The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘athena’

Athena

Gymnasium

As you approach the small town of Delphi you first come across the ruins of the Temple of Apollo amongst other ruins. But even before you get to those, if you stop and look down into the valley on your left you will notice some magnificent ruins which are signposted as “The Gymnasium”. After we had returned from the failed attempt to visit the Corycian Cave we looked upon the ‘gymnasium’ and tried to find a way down to it. Following the path along the road side for a while proved fruitless. It seemed that that area was fenced off. We did not feel the need to don Guerilla techniques and made our way instead to the main ruins and the Temple of Apollo.

A few hours later our work there was done and we turned our attention once again to the sign marked gymnasium. We attempted a couple of routes in but where foiled at every turn. Giving up we opted for a trip to the museum and then some food. Fed, rested and with a few hours of daylight still with us (see Temporal anomalies in Part 5) we decided to make another attempt at the Corycian cave. What madness! As we set off in the car we drove along the road that was adjacent to the Gymnasium. Quite a bit further than we had walked we passed an entrance to the way into the valley. Oh my word! We stopped the car and back tracked to the entrance. Had our desire to go to the cave been prompted by some inner knowledge of the entrance to the gymnasium? The dowsing rods said Yes, but I wasn’t convinced. Anyway, we had a way down and that’s what mattered.

As we got half-way down to these, as yet, unexplored ruins we saw a sign denoting The Temple of Athena. Really!?! Where had the sign been at the top? With more enthusiasm than a mere ‘Gymnasium’ would have elicited we followed the rods down a winding female energy line, almost step to step behind each other.

Perception is almost everything

A feeling that crossed my mind when exploring the Temple of Athena was sadness. I felt that she had been forgotten and indeed, the comparison of visitors to the temple of Apollo and hers was representative of this neglect. It has been speculated that the power of the Gods and indeed perhaps there very existence is relative to the belief that we humans hold in them. It is difficult to imagine belief having such power. My understanding differs slightly in that I think that there is a dimensional separation between us and such beings. This separation is what belief or lack thereof impinges on. So in my humble opinion it isn’t that they have ceased to exist, it is that the bridge between us has narrowed.

Athena

I felt sad, and it is sad. Athena know for umpteen qualities is also the companion of heroes. Often seen as a warrior goddess she much preferred the route of wisdom than the sword. Whilst visiting her temple I wondered whether I was feeling sad because there were no visitors here or because of an empathic connection with the goddess. Did she feel sad that she had been neglected? I mused on the topic whilst sitting amongst the remains of her court. Perhaps she was sad because of the state of the country, once the greatest in the world? Maybe both. I would have attempted some dowsing to ascertain answers however I have learned (from my experience with Poseidon) that ancient gods are almost un-connectable.

I do wonder though, perhaps what Greece needs today is some of those Athenian heroes?

Kal Malik

As I come to write this blog post my random musical playlist has picked Led Zeppelin’s “In My Time Of Dying“. This turns out to be directly relevant to this post! Have a listen to get you in the mood for this post.

Relevant because the topic of this post – The Death of the Old Gods – is something that Kal and I uncovered as we explored the last site on the slopes of Delphi’s glorious temple complex. The main road into Delphi splits the sites into two parts – those above (governed by paid access) and those below. There is also a sacred site on the road itself and I’ll describe that too soon.

Defining Thought Forms

Let me start by first talking about Thought Forms. These are energetic constructions made by the imagination and intention of human beings. We create pictures of something, then we feed this image with subtle energy by re-imagining it. We give it power by imagining that it has power. If the idea gains wider popularity, then other people can also begin to shape and feed energy into this imaginative construction. At some point in this process the energy levels are such that the thought form can actually evolve, can gain independence, intelligence, and can begin to act by its own intention. Sounds mad, huh? Sure does, but this process is how we have constructed most of our ancient and modern deities, mythological and modern heroes and folkloric figures.

The Old Gods were propelled by these elements:-

1. human’s thoughts of their image, including being realised into art
2. the number of thoughts that sustained them – whether by devotion, need, or curiosity
3. focal points where this energy was collected, promoted and sustained, e.g. temples or shrines

I could go much deeper into those elements – psychology of the archetypes, the differences between ritual and intent, the idea of earth energies being used to retain thought form energy – each of these topics is an article in itself. At the moment let’s take these as read, and consider some information about how the old gods are destroyed, which is the aspect that we discovered at Delphi.

Choose Your Weapon

If there are things in the modern world that kill off the old gods they are surely these:

• Wi-fi signals – omnipresent radiation that combats subtle energy. Part of a technological replacement of the unseen forces within Nature.
• Health and Safety – the New Gods, who decree that we should cordon off most of our ancient sites and birthrights
• Apathy and Indifference – old gods with new faces. They re-direct attention and remove thought from the process. They seek the dissolution of intent.
• Repatriation - the re-dedication to another religion, and the consequent loss of hard-earned knowledge.
• Physical neglect – letting the ancient sites become dilapidated  or “modernising” them, constructing over them, using inappropriate materials which do not have the same energy-retentive capabilities.

As I go through this post I will try to provide you with some evidence for how these things dull our connectivity with the ancient thought-forms that grew up around the Old Gods. Of course, many of the Old Gods have been replaced by New Gods, so should we care? Well, only in the sense that we have invested a great deal of psychic energy into the Old Gods, and we’d be wasting a lot of stored knowledge and subtle energy if we let them fade away to nothing. Very few people care about this. It may or may not be an issue – I’m too small to be able to hold the bigger picture in my head, but I just want to make the point as I go along about what I think is happening with the Old Gods, and to describe some of the ways in which we are killing them, or rather, letting them die.

See now, that even in the town of Delphi, that once mighty sacred place, how the Old Gods are stripped bare and left to wither. Here is a tale of woe and sadness. Brace yourself!

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In a book called “The Dance of the Dragon” Hamish Miller demarcated one of the very long ley lines that spans at least part of the way around the Earth, and possibly beyond (it’s hard to dowse in a sailing boat). He called the long ley line that he found The Apollo-Athena Line. He claimed it extended from Skellig St.Michael in Ireland to Armageddon in Turkey, and possibly beyond that. This stuck in my mind when I was a budding dowser, entranced by the notion of leys.

I never really imagined that I would actually find myself at one of the points along this Apollo-Athena line (I have a very limited imagination). Yet, after Kal had achieved everything he had wanted from the one sunny day we would get in Delphi we did find ourselves with a bit of spare time before the last rays disappeared. I turned my attentions to the secondary aspects of my visit – to see whether this fabled line actually existed at this site, and if so, what its qualities might be. I didn’t intend to trace the line as Miller had done, just to sample it and see if he was talking rot or not. Everything, no matter how holy, is open to testing.

It didn’t take long for me to use the dowsing rods to locate the approximate position of the fabled ley. I was led up the concrete ramp, back towards Museum of Delphi. Further down the path towards the entrance to the temple complex the rods began to splay apart indicating they had reached a boundary point – the outer edge of an energy line. Seeing as I had asked for the Apollo-Athena Line I checked to see if that was indeed what I had found.

I used the rods to get a direction of flow – South East, pointing down the valley away from the temple complex. Judging by where I was standing it looked like the line actually missed most of the important sites on the hillside above, possibly just clipping the western edges of the stadium above. Odd.Where I picked it up it was going through a stone bowl artefact full of water, which I thought was a nice touch.

Bearing of the Apollo-Athena ley line at Delphi

The ley was pretty standard when measured. It was 22 steps wide – a measurement I have made at many national and international ley sites. Remembering the drawing of the rough direction of the ley I imagined that it confirmed pretty closely to the North-West to South-East direction of flow.

So much for its standardisation. There was, however, a curious anomaly associated with this famous ley line. A curious distortion.

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Do you know your Odins from your Wodens? Do you know St.George from St.Michael? Does it really matter? The more research I do, and the more thought I give it, the more it all leads me further back along a reducing scale until I reach The One Other. The further you stretch towards the divine, the fewer in number the form of the concept becomes.

I have been trying to understand people’s fascinations with the concept of a pantheon of gods, a hierarchy of spirit. It makes sense to me as a network of ever-more powerful forces. I can deal with it as a range of energetic entities that have qualities of size, form, sense and intelligence. An intelligence that has a range of influence, and therefore engendered within it a sense of power, of strength. That is how I have come to picture the energies that I have dowsed and dealt with, in the sense that I have traded energy and thoughts with Nature’s own. When I work with Nature it has not been necessary for me to do anything other than make a connection. No need to specify to whom, or to what, or to implore the help or attentions of anyone of anything in particular. Simply to extend the wish to connect to something real and alive – some natural element such as fire, sun, moon, air, water, earth. Other sentient beings such as trees, or animals.

It is not necessary to invoke a huge and intricate pantheon of gods in order to work with energy and perform acts of Natural Magick. The pantheon is only a guide to the various possibilities of working with energy. In a way they personify the aspects of life that can be affected by energy, and we relate to them more readily in the form of a character from an old story, a film or a book. The range of the divine goes all the way from one to as many as we can feasibly hold in our heads or in our culture.

Worship of The Gods

Whether you work with a single concept of natural power, or with a very specific aspect of Nature in the form of a small god, a faerie or a ghost – you are still working with the same intelligent entity. It simply conjures up images of itself in whatever form we imagine, however we are capable of understanding it at that time. Is there value in working with a specific aspect of Nature? In the same way that communicating with a single person can enlighten you, then the answer is ‘Yes’. The question, however, would need to be very specific, or your request to work with it would need to be sure that this one entity had the power to help you.

Simply tuning your request to find a sympathetic connection is a more efficient way of working, though. The response will be felt intuitively, and can be easily discerned. As the Internet does, scanning for connections from the totality of possibility with a well-formed query allows the entire pool of creative connectivity to be browsed.

Some people spend what must be a great deal of time gorging themselves on the myths of ancient and modern times. It is all too easy to get pulled into the stories of the Little People, Arthurian Legend, the Gods of Greece and Rome, and to have those myths offered to us in mesmerising media that require little thought to digest. A feast for the eyes and the mind, but your own stories need to be told. “Time waits for no man” to pull himself out of his stupour and cleanse his third eye of the grime that has accumulated.

I don’t dismiss the value of a story that interweaves a tradition that symbolises a living wisdom – rites of all types are our means of communicating between ourselves about the Mysteries. Of course they should be upheld, encouraged, re-discovered, enjoyed again and again for their worth. But there is another side to the myths. They have embedded within them tales of the possibilities that can be explored. And it is to this that we must draw our attentions.

A narrowing of focus. An opening up to the wealth of possibility. A keen eye and a goal. A Hedge Druid’s meditation.

Kal has already written a lengthy and laudable account of the British Society of Dowsers conference recently, but he has urged me to add my own bits to it, and so I will add those elements that are in addition to his write-up, or which display my own perspective on those events.

As we journeyed down to deepest darkest Gloucestershire we were in good spirits. I was excited, and wondering about how we might fit into a group that I expected would be primarily of retirement age, or batty as Battenburg cakes. Probably both.

On arrival we were immediately made to feel welcome, and were given our name badges and starter packs. Hmmm. At least Kal had a pen and notebook in the pack – he always takes mental notes instead of writing stuff down. Kal ditched the name badge. I played the game to see what happened. As I’m not a very social person it seemed to help during the day.

Dr. Serena Roney-Dougal – Where Science And Magic Meet:

Although the first lecture of the four we would attend that day, this was the most interesting. Dr.Serena talked about what seemed to be quite diverse subjects, and in some depth, but she managed to pull them all together into a cohesive argument for the validity of shamanic practises, as they related to the earth’s energy grid and fields.

The important information I got from this lecture was:-

• The earth’s “GeoMagnetic Field”, or GMF, is perceived by Dr.Serena as synonymous with the Hartmann and Curry lines and grids.
• Earth energy at ancient sacred sites is probably linked to geological features such as fissures, weak points, stress points, fractures and fissures. Water is a factor in the production of earth energies too.
• When the GMF is strong (or active) due to earth changes (seasons, tide, sunspots, moon phase, geology, earth’s magnetic core) then poltergeist activity and healing work is stronger.
• When the GMF is weak (or less active) then remote viewing and telepathy is stronger.
• DMT (Di-Methyl Triptamine) is in the pineal gland of the brain and directs all other systems depending upon its chemical levels.
• Triptamines can be introduced from external sources such as the ayahuasca vine, or many other shamanic plant extracts, to induce a living dream (or lucid dream state).
• At 3AM (“The Witching Hour”) our brains naturally produce more triptamines and start releasing them to induce dreaming.
• Certain structures such as long barrows (which have a layer of organic, then inorganic substances) seem to act as shield against the effects of the GMF on “psychic” abilities.
• Our sense of direction and navigational abilities are linked to the GMF (studies of pigeons).

As you can see, she pulls together brain chemistry, dream states, psychic abilities, the effects of the electromagnetic energies of the earth, and the purpose or usage of ancient sites. Quite a lecture in an hour!

I found that so many of those topics chimed with me. In addition I have always had a good sense of direction (on most occasions) and can find paths through seemingly impossible terrain, but have never linked it to the GMF activity before. Something for me to think about. I particularly liked the link between GMF activity and “psychic” abilities. I will try to be much more aware of this when attempting druidic work.

I think that the conclusion we could reach is that remote viewing and telepathy would work better from within a long barrow or chamber, whilst a stone circle may be better suited to healing and spirit activity.

Dr Tim Darvill – Stonehenge and Healing:

Dr Darvill (‘Davros’ I kept thinking) was something of a coup for the convention. His TV programme about his excavation work at Stonehenge was getting its first showing on mainstream TV that night. Dr. Darvill therefore delivered his lecture with the smooth assurance and well-rehearsed aplomb of a man who has worked through his theories and re-visited them until he felt they were as convincing as he could muster.

I must say I found it all very fascinating and I felt it turned a listed contender for the purpose of this most famous stone circle, and elevated it to an ‘almost definite’. Healing was, I am convinced now, being done at Stonehenge at some stage in its development, and Tim can practically pin-point that time. But it’s not the whole time. It’s a fragment.

Whether healing was Stonehenge’s original purpose, capability or raison-d’etre I wouldn’t like to say, as I think other competing theories are just as likely seeing as the monument went through several re-workings, and passed through thousands of years of use. Ye gods, we can barely keep one of our modern miracles of architecture for the same purpose more than a year these days!! Now it’s a bank, now it’s a cinema, now it’s a shop, now they’re all flats….Imagine trying to trace an original purpose to any modern building after even 200 years of use. The one constant we can rely on is change. The line may become twisted and broken. The evidence may be cleared out. Purpose may have to be divined as much as reasoned. And we use written records. Most of modern archaeological theory is as much creative cultural anthropology based upon fragments as it is true history backed by permanent record.

That’s not to belittle the work of Darvill and others before him. Anything that adds to the certainty of a theory is welcomed by me, and he presented his arguments assuredly and provided physical and historical evidence to back his claims. Diseased bones that could be traced to a man who came from the Alps is n interesting development. Click here to read about his recent work and theories.

A convincing answer is what Kal and I are after – not an intractable debate. There is more to Stonehenge, though, than simply a healing site, however good it was in its prime. This quote about it comes from a Guardian newspaper article:

The latest finds imply a much more complex story: they include a Roman coin among stone fragments, suggesting the Romans also believed in and sought out the healing magic. The later charcoal deposits suggest to Darvill and Wainwright annual gatherings, perhaps for feasting and ceremony at the winter solstice, continuing as late as the 17th century.

The modern-day druids and pagans who assemble bearing green boughs for the winter and summer solstices may not be so far off the mark after all.

Guardian newspaper, 23rd September

I found it interesting that the healing Blue Stones were from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire (not the Presley Hills, my American friends, he didn’t own them too – and they probably can’t revive him now). Recently I had been on holiday to Pembrokeshire but had had no idea as to how many sacred sites there would be in that area. I now wish I’d gone for a fortnight instead of three days! A strong place for energies and sites, a rather uninspiring holiday destination though.

Darvill continued to raise the stakes though by saying that Stonehenge might have been a copy or replacement for a more natural circle of stones atop one of the mountains in the Preseli Hills. His candidate is Carn Menyn. From his slide presentation photos it looked a good bet. A complete circle of jagged natural ‘blue’ stones formed a gigantic cathedral that is a natural wonder.

A lunchtime interval came as a welcome opportunity to try a bit ofdowsing in the warm afternoon sunshine, the results of which Kal amusingly recounted in his post. I must say I had to laugh when I guessed that he had played a trick on the rather-too-smug lady by shrinking the boundary of her energetic aura to a few feet. It had a positive side – every time we dowsed for auras now we were able to pick them up easily. Now Kal was demonstrating his skills at manipulating them too, which is something I want to study and practise too after learning about the concept of the nemeton (see previous post).

Hamish Miller – The Southern Serpent, New Zealand and Healing The World:

I had been looking forward to Hamish’s talk, as I have read a couple of his books and had a lot of respect for the work he has put into understanding the nature of the energies he has encountered. Luckily, he didn’t so much re-capping on his near-death experience, or much about the Michel and Mary line that he had dowsed with Paul Broadhurst. Instead he started off talking about the Apollo/Athena line, a line running from Skellig Michael in southern Ireland, and which continues through many sacred sites until it reaches Armageddon in Israel.

Hamish then told us about a phenomenon that he had experienced on both lines – that when he placed a stone on a power centre at the sites along those lines the manifestation pattern would complexify as he followed the alignment ley from one site to the next. Even going back would increase the complexity.

Whenever I have manifested patterns I have invested my energy into the stones before producing the manifestation, but Hamish doesn’t believe that is necessary, in fact stated to me directly that he thought it should not be done using one’s own energy. I will have to test this out – any stone vs. one I pick and invest energy into. I will see what differences emerge. I also plan to pick three sites on an alignment to check for the compelxification of energy patterns as I travel to each in turn. I have such an alignment locally, so it should be easy to check out.

The second half of Hamish’s lecture concerned his visit in search of what he called the “Southern Serpent” in New Zealand. He talked a little about the potential that there had been an indigenous people in NZ well before the Maori people colonised the islands, which he named as the Hawaiki. This group of people may well have come from China, the Pacific Islands, and possibly even Easter Island! I believe there is little at the moment to back this up except ancestral memory, folklore and strong supposition, yet it was an endearing thought, because many of the tales of energy paths, spirit and energy flows and netherworlds all seems to have originated from this Hawaiki people’s culture.

A mother and daughter that Hamish and his wife Ba met whilst there were Maori people who were well-versed in energy work. The daughter had been taught from a small girl to appreciate the energies, venerate them, work with them, and induce energy through the use of a “magical” stone that she kept in her possession, and which had been a gift to her, presumably as some form of rite of passage with the work. During her tuition she had been taught songs to draw out the “song lines” as the Maori’s call the energy. This girl then visibly demonstrated her powers to Hamish’s assembly of friends when she placed her stone onto a sacred site’s centre and sang energy into marvellous patterns of manifested earth energy.

After the talk I questioned Hamish about some of our suppositions: did he agree that energy lines were male, female and neutral? He did, but was not sure what I meant by neutral. I think other people call them ‘null’ lines, alignments, ley lines. They are the guiding force that keeps the male and female wave patterns moving along a particular alignment between sites. But we have also seen the lines have a vital role within the sacred sites themselves in terms of linking the major stone of a stone circle, for example. Hamish stated that the polarities, he found, flipped over between sites so that male became female and vice versa, at various points along a long line.

I found this food for thought and thanked him for his input, and the lecture before Kal and I moved off towards the enticing book store that had been housed int he next building to the lecture theatre. We had one more lecture to attend, but there was some debate. Kal wanted to go and see a workshop about earth acupuncture. So did I, but that workshop was officially full, and so we had to stay where we were.

Michael Bott – Standing With Stones:

Michael was not a dowser. He was, however, amiable and amusing, so despite the fact that he had very little to offer a group of dowsers he managed to make a reasonably entertaining hour pass with some beautiful photos taken from the DVD he has produced with his mate Rupert Soskin – who he said WAS a dowser, but didn’t dowse during their epic tour of hundreds of megalithic sites across the country! O…K…..well.

There’s not much to say about this really. The images were nice, the stories vaguely amusing (in a kind of Open All Hours sort of way) but when I asked whether they had had any mystical experiences then answer was…er…no. They had been too busy filming. O….K…..well. See you then!

However, Kal and I saw Callanish in all its glory and if nothing else we learned that we really needed to go there and do some energy work – preferably close to Winter Solstice, if possible. What a place!

All in all it was a hugely enlightening experience to spend time with some seasoned dowsers, but we did wonder how often they dowsed these days – no-one seemed to be doing it – were we falling foul of some rule of etiquette?

I’d like to thank the staff of BSD who organised the event for making us feel so welcome and remaining upbeat to everyone they encountered. It made the travelling worthwhile. A special thanks to Helen Lamb for making every effort to get us there and for her helpful recommendations all through the day. That’s the kind of dedication and effort that keeps societies going.

Gwas