the edges of the circle upwards to a point some fifteen feet above the circle. My eyes, providing I didn’t look directly at this movement, were able to see this shape, this invisible shape, this overlay, and were able to describe the shape of a spiral – a cone of energy.

I emerged from this state quite excited and Kal happened to be emerging from his seated posture too at this time. I eagerly told him about the experience, and then we had one of those ‘I know’ moments, as Kal described the visualisations he had done, and that a spiral in the centre of the circle had been the major process. I’ll leave it up to Kal to tell you what he went through that day – it’s his story – but my story was already getting interesting. As the cloud cover thickened and the wind picked up from off the sea to chill our bones we decided to generate some heat by walking quickly back to the car and on to the next site: Swinside circle.

Swinside Circle

There’s no easy way to get to Swinside circle. Although there is just about enough room for three cars to park in the lane near a farmhouse just off the A595 in a C-class road. It is signposted, but you have to look carefully. From the place where you park you walk left up a small track that rises steeply. All around you are even steeper fells until you open out onto a valley between Swinside Fell and Mere Crags almost opposite. It’s only once you are walking through that wind tunnel that you begin to appreciate the stunning situation of this incredibly well-preserved and quite large stone circle.

The first thing we did on arrival was to get some shelter from the biting cold and harsh wind from off the fells. We decamped behind the relative shelter of the wall that defines the field in which the circle dominates. The circle is constructed on virtually the only flat ground around, and has views that rival any other I’ve seen for sheer aesthetic qualities. For a site without trees it’s remarkably beautiful, ans I wish we’d seen it on a clearer calmer sunnier day.

While Kal roused himself to do some of his own work, I went about my business in a ..well, business-like manner. This was not a place to be hanging about in today, and both of us would be doing only what we felt we needed to do, and no more, to save our hands from the freezing winds. First thing I did was to find my compatible entrance to the circle. This turned out to be the entrance closest to where you enter the field, and the natural place for most people to enter the circle, I suspect. This was the moon entrance that faces you as you approach the circle. The sun entrance was immediately opposite on the other side of the circle where a large gap between stones could be plainly seen.

I deposited myself on a stone that seemed strangely familiar and sat thinking about the layout of the circle and looking at the stones, trying to get familiar with the ambiance of the place and to feel whatever feelings might arise from being here – ‘being and seeing’ as Paul Devereux puts it. I recognised the shape of the stone I was sat on – it was identical in every single feature to that of a female stone that was my power centre at Druid’s Circle on top of Penmaenmawr in North Wales. When I dowsed this stone it turned out to be my power centre here too, and it was a centre of female energies.

Kal and I discussed whether there might be other entrances other than simply Sun and Moon aligned ones. Quickly we found entrances for the planets Mercury and Venus too, although at the time we didn’t have any way to confirm this. Now I have some nifty software that should be able to confirm these alignments when we dowse for the time that the entrances are supposed to be energetically active. We can check this now, which is going to be interesting.

Big Stones and Little Centre

As I sat on my female power centre huddling from the roaring wind behind me I noticed that my eyes were moving between two stones. To my right there was a round-topped striated stone with a leaning sentinel alongside her. I knew the stone was female as I have become adept at recognising the differences between the two types (mostly) after spending so much time seeing rows upon rows of them and dowsing along the lines at Carnac in Brittany. On its opposite side my eye was being drawn to an inverse triangular stone, which was taller than the others and so obviously of a male shape. Male to female, female to male. My eyes were drawn across the circle, and passed through a little ring of stones placed geometrically in the centre. I hopped off my stone to see what the dowsing rods would make of these things. Would they confirm them, or lead me elsewhere?

I asked the rods to lead me to the strongest male stone in the circle. I was led by a wobbly path to the angular stone that I had thought it would be. As I approached the stone the path deviated off to circle around it and finally the rods touched the back of the stone in the centre. This was something that I had seen happen many many times when dowsing particular stones – the ‘entry’ or ‘exit’ point for the trail of energy was usually on the outward-facing side of the stone, even though the trail went inwards.

Was this stone linked to any other stone in the circle, I asked. The rods began to twitch and lead me off back into the centre circle of little rocks before changing direction and spiralling out of the centre and out to the other side of the main circle. Moments later I was circling around the largest female stone. Just as I had intuited, these two were somehow linked through the centre of the circle.

I dowsed for the energetic centre of the circle and arrived at the little circle of placed rocks that someone had made. So this was the connection point for the male and female energies of the biggest stones, but more interestingly, someone had specifically marked this spot with stones. Other dowsers? Or who? Someone energetically aware, that was certain.

The Work of This Time

One of the agenda points I had wanted answers to this day (because we’re dowsing and doing energy work with a purpose these days) was that I wanted to know what the purpose of the time was between Spring Equinox and Beltane at the start of May, which was the next significant marker in the eight-fold year. I was assuming that there was 0ne, given that I had been working to a theme for the previous eighth of the year between Imbolc and Spring Equinox. What was the purpose of this next phase, I wondered?

To find this out I needed to immerse myself in the energies of this circle, I felt. I spent some time dowsing for where I should stand, in what order, and to see whether I would need anything like incense sticks to help me. When I got my answers I set off positioning the incense, lighting it in the gale-force winds (a test of patience, surely) and then trying to relax into the feeling of the site. I was attempting to make contact with whatever helpful forces might be around, in whatever form that might be.

After what felt like an Ice Age I emerged from my half-sleep trance state with a quite clear thought running through my head: this next phase was about achieving balance, finding neutrality. Those were the themes. During the meditation I had been shown as the very centre point between forces above and below. I was the nexus point in the interchange of those forces, the neutral point, the axis. I was shown that if I could connect into the ‘network’ of neutral energy within the planet then I could use this energy to divert, shape and collect the male and female energy and to use it for my own purposes – I was being given the secrets of how the ancients began to collect and utilise earth and celestial energies.

This was quite a revelation, and far beyond what I was expecting. Suddenly I felt a huge burden of responsibility coupled with a dread as to the amount of work I might have to do to take on such a task. I would have to centre myself to such an extent that I could withstand the centrifugal forces of the energies that spun around me as I connected to the very subtle energy grid of the planet, drawing from it and shaping the energy into a meaningful form.

It all felt a bit too much to cope with. What would I have to do? Could I stand it? Did I have the mental strength, the ability, the sense of responsibility to try to do this? How did I go about connecting? What would I have to endure? What would I be shaping the energies into? For what purpose? A million questions exploded like emerging stars on a dark night.

We reconvened behind the wall to discuss our findings and Kal’s were equally interesting. It looks like we had both got a lot out of this visit. The clouds were thickening all the time and the temperature felt like it was  a few degrees cooler than when we had started that morning. We decided we had withstood enough, and packed to leave, facing into the harsh wind once more as we tramped back down the track to the car.

Despite the chill wind and occasional sleet the lambs in the fields indicated the coming of Spring. It was a joy to see a few white and a pair of black lambs prancing about in the rugged fields back down near the farm buildings. It heralded the advent of Spring. even if the weather was not yet in agreement with that.

In the next post I will tell you how the day progressed. The first half of this day of balance had been filled with sun and light, but moving steadily towards a darkening. Next we went to search out Stanley Force – a waterfall in a beautiful setting near to the village of Eskdale. We would then climb again up the impossibly steep Hardknott Pass to the Roman fort  to complete the day’s undertakings.

Gwas

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.

There have been many wild and fantastic suggestions and theories about the coming of the group known enigmatically as The Shining Ones. Some “theorists” have said that they were so called because they gave off an unearthly light, or that they were extra-terrestrial visitors who came down to give knowledge to the human race to move them out of savagery and into civilisation, and that they established the concept of kingship because the savages they encountered viewed them as gods from another world. Maybe this was actually what the people believed, but we can never know this from archaeology or any written source. Instead, their influence is only fleetingly spoken of, and the last remaining scant written evidence is from the Irish myths of the Tuatha De Danaan.

This group of people are known by many names: The Shining Ones, The Tuatha De Danaan, The Annunaki, The Great White Brotherhood, or The Ascended Masters. Of course, each of those who is a devotee of these subjects will argue that they are subtly different, but the idea of ancient hidden knowledge being carried through to our own time is the essence of each of those designated groups, irrespective of their supposed sources or incarnations.

My quest has been to get back beyond the time of the Druids to the source of the megalithic structures, or certainly the inspiration for their design. To do this the only tool I have available is dowsing – no amount of scholarly research is going to reveal anything that isn’t utterly without a duality of meaning and a massive degree of interpretation. Besides – we simply do not have any written knowledge from those times, and I am talking about before 3000 B.C.E.

I am interested in understanding stone circles and other megalithic structures – how they work who made them, why they were made, and for what purposes they were built. The only method I have available is a blend of gnosis, intuition, and the application of rationality after a collection of knowledge has been obtained.

It may strike you as a completely illegitimate and unreliable means to recreate this lost knowledge, but the tool of dowsing is capable of allowing us to tune into the flow of the universal consciousness and retrieve knowledge. Using these tools I have re-constructed the following pieces of knowledge concerning this shadowy group known to us as The Shining Ones. Take from it what you wish – discard anything you do not trust, or cannot verify for yourself. Dismiss anything you don’t instinctively apprehend as having a high probability of being true. How can you tell? You can’t – it’s all guesswork, but over the years I have developed a sense of trust in my dowsing responses, and that’s all I can offer in terms of validation.

After having established a degree of trust in my dowsing work with whatever the source of this knowledge might be, I felt it was time to try to work out who the Shining Ones might be, or at least to try to get some pointers on their influence in the process of megalith building. So Kal and I visited the Nine Stones Close circle, as it seemed to have the right kind of character to acquire knowledge from.

Information source!

Here is what I found out after having “unlocked” the power centres at Nine Stones Close stone circle, and then dowsed about the Shining Ones:

1. Shining Ones were human, they lived before Druids, and there are none around today
2. Although they discovered the way to harness the properties of the earth, they did so not for its worship, but for the benefits they could extract from doing so. They supplied the knowledge of how to build the megalithic structures – the template, the basic mathematics, the sacred geometry, the planetary alignments – but they used the cover story of worship in order to motivate the populous to help them to build these structures.
3. They installed the concept of kingship in human society
4. The Druid Orders, then The Knights Templar, and finally the Freemasons were the inheritors and protectors of their secrets. This is against Nature, as no knowledge should be denied to those who may comprehend it. Those who cannot understand will be shielded from it, if not its consequence.
5. Our paths are not their paths, although there may be many crossing points. We can learn their lore, but we should not follow their teachings.
6. The Shining Ones understood the workings of Nature.
7. These people were influential from the period of 5500 bce up until 150 bce. The Druids came after them and inherited much of their knowledge and status.
8. They were not in any way connected with extra-terrestrial beings- they were learned human beings who received their knowledge from Nature through processes of Gnosis and meditation and the use of their megalithic structures to induce connectivity and trance.

The Matthews categorise any being within the Otherworld as being “Shining Ones”. Does that take the shine off their special status? Not if we examine the myths surrounding the appearance of this group of people – in these myths their status is exemplary: they are the bringers of truth, wisdom, knowledge, law, and skills. All of these are brought to the uncivilised groups living in the northern hemisphere spanning from Ireland across the Celtic landscape and into the Indes.

That is about it for the information we have about them. As one might expect from a time when written records were minimal, and considering all of the great literary losses our race has endured over the centuries (e.g. The Library of Alexandria), coupled with the sense that the written medium was only beginning to be introduced when this supposed race of people appeared, then we are unlikely to be able to verify any of this with factual material. What we are left with is more questions than answers. I only hope that through my dowsing work I can at least begin to scratch the surface of the intentions and origins of these historically and mythologically important people.

References to Shining Ones:

Excerpts from The Book of Leinster about the Tuatha De Danaan

Books:-

1. “The Shining Ones” – by Christian and Barbara Joy O’Brien [buy]
2. “The Ancient and Shining Ones” – by Deanna J. Conway [buy]
3. “The Shining Ones: The World’s Most Powerful Secret Society” – by Philip Gardiner [buy or view in Google Books]

Videos:-

• Learning from History – Part 1 [link]

Links:-

• A typically vague description provide here.

————————————————————–

Gwas.

Section 7. Summary of the Year

In order to organise our thoughts Kal and I came up with some questions the answers to which we hoped might summarise the way that year has gone for us – what were the bits we expected, what exceeded our expectations, and which things arose to meet us on this path that we didn’t anticipate? Here are my answers to this year’s questions.

What did I think I was going to learn?

1. Whether specific periods of the year are more energetic than others, and whether those periods align to the calendrical eight-fold year.
2. How stone circles work in terms of their energy
3. Whether specific geology affects the energetic responses from sites

By the summer of 2009 I had already established to my satisfaction that there was a difference in the strengths of energies at the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. I was sure that there was more powerful sun energy (i.e. stronger male energy) at the Summer Solstice. The Spring and Autumn Equinoxes were very similar in strength, and were a balance of male and female earth energies. At the Winter Solstice the male energies were very weak, as was the Sun. The female energies fluctuated only in relation to the strength of the Moon and the input from nearby trees, again weaker in Winter.

Determining any objective means of measurement was difficult, as our own energy levels seemed to be a factor in how well we could dowse or do energy work at a site, however a scale of measurement (strength from 1-10) seemed to work for the purposes of obtaining some data that could be compared between sites. The solstice and equinox dates depended upon the quality of the Sun to determine the amount of additional energy was at the site compared to our visits to them on other dates.

The Celtic Festival dates (Lammas, Beltane, Samhain and Imbolc) in between those times were much harder to figure out. These dates seems to depend upon the position of the Moon for their effects upon ancient sites., rather than the Sun’s effect. I will be posting much more on this soon, complete with a table of the relative energy levels at various sites dowsed this year.

Further theories have emerged concerning the operation of energies at stone circles and other sites too. See the Earth Energies and Ancient Sites Summary posts for details on those.

We have kept a weather-eye on the geology of sites whilst dowsing this year. It started for me in Carnac when I discovered that the stone rows were placed along a shelf of rock quite different from the surrounding geology of the rest of the nearby coastline. We have concurred with the popular dowsing theory that geological faulting is important to the situation of ancient sites, as is often the presence of water, but we do not wholly agree with the necessity of water (or a ‘blind spring’ formation) being present at all ancient neolithic sites. Some major sites such as Stonehenge and The Rollright Stones do have this water formation, however, and we think these popular sites may have led to the popularity of the idea amongst the dowsing fraternity that such a formation is necessary to a strong energy site. We do not find this to be true.

'CARNAC: Des Pierres Pour Les Vivants' by Pierre Mereaux

What’s been the surprise?

1. Crop circles being designed by some intelligence beyond the confines of this planet – expected them to be of human design and manufacture.
2. The energetic and healing potential of running water – Pistyll Rhaeadr and Viktor Schauberger convinced me of this at different ends of the year. At Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall my wife’s twisted ankle was healed in minutes. Later I read Schauberger’s theories on the properties of water and I understood how this could have come about.
3. A spiritual pilgrimage being worthwhile doing, and not some soulless religious historical trail as I had imagined it to be.

1. Astrology - There is a correlation, a link, between the relative positions of the stars and a human being. My natal chart is stunningly accurate in assessing my personality traits. Kal and I have also discovered that we are energetically linked to particular planets – Kal to Mercury and myself to Venus. We are more energetically ‘loaded’ or ‘charged’, and more energy work is possible, when our respective planets are visible. I have tracked this since the beginning of the year and have each dowsing response confirms this.
2. Elemental beings and cloud sylphs – I see some this year on four separate occasions and each time I was stunned by the effect – this was no mere simulacrum. Seeing faces in the clouds must be the third and conclusive qualifying factor in any signs of madness developing – that much I do appreciate, but nevertheless, they have been present at quite specific times of high energy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Section 5. Ancient Sites

From the beginning of my journey with the tools of dowsing I have sought to understand the way in which ancient sites may have been used, and how the energies of those places were shaped by the formation of the ancient monuments. During the year this directive has had to sit alongside the fascinating development of my work with Nature itself, however, some very interesting developments have occurred not in spite of that growth of spiritual practise, but because of it. Here are some of the main points that have been gleaned from dowsing and druidry this year concerning the nature and function of sacred sites.

This year has seen us visit some of the most awe-inspiring ancient sites from the stunning background scenery of the Cumbrian circle, to the fields of stone rows at Carnac, the giant megaliths of Brittany, and the quaint but powerful sites along the Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Not forgetting, of course, all our favourite sites in North Wales, Shropshire and Derbyshire, with which we are becoming quite familiar.

5-1. Recurring features of stone circles: We have found some identifiable and consistent component parts of a stone circle’s layout:-

• a King Stone – sometimes called a ‘Heel’ stone as well. This is a standing stone of a height similar to the stones within the circle, but outlying the circle. The distance from the circle itself can be quite variable, from a few feet (Druid’s Circle) to a hundred yards (Mitchell’s Fold). We term the stone ‘King’ stone because tends to dowse as being ‘male’, and usually has a source of male energy. This male energy is obtained from two sources: The Sun’s radiant energy, and the placement of the stone upon underground flowing water at a geological fault.
• a Transformer Stone. I also call this a ‘Queen Stone’ because it draws down the radiant energies from The Moon and transforms them into female earth energies to add to the stone circle’s energy flows. The other source of female energy is energy from structure of the rock – either from the stone itself or the geology beneath the stone.
• a Grounding Stone. So-called because its function is to draw down energy from anything that interacts with it. If a person sits on such a stone they may begin to feel drained or tired. People sensitive to subtle energies can feel the energy being drawn into the stone and surrounding earth. It seems to have a cleansing effect leaving a person’s energy aura “cleaner” – i.e. free of the detritus of modern life, such as electro-magnetic radiation (this is just a working assumption at the moment – an intuition). When considering the concept of ‘cleansing’ before any ritual or energy work, we now consider this stone to be part of the preparation for that work.
• Male and female energies. We have spoken many times on the fact that male and female energies are present at sites, and on their relative strengths and qualities, even on their possible sources. What we discovered this year was their interaction with each other. The male and female energies, like the double-helix of a DNA molecule, interact by alternately attracting and repulsing each other, and this dynamism creates the ‘vibrancy’ of the energy at a site.
• Neutral energy flows in straight lines across a site, travelling through it, and providing a course for the helix of male and female energies to latch onto. 
• Celestial bodiesaffect the flow of energies within a site. We are not yet sure whether the design of the site determines which planet’s radiant energy is able to be captured, or whether the planet’s energy has determined which type of structure would be built.
• A double helix of male and female intertwined energies, usually flowing to and from the outliers (e.g. King Stone or Grounding Stone).

5-2. Home-grown circles: We could build our own stone circle this year at Castell Dyserth by placing rocks. This was re-inforced for us when we repaired an existing circle’s flows by adding in these extra home-made circles.

A home-made stone circle

5-3. The geology of sites: seems to affect the purpose, but not type, of the energy present at the site. For example, limestone sites are useful for healing and purification, whereas granite sites are useful for transformation, and for fixing information in place which may be recalled later. It is particularly female earth energy whose character and purpose seems to be determined by the geological properties of the area.

5-4. A site with a strong nemeton attracts visitors, or, a well-visited site reflects the energy of its visitors in a stronger dowsing signal.

Le Champ Dolent - a well-visited megalith

5-5. Some standing stones and their notches serve the purpose of showing astrological alignments of sun, moon, planets and stars. The notches have been made by human hands specifically to record such alignments, presumably to inform people of the time of the greatest energy flows when planets are at their zenith or in conjunction, or when the moon or sun are at a specific phase.

5-6. Aligned entrances: Sacred sites have entrances. Some sites have one for solar-aligned people and another for lunar-aligned people. Some sites have specific entrance stones that have an energetic barrier between them. The purpose of this is not exactly known yet.

Solar southern entrance

7. Ritual paths: Some sites have ritual entry paths. As we can’t be sure whether we are picking up the traces of previous ritual paths determined by the long-term use of humans, or if those paths are naturally-occurring doe to the formation of the sites themselves, we can’t be sure of their exact purpose.

5-8. Tall artificial moundslike Silbury Hill focus energy to the peak of the mound. Like the capstone of a pyramid Silbury Hill, for example, focuses all of its energy flows into a conical space at its peak. It seems designed specifically for this purpose, energetically speaking.

5-9. Chambered ‘tombs’: have small chambers that serve specific purposes, which can be decoded using the rods. These chambers can be used for vision quests and transformative experiences.

5-10. Petroglyphs: can be linked to specific places in the site. In other words, by dowsing it is possible to be taken from a cup-mark, hollow or line to its corresponding place within the site. In this way petroglyphs or cup-marked stones can be seen as “maps” of the energetic places within a site.

Gwas.

Long Meg and Her Daughters – September 25th, 2009

The first thing that strikes you as you approach this site is the sheer size of it. Avebury could be considered to be massive, as it hosts a village at its centre, but Long Meg is also in the category of huge sites. Unlike Avebury very few of the stones are huge in themselves, but their spread is very wide. Wide enough for a narrow road to pass through its focal centre.

Kal in particular was disinclined to dowse here. Although he made some intial attempts, these were merely investigative dowses to determine whether there was any energy work to be done. He soon found that he was going to be kept busy in dull grey late morning by some healing work that he needed to do upon himself – some psychological healing. His recent personal circumstances warranted such work, so i left him to quietly get on with it, whilst I went around the site finding out some interesting things about it.

First of all, it was clear that I was not going to be able to map out the energies. The site was too large for that. Had it been a sunny day in summer, and this had been the first and only site we would be visiting, then such work may have been completed, but we had a big agenda this day and our visits would have to be targeted and investigatory. So be it. I started with Long Meg, the tall pointed upright stone that dominated the near corner of the site.

The Long Meg stone and her spirals

The Long Meg stone was fascinating in itself, never mind in its relationship to the rest of the site. The first thing that caught my eye was the notched cut-out on the top of the stone. This reminded me of a similar stone just to one side of the Carnac fields of stones. It had a similar notch on top, and when I dowsed the Carnac stone I learned that the notch was aligned to predict the position of either sun, moon or star constellations at certain times of the year. I wish I had known more and been more specific at the time, but that was the outcome then.

Long Meg’s notch is aligned to the moon, so the rods informed me. A touch more specific, although I didn’t go through a process of working out exactly when the alignments might occur. It probably changed every year anyway. That information wasn’t too important right then, as I didn’t intend to make use of the alignment anyway. But now you know, you moon ritual people could always go and check it out for yourselves if you needed it, right? I presume you’d need to observe it from a specific place such as your own power centre.

The stone had inscribed upon it some spirals that intruiged me – I would have to find out what they meant. I placed me hand over each of them in turn, feeling for rather than dowsing for energy. When I placed my hand over the top-most spiral I felt a shiver, despite the fact that the spiral felt warm as my hand moved through the air above it. Strange! I tried the lower spiral – nothing. No reaction at all – no felt energy.

Where did the spirals connect to, I wondered? I found the link for the top-most spiral and later Kal found the link for the bottom-most spiral. We both confirmed each others dowsing too in order to satisfy ourselves that this was consistent irrespective of who dowsed for it. The top-most spiral linked to a spiral power centre right between the two entrance stones (these are the pair of round-topped stones shown in the middle of the picture below). The lower spiral was found to link through the entrance but then terminate in a spiral between the pair of stones in the foreground of the picture. Interestingly, the entrance spiral was pleasant to stand in, but Kal found the other power centre to be quite detrimental and quickly moved away from it once he had confirmed his results.

Kal had discovered that one of the site’s major benefits is to promote healing work, as I mentioned. He went off to involve the two trees in the centre of the circle in some healing work on himself. After visiting the two trees he then went to the Dream Seat stone which you can see in the picture below – there’s Kal in the far distance next to a tall wide stone just to the left of the left-most tree.

As with Castlerigg there was a Dream Seat stone, but this one was a little less comfortable. It was more of a large hollow that you could lean against or sit with your back against, but it served much the same purpose, according to my dowsing results. There was certainly a strong flow of energy coming from that “scar” on the rock, and the angles and points of the rock’s general shape seemed to focus the energies to that point where the concave had been created. I sat there for a few minutes and could feel the strong waves and pulses of subtle energy coming out of it. More deviceless dowsing, huh?

Getting more purposeful

This was all well and good, but what was the site for? I ran through a list of usual suspects. The idea of the list of not to pinpoint a single possibility, because I think most sites have several ways in which participants can work with the energy depending upon need, ability and timing. Rather it is to hone down the list from every possibility to those that react the strongest and thus demonstrate to use the best possibilities for achieving something useful with the site’s powers.

Long Meg dowsed for having capabilities including regeneration (healing, empowerment), education (they almost all seem to respond to this element) and for revelation (i.e. transformation of consciousness). It also registered as being primarily a lunar energy driven site.

Given the lunar notch on top of Long Meg I was hopeful that it would dowse as a calendrical site too – it did. So, there were stone positions at the site that were paced in specific positions to mark certainn times of the year such as solar risings and settings, and lunar positions such as the Lunar Major Standstill and Minor Standstill points. I left the exact positioning of these stones until I come back to do a full dowse and mapping of the energies and stones. Maybe next summer.

In Earth Memory there is a summary of some astronomical findings related to Long Meg that adds weight to this:

“At midwinter sunset, John Glover observed that the shadow of Long Meg is thrown across the vast circle, so that the tip of the shadow touches the opposite side of the stone ring. R.D.Y Perret later showed that at the equinoxes Long Meg’s shadow provided true tangents to the circle.” (pp.116)

I obtained one final bit of information before Kal returned from his meditation adventures/healing session. I found that there were many more grounding and energising stones int his circle than I had found elsewhere. Maybe I had stopped at finding one at other circles, but here I walked around identifying THREE grounding stones (i.e. stones that would draw your energy from you) and FIVE charging stones (i.e. they robbed you of small change as you sat on them – no, I’m joking, I mean they would imbue you with subtle energy like charging a battery).

Off-the-scale dowsing

Our final bit of dowsing was to try out an experiment in dowsing the aura around Long Meg. We wanted to see if there was any association between specific musical notes and the chakra or rainbow colours of the aura. We firstly identified the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet bands of the aura. We placed a peg to show us where these bands started, and as at other places where we had done this the bands were wider at the outer edge (the red, orange and yellow bands) getting progressively narrower as the colour frequencies increased towards violet, which was only a few inches away from the stone.

Then I got out my MP3 player and plugged in some battery-powered speakers. I had pre-recorded the C2 range of notes, and the idea was to see if we got a dowsing response from any of the notes in this octave. We did indeed. The red band responded to the third note, the orange band to the fifth note, and the yellow band to the seventh note. The we ran out of notes! Damn!

I played a longer recording that went through more scales but it was impossible to keep track of where the notes were when the rods crossed. I would have to try this again somewhere else and this time include a spoken element stating which note was being played all through octaves C2 to around C4, I reckoned. Still, interesting correlations between the chakra bands and musical notes. Perhaps Pythagoras’ musical theory of harmonics had a resonance with colour frequencies and subtle energy fields? More testing required, I think.

On our way out of the site we came across a tree with lots of rags tied to it. Aha – another ‘wishing tree’ in active use, just like at Nine Ladies in Derbyshire and West Kennet, and many other sites. It seems this custom is being kept very much alive. Notice that, despite several photos being taken of this tree none of them came out sharp – they were all blurred. None of the other photographs of the site were blurred. I find this interesting. It’s happened before when taking photos of trees. I wonder if its something to do with their energy field? I had a similar experience at the Forest of Dean when I had to take five photos and really concentrate on holding the camera particularly steady before I got anything like a reasonably clear photograph. Very strange!

Time to move on to the associated ‘sister’ site of Little Meg, which was somewhere nearby.

Gwas.

Tying a yellow ribbon round an old thorn tree.

Here is a list of phenomena that Kal and I keep experiencing when we visit sacred sites. It is the first of a series of posts to try to catalogue the formations and phenomena found at sacred sites when we dowse them.

List of energy formations at stone circles

• Male energy coming out of circle stones in a short spiral – often on the outside of the circle, but not necessarily.
• Female energy coming out of circle stones in a short spiral – often on the inside of the circle, but not necessarily.
• Two stones of the circles that don’t have spirals, but have a circular energy path (or arc) that has one hemisphere that goes underground and the other goes through the air as it flows between them. The one that goes underground can sometimes lead to a different stone. The place where the energy goes upwards has a female signature, the place where it enters the earth again has a female signature. It is speculated that the energy rises in a spiral formation as seen in one of Hamish Miller’s presentation slides. The actual arcing energy has a neutral signature. Such arcing – 3D – energies were first discovered at Arbow Low.
• An outlying stone (outlier or King Stone) that interacts with the energies of the circle, often connected by both a male and female energy line that together form a double helix pattern.
• An ‘entrance’ to the circle. This can often be a gap in the stones, or at the side of a particularly large or unusually shaped stone. Such a stone often dowses for female energies.
• A tree or bush that is connected by a male energy line that flows through an outlying stone before coming into the circle and forming a spiral. This energy always enters a circle through its designated ‘entrance’.
• A neutral alignment ley running through the site, and along which particular stones are positioned so as to be in perfect cardinal alignment. Powerful leys run in the primary cardinal directions, but less powerful lines often cross-cross the site with less-obvious alignments.
• Power centres. Some circles have many, others have one. The power centres have a dowsable gender, and suit particular types of people (i.e. some people feel more comfortable on particular types). They seem to form a connection point between human and energy formation. Also the energy centres are rarely in the center of the circle – usually they are off to one one side.
• Rainbow-coloured bands in concentric spheres approaching the centre of a circle. The colours usually dowse in the order that they are found as constituents of light (ie red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. and we have found that their position is unique to each dowser. As the dowsers become more ‘in tune’ with each other the positions of the bands becomes more synchronous.
• A nemeton, or auric extent is always dowsable at stone circles for us. Each stone circle seems to be encircled by a sphere of energy whose radius is dynamic. The nemeton can contract to the exact radius of the circle, or extend out from the circle by up to about twelve feet, possibly more. The nemeton’s energies are often made up of multiple lines of energy, all flowing in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction. A clockwise direction feels more positive and healthy than the opposite.
• Nemetons can be composed of three concentric circuits of the circle stones before entering the circle and spiralling to a point.
• Circle stones can be linked together by neutral straight lines of energy. The lines are dowsable the full height of the stones.
• Outlying stones are often linked to the site by lines that terminate in a connection to one of the stones in the circle.
• It is possible for particular stones in the circle not to register for any energy being connected to it, or inherent in it.
• A draining stone is sometimes discovered amongst either the circle stones or one of the outlying stones that are connected to the site. This stone draws out energies (beneficial or malign) to leave the person touching it ‘neutralised’, ‘cleansed’ or ‘drained’.
• Radials are neutral energy spokes that come out of the center of some circles like the spokes of a wheel. This formation was first discovered at Arbow Low and needs to be confirmed at other sites. The StoneDowser’s site displays many diagrams of radial energies at stone circles.
• Shifting male and female energies – there is a possibility of energy lines that shift from male to female as you traverse them – but it might be that they are so close that there is no distinguishable difference between the two. We first saw this effect at Bryn Celli Ddu burial mound in Anglesey.
• Energies can be felt as bad, negative or malignant and can be found in the stone circles themselves, or in the surrounding area.

I will post more lists of common features of dowsing at sites soon. Next up – The Dolmen (or Cromlech).

Gwas.

Follow an uncommon path.