The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘subtle energy’

Last year I went to Ireland based on the idea that I was going in search of renown. I don’t think I properly explained that idea, so in the hope of making  the motivation behind those episodes a little clearer I want to discuss what I have come to think about the idea of “renown”.

The original meaning of renown is to “repeatedly name”, in the sense of repeating the name of someone until they accumulate fame. A sort of “making a name” for someone through the stories and mythology that comes of telling about someone’s deeds and life history. Figures who ended up in tales, poems and songs would come to be passed down through the generations and across cultures.

In an energetic sense one can increase the renown of someone or something (or place) by increasing the amount of intent and attention that they receive. By receiving the energetic focus of an energy worker a person, place or thing can accumulate subtle energy (of the human variety). Some cultures have spent time creating structures, spaces and coincidence of time and space which will corral, encourage and intensity subtle energy forces with the express purpose of creating renown for a person or place. A sacred place is made special to humans by the use they can obtain from its energy fields. Repeatedly focusing one’s intent upon something, say by gathering many people at specific times of the year when the energy is more abundant or in harmony with the Earth and Sky, only serves to increase the energetic renown.

Collectively forming renown

Building a collective legacy

When it came to the idea of one’s legacy, I think that the Neolithic people had a concept of renown that meant that they sought to achieve a nothingness, a balance of energies at the point of leaving their physical bodies. For them, achieving renown was a personal matter of achieving the maximum personal power in order to have sufficient energy to carry one’s spirit through death into the Otherworld. Sacred sites and point of strong subtle energy on the Earth were places where such passings into spirit could be completed with the best effect. As the spirit retreated out of the world, renown was left behind – an energetic shell which retained both energetic force, and more importantly the information field of that person.

What a person of renown left behind was his story, his history, his achievements, his energy. For example, what a shaman left behind were the tales he had collected from the tribe’s ancestors, the healing knowledge, plant wisdom. A tribal mother may leave behind her knowledge of how to bring children into the world safely. Renown was accumulated not only through personal experience, but through the recovery of knowledge from the Otherworld (by liaising with energy forms in that existence) or by undergoing a shamanic journey to recover knowledge through a revelatory experience.

All these things still exist in the information field of the person of renown when they transferred into spirit. Their subtle information energy field, their information field, remained in place, accessible to future generations, and kept alive by the renown with which they were adorned. The tribe continued to apply its focus of attention and intention upon the sacred places, the places of the passing of people of renown, and thus they re-energised and kept these field integral, kept them from disintegrating through neglect.

Power and status now denote renown

Bronze Age – A change of ideas

I think that the Bronze Age people changed their concept of renown. In their eyes renown was imbued into a person or place based on the assessment of personal power. Consequently, for the Bronze Age people renown meant the maximum accrual of energy through wealth, status and influence. The concept of renown began to become entirely anthropocentric – all based on the human’s energy, rather than a combination of power, place, timing and human energy, as it had been seen earlier. They no longer sought to transport spirit and leave renown for spiritual purposes. Now the renown was purely linked to the life of the individual who was the pinnacle of the social hierarchy – the King or Queen. Thus we see the introduction of tumuli in the megalithic landscape and the concept of burial becomes the parting practise instead of creation. In time this became a physical and material shift away from the spiritual and subtle energy forces that held the renown energy. With that change in emphasis came the move away from spiritual practices that retained and encouraged the preservation of subtle energy forces. As the subtle energy dissipated over time through a lack of intent and awareness, so the site gradually became abandoned. What purpose did they have now? They were merely the marker stones and turf mound graves of forgotten individuals. No longer did they have the same subtle powers, and the information field dissipated into the general consciousness of the nation, held in place by written mythology alone, and no longer functional as information sources, or guiding forces for the tribes that had moved away from the sites.

My quest of renown last year was closer to the original concept – I went back into the landscape of my forefathers in search of places where their renown still lingers. In this way I took on their energies, leaving them free to move on. In taking their energies I accumulated more personal power and this added to my own energetic strength, whilst simultaneously cleaning the land of their remnant energies. Only I can judge whether this is going to be a beneficial thing for me and my ancestors, but I believe the concept is real, and marks a passing of “the mantle” of information to a living generation. Now it remains for me to find out whether this information can be put to good use for the benefit of myself and future generations. It is for me now to create my own renown through my words and works.

In the second part of the day spent visiting the megalithic sites of Antequera in Spain we travelled the mile or so down the main road out of town heading towards the dominant feature in the landscape – the mountain of La Pena. We drove into what can only be described as an industrial estate, down a road whose tarmac suddenly ran out, and then down a dirt track, all the while following vague brown signs pointing towards ‘El Romeral‘. As we turned yet again into an area that seemed all ‘wrong’ for an ancient site, we could begin to see some grass and trees at the end of the track. Was this it?

As we pulled into the car park with its dedicated ticket booth (oops – should we have paid at the previous site?) El Romeral loomed with it circular crown of cypress trees. It looked like a crown jewel among the slovenly industrial units and their dumping grounds that surrounded the site. We noticed that yet again there was a bus full of school children visiting the place, so we sat and had lunch while we waited for them to finish their noisy procession in and out of the central chamber.

At the time of visiting I didn’t have my bearings of the place and its surroundings. Only later did I do some research and find that there is a cardinal alignment between El Romeral’s chamber and the El Torcal sleeping dragon that faces it due South of the site. It’s like the dragon is watching the chamber from far above. The only noticeable alignment on the ground is with the La Pena mountain - the lady in the landscape. A gap in the line of trees shows the mountain’s profile perfectly.

El Romeral due North of El Torcal

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For a while I have been thinking about a quaint and seemingly incidental finding that I registered with my dowsing rods when visiting a stone circle once. The stone circle was close by to a telecommunications mast and this got me thinking about the effects on the subtle energy field of a human being from such things. This then turned into a thought about what the effects were of the ubiquitous devices that we carry around with us everywhere every day. What is the impact of the mobile phone on the human energy field? This is my first attempt at dowsing some of the aspects of mobile phone usage and its effects upon the subtle energy body. I realise the post leaves a lot of open gaps – so if you feel like you want to know more – go ahead and dowse it!

Before I start I’m adding this notice:

This post is un-scientific. I may repeat that word a few times for emphasis. Unscientific. It’s based on dowsing, not on double-blind experiments that have been monitored and checked by an independent adjudicator. It’s crackpot theory. Junk information. Useless and worthless. OK? It’s unscientific. There are logical flaw, inconsistencies in the testing and the results have been acquired from what is considered to be a wholly unscientific source (dowsing).

Right. Now we know where we are, then we can begin. Any comments on how this information is unscientific will not only be removed they will be sent to Coventry, where they will be forced to live with a slobbering old aunt who has rabies. Still interested in what I found? Good, then let’s continue!

The Pseudo-Science Bit

What effect are phones having on us?

A recent study on Danish people showed that low-level usage of mobile phones could not be linked to cancer rates.  Here’s a new article about the study [link] and a report that criticises the study as being flawed [link] so that you can see both sides. I think it is fair to say that the study that found no link was quite limited, but has since been used to nullify any arguments over siting phone masts in sensitive places (e.g. near to schools and other areas of population).

When I last dowsed mobile phones I found that they had a detrimental affect on the body’s energy system, but I didn’t do this work systematically, so all I knew was this general finding. When I heard about the study, and the fact that it did not include high-usage statistics in the report, then I wanted to do my own dowsing to find out what the effects of a mobile phone are upon my own health and particularly ont he effects on the energy body, as this is one of the factors that I consider to be instrumental in our general physical welfare too.

In the sections that follow I have considered some questions and then dowsed the results as thoroughly as my interest levels would allow!

Beyond Here Be Dragons and Myths

The testing was performed in a non-shielded environment, outdoors, in a place where I had dowsed there to be no wi-fi signals, and which was also dowsed as being clear of earth energies. The equipment used was the Apple iPhone 4S model. I thought that I should do the testing, where relevant, in three modes of phone operation:

1. Mobile on Airplane Mode
2. Mobile not polling
3. Mobile polling for a signal (searching for a carrier, or changing between masts)

It turned out that I had to consider one more very important factor:

4. Mobile downloading data

My first issue was how to tell if the mobile phone was polling or not. As you may have realised, if you are close to a live audio speaker when the phone polls it causes a series of loud “pips” to be audible through the speaker. I considered placing the phone near a speaker, but I reckoned that the magnetism from the speaker might interfere with the test.
Then I considered that ANY magnetic effect might interfere with the test, so I had to consider where to place the phone that would ne “neutral” ground. I decided to dowse for the best place to conduct the test.

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Oh blimey! We’re so far behind with our posts. Here’s one from the early part of June that I’ve just got around to. It’s the second part of the story of our Wales visit during the Venus Transit early in the month. I think I put “Mid June” at the start of the last post, but actually it was early June. Wishful thinking! I’m determined not to fall further than a month behind with these posts. We’ve got so much to tell you still! Onwards!

In this post I will tell you about some dowsed history of Dinas Emrys, and then another experiment we did with sound and chakra points. The scene starts with curtain up on a wide valley steeped in wisps of flowing mist like the breath 0f a Welsh green dragon filling the world with its presence.

Mist in the Nantgwynant Valley

Breath of the Dragon

As we turned the corner and passed over the crest of the A498 heading towards Beddgelert were were greeted by a sight that literally made us gasp in astonishment and wonder. The sweeping panorama of the lake and valley of Nantgwynant is stunning on any day of the year, but today there were wisps of cloud hanging on to the sides of the mountains that made the whole scene magical. Snowdon had never looked more mysterious, and broad smiles were pasted to our faces for the rest of the journey into the valley below.

Parking in one fo the handy lay-bys at the side of the road we got our wet-weather gear ready, despite the humidity. It was definitely going to rain. It had been raining all morning everywhere around us on the journey in. All surfaces were wet and slippery. I put my sturdy boots on. Kal went in trainers. He surely had to expect wet feet again?

We climbed over the iron gate, got to the path, and climbed up past the static caravans up the less steep side of the hill to the first plateau. Once reached I reminded Kal that this was the place where the mythological red and white dragons had their battle as Merlin and King Vortigern watched. Kal ignored this wonderful piece of information and reminded me that his vertigo had gone. I’m sure he misheard me!

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Recently I was toying with my five Callenish stones. I bought five stones from the gift shop when I was there last year, and now I wanted them to be ‘charged up’ with subtle energy in readiness for any forays I may have to make that would require their use. These stones, made of Lewissian Gneiss, are practically the only stones I have left, after having lost other sets and leaving others around the country to do their work restoring some subtle energy imbalances.

Lewissian Gneiss forming beautiful folds

My usual method of charging such stones is to place them within my favourite (and most favourable) power centre in my house, and to leave them there for however long the divining rods say they should be left. This I did, simply plonking them into a rough pile in the centre. The rods indicated that they would take five days to fully charge up. Hmmm….leaving them for five days in a prominent place might present a problem – what if one of our cats disturbed them, or they got kicked? Was there a faster method, I wondered?

The divining rods indicated that there was a faster way. I asked the rods to show me where I should place the stones in order for them to charge up faster than the specified five days. One by one I dowsed for their positions. One here, one there, one next to this one, one near to that one, etc. I stood back once they had all been placed and looked at their formation. The formation was clearly a parabola, with the focal point directed towards…well, towards Callenish actually! I asked the rods how long it would take to charge the stones up using this formation – one day!

So, was the parabola the most efficient form for collecting and focusing subtle energy? Not quite. It was the right shape for charging up radiant energies (i.e. Sun, Moon, Planet or Star energy) but not for Earth Energy. The formation most effective for collecting earth energy is a circle. Superficially you could say that a crescent moon shape and a sun shape are the perfect subtle energy forms. I rather think the concept has more to do with the efficient qualties of the parabola and the circle than any correspondence with the shapes of The Moon or The Sun, however.

I find it interesting that, given Kal and I have discovered that subtle energy forms conical shapes above and below ground with the centre point being the surface of the earth, a parabola is described as being a through-section of a cone:

“In mathematics, the parabola is a conic section, the intersection of a right circular conical surface and a plane parallel to a generating straight line of that surface. Given a point (the focus) and a corresponding line (the directrix) on the plane, the locus of points in that plane that are equidistant from them is a parabola.” (source: Wikipedia)

Construction of a parabola

This discovery reminded me of when Kal dowsed to discover the perfect crystal layout to try to dispel a powerful negative pool of energy that had accumulated close to his house. He too formed a parabola shape, and the actions of the Sun and Moon over a period of time managed to dispel it. Another thing for us to look out for, but this is not the first time we have formed this shape “accidentally” by placing each stone in a place suggested by the dowsing rods.

I would also seem a reasonable hypothesis that stone circles were created with the intention of collecting and generating earth energies using the most efficient design possible for this.

Gwas Myrrdyn.

This is a short and simple post explaining the sources of four of the types of subtle energy that can be dowsed.

1. Male Radiant - from the radiant energies of The Sun
2. Male Earth - from the action of primal underground water over rock
3. Female Radiant – from the reflection of the energy from The Sun on The Moon, the Planets, and from other Stars (in descending order of strength)
4. Female Earth - from living or dying organic material (animals and plants)

There is an additional energy, which we call “Neutral“, and we will spend more time this year uncovering the properties and qualities of this particular energy, because we feel we don’t yet know enough about it to write authoritatively or from deep experience. Stay tuned for that post coming later this year.

In subsequent posts I will also discuss the ways in which some of these energies can combine to produce subtle energies with different qualities.

Gwas.

Every once in a while I am stopped in my tracks when I read a passage from a book whose description of the subtle energies is so closely in accordance with my own experience. In Chapter 3 of Serge Kahili King’s book, simply entitled “Earth Energies”, I have found just such a correspondence. Describing Baron von Reichenbach’s experiments with magnets and so-called “sensitives” (people who are particularly sensitive to energy) King makes this statement:-

“A fascinating discovery in relation to the magnet was what Reichenbach called ‘the rainbow of od“. A great number of sensitives during thousands of experiments reported a spectrum of colours appearing within the blue or yellow-tinted flames of the poles of the magnets. When not disturbed by breath or motion, these colours arranged themselves in a orderly rainbow sequence, with red at the bottom and dark blue and violet-red at the top. The top colour ‘died gradually away into a smoke-like vapour.’ The whole spectrum of colour was intermingled with sparkling points of light.”

A rainbow of od, or Odic Force. Or perhaps the rainbow of Oz? The Baron used the term ‘od’ to denote the etheric field that seemed closely related to Mesmer’s concept of ‘animal magnetism‘, which was later termed ‘vril‘. Other names for it are ch’i, ki, and prana. It is the life force of Nature in druidic terms. It is the subtle energy field whose flow dowsers tune into. It may be the ‘dark matter‘ that scientists have recently ‘discovered’ and theorised about.

From my perspective I am just pleased this this is yet another source whose descriptions of the qualities of this force mirror my own, non-scientific, experiences.What struck home with me were two things: the sparkling points of light and the rainbow colours. In this blog series both Kal and I have mentioned finding and testing the rainbow colours many times. One of our most recent sessions working with them was at a small ring cairn near Castle Dyserth in North Wales, where I dowsed the rainbow pattern created by Kal standing on a pre-dominantly male power centre:

“I dowsed for the edge of Kal’s aura, his nemeton as I approached again. I found it about 12-15 feet away from the small ring cairn’s centre. I followed it around both sides and behind Kal. Behind him the nemeton was very thin, only several inches wide, but at each side and out in front it expanded into an large ellipse shape, like a pair of butterfly wings. The clouds were quickly disappearing now as the sun burned through.

I dowsed for Kal’s rainbow chakra colour field to see if it was any different from his aura. Indeed it was. His violet coloured boundary was a further ten feet beyond the edge of his aura. Again the bands decreased in width as I approached Kal. His red band was a mere inch from his body as he stood on that spot.”

The butterfly wing shaped aura was reminiscent of the field effects of a bar magnet, the very item Reichenbach was using in his experiments. As for the sparkling lights, remember my description of a visit to Cerrig Pryfaid stone circle, which is on the landward side of Tal-y-Fan, close to the Druid’s Circle formations of Penmaenmawr?

Here’s what I wrote about the energy around that site:

“As I stood there I slowed down my thought processes. I concentrated on the silence. I began to hum and softly speak a few “Awens” to relax myself – a form of druid meditation. I don’t usually make any sound, but the sound seemed to suit the silence of the hillside and the circle seemed to bounce the hum back at me even though the stones were only a few feet high. As my mind stopped being demanding for stimuli I quietened to let the silence engulf me totally. Nothing was making a sound. No sheep. No car. No bird. It was utterly silent. All I could hear was my own slow breathing. My eyes narrowed slightly and I stopped focusing them on anything in particular outside of the stone circle. In that state I was able to see sparks of white horizontal flecks that fizzled and flashed like a TV screen without a channel tuned in.”

This is all very intruiging. Kal and I have come to discover most of the information we have gathered through intuitive responses and off-the-cuff experimentation. Often the results have been above and beyond expectation, and often they have been contrary to any ideas we may have been harbouring. Yet here, in this book as with others I have read recently, I am finding a large degree of correlation in the descriptions of their work with the subtle energy fields.

I feel as though the theoretical side is finally catching up with the wealth of experiential evidence that we accumulated in 2008. This year is shaping up nicely for a mind-blowing collaboration between the two!

Gwas

Following in the footsteps