The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘spring equinox’

We have been having a run of dry but cold weather. It almost felt like Spring was close at hand, and besides we couldn’t contain ourselves any longer. Some of us have already got quests to do, you know? I was on my quest to discover the Sword and Shield. At the Spring Equinox I had found The Shield. I created/discovered it at Valle Crucis Abbey in Llangollen. In combination with the four other sites I visited that day it was formed in my mind, and its purpose became clear – to assist the healing of energetically-damaged sacred sites.

Now I was on the hunt for The Sword part of that pairing. To that end I had received a vision in Alderley Edge that indicated this sword could be found at a sacred lake. The sacred lake in question was undoubtedly the same lake where there is a mythological association with The Lady of the Lake and the giving of a magical sword – that lake was Llyn Tegid, or Bala Lake. At first I thought it might be Llyn Brenig, but dowsing revealed a better ‘fit’. I didn’t yet know what the purpose of obtaining this energetic sword might be, but that could be determined afterwards. The focus was now on getting it.

To that end I had identified a useful starting point via the aid of map dowsing. Llanycil church next to Bala lake was an ancient sacred place, since converted or at least marked with a church. Llanycil Church is no longer in functioning use. It would appear that, for at least the second time in this place’s history, the religious order has been overshadowed. One may say that the wheel has turned back on itself in some ways, at least that was how we felt as we pulled up in front of it in the handy lay-by opposite on the Bala Lake main road.

Llanycil church entrance

As so often seems to happen on my outings around Wales I found that a place that I visited was dedicated to St.Beuno. This character seems to crop up at so many of the places that were once pagan sacred sites. I tell you – that man got about a bit considering there were no cars or good roads in his time! Somewhat amusingly, his name could be translated into English as “Bono“. Interesting parallel here – it is said of Beuno that:

“”on the seventh day of Easter he had a wondrous vision” (source: Wikipedia)

A calculation using this year’s Easter date would be around 6th April This visit was a couple of days after that. Close…..close enough to be interesting.

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When the weather has been dry for several days in England then it would be rude not to go out into the world and see if you can feel the forces of Nature at work. Not wanting to be rude Kal and I gave a large part of our eating and drinking time over to a journey to our favourite magical woodland – Alderley Edge. It was the first visit of the year, and although it was definitely not Spring-like weather yet, at least it was dry and had been for days, which meant that we could walk around without fear of falling foul of a foot of mud and slutch.

As if our wont, we had to have a question to be working with in order to make the experience bring true reward (yes, wandering around aimlessly can be its own random reward, but if you want to make steady and sure spiritual progress then you need a mission, a plan, a guided meditation). For my part, I had questions about my recent work with The Sword and The Shield. I had managed to absorb some energy into my shield stone and this was very satisfactory. Now, I wanted to know about the Sword aspect. What was it, and how could I go about obtaining it so that I could fulfil my healing potential using these two magickal symbols and their associated energies.

My research into the figure of Galahad had shown that he had encounters involving a sword and a shield. For Galahad they were to be found like this:-

• The Sword of Spirit - a sword drawn from a rock
• The Shield of Faith -  a shield found at the altar of a white abbey

Galahad or Arthur pulling the sword from the stone?

Well, that was all to plan so far. I had found a white abbey (Valle Crucis), its ancient altar location, and had transferred the energy of the “shield” into my shield-like stone, and was now able to use that to quickly protect and retain energies for sacred sites. My thoughts thus turned to The Sword. Drawn from a rock? Really? Like Arthur’s sword, Galahad also had to draw a sword from a rock?

Who owns the sword?

Last year I had been doing some research into Gawain. During that year I had some experiences, particularly on Iona, the led me to believe that the Sword is identified with the Will. This is especially true in magickal work. However, was the sword that I would work with this year related to Galahad, Arthur or Gawain? It was a confusing picture! Did it matter? Could the dowsing rods sort it out for me? Or maybe a tarot draw?

The dowsing rods were able to help me divine the answer. It is Galahad’s Sword that I am to find and work with.

“Sir Galahad survives this test [being sat in the Seige Perilous seat], witnessed by King Arthur who, upon realizing the greatness of this new knight, leads him out to the river where a sword lies in a stone with an inscription reading “Never shall man take me hence but only he by whose side I ought to hang; and he shall be the best knight of the world… Galahad accomplishes this test with ease, and King Arthur swiftly proclaims him to be the greatest knight ever. ” (Source: Wikipedia)

Now, on to the Alderley Edge tale, where I find out more answers than I bargained for!

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In this final part of my Spring Equinox story I reveal the reasons why I had been linking the four elemental sites around Llangollen. I am also shown why this link was important, and how it relates to my work with the energy form of Galahad this year.

Ffynon Sara

Only a few miles from the edges of Clocaenog Forest is the beautiful secluded site of Sara’s Spring. The Sara in question may well be the Patron Saint of Laughter that Kal talked about after he visited the site. This day I wasn’t interested in discovering more about the energy form at the site, only to come with questions that needed urgent answers.

I began by offering an energetic gift. I placed incense all around the spring’s rectangular wall and then offered all of the story of my day and my quest for this part of the year. This was offered through my heart chakra, freely and with love. I hoped that this energy would be sufficient as an exchange for what I was about to ask.

I used the dowsing rods to confirm whether I could, should and may ask these questions here. Luckily the answers were all a positive and the feeling generally was that I should finally get some answers to my puzzling quest after such hard work this day.

Q. What was the purpose of linking the four sacred sites around Corwen?

In answer I was shown the white shield in the stone that I had energised in Valle Crucis Abbey. With that image came the following explanation:

The White Shield of Galahad is emblazoned by a red cross. The shield shape is formed by the four sites. The cross shape is formed by drawing links between them. I needed to have that symbol in my head as an elemental cross so that I could emblazon it on the shield that I had acquired from Valle Crucis. Without that emblem the shield would not be at full strength.

Sara’s sacred spring – a place of inspiration

“…at full strength”. That was an unusual phrase that I would try to deconstruct later. For now, I wanted to know more about the rituals at the four sites.

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In this second part of the Spring Equinox tale I begin with a bit of a soap-box moment, but quickly move on to talk about my favourite stone circle, and finally introduce a new sacred site. Let the wordage begin!

<BEGIN RANT>

I begin this post with a bellyache. I’m going to get riled, spill bile, make a pile of fuss. Possibly about nothing, but let’s get it out of the way first. I’ve been stewing on it for years, and I think it’s about time I got it “out” into the open.

It pains me the way modern farmers slash hedgerows!

To me this is akin to punching small children in the face. “Look,” you could say, “They’re bleeding now, but in a few weeks they’re back to normal.”  Hardly the point, is it? Just because something heals doesn’t mean we should make them go through the initial trauma of being battered. Ask any victim of domestic violence. “Ah, but you’re alright now, yeah?”

I’m not saying that I’m an advocate of the Backster experiments on plant feelings. Instead, this is a respect issue. I was under the impression that part of the duty of care that farmers were supposed to adopt as custodians of the land could be employed in their treatment of the trimming of plant life. This “hack and slay” policy, done for expediency and efficiency, is not only damaging to the main trunk and branches of the plant, but it’s also a display of contempt for the hedgerow, and damned ugly to look at!

Phew – I’m done. It’s in print. but I’ll still die a little when I see such a close haircut. I urge anyone with influence over these things to try to find a better way. I keep putting my thinking cap on to come up with something. One day.

</ END RANT>

Moel Ty Uchaf Un-Spring-Like

As I climbed slowly up the steep road to the circle at the top of the hill there were several things that caught my eye. Firstly, there were the lambs bouncing around in the lower fields as though Spring had arrived. There was certainly spring in their legs, so perhaps they were just keeping themselves warm. Such a bad year to be born into a cold snap, I thought.  A week later there would be reports of many sheep and lambs dying due to the snowfall in placed like Derbyshire and North Wales. Joy and sorrow are close companions.

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In an article I wrote that is posted on this site I once explained how the beginning of process of awakening to a magical mindset is to notice synchronicity. In other words, if you want to train your brain to become aware and awake to the magical processes and interconnectedness in your surroundings then you can begin by taking notice of the odd little synchronous events that occur in your life.

Well, here I am many years later and that advice has been proven to be useful time and time again. Talking of “time”, that brings me to the subject of this post, and the subject is actually a question too because I don’t yet have an answer, but someone out there in the blogosphere may be able to help. Let me explain what’s been happening.

It started a few months ago. My wife and my bother’s wife got together with the aid of a couple of bottles of wine. Now, usually I sit back and watch the fun. The two of them are very “in sync” with each other and they have a riot when they get together. This time, however, they said and did something quite startling. The time was eleven minutes past eleven in the evening. As one, they turned to each other and said at the same time: “Oh, it’s 11:11“. They looked at each other with mouths wide open. What followed was the realisation that they were both noticing “11:11″ on a regular basis for the past few weeks. No other times, just these two occurrences during the day. They were ‘spooked’ by it, but it amused me, and I thought no more about it.

Since that incident I have also begun to notice time syncs. It began with 11:11, curiously enough. I spotted it one time and then thought to myself, “How curious – that’s the time that M was noticing too.” Since then, things began to get a bit strange. I began to see time syncs of all sorts “23:23″. “06:06″, the lot. It has been building over the last few weeks to a ridiculous level. At one stage I was seeing the time sync almost EVERY HOUR. Almost.

Time syncs – what do they mean?

I began experimenting. If I WANTED to catch a sync I couldn’t. I would always miss it by one or two minutes. Without exception. That’s if I tried to calculate when it would happen by checking the time perhaps ten minutes before and then trying to estimate when I should next look at the clock. Always got it wrong. However, if I inadvertently looked at the clock – “14:14″, “17:17″, “20:20″. Mad.

What does this mean? I wonder if it was a build up of psychic energy generally. It increased to a crescendo up until the Spring Equinox, and now it has completely trailed off. I’m not getting syncs any more at all since I went out for the Spring Equinox. What form of Otherworldly communication is this? Has anyone else experienced this? Have you found out what it means?

Perhaps this is the answer: Energy influx at Spring Equinox

I’m puzzled.

In the final part of my Spring Equinox posts for this year I have a small tale to tell that demonstrates how following your path leads to results even in the face of adversity and seeming inactivity. It’s a tale for those to whom perserverence is a watchword. The story follows directly from our encounters in Dove Dale. You may remember that I had met The Lady of the Dove at Lover’s Leap rock, high above the River Dove in the late evening sun. I had requested her help to know the next part of my journey and she had offered her help, but had told me that such knowledge would not (indeed could not) be given at Dove Dale. I already knew this, as I had dowsed that I would need to visit Parwich Hill in order to find such an answer.

Prangs for the memory!

We drove the few miles down the A515 then down a small country road to the village centre. From there we would have to find our own way to the hill depending on how things looked when we arrived. On arrival the village was surprisingly busy. There were narrow streets, parked cars, people milling about, and most surprisingly a coach was trying to reverse down the road that I thought we might need to go up to get to the hill. I looked across to Kal and reminded him of Imbolc when such blockages had been a sign not to visit a particular place with bad energies. Was this another bad omen? As I thought that I reversed to make space for the coach to come out into the main road and managed to back my car into a low wall. A sickening crunch and scrape noise was heard from the back of the car. Although startled, I reckoned it didn’t sound too bad and resolved to look at it later. For now we needed to find a place to park before the sun went down completely. We still had the hill to climb and we had done a lot of climbing and walking already this day. The closer I could get to the hill the better.

We parked and I looked at the scratch. It was bad. A paint job definitely – this wouldn’t wax out! Never mind. I just hoped it wouldn’t sour the visit. We found a footpath up the hill and began our final climb of the day. Ten minutes of burning calves later we were on the top of the hill looking out over the village and the surrounding countryside. I appreciated all the work I had done in the last year on getting fit! In the late evening sun the view was beautiful. We headed for a clump of trees on the summit and wandered around inside looking for the best place to meditate.

The copse on Parwich Hill at Spring Equinox

We knew where we wanted to sit, and when I found the best spot – sunlit and between two mature trees – then we settled there in order to absorb the day’s last rays. Kal sat against one and I was against the other, and each of us did our own work in the fading golden light. We had again timed it just right because the place where we sat was only now in sunlight, and when we arose it was in shadow again. We had picked the perfect time to be in the most obvious meditation place. We confirmed our intuition with the dowsing rods, but this was a formality. We already knew this was the bets place to be.

Now began to meditation to discover the purpose of my journey for the next several weeks until Beltane.

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Kal sits in Dove Holes caves at Dovedale in Derbyshire

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Dove Holes. I had visited Thor’s Cave in Derbyshire at Winter Solstice and that had been impressive. The Dove Holes were equally impressive. My mind was taken back to the episode in the books I had read where the questors met with the spirit they called “Gweveraugh” – a sort of female deity figure that they associated with a tribal leader from England’s history. I wondered if there was any sign of such a presence here in these caves at this moment. Kal and I sat in the caves but I felt no presence there at that time.

Kal began making sounds within the caves so I began to try some sound experiments too. I did some humming of various frequencies that I associate with opening my chakras (after putting up some protection, of course – lessons learned and all that). The procedure felt really good and I was enlivened by the response of my sound in that cave environment. Then Kal called over to me, “Hey – try expanding your aura in the cave” he suggested. We had done this kind of thing before at Park Wood in South Wales so I tried it again. As my aura touched the cave walls I began to get “feedback” – my temples began to pulse and throb like they do just before a thunderstorm.

Kal looked over at me,

“When you expand your aura do your temples throb just like before a thunderstorm?”

Was he reading my mind? I confirmed that they did. How odd! I wonder what all that was about?

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