The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘arthur’s grave’

Well, I see that Kal got his summary out first. Still, “if you can’t beat them…”

Generally, what type of year it has been? Dis-jointed, slower than last year’s breakneck speed, measured, with lots of deep synchronicities. When I come to review the year I realise that I still made lots of progress on the various tasks that I was lead to perform in order to progress along my path of Druidry.

Below are the main topics that I have picked out from this year’s blog posts. I have tried to keep the explanations to a minimum, so have included links back to the original postings if you want the detail for each of the topics. What I thought was a quiet year has actually turned out to be incredibly packed and busy. The topics are in no order whatsoever, which kind of fits with the way that the year’s learning has come about – seemingly haphazard, but all threading into and through itself like some kind of cat’s cradle whose overall pattern will only be known when the final moves have played out.

26 topics I have been involved in this year:-

a) Healing – Most of the year has been spent developing healing skills, whether that was using remote energies, balancing the chakras, healing with the hands, or with crystals. I have realised that I am more attuned to healing places than people currently, but that is changing. The healing energies can be attuned to different colours for particular effects. To work with these energies I need to understand which “colour” is missing from a site and then call upon the energies of the local living entities to gather together to create this missing colour and thus heal the site. [related posts: My Five Healing Rays, Healing Rays Explained]

Also, in conjunction with my friend Mike, we created a new healing centre at The Bridestones in Cheshire. [related posts: A New Healing Centre]

Chakra colours, energy frequencies and healing may be linked

b) Re-discovering the bard - Discovered great new music (and that I like the new forms of folk music) at The Green Man Festival, and saw Roy Harper in concert in London. This year music has really connected with my heart and stirred great emotions. I have written more poetry this year than in other years too. [related posts: Green Man Festival, Roy Harper]

c) Astrological links to Venus, Orion’s Belt and Sirius affirmed at almost every site. Also Scorpius, astrological links to Arthur and the Great Bear constellation. The constellations of Serpens, Corvus and Perseus have been especially meaningful to me this year, guiding me along a very meaningful path from one end of an energy ley to another. [related posts: Serpent at Castlerigg, Arthurian Archetypes of Corvus, The Berth and Death of Scorpius, The Three Stars of Fertility, Absorbing Orion at Lud's Church]

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This year, 2011, I spent Samhain at two places. Not at the same time, obviously. That would be impossible even for a hedge druid who is accustomed to the unusual. I first spent some time with a group of friends in Derbyshire (more about that soon) and then I went with my wife M to Pembrokeshire. In Pembrokeshire we first climbed the hills to visit Arthur’s Grave (see previous post this month) and then I made an unannounced stop off at Pentre Ifan, because I remembered that it was quite close to the route we would take to get back home. Never one to miss an opportunity, I saw this as a chance to discover what the remainder of the year might offer in terms of my healing quest.

As far as I was concerned the visit to Arthur’s Grave an hour earlier had been the culmination of a spiral that had begun at Spring Equinox and had completed this Halloween.  I wasn’t sure, therefore, what I would get out of visiting Pentre Ifan. All I knew was that I felt drawn to it, and that i wanted to see whether its incredible energies would spark any further revelations about my tasks for the year. Perhaps it might confirm that actually all was done and I could rest for the remainder of the year? No more site visits or blog posts, perhaps? All quiet now? Rest and recuperation? Not a chance!

View of Pentre Ifan at Samhain

We stopped at the site information board to take a look at how the archaeologists have reconstructed the mound. Their representation seemed remarkably familiar – it matched the reconstruction done at Tinkinswood in South Wales. Perhaps the neolithic people were all working from a similar template, or perhaps the geometry or the physics of the places simply suggested a natural configuration that was now generally agreed upon amongst The Intelligentsia of our times? I wonder what became of all the rubble that one surrounded the great stones? The site is so clean now. The information sign put the entrance portal at the south. I have previously dowsed the same, so that’s one aspect I agree with.

How Pentre Ifan may have once looked

I re-introduced myself to the site,. seeking the permission of the Spirit of Place before attempting to enter its energetic boundary. Being successful (politeness and respect seem to be viable currency with the spirits that inhabit such places) I began to dowse for the best starting point for me at the site. It was a flat round rock at the eastern edge of the main uprights, and I recognised this as the same stone upon which I had started and energised when I had previously visited the site in the late summer of 2008. That seemed like someone else’s life, and a whole lifespan away, and I found it hard to relate to the person who had stood there only three years ago. Yet it was me. How would the site react to me now, I wondered?

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On a day that only a mother could love I dragged my long-suffering spouse into the farthest reaches of our lands to the western shores of Pembrokeshire. Why would I do such a thing to a nice lady? Well, I had taken the day off to celebrate Samhain, and it was part of my year’s quest that I should resolve the link between Berth and Death. That’s The Berth – a Shropshire hillfort – and Arthur’s Grave, the final destination for a mythical character and a hedge druid. If you haven’t read the beginning of this story, then may I refer you to this post? I feel compelled to do so.

So, the story was that “The Death of Scorpio”, or the coincidence of the constellation appearing at the point of the western sunset along the south-western axis that joined The Berth to Arthur’s Grave was the reason I was making a four hour drive along slippery autumnal-bedecked roads to hike into the back of beyond. As I journeyed that day I was continuously recognising places that Kal and I had passed on our journey to the same location earlier in the year at Spring Equinox. On that occasion I had come to Beddarthur (Arthur’s Grave) as the final part of a quest to use the energies of three stars to unlock an inactive part of my DNA sequence, and potentially unlock some hidden healing powers. At the time I had no idea what I had done. During the year I discovered that I had acquired an ability to draw energy from plants to use to negate the dark and twisted energies left behind by some humans upon death, and I had also unleashed a guiding spirit of a knight who had been enlisted to assist me with such work.

All that seemed far away and certainly locked deep in the back of my mind as I wrestled with the increasingly powerful and playful winds that rose to meet us as we crested the hills from which Stonehenge’s powerful healing stones had been hewn. Today my mind was focused on the mundane matter of the rip in my hiking boots that were making one foot wet and squelchy.

View across Arthur's Grave to site of the Bluestones

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I sometimes find myself doing some very strange things without knowing why. This night was one of those strange evenings, and yet the strangeness would continue beyond this night and lead to an even stranger conclusion by the time I had finished unravelling all of the clues.

I had decided that at some point in the week I would need to go somewhere. The weather was good, so I got out my dowsing rods and began to enquire about a suitable place for me to learn something that would progress me on my spiritual path – the usual request – general and open. The responses I got seemed to indicate that I could find such a place in the county of Shropshire, and that the place existed on the Megalithic Portal, so it was only a matter of bringing up a list of sites in Shropshire and working through a process of elimination to find the site that I was expected to go to. Soon I found it – The Berth – an ancient hillfort and associated pool near the village of Marton a short distance from the main A5 road. I did some reading on the Megalithic Portal about access to the site – not good. Permission from the local farmer is suggested. Well then, a covert visit may be in order given that I would be arriving late at night.

The Berth [Portal]

I put on my dancing trousers (well, the fleece-lined ones – it might be cold) and began to journey southwards from Cheshire. Soon I was past the eastern edges of Wales and skirting the western fringes of England. Within an hour I had arrived at Marton in the dark of the late evening and was searching around on a small-scale OS map for the perfect place to park and navigate through the fields to the hillfort. Luckily, without too much fuss, I found such a place down a road marked “Unsuitable for motor vehicles.” No kidding! Good job I was in a four-wheel drive machine.

A map showing The Berth hillfort in Shropshire

I parked at the only place down the narrow country lane that would fit a car. Using my print-out of a low-level OS map I headed off further down the lane. Five minutes later I realised I must have gone past the entry point I was looking for and doubled back. The entry point turned out to be where I had parked the car! When will I learn to trust my intuition? Such a hard thing to do!

Several times I had to stop myself from asking the obvious question, “What the hell are you doing in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?“. Luckily, I didn’t allow myself to even try to formulate an answer, but instead began to walk across the fields towards what I hoped was the right place, breathing in the still-warm evening air and wishing I hadn’t muffled myself up because I was beginning to overheat! This is October, right? Supposed to be cold and damp? Instead we are in the tail end of a heatwave and it was still 15 degrees late into the evening. Bizarre weather!

Fortune seemed to be on my side, guiding me towards something whose very impulse and importance I could sense like a scent on the night air.

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