The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘sign’

I sometimes find myself doing some very strange things without knowing why. This night was one of those strange evenings, and yet the strangeness would continue beyond this night and lead to an even stranger conclusion by the time I had finished unravelling all of the clues.

I had decided that at some point in the week I would need to go somewhere. The weather was good, so I got out my dowsing rods and began to enquire about a suitable place for me to learn something that would progress me on my spiritual path – the usual request – general and open. The responses I got seemed to indicate that I could find such a place in the county of Shropshire, and that the place existed on the Megalithic Portal, so it was only a matter of bringing up a list of sites in Shropshire and working through a process of elimination to find the site that I was expected to go to. Soon I found it – The Berth – an ancient hillfort and associated pool near the village of Marton a short distance from the main A5 road. I did some reading on the Megalithic Portal about access to the site – not good. Permission from the local farmer is suggested. Well then, a covert visit may be in order given that I would be arriving late at night.

The Berth [Portal]

I put on my dancing trousers (well, the fleece-lined ones – it might be cold) and began to journey southwards from Cheshire. Soon I was past the eastern edges of Wales and skirting the western fringes of England. Within an hour I had arrived at Marton in the dark of the late evening and was searching around on a small-scale OS map for the perfect place to park and navigate through the fields to the hillfort. Luckily, without too much fuss, I found such a place down a road marked “Unsuitable for motor vehicles.” No kidding! Good job I was in a four-wheel drive machine.

A map showing The Berth hillfort in Shropshire

I parked at the only place down the narrow country lane that would fit a car. Using my print-out of a low-level OS map I headed off further down the lane. Five minutes later I realised I must have gone past the entry point I was looking for and doubled back. The entry point turned out to be where I had parked the car! When will I learn to trust my intuition? Such a hard thing to do!

Several times I had to stop myself from asking the obvious question, “What the hell are you doing in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night?“. Luckily, I didn’t allow myself to even try to formulate an answer, but instead began to walk across the fields towards what I hoped was the right place, breathing in the still-warm evening air and wishing I hadn’t muffled myself up because I was beginning to overheat! This is October, right? Supposed to be cold and damp? Instead we are in the tail end of a heatwave and it was still 15 degrees late into the evening. Bizarre weather!

Fortune seemed to be on my side, guiding me towards something whose very impulse and importance I could sense like a scent on the night air.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I decided to return to the world of IT and computing. To this end I had and am applying for various positions with the field of contract web development. To understand the following you will have to appreciate that for the last 12 years I have only ever taken contract positions. In fact I have only had one permanent (permie) position…the first ever job I had about 15 years ago.

The apparently offensive waistcoat

So…I had applied for a contract position training IT, something which I had done many years ago. A couple of days after my application I received a call to ask whether I would take a permie position. I was loath to say yes, but the salary was reasonable and I do like training so I thought I would try the interview at the very least.

A couple of weeks later the day of the interview arrived (that’s one of the differences between permie and contract…how fast do they want you). I had got dressed up in the usual…shirt/waistcoat etc…and I went down the stairs and set off…the sun was shining splendidly.

There is a bit missing here which I will add at the end of the post!

The interview went extremely well. I knocked their socks off. So much so they called me in to meet another couple of bods the next day and they were blown away to. The result. “Come and work for us”

I spent two days pondering whether I should accept the position. This in and of itself should have warned me but I ignored my inner sense and went with my rational brain and took the job.

Today I went in for the first day and honestly I was looking forward to it. I had started at 10am (a late start). It was going good. I got the normal permie treatment…here is an introduction to the company…blah blah blah. This didnt phase me as I had expected it. But I confess it started the itch in my neck.

About half of the morning in and I was called in by the head honcho…it is always a worrying sign when the headman calls you in for a “private” chat.

“Err we have a few concerns, first you have to wear a tie when you come into work.”

“Ah, I dont wear ties”

We both laughed, he thought I was joking, I was serious.

“O and I dont think the waist coat is going to go well when clients (there predominant client is financial institutions) are in”

“O ok, I  guess I can give you that one.”

“and, then there are the jeans, we prefer pants”

“Hmmm I’ll do you two for one, Jeans and Waistcoat for Tie?”

Again we both laughed, he thought I was joking, I was serious.

Does this sound a bit pedantic? That is an opinion and in my opinion, I was dressed clean and tidy and reasonably smart. But it added a little more to the pot.

After this small exchange I carried on the tour of the company. After another half hour I got friendly with another of the bods working there and questioned him regarding the more “work/play” attitudes. For example…

Was one able to access external emails? No, What, not even at lunch? No

How often was overtime? Very often. Was it paid? No, Again, to laughter I pointed out that I didnt do unpaid overtime…what is it with these guys? The reply, “This isn’t a contract job” Seriously!

By lunch time, the pot had overbalanced…

In the interview they had said that I would be doing 30% job coaching. Actually this was non existant, all in all I was all but ready to walk. Wow! I went out into the sunny afternoon and sat in a nearby park to consider my position (pun intended).

Fifty five minutes later I returned and called the guy into a private chat of my own (oooh that felt good) I pointed out to him the various (small and petty) reasons that I had for my decision but in the balance of things, it wasn’t going to work. Five minutes later…adiou!

Adios amigo!

Now then, what the Zarquon has this to do with Dowsing? Well, remember I said that something happened when I was setting off for the interview – back at the top of this post?

Well, at the bottom of the stairs in my house is a mirror on the wall. It has been there for about 12 years and has never caused any problems. The day of the interview just as I was by the door ready to set off it fell on the floor and smashed to bits.

I'd like to see Autoglass repair that!

A rather unfortunate mishap you might think, but fortunately we have a way to bring meaning from chaos. I dropped the pieces in the bin and my mind was wondering about the significance of this event. 7 years bad luck – hah! I don’t believe in that but I had a feeling…So, even though I was rushing for the interview by now I grabbed my dowsing rods and asked a few quick questions…

• Should I go for this interview? No

• Should I accept this job if I am offered it? No

• Should I wait for a more appropriate position? Yes

• Will another position arise soon? Yes

With these answers playing on my mind I continued on for the interview anyway. Twenty minutes later I was on the train musing about the mirror with my feet propped up on the opposite seat (sorry) I noticed that in the confusion I had forgotten to change my shoes…and was wearing trainers! Sigh! Fortunately, I was early enough to be able to get some new shoes before the interview.

And there you have it, what do you make of it? A sign ignored? A coincidence, Just madness?

Kal Malik

Arbor Low stone circle, Derbyshire – November 17th 2009

We had decided to go to Arbor Low on a crackpot mission. Previously, Kal had discovered some radial ley lines emanating from the centre of the site like some kind of ancient spoked bicycle wheel, and I was determined to get some spot on bearings for these radials using my whizzy and shiny and accurate compass. In the high wind that blew that evening, and in the almost complete darkness, this seemed like the kind of foolhardy mission that even a buddhist monk told to sweep up leaves in a hurricane would decline!

Arbor Low is now fully recumbent, like a set of toppled dominoes. When the stones that formed the inner circle within the henge had been standing this must have been one of the most impressive megalithic features anywhere in the north of the country. Still, despite its ruinous state there’s something very active about Arbor Low. Kal in particular always seems to have a very positive experience here. I, on the other hand, am largely ambivalent about the place. I admire it, but I rarely get any meaningful experience from it. Tonight was slightly different – it would be the dowsing that stole the show, and I would be more than impressed by the outcome.

We parked up in the darkness of late evening, having just driven through a tempest of hard rain. We mentally prepared ourselves for the onslaught and stepped out of the car – no rain! Eh? We didn’t argue, but instead kitted ourselves out with packs, torches, hats, gloves – all the usual Winter clobber. Arriving minutes later up at the final gate into the site we stopped to appreciate the fact that the strong wind had dispersed the rain clouds just in time for our visit. What a lovely coincidence, as we had been preparing for days to get wet as usual when visiting Arbor Low. Tonight, it was windy, cool, but not wet, and we were thankful.

I had come here with a secondary objective – to find the site’s sigil, or it’s energy pattern manifested in a shape. I then proposed that we use the sigil to introduce ourselves at the entrance to the site, in the same way as I had done at Wayland’s Smithy. My reasoning was that this intuitive approach back then had ensured I had a good and profitable interaction with the site – perhaps the same could be achieved again if we approached the site in a similar manner? This is how superstitions start!

Kal invited me to get my dowsing rods out with the kind of mischievous air that meant, “You first, you nutter!“, and I knew it. When I had finally found a pair that matched, I took a deep breath, settled into the dowsing mindset, and walked off following the intention to be taken to a place where I could find the site’s signature sigil shape, and off I went round to the right hand side of the raised earthwork, heading up the slope. Immediately I clicked into a snaking path that was characterised by a long peak away from the earthwork, then taking me back along a shallower bend as I approached the edge and so on, until my foot stopped as it hit a rapidly rising piece of land. I had found the “avenue” that leads south-east from the outer earthwork of Arbor Low, and whose purpose no-one has satisfactorily explained. “A ritual processional avenue” is probably the best, but unproductive, guess. Kal was moments behind tracing the same path as myself, but not he wandered onwards to the other side of the avenue. I was vaguely aware of him as the sound of his footsteps moved around but I couldn’t really see him.

I followed the rods as they led me out along the avenue’s edge until they twisted and circled into a spiral some thirty feet out from the earthwork’s outer edge. I looked up – Kal was only ten feet away on the opposite side of the avenue and he was also walking in a circle. We looked at each other in the deep gloom and both said: “Here!”. “Now what?” said Kal. “We ask for the spirit of Arbor Low to manifest its sigil formation.” I directed, and we paused to make that connection and implored the site to respond with a dowsable pattern. With one rod in hand I stepped away from the spiral I was stood on and approached it again with the question, “Is there an energy manifestation here?” to which the rods crossed in affirmation. Stepping back I asked the rods to follow the shape of the formation. I just hoped Kal was doing something similar because I couldn’t see him.

The rods began to twist taking me up the ridge of the avenue and across it in a straight line. Inside the avenue itself the rod swirled back on itself taking me back to where I had started, almost. Just before I got there it twirled around again and began to form a half circle, but then twisted back on that shape too, taking me round the inside of the circle. Then it drew the symmetrical opposite of that shape on the other side (with a little bobble at the top) until I was back where I had started. In my mind I traced the shape several times until I got familiar with it. It was a sophisticated shape – like a man with bowed legs, or an Egyptian ankh, or something similar. I went into the avenue to see how Kal was getting on. “Done.” he said. “What did you find?” I described the shape to him and he nodded with every curve and line I described and then said, “That’s EXACTLY what I got!” and he said it with genuine astonishment. Now, I’ve know this man for some time – he’s not usually disposed to humouring me, and if he gets something different he’s more than eager to tell me so. We got the same shape, in the symmetrically opposite points along the avenue, by independent dowsing, in the dark. If that’s not a test that dowsing works…well…it just does.

Here was she shape we dowsed that night:-

Now, in a minute I’ll tell you how we used that sigil to enter the site, and the other dowsing results, but in preparing this post something quite significant happened. As I looked at the sigil shape, and thought about, “Yes, it’s all very well finding the sigil, but what does the shape mean?” I held that thought and did a Google image search for some stock photographs to add to the text, and came across this ariel photograph:

Minus the “arms” there’s the incomplete double circle and the bump on the top. Strange, huh?

 A Bump On The Head

So we had our sigil – what next? We needed to find the entrance to the site – the place where we could draw the sigil and announce our presence to the genius lociGenius Loci means 'spirit of the place' and refers to the geological/gaian spirit of place. It is transfixed to a place – being an embodiment of the collective intelligence of the place. of the site, and perhaps unlock some of its secrets by doing so. Again we asked the rods to show us, independently, where was the entrance? We both wandered off in the darkness following our own path, but as we rounded the earthwork, passing the southern “entrance” we began to converge on the same dowsed line, although Kal was some ten feet behind me. As I got close to the “head” mound the rod swung to the left at a slight indentation with a path on it. As I stopped Kal came level with me and his rod swung at the same point. We looked at each other: “This would be the entrance then.” I said and we clambered up onto the mound. We were stood in between the two “eye sockets” (see picture above) of the skull-like feature, and in the space between them we dowsed that this was the place to put the sigil pattern.

But how were we supposed to transcribe it? Again, we dowsed for the answer: should we draw it in the air? NO. Could we trace it in our minds? NO. Trace it on the ground? YES. Could we walk the shape? YES. So, we walk it. I did so, and Kal did the same just afterwards. I respectfully asked if I could enter and waited for a sign. The howling wind suddenly eased to a whisper, and I felt that now familiar tug at my energetic centre area around my belly button. I could enter, and so I did.

The wind picked up again as we headed into the inner circle and we spent a few minutes wandering around the stones, feeling for which ones we should spend time at. Minutes later we were dowsing for those radial ley lines that Kal had previously discovered, and then a whole new story was set in motion, but that’s another post!

Gwas.

Making the sign of the bow-legged man.