The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘fertility’

Kal had just flown back from New York where he had been taking a well-earned break from his work in Devon. I, too, had just got back from my holidays in Northumberland and was eager to get out and about to fulfill the third and final part of my Spring Equinox quest. You may remember that I had been given the promise of some form of change that would take place in me, possibly to promote my ability to grow plants, and that tis had involved me identifying three stars in three constellations that had the right energies for me to use int he process of this transformation. Having done the previous two site visits in one day (Lud’s Church and then Arthur’s Cave) I now had a final destination that was even further afeidl that I wanted to get to – Beddarthur – a sort of stone circle in the far reaches of Pembrokeshire.

Sunday 29th May began with spots of rain and dark cloud making the whole sky grey and uninviting. I had just decided to make the journey to the Preseli Mountains in Pembrokeshire when I looked at my phone to check for messages. There was one from Kal, which was a surprise because he had been unusually silent for the last week or so since I got back from Paris. I was about to send out a search party when I noticed the text message and read it. “What are you doing today? Wanna meet up? Usual place?” Aha! So, he was alive, and was around too. I texted him back – “I’m going out – wanna join me on a quest?” How could he resist? He didn’t. We agreed to meet an hour later which gave me time to get everything prepared.

When it came to leave I drove off with Kal eager to tell me his tales of New York. We hadn’t got far when I realised I had forgotten two very vital ingredients – my staff and my wallet! About turn! Kal revealed that such things were a major part of his two weeks in New York too. He had done plenty of going back over his trail in his adventures, but I’ll let him tell you all about that in his own time. For now, let’s continue with the story of the stone circle in Pembrokeshire. The journey was tediously slow. I have noticed this about this particular task. It seems that there is a particular timing to be achieved and the universal forces at work are ensuring that my timing is correct by placing barriers in my way such that I arrive at the correct time. On my other day out to the other connected sites in Derbyshire and Monmounthshire I encountered the same thing – really slow traffic getting in front of me at every turn, impeding my progress. So much so that on the first day out I could only do two of the sites in stead of all three in one day, which was my original intention. I felt that this was all designed for a reason yet still it was very difficult to live with.Driving for four hours at 40mph becomes quite a cross to bear when you are eager to get things done. Nevertheless, it seems that this slowing down of progress was necessary – you will see why timing becomes important when I mention the energy of the constellation Perseus.

The constellation of Perseus - The Hero

We arrived and began to walk up the hill. After a few minutes I stopped – I had forgotten something! The small hand-worn stone that I had collected from Le Jardin Des Tuileries in Paris during a psychic moment had been left in the car, even though I had got it out and shown it to Kal, and then left it in a prominent position, ready to be taken out once we parked up. How could I have forgotten it? I had to go back down the hill and retrieve it from the car. Yet again I had to retrace my steps. I blamed the episode on Kal. Clearly, his strange energies were creating this phenomenon, I joked.

We arrived at the summit of Carn Sian and caught sight of our destination marker – a gathering of angled bluestone rocks called Carn Bica that were the place where several paths came together on the way to Carn Menyn. Carn Menyn is the mountain from which the bluestones that were transported to Stonehenge came from. That particular summit was not our destination today – today I only had eyes from finding the small stone circles known as Beddarthur. As we sat on the angular rock outcrop overlooking Carn Menyn I spotted the stone circle just below us in the saddle between the two mountain peaks of Carn Sian and Carn Menyn. We descended the short distance and prowled around the outside of the circle warily, looking for an energetic entrance and assessing the circle. The first thing to notice was that it was not a circle! It was much more of a lozenge shape, an oval flattened at either end and with almost straight sides that only curved slightly at the ends. The stones at each end were embedded rather than prominent, giving the feeling of entrance points, and each of the standing stones that made the circle was angled inwards. The whole structure looked like a human rib cage rather than any stone circle we had seen before.

Beddarthur - looking like a rib cage

I entered by feeling for a space in the energy field. I asked permission to enter from the guardian spirit and felt like I was able, nay pulled, to enter. Straight away Kal took my dowsing rods and began to look for the best place for him to be. I already knew where my perfect spot was, my power centreA place where a person of a particular alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. (see ‘AlignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment.’) feels particularly comfortable and empowered. The place is an energetic centre where a particularly beneficial combination and formation of energies is formed into a pattern that is harmonic with the person for whom it can be called a power centre., and I walked towards it and bumped into Kal as the rods in his hands circled on exactly the same spot. We laughed. Looks like we would be fighting for the best place! Someone had also found it to be an energetic centre because they had left a hand-sized chunk of quartz that was striated with layers of the local bluestone too. Interesting. For now I left if there. There was no time for playing about here – I had work to do and it would be a difficult and involved task, I felt, so I had better get on with it. This was the culmination of three sites and their energies, and I had not a clue how to proceed to make this whole energetic transformation work. The pressure was building.

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In this third and final part of our excursion to Yorkshire I talk about the fascinating experiments that we did at Bolton Abbey – site of a ruined priory and a working church. There was so much good dowsing work done at this site that it needed a whole post to itself to do it justice. I reckon we’ll still be discussing and debating these findings for many years to come!

6. Bolton Abbey. [Bing map]

Bolton Abbey is an evocative place for me. It is probably the first place that I remember visiting as a child. I remember that my mother really wanted to go for some reason. I remember a tall long hallway with a lovely grass surface and the early Spring sunshine shining through the glassless ruined windows. I also remember it being cool and windy. So, it was with some delight that I found that this place was easily reachable as we ventured around the various megalithic sites in the area. I also knew that it was the kind of place that would be ideally suited to us doing some experimental dowsing, and I had lined up a lot of questions to work through.

How Bolton Priory used to look

We managed to find the exact hall that I remembered and did our dowsing work there, even though the area was timidly fenced off. I wasn’t going to be put off from that – I had questions that needed answers and memories to evoke! We wil shortly be releasing several Druid Diary MP3s of the long recording that we took while driving back to Cheshire that day – these recordings go over many of the results recorded below and put them in context. Watch out for those soon.

A summary of the results would be that we worked with magnets on male, female and neutral energies finding that magnets affect earth energies, but there is a cost. We also found that the site was now aligned with Deneb in Cygnus constellation, drawing upon blue/green/yellow spectrum of energies to promote fertility. Within those hallowed walls we got out a long set of questions to ask about various topics.

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Saturday 29th May - Four Knocks, County Meath

On the morning of Saturday 29th May I roped Kal into one of my crazy ideas. We would spend the next two days on a modern pilgrimage, just like we had done at Glastonbury the year before. We would find a starting point and then let the dowsing rods direct us from site to site. For me, I would set my intention for this pilgrimage to be to work on each of the seven chakras and to see what came out of trying to do that. For Kal, he would just do what he does – see what happened at each place and go with it. So, with the help of the iMegalith iPhone application and my SatNav system we trekked off to the starting point, which I had determined would be a henge and mound close to Four Knocks.

We didn’t get very far trying to find the henge and mound. The mound was visible in a farmer’s field, but the supposed henge had been… well, let’s assume it was removed and ploughed out of existence! Not a good start. Was there anywhere else we could pick up the quest? Our dowsing showed that nearby Four Knocks would be suitable. As soon as we got the rods crossing we kind of knew that this had actually been the right place all along, but something had been preventing us from dowsing that from afar. We sort of had to be in the area to zoom in on it. Perhaps we had prevented ourselves from ‘finding’ Four Knocks prior to actually being there because we knew you had to obtain a key in order to get in? Who knows. We obtained the said key (by the way – the directions are not very clear – but we found the house eventually and got the key by leaving a small deposit with a nice lady) and went to discover this famous mound’s secrets and begin a quest.

Entrance to Four Knocks

We opened the iron door up (iron – aaargh!!) and began to settle in. I needed some stuff from the car that I had forgotten, and by the time I got back to the mound it was swarming with a minibus-load of tourists from various parts of the world – America, Japan, Australia….all over. Their guide had clearly gone off to get the key without realising that we already had it. Ten minutes later he was in the mound beginning his guided tour of the place, which I earwigged into, of course. Hey – it was free for me to listen!! And jolly interesting it was too, although I could see Kal twitch every now and again, and I was biting my tongue at some of the speculative leaps the guide was making to fill the gaps in the archaeology with fantasy and pure imagination. He was very careful to preface everything with “My guess would be...”, or “Perhaps they might have…”, and even in the dim light I occasionally caught Kal swinging his dowsing rods behind the guide, shaking his head as though to say, “Nope!” It’s funny how dowsing can sometimes make you feel quite confident about being able to find out hidden knowledge, and yet later in the day that confidence would be completely reversed, but we’ll come to that in a later tale.

I don’t know if this is the traditional position but at Four Knocks we have the female on top and the male underneath. Yes, on top of the rounded mound there was female energy all over it. All around the outside of the mound was a male energy lineThe direction energy takes when moving. It may be straight or curved, in several dimensions and be composed of one or more different types of energies, i.e. negative, positive or neutral. Energy lines can be found at standing stones and ancient sites but are a general feature in all energy fields., waving and running around in a sunwise direction. Kal was spending quite a time outside, pacing around and around, working something out, but I decided to get myself inside to take some pictures of the rock carvings and to try to work out what I might have to do to work on my Root Chakra – the first part of my modern pilgrimage. That was the intention, but instead Four Knocks had its own agenda for working my chakras!! I will explain in a moment.

Inside there was more than the usual amount of decoration. Many of the swirling circular shapes were familiar to us, but there was an abundance of zig-zag lines and lozenge shapes carved into the lintels of the recesses in the mound that seemed to be quite unique to this particular chamber, or at least rarely seen in such quantity elsewhere.

Zig-zag lintel decoration at Four Knocks

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In this post I’d like to talk about some of the theories of a man called Viktor Schauberger. I found that I wanted to write a great deal about this man as I sympathised with so many of his views about the way Nature works, and the appalling treatment of Nature by mankind. However, I intend to keep the post limited to those ideas of his that I have found correspond to my own findings through dowsing and druidry. Reading about Viktor’s work with water and centripetal forces will, I am sure, suggest many other interesting areas for me to pursue with the dowsing rods, but for now I wanted to highlight those elements of his theories that I have already found fit with my own thinking about subtle energies.

Viktor Schauberger was responsible for some quite remarkable theories, all of which he derived from his observations of Nature. He was born in Austria in 1885 and died in 1958. He was a “forest master” in the Alps as a young man, and developed a pioneering log flume to transport logs down the steep slopes using the motion and qualities of water that he had discovered. Beyond that, he was co-opted to work for the Nazi government during the war where he developed a flying saucer based on his ideas about centripetal forces, but his prototypes were destroyed on the orders of the German Army, and his papers confiscated by the Allies as the war came to an end.

He was passionate about the idea of replacing the trees that were, and still are, being removed from the environment. He knew that trees gave the necessary shadeA shade is the energy body of a human being that has become transfixed at a geographical location. The shade retains many of the qualities of the human that it was attached to (memories, character traits, a level of sentience, movement between places known in life). to keep the rivers and streams running that supply fresh “living” water to our species. He worked on projects to enliven water through the same processes as he observed in mountain streams, and in such phenomena as tornadoes and water spouts.

He developed new forms of propulsion through his ‘implosion engine’, and developed methods of producing electricity directly from water. In his later years he worked on agricultural projects trying to convert farmers from using iron implements to copper as he knew that iron had a debilitating effect upon the quality of the soil.

To the end Schauberger attempted to ensure that his work would be for the benefit of all, and not to be used for commercial dominance or for military purposes. It is debatable as to how far he was able to do this, as an American consortium cheated him of his patents leaving him a desolate and destitute man.

Yet he leaves a legacy of ideas that, although unable to be implemented in his own time, I hope will begin to see the light of day in our lifetime, or we will inevitably witness the decline of our own species – his ideas were that important. Here’s what Alick Bartholemew, a writer trying to bring Schauberger’s views back into circulation, say of him:

“In the years to come he will be acknowledged as one of the principal guiding spirits of the 21st century and beyond, who brought about a fundamental shift of Copernican proportions in humankind’s appreciation of Nature and natural energies.” (Nexus magazine article)

 Mystical experience

I find a lot of what Schauberger talks about seems very aligned with modern Druidic philosophy. It therefore was not much of a surprise to find that, as with many great thinkers, he found his inspiration from direct contact with Nature’s intelligence. Here’s a quote from the book Hidden Nature (reference at foot of post) that describes a process that is now very familiar to me:-

“As a young man, searching for inspiration in his beloved forest, Viktor was sitting quietly by the bank of a pristine stream when he unexpectedly found that his consciousness entered the water. It connected with an intelligence in the water that spoke to him. It told him what movements it needed to make in order to stay healthy, and under what conditions. It was from this mystical experience that he built up his awareness of how healthy water is essential for the creation and maintenance of all life.”

The above quote shows that many people who go on to study Nature’s workings are initially inspired by a mystical experience, or that such an experience is a great motivator to continue delving deeper into the mysteries. It also demonstrates that when the human mind resonates in sympathy with Nature all sorts of connections can be made revealing knowledge and inspiration. I liken this episode to the many instances where I have achieved the same levels of connection, a prime example being West Kennet Long Barrow, where I was informed about the purpose of and path through each of the chambers within. That was not information that I could have deduced or reasoned for myself – it took ‘divine inspiration’, if you will.

Male and female energies

Nature favours a constant movement between male and female polarities and continuously seeks higher states of complexification. So states Schauberger,but the theory is also similar to statements made by another more modern mystic Terence McKenna when he talks of Nature’s development, or the journey through time towards the Omega point at the end of time that he called The Eschaton. Nature’s energies spin clockwise and anti-clockwise, they expel centrifugally then pull back in centripetally. These movements, these breaths of life, are the heartbeat of the planet, the pulsations that permeate existence. Schauberger warned us that to head for the stagnant middle ground where nothing oscillates, the stable central point, is to head for a monochromatic existence which will deny growth. Instead we thrive most when dancing around that centre point in active spirals and vortices of creativity and destruction, balancing out their forces through the constant movement between their poles.

I see this reflected at ancient sacred sites where energies play in the sun and moonlight, where the spirals and vortices make the dowsing rods twirl in sweeping movements of sacred geometric patterns. In the ambiance of these living energy fields I feel very alive myself, interacting with the earthly and celestial energies, creating my own imaginary energy movements to contribute to the dance. Some sites I have visited no longer have any of this movement. Destroyed circles and ruined barrows often have mere remnants of these forces. Some may still have a neutral ley lineThe term used by many British dowsers to describe an energy leyA straight line of neutral energy linking two or more sacred sites or other energetic centres. This is often confused with Alfred Watkins’ concept of the Ley Line. Strictly speaking a ley line does not necessarily mean a neutral energy line, only a sight alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. between notable places, whereas an energy ley is like a radial spoke in a wheel, with energy flowing outwards across the land in a straight line. It has sometimes been found that the energy ley can be diverted from its strict straight path by changes in the landscape or strong attractors that pull it away from its original course. Energy leys may have inter-twining streams of male and female energies weaving along them, as though the energy ley is an attractor, a pathway or a conduit for the male and female energies.. It is easily confused with ley and therefore its use is not recommended by dowsers. going through them, but the female and male energies that once swirled around these ley lines are no longer there. Sometimes we see the hand of modern man in this destruction – stones removed; iron cages and concrete houses erected; streams dammed or diverted; trees chopped down; power lines swooping overhead; transmitter masts atop ancient hills – all these factors nullify and neglect the interplay of natural energies, and dowsing such sites can be a very dull and dispiriting affair.

The Spiral and the Vortex

Whilst reading about Schauberger’s concepts of energy I had another of those spine-tingling moments when I saw the double-vortex shape. That shape was exactly what Kal and I had dowsed at Arbor Low stone circle. We had talked about our lack of drawing talents and whether we could render the shape sufficiently well to include it in a post for all to see. Here was that shape, not only in its conical format, but also shown as a wonderful spherical shape too. It was at that moment that I knew we were speaking the same language – the mathematics that had arisen out of Schauberger’s energy concepts and which was revealed in its sacred geometry was the same three-dimensional shape that we were dowsing at ancient sacred sites all over the country.

The point at which the cones meet is the “earth point” – the point at which the energies touch the earth. This is where we were dowsing the spirals – on top of the earth – but we knew that we were dowsing a two-dimensional pattern that was something that existed in three dimensions as cones of energy rising above and going down into the earth. The favoured shape of energy is the spiral and the vortex – the spiral being centrifugal and male, the vortex being centripetal and female. These are the most natural shapes in existence:

“Spirals are a basic form of motion in Nature, but Schauberger’s recognition of the vortex as the principle creative movement system in the Universe is at the core of his Eco-technology and the key to his valuable implosion research. From the tornado to plant growth, it is nature’s mechanism for transforming energy from one level to another.” (p.33 Hidden Nature)

The spiral is the shape that is aligned to the male energy and which moves outwards from the centre – centrifugally. The vortex is the shape that is aligned to the female energy and it moves inwards towards the centre – centripetally. Here is a comparison of the qualities of those forms of energy:

• Centrifugal energy:  male, sun-powered, disintegrating, decelerating, dissipating, destructive, divergent, loosening, friction-inducing, gravity -> diffused power is noise -> inward to outward
• Centripetal energy: female, moon-powered, consolidating, accelerating, integrating, contracting, convergent, formative, friction-reducing, levity -> concentrated power is silence -> outward to inward.

If these energetic forces are removed from water or the earth, then they become stagnant or infertile. They die. The process that Viktor was describing was the very life force of the planet itself. Notice how that life force is also dependent upon the direct and indirect energies of The Sun and Moon, but also how we, the human race, have a responsibility to maintain its vitality and flow as well. This man was defining scientifically the very essence of what I feel it is to be a druid in the modern world – an energy worker, an ecologist, a student of Nature.

The effect of moonlight and sunlight

One of the things that Schauberger discovered very early on in his studies of the properties of water was the effect that sunlight and moonlight had upon it. The “strength” of water was altered by the effects of sunlight, making it “weaker” and less able to support weight. Conversely, moonlight, especially a full moon, strengthened water. These effects were at the heart of Schauberger’s successful construction of log flumes to transport timber from the higher slopes of the Alpine forests to the timber yards in the valleys below.

When water was cooler and moonlit he could transport heavier logs. Temperature was part of this equation certainly, but there is also something more esoteric at work in this finding. Moonlight was having a centripetal effect upon the water – it became more consolidated, had a greater power of levitation. Sunlight made water ‘disintegrate’, i.e. lose its carbonic qualities, shedding oxygen and ‘weakening’. Callum Coats explains it rather prosaically like this:

“In the spawning season, when the rays of the full Moon strike water with a high content of negative-ions at the right angle, its levitational force intensifies to such an extent that even small stimuli are enough to cause a highly excited trout to float upwards in plunging waterfalls. The effect of gravity on the respective body is therefore a question of the inner constitution of the water, the blood or the sap.

Apart from the movement arising from their healthy composition, the carrying and tractive forces of these vital fluids are also influenced by the Sun and the Moon. For instance, were there no Moon, then the heavy Earth would be unable to float autonomously in the space infused with high concentrations of qualigen surrounding it.” (Callum Coats – The Fertile Earth – 2000)

The moon has always had an effect upon us, whether it be literal or metaphorical. It is been associated with the feminine forces of humanity and the Otherworld of myth since we first recorded such things. It is the symbol of creativity and darkness, and is forever associated with the element of water. It is the oscillating effect of the moon as it travels across our  planet between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer that provides the rhythmic pulse of our ocean tides.  The Sun is seen as the direct life-giver, without whose influence life would not exist at all. It is the prime motivator, feeding the movement of all energies. From it we derive the solar-hero myths of taming the dragonDragons are spirit or energetic beings that reside in sacred sites and have a particular location in them and also move throughout the day (and or season). They also leave the sacred site on occasion, which again differentiates them from Genius Loci which don’t. (energies) through its counter-balancing effects to the female forces.

Sonic fertilisation

One final point about Schauberger’s work that relates to subtle energies. In his later career he worked with farmers trying to solve some of the problems associated with agriculture. The problems he saw were those of how to maintain the fertility of the land in the most natural way possible, again by copying the processes inherent in Nature. He observed a rural farmer’s ritual of stirring a barrel of water first one way then the other, whilst sprinkling soil into the mix and singing. When the water was revolving clockwise, the old farmer would sing up the scale of notes. When the direction changed he would sing down a scale. The resulting soil, he found, had a much-increased fertility over the soil that had not been through this process. The old farmer then used this mixture to sprinkle over his farmland to promote the fertility of the fields.

In my own findings relating to sound and earth energies I have been able to find a that a sacred stone’s energetic aura is composed of various levels, each of which correspond to a colour – one of the colours of the rainbow it turns out. As one dowses closer to the stone, so one goes through levels or fields of energy that resonate at a vibrational frequency that corresponds to a colour. For example the outer edge will be red, then orange, then yellow and so on until the inner aura field next to the standing stone is violet. When I played a musical scale at the boundary points of each of the colour fields I found that I could get a positive dowsing response to musical notes as I moved up the scale, so the red boundary would dowse for the lowest note, and the violet boundary for the highest note. The sequence passed through three octaves, but I need more examples before I publish this information.

Schauberger was also the inventor of the “Golden Plough”. Ploughshares were usually made of iron, but Schauberger knew the effect that iron had upon the earth energies in the soil and knew that they created an effect that neutralised the soil making it less fertile. He produced a ploughshare that was copper-coated, and also one made of phosphor brass. The shape was also a unique design being a vortex shape that turned the soil but didn’t damage the root systems in the soil. All these elements contributed to increases in the fertility of the land that made use of his unique designs. The idea that iron negates earth energy echoes the work I did investigating whether iron spikes can neutralise earth energy spirals - they can. Kal and I have also find that iron cages around trees prevent the tree’s aura from extending beyond the cage (see the post on the Holy Thorn Tree on Wearyall Hill). At the Rollright Stones, the King Stone is caged and its aura is limited, however earth energies still pass into the through this stone somehow. Clearly we need to do more work to understand this fully.

I hope I have whetted your appetite for doing some more research on this fascinating man and his theories. To assist you here are some videos and links to books about him.

Related videos:-

Nature Was My Teacher

httpv://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4770477589537728517&ei=JFQUS9qxM4e62wL6rpVX&q=nature+was+my+teacher

The Extraordinary Nature of Water

httpv://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8915966819502040048&ei=bVQUS9iTF5zE2wKRybWXCw&q=extraordinary+nature+of+water&view=3

Sacred Living Geometry

httpv://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5643559434275921302&ei=TVQUS8ecNJvE2wLl_OjIBA&q=sacrfed+living+geometry&view=3

Related books:-

“Hidden Nature: The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger” – by Alick Bartholemew [buy]

“The Fertile Earth: Nature’s Energies in Agriculture, Soil Fertilisation and Forestry” – bu Callum Coats [buy]

“The Water Wizard: The Extraordinary Properties of Natural Water” – by Callum Coats [buy]

Gwas.

Following the the wet footsteps of the water wizard.