The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘fairy’

In England one cannot fail to take advantage of sunny days. They are as scarce as hen’s teeth. So it was, on a Hen’s Tooth Day, Kal and I agreed to meet up to explore some places in Staffordshire that had been recommended to us. I had already been to Thor’s Cave myself, but the stone circle called Nine Pins was new to both of us, which is always an exciting prospect.

We drove past the Abbey Inn at Abbey Green village near Leek. Something tugged at me in a familiar way. I ignored it because I was “following a map”, however ten minutes later I was back at the pub parking in their car park. When will I learn to follow my intuition? Not only was the parking easier than the narrow hill road, but actually it turned out that the pub was the best place to walk to the circle from anyway. The helpful landlord of the pub directed us to the footpath to start us on our way. We would meet him again later when we sampled his excellent local ales.

On the way up the hill behind the pub you’ll pass the site dedicated to the memory of “Tony Squires“. This is a combination of a bench with a breath-taking view and a quaint fence whose posts are carved with Tony’s memorial details. A wonderful tribute.

Memorial to Tony Squires

His shade is hanging around on the bench. Maybe it’s admiring the view? Or maybe it’s pinned there by the intention of his family? I imagine that shades see our world like the landscape in the film Constantine:

Is this what our world looks like to a shade?

On this occasion we left the shade to remain where he was. He wasn’t creating any energetic imbalance. On to the circle…

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At the start of Day 2 on Iona we were greeted by cloudy weather. This can’t be right? Let’s see whether that continues when Kal gets out into the open! He always brings the sun out. Kal was a bit tired from his exploits the previous evening. I’ll let him explain that. I had slept well, whereas he was paying back the time he’d borrowed. Tiredness would turn out to be the least of our challenges this day. Iona has been probably the most intellectually and spiritually challenging places we have visited yet. As you read the rest of my posts you will begin to see how it made me have to grapple with lots of concepts that I had thought were the realm of New Age dreamers, or the stuff of pure mythology. On Iona, mythology seems to be made real for the seeker! Judge for yourself.

Our intended destinations for the day had been largely decided by the available sites as listed on the Northern Antiquarian WordPress blog. We had scheduled to visit Sidhean Mor, then a hillfort called Dun Bhuirg north of that, and finally to backtrack to head to the southern tip of the island to see a standing stone called Clach na Glaistig. This post will cover the first of these sites, and subsequent posts will describe an adventure from high to low and back again. In this post we’ll meet some otherworldly forms, and begin to fulfil a major part of my quest to Iona, that of finding an alien energy spot. More on that soon. There’s some even stranger stuff to get through before we get to that!

Belief and Angels

This time last year I didn’t believe in angels. Well, let me say instead, I had no reason to believe in angels. They were, after all, not part of my Nature pantheon. I had encountered elementals, nature spirits, and to some extent the energetic remainders of humans. The realms of ‘higher’ energy forms – angels and demons – that was something I steered well clear of. Until one unexpected encounter in a graveyard. After that, I moved my position one notch up – from “Have had no experience of that” to “Have had one experience of that“. This makes me slightly less dubious and a tinge more accepting of the possibility of angels. but not at this point a believer.

Angel Hill – same profile as Oran’s mound and Glastonbury Tor

Next on our tour of Iona was the so-called Angel Hill, a hill where it is reputed that Columcille (St.Columba) was observed to be surrounded by a host of angels. Well, what would happen for us?

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I once thought I caught a phenomenon commonly called an “Orb” in a photograph I took in 2010 at the West Kennett Long Barrow in Wiltshire. I had been inside doing some meditation. When I finished I went around each chamber taking pictures for the blog. Later, when I looked at the chamber in the photograph in which I had had the profoundest connection I found a ball of transparent light on the picture. I remember quite distinctly having an “urge” to take two pictures one after the other. Now, there was no reason for doing this because I only took one picture of the other parts of the barrow, but when it came to this particular chamber I took tow, quickly in succession. One had a transparent globe of light on it and the other didn’t.

Note the 'orb' positioned above the feather at the back of the stone

Skeptics Corner
I then did some research on orb lights. Professional photographers had done a good job of totally dismissing the phenomenon, and had cites the following contributing factors to why the phenomenon occurred:-

1. Digital camera technology
2. Flash photography
3. Specks of dust or rain in the atmosphere

In fact, this article went a long way to making me think that it was all just a product of a combination of cheap technology and airborne particles:

“This comprehensive survey strongly supports the hypothesis that orbs are simply the result of dust and other airborne material drifting close to the camera and reflecting the flash illumination back toward the image sensor and provides long overdue definitive evidence that their origin lies firmly within the mundane and explainable, not the paranormal or supernatural.

A 3 megapixel CCD actually captures less than 10% of the total image information available within a scene when compared with a 35mm camera negative. The software has to ‘fill in’ these gaps in the image by making comparisons with the information from neighbouring pixels, thus a single pin point of light in a scene may be ignored completely or seen and then ‘expanded’ by the software as it compares and interpolates each pixel with it’s neighbours – the single point source of light becoming a gradually larger and fainter circle of light – giving the characteristic circular Orb anomaly.”

(source: Para.Science)

Well, my camera is a 10 megapixel camera, but let’s not be too picky about this. I couldn’t rule any of those factors out of the West Kennett situation – I had used a digital camera with a flash, and it was surely quite dusty in there.

Weeks later I took some more photographs using a flash where I knew there was lots of dust and got the same transparent glowing globes on my picture. Later I took some pictures in the rain and got the same. Transparent orbs which had an ethereal appearance. Well, mystery solved then, it was merely a trick of the light and the technology. I put orbs away to the back of my mind and though no more about them.

Formby Point

Beautiful pine trees on Formby Point, Wirral

Then recently, I copied some pictures off my camera from a special day that M and I had spent at Formby Point on the Wirral, Merseyside. It had been special for one particular moment. I had an urge to go down a particular path despite it not looking particularly promising, and despite the weather being cold. I had that urge. So much so, i connected to the forest and expanded my aura into it in order to “feel” what was going on. Something was calling…

As we were walking through a mixed forest of pine trees and birch trees near to the shoreline I saw a peculiar bent-over tree that reminded me of my favourite tree in Delamere Forest and also Alderley Edge which were also bent over.

Delamere's bent over tree

I stopped next to the tree. M realised that I wasn’t following her and stopped too. Why had I stopped? I filled the time in by taking some pictures while I thought about an answer to that question. After the first photo I felt odd. I didn’t want to take any more pictures, but I made myself zoom in on the way that a birch tree had grown into the bent over pine tree, but all the time I was doing this something was nagging at me, saying “This is irrelevant!”. Very odd feeling, so I stopped taking pictures.

Even though M was waiting for me I said I needed a moment. I tuned into the pine tree, placing my hand a foot above the point where the birch tree joined it, and the crook of its “arm” as it reached for the sky. A frisson of energy made me shiver and I used the connection to send loving thoughts to the tree, and to the forest in general, wishing it a long life and thanking it for being so unusual and delightful to look at.

Then we carried on our walk. The sky was grey, dull and cloud-covered, threatening rain. Minutes later I had collected shells from the shore and washed them in the sea, asking for the sea to bless the shells. For some reason I would need them later, and I put them into my pocket. We walked back. The rain stayed away until we got back to the car. We had been very lucky.

Today, I copied the pictures from that visit to my PC and looked at them. Here is the one of the bent-over tree:

What are those glowing circles?

What can I say? Low light, no rain, no dust, and too many coincidences.

Gwas. Believing again.