The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘vannes’

Kermario, Carnac – 8th May 2009

In this sixth installment of the Brittany series, the second part of the Carnac visit, I found possibly the most interesting aspects of the whole Carnac visit (not to put you off the next post, but this is the ‘main feature’, if you like).

Entrance stones

As we walked across the road to the next section, called Kermario, we walked into a larger section of woodland than was around Ménec.On either side of the road winding through this woodland were two large boulders.

I stopped as I reached the point between them. I could feel a barrier of energy! There was a definite flow of energy between them that made my midriff feel a tug, just like when I walk the energy paths down a hill, or stand next to a large menhir. What was the purpose of putting these two stones here? I glanced around. I had missed two other similarly sized boulders that were fifty feet or so away. They were sites in an enclosed field nearby. Two pairs of boulders? The previous pair looked like they might designate the end of the Ménec field, whilst the pair I was standing between might demarcate the beginning of the Kermario field, I wondered? I dowsed between them – a strong male line going back and forth between them. I asked for permission to enter and the energy stopped tugging at my stomach, so I passed through. Hmmm….entrance stones for the energetically-aware?

Nemeton size: more guerrila dowsing

I was glad we were walking instead of driving now. I was seeing much more than if we had just whizzed by on a whirlwind tour from the car as most people seemed to be doing. This fast-paced tick-in-the-box tourism was beginning to become anathema to me. We stopped alongside the Kermario field of stones.

It was an even more impressive sight than Ménec, because you could see down the slope through several fields, and the alignments just kept going on and on into the middle distance. We had found a nice spot amongst some outlying rocks that were not fenced off, but were close to a point that looked convenient for hopping over the fence unseen to most eyes. Whilst I waited for the occasional couple of tourists to wander by I did some dowsing at the edge of the field of stones.

I wondered if all those stones were producing any kind of nemeton field collectively? I walked back into the woods some fifty feet, then asked if I was in the nemeton field and got a “NO” response. I walked towards the fence surrounding the stones until I got the familiar barrier response indicating the extent of the nemeton. It was about 20 feet from the nearest row. I tested for its qualities – FEMALE and NEUTRAL EARTH energies were found. I have begun to differentiate between male, female and neutral earth energies and the corresponding genders of human energies. Kal and I have found that when the earth produces a “white streamA flow of positive energised and healing subtle energy. The white streams usually emanate from a source of good energy such as a holy well, a sacred site, a power centre or a place of worship of good intent. We have found that white stream energy consists primarily of male and female energy combined in a balanced and harmonious blend, such that the two streams “play” with each other, warping and wefting in a dance that invigorates and enlivens everything that comes into contact with it. If a human stands in such a stream then they will feel positive, happy and energised, warm even.” of positive, beneficial energy it is a combination of male and female. Since discovering this I have begun to qualify the energy types by stating whether they are earth energies, radiant energies, or human energies. This nemeton field was earth energy.

The Energy Engine

As we progressed down the path alongside the fields of stones, admiring the amazing lines that flowed in parallel across the undulating landscape we spotted a tower in the distance that looked like a great vantage point from which to view the whole scene.

Before we got there I wanted to ask the rods some more questions about how the purpose of this place. A convenient stopping point was where the path crossed between two fields of stones near to a ‘creperie’, actually a farmhouse built right in the midst of the aligned rows of stones. At this point the rows seemed artificially disconnected by the path and farmhouse, so I took the chance to check my findings so far, and verified them all. Now that I knew the way the energies flowed I was less inclined to continue asking the same questions all over the site. How about finding something out about what this was all for?

I knew that archeo-astrologers and other researchers have picked up on solar, lunar, maybe even stellar alignments, and like most sites I knew that this was a comp0onent of their construction, but not their entire purpose, I felt. Only part of the story. I suspected that the astrological alignments simply told the druids and other people who understood these sites WHEN they would be at their maximum and minimum in terms of their energetic potential. The question now was what would they be doing with this energy, and why was this particular site built like this? I asked the following questions whilst standing in the energy flow between the disconnected rows of two fields of stones:-

• Was the purpose of this site to gather energy by transforming radiant energies and drawing up earth energy like some kind of massive energy generator? YES, came the response.
• Was the whole series of stones all one big engine? Er…NO, not really. OK, let’s be more specific.
• Is this Kermario section all one engine? YES. So, was each named area an engine unto itself? YES.

Wow, this must be some huge engine! Where was the energy going?

• Was the energy produced in each section of the Carnac site going to a specific place? YES.
• In the Kermario field, where I now stood, was there a single nexus point for the energy? YES. Would I be able to locate it? YES.
• Was it on a path accessible to most people (I asked hopefully)? NO.
• Was it within a mile of where I was? YES.

Armed with that much I set off intent on finding this single point where all the energies of this huge field of stones was focused. I asked to rods to take me to this focal point, and I followed them as they led me down the path alongside the field of stones towards the tower in the near distance. As I approached the tower, wondering to myself whether this was the place, the rods swivelled left and I turned with them to see where they were now pointing – at two small green mounds ten feet in at the end of this section of stone alignments! I hadn’t even seen them as I approached, but now they stood out like…well, like a pair of green breasts on a nun!!!

The Mounds and The Tower

Again I hopped the fence. Luckily the mounds were only a few feet away from the path that intersected the fields of stone rows. I asked the rods to take me to the exact place where the energy from the alignments went to. It was the mounds. The rows of stones petered out before the mounds. I couldn’t tell exactly where the energy from the rows came in, but the flow was certainly directed into the mounds. I checked for a nemeton around the mounds and found it circling the two small mounds in a sort of kidney shape, indented more on one side than the other, but flowing around the two of them. It registered for male and female energy combined – a white streamA flow of positive energised and healing subtle energy. The white streams usually emanate from a source of good energy such as a holy well, a sacred site, a power centre or a place of worship of good intent. We have found that white stream energy consists primarily of male and female energy combined in a balanced and harmonious blend, such that the two streams “play” with each other, warping and wefting in a dance that invigorates and enlivens everything that comes into contact with it. If a human stands in such a stream then they will feel positive, happy and energised, warm even. nemeton of earth energies, flowing anti-clockwise. Possibly the male energy went clockwise, I don’t know. I didn’t want to linger too long in this forbidden territory!

I now asked several miscellaneous questions in an attempt to get some idea of its strength. If this was the focal point for all these stones then it might be quite strong. Asked for its relative strength on a scale of 1-10 and got a response at 9. Was it ever a 10, I asked? YES. When? January? YES. February? Less so. March and April? A decreasing response until at April the rods parted. May? The rods began to cross again slightly. June? A more positive response. July? YES. Full cross. August? Less of a response. OK – January and July it was. Two months? I thought about other sites I knew of that were powerful, and asked how this site measured against Arbor Low, for example. Please tell me how many times stronger these energies were. Same strength? NO. 1.5x stronger? NO. I kept going up until I got to 8. Then the rods crossed. Eight times stronger than Arbor Low! Kal would love it here.

When I got back home I checked my “In Tune With The Moon” book which tells me exactly what phase of the moon occurs when in the year. In 2009 the full moon in July coincides exactly with the apogee – one of the two times in the year when the moon is exerting its strongest influence. In January the full moon was at its perigee – i.e. at its nearest, pulling most upon this side of the planet. In July it would be pulling the other side of the planet strongest. I asked the rods if the sun energies would be strongest at the Summer Soltice in June to which the answer was, YES. I was beginning to see how these calendar times meant the times of the greatest energetic potential of the sun and moon radiant energies in relation to the stones at Carnac.

I wondered if the energy came out of the mounds and went anywhere else, so I asked to follow any energy lineThe direction energy takes when moving. It may be straight or curved, in several dimensions and be composed of one or more different types of energies, i.e. negative, positive or neutral. Energy lines can be found at standing stones and ancient sites but are a general feature in all energy fields. coming out of the mounds. I was taken back over the fence and down the path back towards the road. It led me through the woods on the far side of the road, along a barely-visible trail, then back along the road, back up the path and around the tower. Beyond the tower it went into the woods on the other side of the field and emerged again to re-join the mounds (more fence-hopping). The shape was somewhat like a three-fingered hand, or a shamrock, an elongated trefoil shape.

As I was back at the mounds I asked if the field was male, female or neutral. I got a response for a mixture of male and female. So, the area defined was all white streamA flow of positive energised and healing subtle energy. The white streams usually emanate from a source of good energy such as a holy well, a sacred site, a power centre or a place of worship of good intent. We have found that white stream energy consists primarily of male and female energy combined in a balanced and harmonious blend, such that the two streams “play” with each other, warping and wefting in a dance that invigorates and enlivens everything that comes into contact with it. If a human stands in such a stream then they will feel positive, happy and energised, warm even. positive energy. I asked too whether there were any burials within the mounds, as they were suspiciously human sized – NO. Looking down the rows I thought about their placement. Were these rows placed because of the geology of the rock beneath them, I asked? YES. Well, I could investigate this at some future point when I had access to more information. As it turned out, I checked a geological map of the area and found that the alignments were all placed on a shelf of granite that began at Carnac. Interesting. We have found this at every ancient complex of sites – they all make use of solid crystalline volcanic rocks. The crystalline nature of the rock seems important to their function as energy generators or harnessers. This was something I was about to put to the test in my own small way.

A sense of purpose

Now I turned my attention to establishing the purpose of these incredible alignments of stones. What were they here for? I had a series of things I wanted to test for using the dowsing rods. I stood in the field emanating from the mounds and began to ask some serious questions:-

• Was this site an engine to generate energy? YES
• Could it be used for healing? YES.
• Could it be harnessed for transformation of human consciousness? YES.
• Could it be used to create a protective field? YES.
• Could it be used for any ‘magickal’ purpose? YES.

This was amazing. It seemed as though this energy could be utilised in any way that seemed appropriate to the requirements of those who built and used it. This amazing energy generator would create energies that could be employed for any kind of energy work that was needed. As Kal mentioned to me later - is this akin to the legendary Philosopher’s Stone?

Healing with crystals

People were starting to wander up to the tower from the road again, so I hopped back over the right side of the fence. M was sat atop the tower but now she joined me again, complaining about her joint pains, as she frequently does. I wondered if I could harness the positive energies that surrounded us at this moment? I asked if I could use some crystals to do some healing work and the rods happily crossed. I set up my five crystal Venus set according to where the rods said I should put them. It was almost in the usual formation, but two of the crystals were interchanged. I dowsed for where M should stand, and where I could stand to help direct the energies. I asked M to imagine drawing up the energy from the floor whilst I gave the intention to heal her joints. Several minutes later I cleared the crystals away and asked M how she felt. No pain now, she said, but that could have been a placebo effect, however she didn’t complain about her aching joints for the rest of the week, so I guess that tells you something. Believe me – she had been mentioning it several times a day before this incident!
It’s amazing stuff this crystal work. A year ago I would have laughed myself out of the country for doing such a thing (Kal: Don’t worry - I still laugh at you ).

The AlignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. Stones

Now I hadn’t completely dismissed the idea that there were parts of the complex at Carnac that were used calendrically. As we walked back to Ménec alongside the Kermario field we spotted two standing stones that were a hundred feet off to one side. It looked like a make-shift car park that very few people used, but at the end were two standing stones of an odd shape. We have seen shaped stones like this before at sites. I can think of Callenish in particular where the notched shapes of the stones were almost universally believed to provide sightings for alignments of the sun, moon and with particular stars like Aldebaran. These two stones looked just like those shaped stones. I decided they warranted some investigation.

The taller pointed stone only has one “disfigurement” – a slight chunk taken out of its western edge. The smaller stone which stood only six feet away from it had a profound notch hewn from it that meant that its top half was only half the width of its base. I dowsed for energy coming out of the stones and found that a male line emerged from the hewn edge of the smaller rock and led to the flat hewn edge of the pointer larger stone. Interesting. Again, this correlates with so many other stones that have been similarly worked.

Next, I concentrated on finding out which types of energies these stones might be pulling down from radiant sources or drawing up from the earth. The taller stone was drawing male sun energy and also pulling female energy from earth, as was the smaller stone too. Presumably they were also pulling down moon energy, but I forgot to ask! Silly me. It’s easy to be “completist” about these things after the fact. The two stones were involved with both drawing energy from the Kermario field of stones as well as sending it back to them in a sort of circuit.

I asked the rods whether the notches on the smaller stone aligned to specific celestial objects and got a positive response for sun, moon and star alignments. That confirmed their purpose for me. These stones were here to allow users of the energies to determine specific times of the year when the energies were best suited to their purpose, I theorised.

With that we walked back to the car in order to head out to the furthest field – Kerlescan. Here there was another field of stones, but I wanted to concentrate on the side shows – The Giant’s Stone and The Quadrangle, said to once have been a large tumulus.

Gwas Myrddyn

Following an intuition

Carnac, Brittany - Friday 8th May

The 8th May is a public holiday in France. There are loads of them in May, and it seemed like a good day to be heading down to the seaside, so we packed for a trip to the greatest megalithic site of the whole of France – the legendary fields of aligned stones that constituted Carnac. Carnac is a small town on the south-west coast of Brittany, between the towns of Vannes and Lorient. As I checked the map for a route I noticed that almost every village in that area began with the prefix “Ker“. This prefix means ‘horn’ , or the symbol for a crescent moon. It was going to be a two hour drive to the coast at least so I let M have a go at driving to give me a rest, and to allow me to pick the places I wanted to see, and to navigate – badly as it turned out.

The journey didn’t start well. We got diverted almost immediately and my blood boiled at being unable to get us onto the road that would reduce our journey time by half an hour (not yet into the relaxing part of the holiday). Instead we were forced to go miles out of our way. Luckily the rest of the journey was quiet and trouble-free, through small Brittany towns and villages, and down beautiful stretches of toll-free dual carriageway. After two and a half hours we were approaching Carnac and the excitement was mounting (well, for me anyway). We dived into Carnac town and got a site map from the Tourist Information to work from before heading back out to park at the Ménec centre.

Phases of megalithic building in Europe

The fields of stones are effectively divided into three parts – Menec, Kermario and Kerlescan. Each site is bordered by paths through beautiful woodland, and boasts its own particular interesting element in addition to the fields of aligned stones, as if they weren’t enough to be impressed with! 

We started at Ménec near the visitor centre. The weather was threatening to be warm, but clouds kept rolling over the sun spoiling the photographs. Walking into the tiny hamlet of Ménec we were greeted by our first full view of the field of aligned stones and it was a truly amazing sight. Silence. Standing. Staring. Open-mouthed. Into the distance were eleven rows of stones, some ten feet high, most around four or five feet in height. They just went on and on, snaking slightly with the shape of the land into the distance. Now what is to be made of that? It was my mission this day to try to find out.

View along Ménec field

I had read the various folk tales, myths and archeological theories about their presence, but as with so many other sites they were simply nonsense, or had little substance to them other than being quaint stories. The ideas that have been submitted are:-

1. They are Roman soldiers turned to stone by St.Cornelius as he was cornered by them at the coast whilst trying to escape
2. They are gravestones for every person who has died in the area in ancient times, the larger ones being the rich people and the smaller ones the poorer.
3. They are a solar and lunar observatory used as a calendar to mark specific sacred times of the Celtic year

For me these “explanations” mean nothing. They add nothing to our understanding of the value and immense effort that was engendered into the Carnac sites. The idea that literally thousands of stones would be placed in an East-West alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. along a shelf of granite simply to act as a calendar is laughable, and even more so when you’ve actually visited the site. A simple stone circle would have achieved such a calendar function if that was what was intended. It’s clearly only a mere fraction of the site’s purpose. However, I’ll come back to the purpose of the site later. It suffices to say at this stage that these myths do not take into account the energetic intention of the construction. I, on the other hand, had this uppermost in my mind as I strolled along the fenced perimeterof the Ménec field.

Don't fence me in!

Guerilla Dowsing

Yes, fenced. It was all fenced off. Like Stonehenge, apparently we simple souls can’t be trusted to keep our sticky mitts to ourselves and would be hacking away at the stone for souvenirs if we were allowed to, or we would be clambering all over them and felling them left, right and centre if we were permitted access to them. Only a guided tour at specific times of the day (and considerable cost) would allow anyone access to the stones themselves. However, I had not come a hundreds of miles to this place merely to walk along the edges. It was time for some Guerilla Dowsing, i.e. dowsing in places where you were clearly not encouraged to do so and may be arrested for trying to. I did so. I picked a quiet spot, then hopped the fence with my rods and began to take some readings.

Here’s what I found out at Ménec:-

• Two lines of energy run in and out, and in between the stones. One is a MALE energy flowing close to the stones in the usual way, i.e. not deviating much from the most direct course between stones. The second line is a FEMALE energy, as one might expect this energy deviates wildly between the stones, sometimes going up to several feet away from the alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. of the stones. The female energy will also often miss out flowing around one of the stones in the row and be pulled back into a path around the next stone. This is unlike the male energy, which seemed to flow regularly past each stone in turn (although my sampling of this was limited to the occasional sneaky raid over the fence).
• There are 11 rows of stones in each ‘field’ (Ménec, Kermario and Kerlescan) and the energy paths of the male and female energies flowed in one direction down one row, then in the opposing direction for the next row. So, if the alignmentAlignment relates to the concept that humans have their own energy fields that are oriented or formed in a specific way such that the person is either suited better to one energy source of another. Some people have their energy fields empowered by the direct subtle energy force of The Sun, whilst others are empowered by the indirect subtle energy of The Moon. Due to the historical associations and symbolisation of The Sun with masculinity and The Moon with femininity we designate these alignments as either being ‘male’ or ‘female’ alignments accordingly. We interchangeable refer to people as being ‘sun-aligned’ or ‘male-aligned’ and similarly with the female alignment. is East-West the first row flowed West to East, then the next row flowed East to West, then back to West-East, and so on across all the rows of stones.
• Some stones were MALE (pointed shape) and some were FEMALE (flat-topped stones). The male stones were drawing down SUN energy and transforming it into the male energy lines that I had dowsed between and around the stones. The female stones were drawing down MOON energy as well as drawing up female earth energy, transforming them into the female energy that I dowsed flowing more vigorously along the aligned rows of stones.

That was all that I dared to do at first because there was a constant stream of visitors walking up and down the path that we were on, and I felt guilty about breaking the rules. I didn’t want to be escorted away from the site at this early stage, so I bided my time until I could find a place that was a little quieter. Next time I will book a guided tour, although I’m not convinced the tour guide would appreciate having to stop every few minutes for me to dowse around! Having got to the end of the first field of stones I was eager to see what the next set looked like.

The sun was alternately popping out and back in again behind clouds, which threatened rain, but we walked across the main road towards the next part of the Carnac site – Kermario. As we crossed a stranded field of stones made me wonder how much the roads and the traffic were affecting the power of the sites, but it was too dangerous to dowse whilst dodging the cars!

Gwas.

Following rows upon rows of stones