The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘standing stones’

For the recent Autumn Equinox this Hedge Druid went back to a place of druidic significance - Ynys Môn, or the Island of Anglesey. There were several favourite sites that I wanted to visit, and given that I was seeking the solitude and sanctuary of enclosed sacred spaces I could think of no better examples of this form of megalithic sites than the wonderful chambers on that far western isle. With me on this journey I had my friend Mike who would be able to offer his psychic impressions of the sites – another perspective on the places that Kal and I had visited and dowsed so often.

Lligwy chamber

Our first destination was Lligwy Chamber which is to be found at the edge of the collection of sites just west of the town of Moelfre that comprise an ancient church, hut circle settlement and the chamber itself. We arrived in the late morning sunshine and the site seemed to be sparkling and playing with the available light. The capstone shone with a radiant limestone glare as we studied its flat form from the source of the energies that surround it, namely the two small outlier stones just outside of the main iron fence.

One of Wales' largest capstones - Lligwy chamber

As is usual I didn’t tell Mike anything about the place or what Kal and I had found here on previous occasions, but very quickly Mike picked up that the stones we were standing at had strong energies connected to the main site. Maybe not too difficult to work out, but as he walked their path I confirmed with the dowsing rods that he was walking the line of subtle energy that connected the stones to a circuit that surrounded the main site.

Mike’s next statement was another familiar one – there are some pools of strong energy at each of the corners, he said. I confirmed that there were four spirals to be found at the corners. We stopped analysing the site now, and began to talk about how it might be used. I told Mike about how Kal and I had worked out that walking around the site generated a meditative energy that could be used by the person inside the chamber to travel in spirit. We both went into the chamber whilst the other person walked around the exterior in a sun-wise direction, and we both reported having a “sinking” feeling of being drawn into the floor of the chamber as a result. Perhaps walking in the other direction might send your spirit off into the atmosphere? Something to be tested at a subsequent visit perhaps?

Both of us emerged from the experience completely “spaced out” after only lying in there for a few minutes. I could imagine that if the process was done by more people walking around and humming or singing and it was done for longer then the person inside could be drawn so deeply out of themselves that they would achieve a sort of “spirit flight” that is discussed by so many scholars of a shaman’s techniques.

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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.

Kirksanton stone circles - bird's eye view

We dowsed that these stones in this highly-disrupted set of circles no longer had any energetic qualities to them, and were disappointed. We both noticed that there were more stones in the distance, some few hundred yards further on from the outer rim of this circle. I dowsed to see if they had energy in them and found that they did. Kal had already felt the pull of these stones and was already jogging over to them as I dowsed this answer.

The Second Circle

As I got to the second circle I could already see that this megalithic sites was ALSO a double circle. This was highly unusual – two stone circles side by side with each other was strange enough (The Hurlers in Cornwall is three side-by-side) but the idea that they were also both double circles was right out there on the ‘unusuality’ scale! I began to take an interest in the central stones of this second circle, and from a close examination in good light I could see that there were some interesting cup-marks.

The cup-marks int he stone suddenly hit me like a bolt of inspiration. Three circular marks at an angle and in a row, and then a fourth circular mark further down the line and off to the left….seemed very familiar to me. I knew this alignment to be one of the alignments I study most – Orion’s Belt pointing to Sirius! Unmistakeably, that was what I was seeing. So, did this site have a particular link to either Orion or Sirius? I dowsed that it linked to Orion’s Belt, and that the first circle we had visited was the circle that was linked to Sirius. Interesting to me as I had once found that I energise my crystals best by orienting a formation towards Sirius, so it had particular significance for me.

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Friday 28th May – Newgrange, County Meath

On our second day on the Ireland megalithic tour we were going around the main Boyne Valley sights. It would be rude not to, seeing as we were in the vicinity. It would be interesting to contrast how the Irish valued their sites compared to the English, Welsh and Scottish. That said, I don’t think were were prepared for the…organisation levels that we were about to encounter.

To get to Newgrange from Knowth you have to…er…go past Newgrange, back to the bus terminal near the Visitor Centre and catch the bus back to Newgrange. Of course you do! On arrival we had to wait for the guide to, er…open the small two feet high unlocked gate and to tell us to walk up to the standing stones in front of Newgrange’s famous entrance. The arrangements are all a bit of a faff, but it began to dawn on us that this was necessary to control the number of people at the site and make the experience rewarding for everyone. In the end we capitulated, although Kal still went off and did his own thing whilst I endured the guided tour to get some background on the site first. Later we walked back rather than hurry for the scheduled bus. We wanted time to dowse, of course.

I’m going to recount things out of chronological order now, because I want to relate the interesting stuff together, so bear with me! We found that the constant influx of tourists into the mound was causing a build-up of negative energies. It was only slight, and took a while to accumulate, but was there.

The accretion effect I suspect may be due to the fact that tourists in no way “prepare” themselves for entering such sites. Why would they? Of course they wouldn’t, and yet in my experience this can often be a necessary part of approaching these sacred places – to cleanse oneself of the subtle energies from the places we have visited (or live in) that is like wearing a smelly coat!

We walked around it the ‘correct’ way – clockwise, sunwise. This ancient (and now partly modern) construction  was a chamber whose energies we left were in synchrony with the Sun’s movements primarily. We wondered as to why the main path invited tourists to walk around it in a contrary, widdershins, direction. This was something that we found to be the case at Stonehenge too, Tourists were ‘invited’ to walk around the structure in a way that would neutralise positive energy flows and keep the place feeling…drained. It would take quite a strength of will for a tourist to walk around in the opposite direction to the flow of everyone else. Of course, we did just that! Swim against the stream, young salmon!

One thing we did wonder about was this: if the flow of energies during Spring was clockwise, would it change direction at other times of the year? Perhaps someone who lives closer might be able to tell us that?

As we stood outside the entrance being given the known history of the site both Kal and I were separately thinking about the hidden history of the place. Kal had gone off exploring, and my mind was split between taking in the historical information and feeling for the energy coming from the nearby standing stones. As my eye wandered absently along the line of the stones I saw that there was an alignment with nearby tumuli (or mounds) closer to the Boyne River down in the valley floor. Interesting that all these sites are aligned to the path of the Sun, and that they all were built within the bounds of this wide bow bend in the river.

Now it was time for the guided tour of the inside of the Newgrange chamber. We all filed into the chamber, careful not the scratch the artwork, and emerged in the central corbelled chamber. Then Kal appeared again and I could see that he was holding his dowsing rods. He wouldn’t, would he?

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Introduction

I had been looking forward to Beltane for a while. The promise of warmer, longer days to work in plus the chance to get back to some of the best ancient sites in Derbyshire had been whetting my appetite for a few weeks, making all else seem like filling in time until the Big Day. For us, we had worked out that Beltane was happening at the full moon on the 27th and 28th April. This is, of course, different from the ‘new traditional’ concept that Beltane is the 3rd May. Some say the 1sy May – May Day. Others maintain that due to the calendar shift caused by Pope Gregory XIII that the actual date is 23rd April.  You see how confusing this all is?

Our reasoning was simple – we timed the change from the third eighth of the year to the fourth as being when the full moon’s energies signalled a phase change, not on an arbitrary and disputed calendar date. After all, for us the interesting change was a change in subtle energies, so why not connect it to a major factor in the strength of those energies, namely The Moon?

Off we ventured with the intention of visiting as many sites as we could within one day. On our list were Arbor Low, Nine Stones Close, Doll Tor, and possibly Nine Ladies if we had time. Oh, we had time! Arbor Low, Nine Stones, The Andle Stone and Doll Tor will all be covered in this first post.

In part two of this set of posts I will describe our experiences at Nine Ladies, but also The Bullstones and The Bridestones which were also added to the list. We worked efficiently and effectively on this auspicious day and here’s the beginning of my account of our work and our findings.

1. Arbor Low and Ringham Low

The purpose we had set out with for this first site was to check our recent information about the movement of the ‘spirit of place’, the Genius Loci (henceforth – ‘GL’). Kal had found at Penmaenmawr and subsequent places that the GL enters an energised sacred site like a stone circle through an arc of neutral energy – like a fashioned gap or portal into the dome of energy covering the site. The same was true of the exit too – there was an arcing neutral energy that formed a kind of doorway.

Our intention was to verify whether the neutral arc I had found on my recent visit to Arbor Low was in fact an entrance or exit point for the GL. Here is what we found:-

• The Genius Loci travels along a neutral North-South ley line that connects to other distant sacred sites
• It enters the site at the place I identified last visit
• The exit is directly opposite, at the northern-most point of the stone circle
• The path of the GL oscillated more strongly as it approached the embankment of the site
• The path circles around the position where a standing stone would once had been placed on the earthwork (now all missing)

Satisfied with these findings we headed off to a site I had spotted marked on an OS map as being near to Arbor Low. This site as called Ringham Low, but when we got to the place where it was marked on the map, there was no sign of it. We walked the field for a while then got dowsing rods out. We found a circle thirty feet wide on the slightly sloping ground, and wondered what might once have been here. Then we moved on. More interesting work was due next at Nine Stones Close.

2. Nine Stones Close

Our second site was up on Harthill Moor, and was a site we were both very familiar with – our old friend Nine Stones Close. My intended purpose for visiting this site was to try to establish my wider purpose for the fourth eight-part of the year – the time between Beltane and Summer Solstice. We always have a little chuckle about what people might think when they encounter “Nine Stones”, with its four standing stones. Do they think it might once have had nine? It didn’t. Possibly five, but never nine.

Dull weather at Nine Stones Close

Despite the passing human traffic, ramblers and school outings everywhere, I was able to meditate quite deeply at Nine Stones, and to get a lot of dowsing done too. As a precaution, remembering the warning that I had been given by the Llangernyw Yew tree, I put up some energetic protection around myself. According to Kal that did its job, because a passing inquisitive person thought twice about approaching and came nowhere near whilst I has meditating. Just lucky, I guess.

Here’s what I found out:-

• I identified the purpose of the time between Beltane and the Summer Solstice
• The purpose of this time of the year is to learn how to diffract, dissociate and extract the different frequencies that my energy field can generate. Then to learn how to bring those frequencies together again to form a pure white energy form.
• I found that my meditation visualisations have changed from streams of fire to those of water – streams, fountains and geysers.

That purpose seemed like a natural extension of the research I had done for the previous eighth part of the year, which had been to learn how to work with neutral energy. I have yet to discover whether there is something about the energies of this time of the year that promotes or encourages that kind of work – this I will try to discover in the next few weeks.

From Nine Stones we headed towards the imposing gritstone structure that is named Robin Hood’s Stride.

3. Robin Hood’s Stride

There was not much to do at Robin Hood’s Stride. The huge outcrop of gritstone is impressive against the surrounding skyline of rolling hills and tree-studded fields, and something made us both want to go and pay it a visit. The one time we had felt like that previously we had found respective power centres, but that had been such a long time ago (in our minds) that we had forgotten where those were. We decided to re-dowse them to see if we could verify the original findings and to see whether that would jog our memories.

Minutes later Kal had found his centre in a small sheltered cave-like formation on the side of the Stride, whereas I was being directed into a crevice. I looked up the crevice to see that there was some kind of hit-like formation of rock slabs above me. Seems like I would have to climb up. I remembered from the last time that I had had to do that to find my power centre, so I hoped I could find it again, now that the rods had led me to this spot directly underneath this unusual slab formation fifteen feet above my head.

Once on top I followed the rods until they crossed and circled around inside a square box of a rock shelter. Inside I felt cushioned from the cold winds of early Spring and my voice resonated within the stone chamber as I called forlornly to my now absent friend below. As usual Kal had gone a-wandering. There was a beaten and chewed stick that some dog must have deposited within the chamber which kept attracting my attention. I picked it up and started to bounce it off the walls and floor of the chamber like a drumstick. For several minutes I beat out strange rhythms that seemed inspired by the sound of the wind on the walls of the chamber, but which were immensely pleasing. This was the place I had found the last time too.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video showing you Robin Hood’s Stride.

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Stanton Moor and Eagle Tor, Derbyshire, February 27th, 2010.

Our little adventure in the Derby shire hills began on the first day of the Full Moon. Both Kal and I had felt its influence the previous night – for me it meant a sleepless night and a tight head. I love the Moon but it makes me pay for being so sensitive to it! Apart from the Moon we were astrologically unaware of what was around in the sky. All we were aware of was that  it was a Saturday, there was a full moon today, and we had an intention to awaken the energies of an ancient site.

Muck and Pandemonium

A brisk walk up the hill past Robin Hood’s Stride brought us into sight of the four remaining stones that still form Nine Stones Close. There never were nine stones, by the way. We got asked that by some passers-by. There were five, maybe as many as seven. I am sure that there is a stone missing on one side (opposite from the tree), but the tree side was very difficult to determine – the rods were “hazy” on that, which is a most unusual and disconcerting response. I think the word “Nine” is a corruption of an older word relating to “Noon”, or the high point of the sun. Given our findings at the site this day, it may well represent the low point of the sun too. But we’ll come to that soon enough.

When we arrived the first thing I noticed was that the field has been spread with manure – the stones were covered with it! Nice. And we had already struggled through patches of mud to get there too. Roll on Spring and Summer, I say! Terra firma is required, and some warmer longer days too, please!

A misty day

The first thing I did, after waiting for truckloads of schoolchildren to traipse through, was to go through some of my dowsing checklist. I think of it as a kind of warm-up exercise now (almost literally this cold misty day), as well as feeding into the Sacred Sites section of this site (eventually). Here are my findings for this day:-

• The site is energised by the position of the Sun at particular times of the year, for example Summer Solstice.
• The site was energised by the peaks of the Moon too, so was nearing a maximum again on this day.
• The site has an energetic alignment with Saturn – which signifies transformation.
• There is no Genius Loci at this site – it is devoid of external spiritual activity

Looks like we had times our visit right going there at midday on a full moon, but what of Saturn? On my return I decided to see what significance Saturn had. I started by looking at the celestial events around that time. Notice, from the quote below, that Saturn is making itself prominent in the sky on March 1st,

Sunday, February 28

 Full Moon (exact at 11:38 a.m. today EST).  

Monday, March 1 This evening Saturn shines left of the great big rising Moon, which is just past full and just past perigee. By dawn Tuesday morning they’ve shifted way over to the west-southwest, and Saturn has turned to the Moon’s upper right.

The exact wording about the position of various bodies is not what struck me. What made me jump was that we had spent the weekend discovering that Nine Stones Close was being influenced by Saturn, and here was Saturn about to loom large in the environs of The Moon at its peak. Energetically, I felt this was significant, influential even.

Preparations for Pan

So I look around and Kal is jigging about beneath his favourite oak tree. He invites me to record him on his phone doing this, so to humour him I do so. Right. Er…is that normal? I enquire as to his state of mind. “I feel the urge to dance. This site is invigorated by dancing energy.” he states. Of course it is, I think to myself, of course it is. And continue with some preparations for my real purpose at this site today – to awaken the site’s energies. This has been the theme of the Imbolc to Spring Equinox period – to awaken the energies of the sites through human intention.

My preparations involve placing my ash staff in its proper place to focus and collect the energy generated, and for me to place four sticks of incense at appropriate power centres on the inside of each of the four remaining stones. There are more power centres at this site (six – which leads me to think there were originally six stones) – but the other two centres are not required for this awakening. Then I place my hand over four of the cup-marks in the Key Stone (as I’m calling the cup-marked stone).

Kal looks over at me as I break off from this ritual declaring it complete and says to me simply, “Pan!” We make a connection between the dancing, the Trickster god so beloved of Kal and the return of Nature spirits to the newly awakened site. Interesting! I dowse to see what this means and come up with the idea that a Nature spirit, a Pan (not THE Pan – they are multitudinous) is preparing to return to the site. We wonder when this will occur but don’t dowse for a date – it doesn’t seem appropriate to do so.

Kal ignores tricky questions concerning his certifiable behaviour

Saturn, Pan and the Solstices

As if by magic, Saturn appeared! What I mean is, having dowsed for the energetic influence of Saturn I researched the associations. Pan is associated with Saturn because Pan is the name we have given to one of Saturn’s moons. OK, interesting coincidence, but what did it mean for Nine Stones Close? We had prepared the way for a Nature Spirit (Pan) to return to the site. There was once a genius lociat Nine Stones Close but it left over a thousand years ago because no-one believed in it any more. When I say “believed in it”, I think I mean, “maintained its presence energetically” – a process of feeding human energy into the site through intention in order to attract and retain the presence of a Nature Spirit. This is a more intense relationship that “worship” which can be done without any knowledge or interaction with The Other (the Nature Spirit) – more intense because it involves purposefully giving energy to maintain the correct ambiance.

Saturn, in mythology, is the god of agriculture and vegetation. Well, here we were in a field, recently manured, expecting the return of vegetation and in the midst of agriculture (surrounded by farmland). Nine Stones Close is particularly linked to agriculture, as it stands in a currently worked field. Not a stunning link, but a link. Saturn is also associated with the astrological sign Capricorn, and thus the Winter Solstice. My dowsing results showed that the position of the Sun was significant to the energies of the site, so I could see how the Winter Solstice position would be a significant time. Oddly, when I dowsed for an astrological symbol, I couldn’t find one. I don’t know why.

Stones covered in cow crap

The final piece of interesting information was dowsing for a sigil. Despite the fact that I knew there wasn’t a genius locihere (yet) I asked whether I could dowse for the sigil that used to be here representing that spirit. The answer, fortunately, was YES, I could. So I asked for the best location to do that and was directed to an area right next to my power centre. The shape that emerged was this double spiral shape, also called the Cornu spiral:

The sun sigil, or Cornu spiral

I have seen this spiral before – it is the double-headed spiral that is engraved on the entrance stone at Newgrange in the Boyne Valley in Ireland, and many other megalithic sites too; some well beyond these isles. According to one researcher, this double spiral represents the pattern that is traced by the path of the Sun as it moves across the heavens in relation to our Earth. It is a kind of universal pattern that emerges out of the patterns of Nature herself. It is Pan’s symbol.

Newgrange entrance stone showing double-headed spiral

Having prepared the way for the return of a Nature Spirit we left for the next site in high spirits. We had only intended a fleeting visit to Nine Stones Close, but again it had delivered a mystical and profound experience. Next, to a new site for us – Doll Tor stone circle on the hill opposite Robin Hood’s Stride.

Gwas.

Section 5. Ancient Sites

From the beginning of my journey with the tools of dowsing I have sought to understand the way in which ancient sites may have been used, and how the energies of those places were shaped by the formation of the ancient monuments. During the year this directive has had to sit alongside the fascinating development of my work with Nature itself, however, some very interesting developments have occurred not in spite of that growth of spiritual practise, but because of it. Here are some of the main points that have been gleaned from dowsing and druidry this year concerning the nature and function of sacred sites.

This year has seen us visit some of the most awe-inspiring ancient sites from the stunning background scenery of the Cumbrian circle, to the fields of stone rows at Carnac, the giant megaliths of Brittany, and the quaint but powerful sites along the Ridgeway in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Not forgetting, of course, all our favourite sites in North Wales, Shropshire and Derbyshire, with which we are becoming quite familiar.

5-1. Recurring features of stone circles: We have found some identifiable and consistent component parts of a stone circle’s layout:-

• a King Stone – sometimes called a ‘Heel’ stone as well. This is a standing stone of a height similar to the stones within the circle, but outlying the circle. The distance from the circle itself can be quite variable, from a few feet (Druid’s Circle) to a hundred yards (Mitchell’s Fold). We term the stone ‘King’ stone because tends to dowse as being ‘male’, and usually has a source of male energy. This male energy is obtained from two sources: The Sun’s radiant energy, and the placement of the stone upon underground flowing water at a geological fault.
• a Transformer Stone. I also call this a ‘Queen Stone’ because it draws down the radiant energies from The Moon and transforms them into female earth energies to add to the stone circle’s energy flows. The other source of female energy is energy from structure of the rock – either from the stone itself or the geology beneath the stone.
• a Grounding Stone. So-called because its function is to draw down energy from anything that interacts with it. If a person sits on such a stone they may begin to feel drained or tired. People sensitive to subtle energies can feel the energy being drawn into the stone and surrounding earth. It seems to have a cleansing effect leaving a person’s energy aura “cleaner” – i.e. free of the detritus of modern life, such as electro-magnetic radiation (this is just a working assumption at the moment – an intuition). When considering the concept of ‘cleansing’ before any ritual or energy work, we now consider this stone to be part of the preparation for that work.
• Male and female energies. We have spoken many times on the fact that male and female energies are present at sites, and on their relative strengths and qualities, even on their possible sources. What we discovered this year was their interaction with each other. The male and female energies, like the double-helix of a DNA molecule, interact by alternately attracting and repulsing each other, and this dynamism creates the ‘vibrancy’ of the energy at a site.
• Neutral energy flows in straight lines across a site, travelling through it, and providing a course for the helix of male and female energies to latch onto. 
• Celestial bodiesaffect the flow of energies within a site. We are not yet sure whether the design of the site determines which planet’s radiant energy is able to be captured, or whether the planet’s energy has determined which type of structure would be built.
• A double helix of male and female intertwined energies, usually flowing to and from the outliers (e.g. King Stone or Grounding Stone).

5-2. Home-grown circles: We could build our own stone circle this year at Castell Dyserth by placing rocks. This was re-inforced for us when we repaired an existing circle’s flows by adding in these extra home-made circles.

A home-made stone circle

5-3. The geology of sites: seems to affect the purpose, but not type, of the energy present at the site. For example, limestone sites are useful for healing and purification, whereas granite sites are useful for transformation, and for fixing information in place which may be recalled later. It is particularly female earth energy whose character and purpose seems to be determined by the geological properties of the area.

5-4. A site with a strong nemeton attracts visitors, or, a well-visited site reflects the energy of its visitors in a stronger dowsing signal.

Le Champ Dolent - a well-visited megalith

5-5. Some standing stones and their notches serve the purpose of showing astrological alignments of sun, moon, planets and stars. The notches have been made by human hands specifically to record such alignments, presumably to inform people of the time of the greatest energy flows when planets are at their zenith or in conjunction, or when the moon or sun are at a specific phase.

5-6. Aligned entrances: Sacred sites have entrances. Some sites have one for solar-aligned people and another for lunar-aligned people. Some sites have specific entrance stones that have an energetic barrier between them. The purpose of this is not exactly known yet.

Solar southern entrance

7. Ritual paths: Some sites have ritual entry paths. As we can’t be sure whether we are picking up the traces of previous ritual paths determined by the long-term use of humans, or if those paths are naturally-occurring doe to the formation of the sites themselves, we can’t be sure of their exact purpose.

5-8. Tall artificial moundslike Silbury Hill focus energy to the peak of the mound. Like the capstone of a pyramid Silbury Hill, for example, focuses all of its energy flows into a conical space at its peak. It seems designed specifically for this purpose, energetically speaking.

5-9. Chambered ‘tombs’: have small chambers that serve specific purposes, which can be decoded using the rods. These chambers can be used for vision quests and transformative experiences.

5-10. Petroglyphs: can be linked to specific places in the site. In other words, by dowsing it is possible to be taken from a cup-mark, hollow or line to its corresponding place within the site. In this way petroglyphs or cup-marked stones can be seen as “maps” of the energetic places within a site.

Gwas.