The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘ley line’

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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As a pre-cursor to our trip to Greece I have been researching two aspects of energy forms that keep arising in works that I read, often seemingly un-related to the main topic. Those forms are some very early archetypes of the Male and Female earth energies – namely Typhon and Delphine.

Typhon was created by the union of Ouranos and Gaea. Ouranos is seen as the Sky Father, and Gaea as the Earth Mother. We have already encountered a site dedicated to this energy form: Tyfos circle in North Wales.

Typhon – a whirlwind of celestial energies

Now we are about to visit Delphi, where Delphine is the female counterpart to this energy. She is the dragoness that actuated The Oracle of Delphi. Her name signifies “womb” and she is associated with the bowels of the Earth and its prophetic forces, which were always rumoured to be gases escaping from the depths of the earth. These vapours were supposed to have a hypnotic effect on the Sybilline Oracles, and gave them the power of prophetic vision and pronouncement.

“A monster in the form of a serpent-tailed. Dragon-woman. Sister of Typhon. She was the guardian of the Corycian Cave where Typhon hid the sinews he cut from the body of Zeus when they fought. In another story, until it was driven out by Apollo, the dragon was the originator of the revelations that inspired the Pythia to make her pronouncements. Some say she is the same as Echidna. Occasionally called Delphine, Delphyne, Echidna, Echidne, Ekhidna or ‘snake’.” (source: Mythology Dictionary)

Delphyne – Half snake, half woman

Linked with the constellation of Delphinus (The Dolphin)

“This earliest oracle [at Delphi] was protected by a horrible dragon named Delphyne or Python, who was devastating the countryside. When Apollo was still very young, he slew the dragon, claimed the oracle for himself and established funerary games (the Pythian Games) in order to appease the dead monster’s spirit. He dedicated one of his symbols—a three-legged stool called a tripod—to the shrine and installed his own priestess, the Pythia, upon it. According to tradition, the Pythia was seated in the midst of vapors billowing from the earth beneath her tripod, seated in a trancelike state induced by the mists and by chewing laurel leaves, babbling her incoherent prophecies that were then translated into Homeric hexameter by a priest [1]. From her sometimes garbled muttering, the priest would translate into hexameter verse. The Pythia never gave a straight answer…” [Delphi by Ron Leadbetter].

Yet again we have the solar hero slaying the female dragon form.

“Delphinus lies east of Aquila, on the edge of the Milky Way, occupying, with the adjoining aqueous figures, the portion of the sky that Aratos called the Water. It culminates about the 15th of September.” (source: Constellation of Words)

Well, we will be going there in February, when the sites are just beginning to spring to life. Once again we are being drawn towards a primal earth energy site, a site of a powerful ley line, and a site associated with divination. Let’s see if I get to meet with Pythia, and to work with the powers of the Oracle of Delphi.

A song for Merlin is nothing like A Song For Europe (you may be pleased to hear). I was tasked with discovering the various lines of the song or poem, and then learning to recite it at a northern stone circle whose location i had been given in a vision. One snag – the poem was in Old Welsh – I don’t speak Welsh (although I’m trying to learn occasional modern phrases). Also, I had to gather the lines using remote viewing, and then correctly interpret them so that they had meaning and I could recite them with the correct intent. Oh – no problem then! This post gives some background on that part of the task. In this post I will be describing how I came to deliver the poem at the right place at the right time in order to unlock the Merlin energy from its trap and release it for my own uses.

Let me explain briefly what I felt I was dealing with here. I consider, at this stage in my development, that Merlin is a psychological archetype. I feel that I am able to use the mythology, the legend, and thus the thought-form that Merlin has become in order to access parts of my subconscious capabilities (knowledge, observation, power). To me, Merlin therefore represents a characters who is the embodiment of particular possibilities for spiritual growth. All I know about that potential is that it can be realised by following “quests” (or a set of tasks) that require me to go to some effort to improve myself, or to mine for arcane knowledge, and sometimes to learn a new skill or magickal process that I can use to unlock this potential. Beyond that is madness.

 The origins of that vision were a month ago, but now I have had the chance to conclude the quest. Here’s the story.

Imagine a sunny day in Cumbria. I couldn’t. I certainly couldn’t remember one, so when the day started grey and drizzling I wasn’t hopeful. An hour’s drive north later Kal and I were driving into a clear blue sky and the day looked promising. I had various sites printed out and highlighted on OS maps, but there was no strict agenda. All of the sites were, amazingly, in close proximity to each other. We would only need to travel for an hour to see all of the sites that I had previously picked. This seemed like a good idea considering Kal’s situation (he’ll tell you about this).

The Goggleby Stone

We approached Shap and initially tried to find a stone circle marked on the OS Map. Not there. We couldn’t find it. It was supposed to be right next to the A6 road just off Junction 39 of the M5 motorway. Couldn’t find it. It’s amazing how many stone circles disappeared in this area when the motorway came through. Almost as if…. no I won’t say it. We headed for a standing stone instead. We found the Goggleby Stone easily. It is situated next to a marked path which makes it easy to get to, and it was quite obvious sat on its little hill amongst the turnips. We approached through the turnips with the daintiest of footsteps so as not to disturb any of the crop. Considering we’re bungling idiots we did very well not to trample anything.

The stone was lovely. It had a nice feel. You could see that the farmer had kindly fertilised the stone to make it grow better, as there were remnants of sticky straw welded to the sides. Cattle seemed to have rubbed the underside of the protrusion as it was worn smooth. The setting was glorious on this sunny day – stone-walled fields of patchwork greens all round and a bank of trees to shield the motorway from view. Delightful. I set to work.

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Karnak Temple

Karnak temple is only a few miles outside of Luxor. The temple is connected to Luxor temple via a row of hundreds of carved sphinxes – nothing like the size of the famous Giza sphinx, but with each one being at least man-sized or slightly larger that makes for one hell of an impressive sight when you see them lined up in a vast avenue. There is a dowsable energy ley line linking the two temples of Karnak and Luxor along which the sphinxes are placed.

Talking of impressive, the Karnak temple complex covers a vast area in itself. With several generations of pharaoh adding their own impressive extensions to the original temple there ended up being six distinct “pylons” or gates before an invasion of Persians then Romans put a stop to the proceedings. In addition to the huge main area dedicated to Amun-Re (the Precinct of Amun-Re), there are smaller satellite temples dedicated to the female deity Mut, and their son Montu. This makes the place sound quite simple – in fact it is incredibly complex having been presided over the at least thirty pharaohs.

View along the main Karnak temple aisle

The Aura of the Scarab Statue

The final touch is the inclusion of a sacred lake, and a scarab beetle statue which has a myth attached to it concerning it being a wishing status. The idea is to walk around the statue seven times in an anti-clockwise direction and your wish will come true.

I started the dowsing in the middle of a crowd of tourists at the scarab beetle statue. M wanted to walk around the scarab, so I let her. She was the only one doing this at first, but within two circles she was being joined by others who were copying the idea. By the fourth time around she had about 20 people circling around with her! I began to dowse when she started the perambulation. Was she generating any energy doing this, I wondered. She was, it seemed. I took a reading of the aura of the statue at that point. It was about ten feet wide.

As she continued to circle and more people joined her I could feel the aura expanding. I kept taking readings all the way through her walk. The aura seemed to be expanding faster than I could take dowsing readings! The more people that joined in, the faster the aura expended. Soon I had to stop at the lake that was 20 feet away because the aura was heading out into the water! She came back to join me. I didn’t ask what she’d wished for. It was for her to find out if such ideas came true.

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There are some people with whom I have a special connection. Kal is obviously one – whenever we work together or even just at the same location, something interesting, even life-changing, always happens. Another special person is my friend Mike. Mike’s psychic abilities always give a totally different slant on the work we do. Lately we have taken to clearing psychic blockages, or clearing away dark areas of energy from sites, in particular at churches. So when Mike came to visit at the beginning of December I knew that something interesting was likely to happen. And I was not disappointed.

I had been investigating a new energy ley that I believe exists between The Wirral and Derbyshire. Due to the location of the ley and the types of sites that it goes through I have been provisionally calling the line The Royal Line. When I come to reveal it in due course then this will all make sense. This weekend in December was my first outing along the line to determine whether it really existed at the locations that I had theorised that it would. My first stop was a nearby village with its St.John the Evangelist church. Such churches are a common recurring theme along this ley.

St John's Church, Kingsley, Cheshire

Mike and I spent a short while on the car park side of the church noticing a “dark patch” emanating from the corner of the car park. We decided to come back to that later. I wanted to find the ley line, if it existed, and the investigate the church’s exterior. I was drawn to a white birch tree with peeling paper bark, the like of which I had rarely seen. It was an outstandingly beautiful contrast to the leaden grey skies all around us, and we admired its beauty before I began to dowse for the ley. Within minutes I had located it. It was easy to find – it ran the entire length of the church and the width of the church was the width of the energy ley. The ley was balanced at this point and needed no work doing to it to harmonise it. Great. Time to move on.

Near Miss Black Spots

As we peered into the road from the churchyard I pointed out a specific spot in the road where I had seen several cars have near misses, and which always made me feel uncomfortable when I drove over it. Mike noticed that there was some red tarmac at that point – an indicator that the local council also thought that this was a place to drive cautiously. In fact, there was a solar-powered “30″ sign there too which flashes at anyone doing in excess of this speed, despite the fact that they are at the lower end of a long downhill stretch, making 30mph pretty difficult to attain.

Mike said that he felt that the line of holly bushes that marked the end of the church’s boundary, and which coincided with the accident blackspot, was hiding a flow of negative energies. We tracked back into the grounds and found that the negative energy was being emitted from a house on the other side of the holly barrier. Hmmm…someone in that house was giving out bad vibes, and this was being drawn along the hedge and into the point in the road where the near misses were happening. Interesting! I was about to dowse some more when Mike began to get psychic impressions about the person in the house. Then suddenly I was getting them too! I knew things about this person – felt how they felt, knew things about their life – it was all very strange to suddenly begin to describe this as though the person themselves were speaking this out loud. Between us we diagnosed the situation. I won’t divulge any more, except to say that the saving grace was that someone else was counteracting the negativity with some positive energies, and this was leaving the energy ley in a balanced state. Yet, the negativity was still feeding into the road and its vulnerable black spot. We decided to take a different tack and see if there was anything we could do on the other side of the road.

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On a day that only a mother could love I dragged my long-suffering spouse into the farthest reaches of our lands to the western shores of Pembrokeshire. Why would I do such a thing to a nice lady? Well, I had taken the day off to celebrate Samhain, and it was part of my year’s quest that I should resolve the link between Berth and Death. That’s The Berth – a Shropshire hillfort – and Arthur’s Grave, the final destination for a mythical character and a hedge druid. If you haven’t read the beginning of this story, then may I refer you to this post? I feel compelled to do so.

So, the story was that “The Death of Scorpio”, or the coincidence of the constellation appearing at the point of the western sunset along the south-western axis that joined The Berth to Arthur’s Grave was the reason I was making a four hour drive along slippery autumnal-bedecked roads to hike into the back of beyond. As I journeyed that day I was continuously recognising places that Kal and I had passed on our journey to the same location earlier in the year at Spring Equinox. On that occasion I had come to Beddarthur (Arthur’s Grave) as the final part of a quest to use the energies of three stars to unlock an inactive part of my DNA sequence, and potentially unlock some hidden healing powers. At the time I had no idea what I had done. During the year I discovered that I had acquired an ability to draw energy from plants to use to negate the dark and twisted energies left behind by some humans upon death, and I had also unleashed a guiding spirit of a knight who had been enlisted to assist me with such work.

All that seemed far away and certainly locked deep in the back of my mind as I wrestled with the increasingly powerful and playful winds that rose to meet us as we crested the hills from which Stonehenge’s powerful healing stones had been hewn. Today my mind was focused on the mundane matter of the rip in my hiking boots that were making one foot wet and squelchy.

View across Arthur's Grave to site of the Bluestones

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Even though Kal and I had gone to Lud’s Church for Lughnasagh (Lammas) I wanted to do something of my own, so I took some time off work to go on a little outing of my own. The dowsing rods had indicated that the best place to visit would be Anglesey, and so I sought out some sites that were of interest to me given the moon’s phase, the nature of the festival day, and my preference for wanting to know more about standing stones.

Thus, I chose to visit three sites along the A5025 which courses through Anglesey’s eastern side. I have seen many of the sites along the coastal regions all around the island of the Druids, but this road was a little further inland, so it was new territory for me. The weather was cloudy with occasional showers, but I was not going to be put off. I had work to do!

1. Ty Gwyn standing stone (Megalithic)

Standing on a small hill above a number of car salesrooms this standing stone is easy to find, and relatively easy to access (if you don’t mind hopping over gates). The stone stands proudly on the crest of the hill and the hill provides stunning views of other hills around, and across the Menai Straits to Snowdonia. The stone is shaped in the classic fashion – a wide flattened shape with one relatively pointed edge and the other side a more rounded edge.

Upon dowsing I found that there was male energy emerging from the pointed flat edge of the stone, and directed due eastwards towards the next standing stone at Llandegfan called Pen-Y-Maen. I put down the dowsing rods and stood in the flow of this male energy. With my hand I could feel the strong stream of subtle energy flowing out of this sharp edge.  Male energy and I are not very compatible so it was only a few moments of standing in this flow of energy before my head began to tighten, which is the prelude to me getting a headache. I stepped out of the flow and the tightening eased off immediately.

Llandegfan energy ley line

I found that the male energy was emerging from the geology beneath the stone. The stone had been positioned on this point because it was a natural weak point where male earth energy emerged. It was also the point where this weakness intersected a neutral ley line. Putting a stone of this shape at this point, broadside on to the neutral ley, meant that the male earth energy would rise into the stone and be directed to the narrowest point of the stone. This point was angled towards where the male energy was intended to go.

I don’t yet know why this male energy is important in the wider sense, except that male clockwise-spiralling energy has the properties of invigoration and motivation. On a map, if the line is extended eastwards it joins with hut circles and settlements on the North Wales coast at Llanfairfechan and atop the Penmaenmawr hills. Continued further it ends up at St.Asaph. Interesting, but inconclusive of any kind of theory about the usefulness or purpose of this male energy at the moment.

The Ty-Gwyn standing stone overlooks car showrooms

The next unusual finding was related to a patch of flattened grass. There were cows in the field so it was a fairly safe assumption that the cows were responsible for the flattened patch that was concentrated neatly around the sharp point of the stone. It would seem, then, that the female cattle were quite content, nay preferred, to deposit themselves for periods of time at the place where the male energy was emerging from this stone. Obviously, this would not have provided them any shelter at all! So, it may be an indicator that cows like male earth energy?

Cows seem to enjoy the energy output from this stone

2. Llanddyfnan standing stone (Megalithic) [Map]

A few miles further down the road from the previous stone was the much-easier-to-spot stone of Llanddyfnan. In fact, if you’re driving from Pentraeth to Talwryn (a common route for everyone, surely?) then you can’t really miss the stone. It is in a field right next to the road and next to a farm. With it being early in the morning I didn’t want to disturb the farmer with my request to visit, so I simply hopped over for a quick peek and a quick dowse. The only curious onlookers were the herd of bulls in the field adjacent, who again showed an amazing level of interest in what I was doing. Cattle and dowsing!

When I dowsed I found many of the same properties as the previous stone:-

• Male energy emerging from the “cutting’ edge of the flat stone
• Stone positioned to be broadside on to a ley line (in this case running North-South)
• The male energy was being sent off in a westward direction, following the angle of the stone’s thinnest edge.

Another male energy generating stone side on to a neutral ley

So, some corroborative evidence concerning the nature of standing stones and their orientation. It seems that stones are either chosen for their angular qualities, or were shaped accordingly so that there was one thinner edge and a broad side to the stone. The purpose of this seems to have been to mutate, or harness the existing earth energies by placing the stone on a spot of weak geology where earth energies are being emitted from under the ground. The spot was also chosen because it coincides with the path of a neutral energy ley. The stone is fitted broadside on to the energy ley, and its width matches that of the energy ley so as to capture all of the flow.  Some form of transmutation seems to occur within the stone as a result of this, and the resulting male energy tends towards the thinnest edge of the stone where it is emitted as a concentrated ray of male energy.

That being established, I moved on to deal with a more druidic aspect of my work – to seek knowledge through meditation at a sacred site. I chose a dolmen near to a place called Benllech further down the A5025. I will tell you about this episode next time.

Gwas.