The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘st.michael’

The White Lady

I had emailed Gwas with regards to going out on a sojourn this weekend and he had come up trumps as always…Why not visit St Michael’s church at Brentor? Looks like a very energetic place.

I agreed, but wondered as to a purpose for my visit. As readers know Gwas and I have shifted focus in terms of having a purpose for our visits. Gwas suggested that perhaps I could garner some more intel on my quest to become a knight.

Interesting, okay I could live with that and so it was decided. Saturday arrived and I was ready to rock and roll. Brentor is about an hour and half from my rooms and I set off around 11am and the sun was shining on my journey.

I was aprox 5 miles from Brentor and I spotted a sign…”Lydford Gorge” My intuition kicked in and without hesitation I steered into the car park.

Lydford Gorge is a fantastic national trust site. It has all the ingredients that an intuition follower would need…trees, stream, waterfall and some lovely fairy rings. A quick stop at the cafe to stock up on water and I was off on a trail that is about a four mile round trip along a gorge that followed the river Lyd.

Actually, I had another purpose when setting out on this journey today. I wanted some personal snaps of myself. To send to a fair maiden. As I set out for Brentor I wondered how, in such an isolated place I was going to find someone to take pictures.

Trekking around the gorge was a fabulous experience. The energies in that place were truly shining that day and it wasn’t just because of the sun. As I walked along the path I bumped into some really friendly people, and being the guy I am, I asked if they would take a shot or two of me. Throughout the day, I asked some 10 or 15 people to take pics of me and I am delighted to say I got a full compliment of poses.

On with the main story then. So I am sitting quite comfortably with the White Lady aka the waterfall in the gorge and trying to connect with the Genius Loci. After a mere few moments I was able to tune into the spirit of the place. I pondered whether I there was anything to learn about my Knights Quest at this fabulously energised place. The response came back almost instantly. No.

O, I was rather disappointed with that to be honest and thought to ask, why. But before I could do so the answer popped into my mind, “you are doing fine, chill”

Chill? Is that it? Chill, no blue keys, no insights, nothing but to chill? I tried to garner more information but was unable to do so, it looked like “chilling” was the order of the day (and it seemed longer too).

With that rather un-promising result I decided to take the advice and continue my slow leisurely walk around the gorge, stopping of to write a postcard and take in a herbal tea. It was around 5pm when I finally felt the urge to leave the valley. I don’t know why I felt this sudden urgency but I just found my steps increasing and before I knew it I was actually running out of the gorge, Wow!

I got to my car, emptied the last vestiges of my water bottle and settled in for the long drive home. I had given up on the Brentor church expedition since I had the answer of “your quest is doing fine” I had no need to go to the church. As I drove along the Gorge’s length I spotted a couple sat by the road side. I recognised them from my walk along the gorge because they had taken several pictures of me (er for me).

I stopped the car and asked what they were about, the young lad told me that they were waiting for the bus to Tavistock (some 10 miles away). I told them to hop in and I set the sat nav accordingly and was off. As I did so, the bus turned up behind me…interesting, if I had not hurried I would have missed giving this couple a lift.

As we drove away our conversation touched on several topics one of which was my main reason for being in this area, i.e. Brentor church, and I swear to the ancient gods of Kalahari that even as I mentioned it I saw the church up on a tor along the side of the road. I was gobsmacked (a regular term on the intuitive path).

The fella said that perhaps this was an opportunity to visit it on my way back. I agreed and put a mental note in to do just that. We got into Tavistock a few  minutes later and couldn’t find the main bus stop. I enquired further as to there final destination and they said Plymouth. No problem I replied and took them all the way home. Job done.

I stretched out my hand to reprogram the satnav for home when I paused. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that I was taken past Brentor church, could it? I sighed and swapped the destination for Brentor church and 40 minutes later found myself in the car park opposite the hill.

The sun had a cover of clouds around it and so made the climb up the hill more pleasurable than it would have been under the full light of a summer early evening sun.I have attached an audio file which essentially catalogs the dowsing that I did to get me to the best place to connect with the spirit/energy/archetype/angel St Michael.

This was just inside the entrance to the church. I was sat facing West with a slight inclination to the south, so I would say West, west south (er I think). Again the rods had pointed this direction out.

So I sat there ready to connect with my intuition when I heard a noise from behind me, in the church. I put it down to the wind and ignored it until I heard the sound of foot steps. I managed to scramble up just in time before a chap came by with his dog.

What caught my immediate attention was the bright blue t-shirt the chap was wearing. Seriously a blue t-shirt! I had to speak with this guy! I engaged in conversation immediately. “nice day isn’t it?” I remarked and begun a conversation where I was hanging on to his every word, looking for clues and intuitional nudges.

The first thing he told me was that I should visit the forest of Lyd, he pointed it out to me. It is free and has many paths that you can walk around. After this he walked off, only to return a few seconds later and tell me that one could see Plymouth from here on this clear late afternoon. He pointed it out to me, “there it is in that gateway, look you can see the ocean”

After pointing this out he left, dog in tow. I sat on the church looking out to the setting sun and pondered. What did this mean? I dowsed through all the components of my chat with the “man in blue” and here are the words that the rods responded favourably to…

• West (W,SW) direction
• Forest
• Ocean
• Gateway

With him wearing a blue t-shirt, I asked whether this knowledge was anything to do with my Knights Quest? No. Was this another quest that I would be going on? Yes. When would this quest start? End of October. At the conclusion of my Knights Quest? Yes.

So why tell me now? The answer was not forthcoming and it was time to thank the wisdom of St Michael and return to my rooms.

Kal Malik – endless questing

Sunday 22nd August, 2010 – The Hurlers, Minions, Cornwall.

Having driven through the village of Minions to get to Trethevy Quoit the night before we were fairly confident about finding the famous stone circles called “The Hurlers”. There was a big brown sign pointing to them and everything so how could we miss them? We missed them. The morning mist was so dense that visibility was down to twenty feet, and as we trudged along the damp granite path our attention was on avoiding the larger puddles. At one point I stopped, intuitively feeling something was nearby. As I looked up I could see a small marker stone making an unusually prominent shape in the white misty background. We decided to head in that direction across the moorland and soon other shapes were coming out of the mist confirming that we had made a wise choice. Luck was with us and we hadn’t gone too far past, and soon dark shapes were appearing in regular patterns like dull ghostly sentries. We remarked how ‘atmospheric’ it was, which translated meant, “Dammit – why couldn’t it be sunny – this is spooky!”

What the Hurlers can look like

The Coach and Four

Other people were knocking about too, somewhere. Occasionally we would hear the sound of feet on the path and calls to a dog, or a group of walkers crunching past. It seemed that everyone else was missing the stone circle too because we were not disturbed during our hour long visit by anyone else, despite hearing man other voices nearby. Talking of which, as Kal and I convened on our way back we discussed the sounds we had heard in the mist and realised that both of us had heard the same strange noise. It was the sound of a carriage being pulled by horses. Undoubtedly. I’ve heard that sound in so many films that I couldn’t mistake it. I heard the sound of at least two horses, more like four, and they were accompanied by the sound of wooden wheels crunching on the path. There was no engine noise accompanying it. Most odd. Maybe some people with horse and cart were going past at nine in the morning? Even odder, the sound didn’t fade into the distance as you would expect, but disappeared as it passed us. You heard it clearly for a moment, and then as it passed by it died off quickly, it didn’t fade away. Again, very odd. I shivered a little in the morning gloom, and put it down to the atmosphere, but then when I mentioned it to Kal he nodded – he’d heard the same, and he added his own impressions of the noise which confirmed mine. However, on to the circles….

The Hurlers – The Male Circle and the Cross

There are three circles marked on OS maps, but in the mist we only found two of them. The Secret Cornwall site tells us that we are even wrong about that:

“The remains of a smaller fourth circle have recently been found north-north-east of the obvious three circles and a further fifth circle has been suggested between it and the others” (source: Secret Cornwall)

The first circle we encountered was the larger of the two, then there was a small pathway which linked to a slightly smaller ring of stones a few feet further north. One of the first things we independently dowsed was that the larger circle had a female characteristic, whilst the smaller circle was male.

Can you spot the stones?

Kal spent his first hour in the female circle, or rather, around its periphery, whilst I tried to get to grips with the male circle. I had come to the circles with an idea: I wanted to know whether it was possible to connect to the Sirius star energy, and what would happen if I did. I found a power centre and began to work with it, connecting to its core. I identified the location of Sirius, and then sat facing it. Almost immediately I got the impression that I should walk around the circle to stir up the energies. I dowsed for the start point, and then which direction – clockwise. No surprises there. I walked around twice, the second time the path began to weave as though the energies around the stones were becoming agitated. This was good – I had done a similar thing at Mitchell’s Fold stone circle once. At that Shropshire circle I had walked around five times, each time dowsing a more erratic path with higher peaks. This was similar, but only required two perambulations to get the energies flowing enough to work with.

Male circle Power Centre marked by feather and staff

Read the rest of this entry »

This is the third part of the story of my recent pil;grimage to Glastonbury. “Pilgrimage” – that’s what I’m calling these visits because that’s how I feel about them – they are modern-day pilgrimages to a “site of special spiritual interest”, to adopt and mutate the SSSI designation. Glastonbury itself recognises this and has a Pilgrimage Centre where people can go to get information about places to visit and what’s on – sort of like a Tourist Information Centre for Seekers.

So, in the last parts I told you how I sloughed off the energetic attachment of a trickster spirit, got a surprise at a crop circle, then took two trips up the Tor trying to totally tune my tantra. That’s not strictly accurate, but it was the only synonym I could find that was alliterative! I was in the process of working on my heart chakra – the chakra os assimilation, integration, love, emotion and…well, here’s what one site says:

“According to contemporary buddhist teacher Tarthang Tulku, the heart chakra is very important for the feeling of existential fulfillment” (source: Sensagent Dictionary)

‘Existential fulfillment’, huh? Well, I’m pretty fulfilled in that respect, being a trainee druid. So, the day before I had watched the sun set on the horizon from The Tor and this morning I set out with Kal to see where I would end up. There were no plans except a starting point – them’s the rules. Our starting point this day would be the “entrance portals” that are the Gog and Magog trees (now sadly, only one remains).

Guardians of The Entrance: Gog and Magog

No time was wasted this morning – we knew, after last year’s visit, exactly how to get to the trees. It was early (i.e. before tour buses arrived) so all was quiet, even on the campsite next to the ancient oaks. Kal hovered around outside while I clambered into the nettle-strewn glade that forms a triangular cordon around the trees. I was taken aback at how much the first tree (Gog apparently) had paled and depreciated in the last year since she had been burned on the inside by some ardent “worshipper” and his zealous candle. I’m sure there were vestiges of life last year. This year he was totally barren and crumbling fast. It was quite dis-heartening to see.

The legendary and dead Gog Oak tree

Luckily, although I felt the waves of trauma and sadness coming from his partner Magog, she was in decent health. In her hollow I placed the two things I possessed that had a healing energy: a special slice of rose-coloured crystal that I had been given as a gift specifically to use for heart chakra work, and my ash staff. How the giver of this crystal had known I was going to do such work is beyond me, but that’s another story. Alongside the crystal I put my staff in the bole too. I placed my hands on the gnarled bark of the tree and, after the waves of anguish had ebbed away I put some loving energy into the tree. She was clearly pining (or is it “oaking”?), and it seemed like the only thing I could do that wasn’t a selfish act. I wasn’t here to take this time – I was here to give.

Three is a magic number

Oh yes it is. Good things come in trees {sic} so having passed between the trees as a starting point to my morning’s processional way I rejoined Kal and we headed up the slope towards the ever-present Tor in the distance. This would be the third time in two days we would climb the Tor, and each time the energies, the feelings and the results were different. Today was no exception.

The climb up the Tor was straightforward, although again, I felt the need to do it in bare feet. Again, we went up the quick way, up the steepest slope at the ‘back’ of the Tor. Once on top Kal went off doing his stuff, dowsing and meditating for his own ends. I dowsed to find the best place for me to work with my heart chakra energies, and to commune with the Spirit of the Tor to know what I should do for the next part of the year’s cycle. This was my intention this morning – no messing about! Straight to the ‘heart’ of the matter!

It was only a matter of a few minutes before things began to happen. I had stilled myself, then sent my attention deep into the Tor and outwards up into the skies above, creating a channel between the two. I felt a deep rumbling from within the depths of the Tor! It was only slight, but it was palpable. Something was stirring! Was it within me, or within the earth? What was it that was awakening? Through my deep connection I felt the urge to stand and move to the doorway of St.Michael’s Tower – the building on the Tor’s summit. I was standing now in the Michael and Mary Line, the Great Dragon Line, the strongest ley line int he country that runs across this land’s southern width from one end to the other. My eyes glazed, and suddenly I saw a vision…

The Dragon Hill Vision

…The archway of the building framed Wearyall Hill in the town below. As my attention was placed upon it I saw that it was the shape of a sleeping dragon. I could make out a head curled in, folded wings on its flanks, and a tail snaking out and around the back of the hill. As I watched, an overlay, a transparent copy of the dragon woke and looked up at me. With a snort it unfolded its wings, stretched and then looked at me again as if waiting for an instruction. I wondered what to do…then I realised. It wanted to fly but had forgotten how, after such a long sleep. I sent back the instruction to it in my mind – “Fly!” I said, “Fly!”. The dragon vision lifted its neck, looked upwards, and then beat its huge wings until it raised itself off the ground.

Cultural images abound - e.g. Smaug

Once airborne it circled quickly around Wearyall Hill, still visible in front of me, and spiralled upwards and towards me. As the great red dragon flew over my head it disappeared. So authentic was this vision that I knew to be a vision, that for a moment I blinked in case it flew into me….then it was gone. There was no dragon now. Wearyall Hill was just a hill.

View of Wearyall 'Dragon' Hill through the tower

I understood, in a way that only true gnosis can reveal, what it was I needed to do for the next eighth part of the year. I needed to “wake the dragon” – whatever that turned out to mean. I had to wake it, then teach it how to fly, because it had been sleeping for so long it had forgotten. Straight away I was getting linkages coming through from my reading and learning: red dragon -> serpent -> male earth energy -> serpent fire -> kundalini -> ‘raising the serpent fire’ -> a hill -> flying -> shamanic flying -> raising consciousness…. the connections kept coming. It would take me a few weeks to contemplate what this might mean exactly for me, but the direction was clear and more powerful than ever before.

I thought that was the most revelatory thing that could have happened to me that day and I was content to know my direction, but the best was yet to come. We descended the hill and headed for the quiet contemplation space that is the Chalice Well Gardens. That was where the pilgrimage was truly fulfilled!

Gwas.

Section 2. Dowsing and Earth Energies

A lot of work was done by Kal in particular this year relating to the modification of energy centres within houses. Some people call this “house dowsing” or “healing sick houses”. It relates to a concept called “geopathic stress”, but we have found that this “stress” has more causes than simply a water course running under the house. There was a fantastic checklist produced by a British Society of Dowsers member in the December issue of the group’s quarterly magazine ‘Dowsing Today’, which lists these causes, and I will post more on that soon, because I think the information bears repeating and distributing.

I was lucky enough to spend a day at Carnac in France this summer. It was a most glorious day and highly productive, but I absolutely must go back to spend longer there. I feel there is more to be learned still from this massive and impressive site. Other interesting sites this year include: Druid’s Circle above Penmaenmawr; also Nine Stones Close and Nine Ladies stone circles in Derbyshire. I will publish a full list of sites as one of the summary posts in this series.

Here are some of things we learned about dowsing and earth energies this year:-

2-1. House dowsing:

• We can dowse houses accurately, either locally or remotely
• We can either send and receive energy to specific points in the house, providing the house has not been “sealed off” and permission is given
• We can modify the energy formations on site
• Crystals can be used to repair this energetic state, and to change unhelpful or misaligned energies into helpful and aligned ones
• Plants can be asked to contribute to this
• The beneficial effects take some time – depending on how far the energy has to convert from harmful to beneficial, this can take from hours to weeks to achieve. Also dependent upon the amount of new positive input into the formation(s).
• The Moon or Sun can also contribute to the energetic change, acting as a catalyst for the change, and also providing either male or female energetic input.

2-2. Flat recumbent stones attract female energy (moon), whilst pointed stones attract male energy (sun). We don’t yet know which elements of a site attract star or planetary energies, but we know they are present at sites, especially stone circles.

2-3. Kal found that certain geologically faulted locations with water running through them can pin energy to a place.

2-4. Ironwork and iconography (in the case of stones in Brittany I found that it was Christian crosses) can restrain the energy of a standing stone, reducing its aura (field of effect).

2-5. Earth energy spirals are created from sacred geometrical principles and number. Even manifestations created by us have the same properties. Of particular significance has been the discovery that stone circles are based upon sacred geometry in their design. For exmaple, Moel-Ty-Uchaf stone circle in North Wales is based upon a pentacle,or five-sided shape. I have found that this is linked to specific “deities”, but more importantly, that these deities are actually one of the planets. The pentacle therefore is associated with Venus, which itself describes a five-sided geometrical figure around the earth in its annual travel.

2-6. Power centres are the central point of two cones of energy- one going up into the air, the other going down into the ground. Also confirmed by Viktor Schauberger’s research.

2-7. Avenues or rows of standing stones have male and female energies intertwining, and travelling the length of the line of a stone rows of standing stones.

2-8. Tumuli can provide a terminus pointfor energy to sink back into the earth. As an example, I found this double mound pictured below was a terminus point for the energy running through the Kermario avenues of standing stones at Carnac in France.

2-9. Cup-marked stones often provide a rising point, a focal point or source of earth energies entering into sacred sites. Some standing stones that are cup-marked are a map of the energy power centres nearby.

2-10. “Hand spread” patterns of energy fields can be dowsed on the side of circles where energy is being dispersed out of the area. They indicate areas of high fertility energy.

2-11. Many neutral alignment leys travel the length and breadth of lands, and have accumulated sacred sites and churches along them. I suggest this is similar to the geometirc patterns that many dowsers and researchers have discovered overlaying the British Isles, and some say, the whole of Earth (cf. John Michell)

2-12. “Martin”, “Margaret” and “Anne” are other synonyms for the male and female energy lines surrounding national leylines, as well as the better-known “Michael” and “Mary” energies. This year I traced what I call The St.Martin Line running from South-West England through France and into Italy.

These findings should be viewed in the context of the complementary section coming soon on our findings at Ancient Sites. I hope next year to concentrate on water dowsing, or rather, dowsing the energetic properties of water, sap and blood. Next in the series – Part 3 – I will be summarising our findings relating to tree energies, elemental spirits and death energy.

Gwas.

Glastonbury Pilgrimage Notes – Summer Solstice (June 2009)

On June 20th and 21st Kal and I went down to Glastonbury to begin a spiritual pilgrimage. That wasn’t our intention initially, but very quickly that’s what it turned out to be! We had no set agenda, other than a starting point that I had identified after reading Mary Caine’s book about the Glastonbury Zodiac in which she had revealed that the Girt Dog of Langport may have been the first place that initiates to the ancient druidic colleges and mystery schools landed by boat on the Isle of Avalon, the only high ground in the flooded Somerset Levels. This first contact was at Burrow Mump at Burrowbridge. So that was where we started too. From that point onwards I was hoping for some guidance from elsewhere as to the path I should take.

Little did I know quite how successful that approach would be! What follows is an account of how we were lead through the Isle of Avalon, each site opening at least one of my chakras, to profound effect. Follow me now as I show you the trail and the experiences I had – truly a solstice to remember.

Stage 1: Burrow Mump – Throat Chakra

We started the morning looking for the nose that formed the Girt Dog of Langport. Having read Mary Caine’s book about the Glastonbury Zodiac I was interested that she considered it to be the entrance way for the initiate into the Isle of Avalon and the Mystery School transformation process. Not that I was going to subject myself to some sort of masonic ritual! I believe the tradition to be far older than that, and to have been a spiritual initiation of the kind that is symbolically referenced in ancient Welsh bardic texts. Certainly, now that I am recounting this story I feel as though it is the transformation that you seek for yourself that you find, and nothing to do with arcane and involved rituals. Just time, patience, endeavour and a willingness to try.

I was not convinced as to the existence of all 12 of the zodiac signs in the Glastonbury landscape (13 including the dog) despite Mary Caine’s well-argued case. I felt that some of the signs were older – especially the incongruous Girt Dog, which equates to the dog Dormarth – the companion of Gwyn ap Nudd. I am starting to formulate the idea that there may have been only five original shapes – the original fixed zodiac signs and the dog, but that’s an argument that I will spell out in another post. The Girt Dog fitted with the Gwyn ap Nudd tales, but was out of place with the zodiac signs, many of whose shapes I feel were a bit ‘forced to fit’. Nevertheless I felt there as something in the Dog, and that it would form a good starting point, as I hadn’t visited it before on previous visits. We bought an Explorer Map of the area and located it.

The Church of St.Michael

We followed dowsing rods to locate the most energetic paths for ourselves to the top. As usual, Kal’s solar path weaved a little but was almost direct, whereas my lunar-oriented path wandered around ascending at intervals and circling around each of the trees on the slope’s southern side. Then we arrived at the ruins of the St.Michael’s Church on the top of the Mump. If you’ve been reading our posts on this site for a while you’ll know the significance of St.Michael – the archangel of Christianity who pins the dragon energy, or Dark forces, under his sword of Light. However, another way of seeing it, as I saw it that day, was that the Archetype of Light was dominating the natural balance of energies. There ought to be a constant battle between Light and Dark, as is the flow of the forces in Nature. To dominate and subdue the dark forces throws the human world into a state of imbalance. This is how I felt standing in St.Michael’s Church on Burrow Mump – the earth and radiant energy forces were being subjugated by the design and designation of the church. The design channelled the energies, whilst the designation ensured that generations of believers would imbue the site with their dedicatory energies, maintaining the imbalance in the name of the Light (the Sun, the Male force).

Is not Christianity just such a religion? Does it not promote The Light and seek to eradicate The Dark, vilifying it as “evil” and un-holy? Has it not tried to associate all the worst aspects of humanity with the forces of darkness, of night and of magic? The result has been 2000 years of what Terence McKenna would call “the dominator culture“, promoting masculine ideals, favouring male energies, denigrating and subjugating the feminine. Only now is the tide slowly turning in the last hundred years as we slowly transfer alignment to the new Aquarian age from the Piscean. For the established Christian Church trying to maintain masculine sun energy exclusively in the face of this turning tide will bring about the dissolution of these established institutions – unless they can change.

Dowsing The Mump
The St.Michael church was of course aligned East-West. It could hardly fail to be so. Having read Ross Nichol’s article about the layout of churches in the selected collection of his works called “