The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘david cowan’

Anglesey, Wales – August 25th, 2008

This is the third and final part of a three part story about the sites in Anglesey that we dowsed in late August 2008. In this part of the story you find the protagonists winging their merry way towards the north-eastern part of Anglesey, close to the coastal town of Moelfre

As the afternoon was ending and early evening was coming upon us the sun was beginning to move quickly towards the horizon. We still had several hours of light yet, but wanted to spend time at the Lligwy complex where there was an ancient settlement (not another!) and a stone chamber that sounded like more fun. As we approached on the narrow roads, dodging oncoming traffic, we saw a sign which we had seen a couple of times that day: an AA sign for “Songs from Stones“. We took an educated guess at what that was, and I considered whether we might host our own “gig” at some sites soon – Kal and I playing drums and whatever to get some vibrations going! Turned out to be an idea which we implemented sooner than expected. However, ‘Songs from Stones’ turned out to be an animation which was playing at Beaumaris Castle, and was themed on some ancient sites of Anglesey.

Kal has already posted about what happened at the site for him. I’ll just post my additional bits. We stopped, of course, to have a good laugh at the council’s attempts to describe the purpose of the site – the usual: ancient burial rites, etc. Yeah, yeah. I’d test that with a quick dowse in the chamber later to come up with another negative reading for that theory. We had our own theories we wanted to test out.

An entrance passage

For some reason I left my staff at the gated entrance, leaning on the railings outside the main site. So, I prepared my rods and began at the entrance while Kal settled himself on the stone next to the opening. I got a pattern of symmetrical teardrop shapes coming out of the holes around the big capstone. Each corner of the site was inhabited by a male line which came out of a hole, went around into the corner (N, S, E and W) then came back into the same hole it had emanated from. Cool! But how did these lines all interact inside, I wondered? I went inside to dowse and found that the western and southern teardrop lines ended in a spiral inside the chamber. The northern and eastern lines were in fact one line which curved around to meet near the northern side.

My next bit of dowsing was to trace the energies from the two outlying stones outside the gated perimeter. The smaller stone came into the gated railings and turned right, to swirl and terminate just inside the railings. The larger stone came in through the gate too (how odd, but a bit too convenient?) where it swung left, went around the big capstone, and formed a male spiral in front of the entrance hole.

A stone on the northern edge caught my eye. What about the energy from this? So far, every line had been a male energy. This stone emanated female energies, which went from each cardinal point to end in a small female spiral. On my drawing it looked like a set of curly handles! There was a link with the male energies, though. The female spirals closest to the chamber, one of them went into it, the other joined the male spiral in front of the entrance. Oh! I didn’t recall ever seeing a male and female spiral come together that closely before. So, an outlying stone gave out male energy which linked with a closer stone giving out female energy.

Kal pacing sunwise past the female stone

I now wanted to try some of the meditation in the chamber. I crawled in and sat near one side. Kal had taken it upon himself to pace around the site, at what seemed like an increasing tempo. Kal was now humming. It was loud and made the stones vibrate as it bounced around so that I couldn’t determine which direction it was coming from. I sat and thought about nothing (my wife tells me I’m good at that). Maybe so, for in a minute or two I started to recede from noticing what was going on around me as my mind moved into a trance and a picture began to form.

In my vision I saw a young man in a foetal position inside a semi-transparent membrane, like the albumen of an egg. The young man was pushing at the lining until it tore and he was able to emerge, standing triumphantly. However, the moment he emerged two or three black long-nosed faces screeched out of the air, diving at him with their long mouths trying to eat the young man. With his new-felt strength and courage the young man welled up to three times his size, filled with angry emotion until he was larger than the black screaming faces with the dark black eye holes. Now HE consumed the black faces – and when they were swallowed the vision dissolved, and I was back in the chamber – dazed and vibrating with the powerful force of the allegorical tale. I composed myself in the chamber.

I crawled out of the entrance way to recount my story. Kal then had a go and got his vision. Kal told me his vision, and suggested that he thought the shelf was for ritual offerings, not for resting on. With that idea I asked Kal if he would bring my staff in, as I couldn’t (I didn’t know why not – just that it was wrong to bring it in myself). I went back in and he handed me the staff which I placed on the resting stone. I meditated again, but this time I got no visions. Instead I felt a cleansing effect, as though all the energy that had been built up by Kal pacing around had been dissipated and neutralised, and I felt ‘clean’, fresh and alert. I suddenly got an overwhelming urge to look out of one of the hole, which was shaped like a ‘V’. I looked again – and it drew me out of my sitting position. I found that I hurled myself out of the hole up onto the grass outside the chamber! Literally threw myself out! Very strange. I lay on the grass giggling in the remaining evening light.

The V-shaped birthing hole

Last thing I did was to hop up onto the top of the huge capstone to see what was up there. It was going to be yet another bizarre coincidence in a day of such things. Rainwater had carved unusual patterns in the top of the rock – two faces sharpened into focus. One was a small face with black holes for eyes (flashback!) and the other was a face with a long nose or beak (double flashback!). I nearly fell off the stone in amazement. These were the faces I had seen in the vision! Seriously! My legs wobbled as I photographed them I can tell you. I dropped back down, mouth still open with gaping disbelief.

Black-eyed face

Still in shock I asked Kal if he would come and collect my staff for me, but he told me he couldn’t! Somewhat miffed I gingerly felt inside the entrance hole to grasp the staff and pull it out. For some reason there was no way I was going back inside. I had had my information and it was time for me to leave. I had no idea what the information was that I was supposed to have learned, but nevertheless I had to go now. When I got to Kal he apologised, but explained that he felt he couldn’t go back inside the site now. At that moment I understood exactly what he meant! I too felt like that and I also didn’t have a good reason for it either.

Long-nosed/beaked face

As we walked back to the road, and along it towards the car, a murder of crows leapt from the trees in the field to our right, soaring and swooping, making a racket in the late still air. They swept in front of us, and danced in the air before careening off to distant tree tops. We looked at each other, and muttered about symbols and meanings. This was going to take more than a single cup of coffee to make sense of all of today’s events.

Gwas.

Follow your true path.

UPDATE 30th December 2008:

I have been reading David Cowan’s excellent books “Ancient Energies of the Earth” and have come across this paragraph, which I felt was pertinent. He had just been discussing how some burial sites have cup-marked stones placed next to or on the graves of reknowned people. Then he says:

“If the energy from cup-marked stones can, indeed, allow access to the system for the spirits of the dead, then it must also do the same for the living, so building an underground chamber or souterrain with a powerful cup-marked capstone in the roof and below it, in the passage, another upright inside the entrance so that initiates, wizards or shamans could meditate or perhaps retrieve knowledge would be an important part of the ceremonies of the ancients. The Native Americans had a similar procedure, building subterranean kiva (magnetic chambers), where they could achieve lucid dreaming and imagery, helped by hallucinogenic plants.”

“Ancient Energies of the Earth” – Ch.14 ‘Rebuilding the Ancient Magic’ pp.170-171.