The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘fir bolg’

Sunday 30th May – Hill of Tara, County Meath. Ireland.

This is the final post relating to my chakra work in Ireland in late May this year. It has been a long haul for anyone who’s been reading them all! I appreciate you taking the time to stick with it. If you want to read them all in sequence then you just need to search for the tag “gwas ireland” to get them all at once. You think YOU have been babbled at? Wait until you hear about my final chakra encounter at the Hill of Tara complex on our final full day in Ireland!

The place was mobbed. Sunday visitors had the run of the place. We bided our time wandering around and went our separate ways for a while marking time and occasionally dowsing a few things to answer questions that popped into our heads.  I went off to the far north of the site and found an entrance to the site. The entrance consisted of an arc of neutral energy forming an archway. At the base of the archway were two circles of neutral energy, each about two to three feet in width (how many megalithic yards is that – one?). The archway was about five to six feet in width and seven or eight feet in height.

I went in “properly” (i.e. with awareness of what I was doing) through the arcing neutral bridge. Often this changes the way a site responds to your work, and it may account for what happened shortly afterwards.

Two faint faerie rings mark an energetic entrance to Tara

As I wandered back up the slop, following an earth energy line for the hell of it and snaking around from side to side, I decided I had time to visit some of the things that we had skimmed over on our last brief visit. As I had more time I went to each feature and tried to engage with it energetically, with awareness. This approach is always more rewarding that simply being a tourist and taking pictures and wondering why you are there.

The Un-Radiant Stone

I was trying to be clever when I visited this stone. I didn’t dowse it, but instead tried to “feel” it. Sorry. I was crap. I have no information to report back about the stone. It felt kind of…dead. I should have dowsed to see whether it had any energies surrounding it, but I didn’t. Possibly because it was dead? I like to hope so. So, what can I say about it…er…it had a radial brickwork pattern around it – similar to the top of Pendle Hill. The views from that point were stunning and expansive, and the stone was a major attraction for almost everyone visiting the site. I hear it’s a modern reconstruction. Probably why it felt uninteresting. People would arrive, look around, then move on.

View west from the standing stone at Tara

Next on the pagan tick-list was the wishing tree on the western edge of the site. Clearly, this was a more “specialist” attraction. I found that the tree felt rather proud to be bearing the wishes and hopes of so many people – but again this was feeling, not dowsing. The hawthorn was in full bloom and smelled divine, which was reason enough to spend time around the tree. Some people seemed to have attached the most bizarre objects to it, though, including something that looked like a mini pink surfboard! I won’t mention the word “appropriate” in this context. It’s a shame that from the picture you can’t really make out the hundred other small ribbons discretely attached to every branch and twig. A lot of love is hanging on those small old branches.

Wishing tree at Tara - check out the surfboard!

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Sunday 30th May – Hill of Slane 

In the latter half of what had been a busy Sunday (and a full weekend, really) we were on the hunt for two final places to visit. The first needed to be somewhere suitable for working on the third eye chakra (or ‘brow’ chakra as it is also known) and then we would go back to Tara to work on the crown chakra. I say “we”, I mean “me” because Kal had his own quest to do, and that didn’t really involve working on the chakras. I’m sure he will explain in good time. For me, the third eye chakra symbolised the concept of mystical vision, whilst the crown I believed to be linked to higher intelligence. 

As we had found before with Four Knocks, sometimes our dowsing took us to the right area (town, village) but not the exact location. Same here. We were directed to be in Slane (even though we had visited it the previous day and vowed never to return because it had nothing we wanted to see, or so we thought). The dowsing rods, combined with the iMegalith app on the iPhone [get me - I'm a  techno-pagan!], took us back to Slane. It directed us to a small barrow (or ‘souterrain’) in a field. We parked, took one look at the “leprechaun hole” that we would need to squeeze through (thorns, hedge, barbed wire) and gave each other a knowing look. Oh no! Not that again! Lesson learned on this occasion. We retreated back to the car to see what else was around the area. 

I found a web site that mentioned Slane Abbey but we couldn’t find any directions. Oh well, let’s just drive up the lane we were on and turn around and maybe go somewhere else entirely. So, we drove a few yards up the hill and within ten seconds we saw Slane Abbey sitting on top of the hill as it opened out before us. How convenient! 

Approaching Slane Abbey

The information on the Mythical Ireland web page included information about how the monastery was once the kingdom of an Irish King called Slaine, a Fir Bolg (giant warrior). Other sites recount the written description of Slaine as an Irish King of the domain of Leinster:

“Slaine, whence the name? Not hard to say. Slaine, king of the Fir Bolg, and their judge, by him was its wood cleared from the Brugh. Afterwards, he died at Druim Fuar, which is called Dumha Slaine, and was buried there: and from him the hill is named Slaine. Hence it was said: Here died Slaine, lord of troops: over him the mighty mound is reared: so the name of Slaine was given to the hill, where he met his death in that chief abode.” (Source: Edward Gwynn – Metrical Dindshenchas, vol 3. Published, 1925)

Note “the Brugh”, as in the “Brú na Bóinne“, the name of the surrounding Boyne Valley area which incorporates the Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange sites among many others. From his perch atop the Hill of Slane the King had an unparalleled view of his kingdom for many miles around.

The Slane Abbey tower

 OK, history lesson over. Slaine was an ancient Warrior King who was reputedly one of the race of giant Fir Bolg who are supposed to have been an early invading race that conquered Ireland. That sets the scene quite nicely for what was to come. None of which I knew about before it happened, by the way. All I knew was that the place was supposed to be the home of some bloke called Slaine, former King of Ireland. I didn’t want to read the information board’s detail – this chakra work was supposed to be using the third-eye chakra! Surely intuition was the order of the day?

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