Flowerdown Barrow

September 21, 2023September 8, 2023 / Ann Murphy / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I had a sudden impulse to take a different route to my father’s house, (every time I write My Father’s house, I think ironically of the biblical heaven, which it clearly isn’t) and went through Littleton, in Hampshire, passing Flowerdown Barrow as I did. Passing the site, I felt a connection to the barrow, which then anchored itself in my lower hara centre, behind my navel. This is my energetic connection to Mother Earth the human energy field. The connection looks, to my inner sight, like a gold cord, vibrant and alive.

I wondered what I was supposed to do with it. Two weeks later…

5th September.

This morning was one of those mornings when I had no desire to do anything. Usually, my mornings are filled with a routine: reading for an hour, somatic exercises, then breakfast, followed by a shower, and then writing for a bit, or getting some shopping for Dad. On mornings when my time feels empty of purpose, I have learned that that is when I need to go out and walk – there is energy-work to do – somewhere.

I drove in the direction of Barton Stacey, still unsure of my destination, until the idea to visit Flowerdown popped loudly into my head! I had wanted to visit the stone beside the barrow there since I had a dream about menhirs a month ago. The dream showed how outlying menhirs were anchors of fertility, like electricity pylons, creating an anchor for the energies of the larger sites that control fertility, such as stone circles and disc barrows. They are erected on a line of energy from the main site and then that energy is transmitted into the surrounding landscape, adding energy to the land.

This is very much the same as having acupuncture to keep your body’s meridians flowing. The energy flows, unhindered, through your chakras. These chakras, or ‘wheels’, distribute the energy throughout your body, filling it with vitality. When the tissues are infused with higher vibrational energy, the body is healthy and can do what it was designed to do.

Stone circles ‘contain’ the energy of the land, which is brought into it from the solar energies at specific times of the year. It is channelled into the energy point below it, or into underground waterways, which then feeds the surrounding countryside, like a chakra point. But a circle only has a certain radius. The way to get around this is to place outliers, menhirs, which can hold an energy line from the circle and radiate it into its locality. One circle, either stone or henge, can have many outliers at a certain distance from it, and I imagine, the tall individual standing stones would have stood within a certain area and also be used as territorial marker stones, or signposts. They might have had multiple uses, but their primary purpose would have been as an energy transmitter.

Thinking about that, it makes me wonder if the menhirs also signposted the proximity of a sacred site? The people back then would have known and understood the function of the Menhirs, and would have also known how to use them to find their way to sites or settlements.

The stones, stone circles, and barrows do the same for the landscape as acupuncture needles do for the body. If the energy is flowing well, the fertility of the soil means better crops and healthier livestock. The sarsen in Littleton, which had been found in 1906 in Dean Down Drove, would have been connected to the Flowerdown Barrow, the largest barrow in Hampshire and, according to ‘Upstairs’, one of the most important sacred sites in the prehistoric area of modern-day Hampshire.

The stone itself is beautiful. It is a golden sandy colour and might have stood at least a meter higher if the top had not been broken off. I also found some interesting markings on it which maybe someone can explain to me. There are many scratches on one surface, which makes me think they could have happened during the move to Chilcomb Museum. But there is a definite lozenge carved into the surface. Again, it could be accidental, but equally, it might have been intentional. You can see these lines in one of the photos below. The lozenge seems to be part of a bigger pattern but the stone is quite damaged here too.

The stone is obviously not in its original position, it was moved originally from Dean Down Drove, which leads off from the barrrows, but I can find no evidence of the stone on old OS maps so it might have been buried under years of mud and vegetation. But there is also a hole which has been bored low down on one side, which I initially thought was a core sampling hole, however, it is too shallow and too wide. Could it have been used as a gate post, perhaps at some more recent date? That is what it reminded me of, yet there is no record of a stone anywhere near either of the Dean farms, where, I imagine, the drove-way lead to – or from… The hole might also have been caused by rain but I would have thought there would have been more, in that case…

On this particular visit, my job was to connect the stone to the disc barrow, as I imagined it was originally connected before it was moved or had fallen over. But first, I had to walk anti-clockwise around the first barrow, something I had not done on all my previous visits. Halfway around the barrow, I became aware of a woman in handwoven, woollen clothes standing on top of it. She watched me, as I went around, and I got the impression that she was waiting to see if I knew what I was doing. She continued to watch, while I finished the round.

I was then told to create a lemniscate, the infinity symbol, by walking anti-clockwise around the disc barrow, joining the two barrows. I’m always curious why things happen at certain times. I have been coming to this barrow site for nearly twenty years and only now are these two barrows being connected. As I came close, to where I started walking around the larger barrow, I felt energy rising which to me feels like excited anticipation. Sometimes it makes me want to exhale forcibly, but not this time. I have to say, feeling energy that way is one of the things that makes this work so enjoyable. It is as though I am doing what I am supposed to do, working with the landscape the way our ancestors did. In that moment of rising energy, I am the ancestors.

As I completed the round of the disc barrow, I stopped to take some photos and then heard ‘Complete the circuit’. I realised that I had not gone back to the beginning. There was still about two meters to go. I completed the circuit, as instructed, then walked into the centre of the barrow. I was immediately aware of the emerald energy but it was coming in with a blue ray, like sapphire. I have worked with Sapphire before but I’m still not sure where it fits. I asked what this ray was and was shown a blue dragon descending through it. Aha! The blue dragon is water, rain. My immediate thought was, ‘Haven’t we had enough of that?!’ (As it turned out, the land in parts of Littleton floods when the winter bourne rises).

The emerald energy above the sapphite tube represents the energy of vegetation so in that context, it made sense that the blue dragon would descend down a column of sapphire. You can’t have vegatation without water.

Once this energy had been fully anchored, I moved off the barrow. As I approached the other, smaller burial mound, I heard: ‘A message for you.’ The woman in her reddish-brown, shin-length dress was there again. She wore a blueish tartan-like top, all handwoven, and was old, her hair yellow-white. She would have been fair-haired when she was younger.

As she looked down at me from the top of the mound, she held out a package wrapped in soft brown leather, tied with a leather thong. ‘Take this,’ she said, ‘And guard it well.’ She placed a yellow flower on top of the package, which looked like a dandelion, or cat’s ear, then added, ‘For the chosen one.’ I took the package, knowing I had to pass it on to someone else. Then she said, ‘For you.’ And she gave me a bottle, the lower rounded half wrapped in a leather casing, like a bottle of sweet wine, or Sherry, from Spain.

She then went on to tell me that she was a Mother in the local community, which now lies beneath Littleton … somewhere. As I was walking away, she stood and waved, but now she had her granddaughter with her, reminding me that her daughter was a spiritual leader within the community and that she herself was teaching her granddaughter, just as the Neolithic ancestors had done. It also made me wonder if both hers, and her granddaughter’s, ashes were in the smaller barrow. It also made me think there was a subtle message there too about teaching my own granddaughters…

Later, I wondered if the single yellow flower represented the energy of this ancient Down (a Hampshire word meaning a chalkland hill) which had been called Flower Down. It has been called Flower Down for centuries, possibly because of the profusion of wildflowers that grow on chalkland, and it has been called that since before 1750. It was originally used as common land to graze animals, and therefore never ploughed. This is why the barrows were left alone and undamaged. It must have been beautiful if they called it after the flowers that grew there, the land fertilised by all the animals. After the Enclosures Act, a patch of land, with the barrows on it, was allowed for the villagers; the rest was owned by a landowner. Thankfully, he left them that part, or we might not still have them and all that information would be lost!

Continueing my journey to Dad’s, I passed hte Running Horse Inn and had the thought that I should have breakfast there one day, that therre was something beneath it that needing accessing. So, next Sunday, we are going to check it out. I’ll let you know what happens.

If you are ever in Winchester, pay Flowerdown Disc Barrow a visit, and tune in. It is a wonderful place, as many Wintonians can vouch for. I know some of you already know this stone, and these barrows, very well indeed.

https://www.cityofwinchester.co.uk/history/html/sarsens.html

The Enclosure Acts

https://www.alresfordhistandlit.co.uk/72%20An%20Introduction%20to%20Hampshire%20Drove%20Roads.pdf

Click to access Flowerdown-Sir-John-Moore-Barracks-A-Planning-Overview.pdf

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Crystal Sphere Attunements.

June 21, 2023July 16, 2024 / Ann Murphy / 4 Comments

Three weeks ago, my guides transferred to me a new way of sharing the crystal energies I had been carrying for over twenty years. It involved the use of crystal rays, anchored in the chakras on three separate, but interconnected levels. I initially received these crystal energies over a period of months in 2004, and at that time, my guides told me that this was the symbolism used in the breastplate of Aaron. The video below shows how it was constructed, according to one version of sacred writings, but if you think about this as both a physical object and an energetic object, you may get a glimpse of what the crystals might have been used for and what energies the priest was capable of working with. Remember too that Moses, his brother Aaron (priest) and his sister Miriam, (prophetess) came from Egypt and the knowledge they held was learned there.

This would also explain the symbolism of the colours used in the weaving of the plate itself. I think that over time the true meaning of this breastplate was forgotten as history was rewritten and changed over the telling of it. What may have been understood when the high priests first wore the plate, was no longer understood, or maybe the interpretations changed because the scribes didn’t have access to the sacred knowledge. Who knows?

When you hold these crystal energies in your chakras, they give you access to the crystalline layers of the earth’s energy field. These spheres, and their crystal rays, are anchored one sphere at a time, with a space of time between each anchoring to allow each level to be fully integrated. Each sphere corresponds to a crystal energy in the Earth’s energy field. (See the video below).

The first sphere contains two crystal rays: Emerald for the nature-elementals of land, and Blue Topaz for the world of the sea. These two energies represent the consciousness of land and sea and all the layers they contain, including the physical. The planet is, at its most basic level, the physical matter of land and water.

The spheres are anchored electrically, meaning their energy affects the electromagnetic energy of your field. Lightning, in the form of an energetic bolt, is used as a high-voltage cleanser, cleansing heavy energies both in the human energy-field and in the planetary field. Physical lightning does the same breaking up heavy, stagnant energy and renewing the area. It recharges the part of the world is actively engaged with.

The second sphere is a higher vibrational energy made up of Ruby and Diamond, the Feminine and Masculine energy- fields around the planet, the layers that contain the Divine Mother and Divine Father thoughtforms. These layers hold positive beliefs about Love and pure spiritual thought, thoughtforms which are being anchored by many people around the world. The Ruby is Divine Feminine LOVE and the Diamond is Divine Masculine THOUGHT.

In each of the first two spheres, the pairing of land and sea; Mother and father, provides Balance.

The third sphere is the Amethyst, which contains the higher thoughtforms of purpose, and spiritual development on earth. This would be akin to the Spiritual MIND which is above all physical, emotional, or mental concerns. It does not contain two balancing energies because it is above polarity. Our world exists as a polarity, which is not a bad thing. Polarity links two things together. It connects, like the positive and negative ends of a battery. We need both energies, in this world, to learn and grow and to live.

If you were to imagine the earth as a human energy-field, the levels would correspond to the physical, etheric, emotional, mental, and higher mental body. The crystal energy in each of these crystal ‘bodies’ influences how we think and how we relate to the different aspects of each sphere. If you knew that you were related energetically to nature, if you knew, without doubt, that you were related to the trees and the plants; if you saw your sameness, the way we are all composed of the same elements of nature in different ways, would you treat it like a commodity? Would you destroy the worlds of all your relatives for your own personal desires? Or would you want to work in partnership with that world; recognising that we are all related and that what you do for one you do for all?

The same idea applies to the second sphere. How we relate to each other, as males and females living on the planet, how we think as male and female, how we fight, how we heal, how we learn to work together, etc.. is what this sphere influences. (Again, I am talking here about polarities, not gender identification, which may also be part of the learning to balance the opposite polarities within oneself).

Gaia’s body contains many dimensions. The crystalline intelligence is just one of those and one which we learn to use in anchoring her Divine crystal energies into the grid. Working with these layers influences the development of those qualities in humans. The ancestors understood the crystalline energies well because they built their stone circles and other monuments with stones that contain quartz and other types of crystal. They might not have understood it in the same way as we do now, but they understood its importance in holding energy and its ability to transmit that energy into the landscape.

I have been working with these crystal layers for quite a while, but this attunement allows me to pass it on and work with it in a more precise way. Previously, we opened sites to the Ruby layer, and to the Diamond but only one to the Amethyst band. Sites which allow access to these crystal layers are Gateway sites. It is part of what makes them special. I have a sneaky feeling that the Gateways to the Underworld, known as the Sidhe, might also have served this function and this knowledge came down to us in folklore. Of course, there is a way to test this theory … if anyone wants to try it.

One amethyst site that immediately springs to mind is one of the burial mounds, or barrows, near the cursus at Stonehenge. When we were working with the barrows there, the amethyst was clearly visible above one of the barrows, as though it was suspended in the air. That was my first awareness of there being an Amethyst layer. There may well be other, higher vibrational crystal layers, but we haven’t accessed them yet.

Uffington, famous for its White horse carved into the side of a hill, is a Ruby site, as are both Banjo enclosures in Micheldever Woods, Hampshire. When you are on the top of the hill, you are sitting in the layer of the Ruby, which looks more magenta than red. The magenta contains the pink of Divine love.

At a Banjo enclosure site, the gateway for Ruby energy is usually at the bottom of the avenue, rather than at the centre, which is where you will usually find the Emerald energy. The Emerald energy, therefore, regulates the elemental energies that create fertility around, and in, the site, And the Ruby gateway opens the upper layer, the energy of Mother, which either funnels down to the gateway or up from the gateway. Sometimes, at different points of the year, the Ruby travels up the avenue and into the Banjo enclosure to encompass the emerald energy sphere. So it is radiating both Emerald and Ruby.

The crystalline layers intersect on different levels, which means they can also bridge sites of a different time, and a different belief system, such as Bronze Age/Iron Age sites with modern Christianity. I believe this is what they were designed to do.

There is a mingling of beliefs happening across the world, as newer ideas take hold, but it is important that some of the more ancient ideas stay with us. Our ancestors knew what they were doing, energetically, and it is important that we remember, and continue to develop the interdimensional work they did so well.

Most of the work we have been doing lately has been about bridging the different timelines, reinfusing Christian rituals with the ancient fertility rituals, and acknowledgement the Earth as Mother. Working in Timelimes is important as valuable information is retrieved from ancestral wisdom traditions.

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St. Catherine’s Hill May Celebration

May 11, 2021May 10, 2021 / Ann Murphy / Leave a comment

We were finally given our instructions to go to St. Catherine’s Hill to conclude the lessons of the Spring rites. I wondered why that day had been chosen, a week into the month of May, especially as the 1st of May has always been the traditional day for celebrating the Spring ritual. Perhaps it was because the sun was shining, or maybe it lay in the influence of the stars, or… who knows? I don’t question the instructions. I am simply the witness, the learner, the student.

On the drive there, having picked up a Freecycled chicken coop, I received messages about Mary Wollstonecraft, and the rise of Feminine power. I could feel this power. It was not the rise of women who used male power models as their own, but a true feminine power. However, I didn’t quite understand what this had to do with the Rites of May. I was still no clearer by the end of the day!

We parked along Five-Bridges Road and walked towards the River Itchen. It was important that we came from this direction, rather than the canal end, which was not only full of parked cars but also because the canal was man-made. But I knew, before we came, that we had to be close to the river. When we got to the bridge over the Itchen, it made sense. I had already been told to bring a bottle of water, for an essence, so when prompted, I opened the bottle.

As I stood watching the river flowing towards me, the clouds and blue skies reflected in the water, the fish symbol flowed into my centre (behind my navel). I saw a hand popping a young fish into the bottle I held in my hands. The fish is the symbol of male fertility as it flows through the water and on a previous earth-working with the river, Chris, Eartha and I had anchored that energy to the river from the Brooks centre in Winchester.

So, with bottle in hand, infused with the male energy of the river, we followed the path to St. Catherine’s Hill. It was a lovely sunny day and as we walked, I could smell nettles, Angelica, and May blossom. My sense of smell seemed more sensitive than usual, making the walk so much more pleasant. We stopped briefly at the canal lock where the water was rushing through it like a waterfall, creating a mist of cool moist air, then we made our way up the steps to St. Catherine’s Hill.

Chris had the remnants of a cold so he stayed beside the river while I headed upward to the summit. It isn’t a mountain, but it felt like one! My thigh muscles burned and my hip complained mightily, but I knew this had to be done if I wanted to understand the significance of the hill to our ancestors. I need to walk up hills more often!

As I reached the innermost bank, I saw the creative energy in the center of the hill, in the form of a dragon. I heard myself call the dragon awake and watched as it emerged from the ground beneath where the remains of St. Catherine’s Church lay. As the dragon pulled itself from the earth, it shook the soil from its great wings, surfacing eventually and taking flight above the hill. Its colour was a combination of gold and red, making it look nearly orange. I haven’t seen one this colour before, two colours combined in this way. It was beautiful. Once again, I heard myself call the dragons to awaken, to take flight, to soar in the air. This felt like a resurrection of sorts.

I walked towards the top of the hill, and into the beech tree copse which now had new Spring leaves open, creating shifting patterns on the floor below. I had an impulse to pour some of the Itchen water in my bottle onto the rise in the centre, bringing the fertile river, energetically, to the hill, connecting them both. I was told to infuse the water in my bottle with the energies of the hill and so I tuned in and watched to see the energies move into the water. Now, along with the fertility of the water, it also contained the heart of St, Catherine’s Hill.

An energy band came from the left of me, then another one came from the east. The western one was masculine and the eastern one, female. They flowed into me and then rose in twin columns high into the air, through my head, where they coiled upwards together like a candy-cane. I waited until that was stable and wandered around the top of the hill, but saw no more. Until, walking out of the clearing, I heard a woman’s voice say: ‘Join with us, sister.’

I turned to look back into the trees, and saw a circle of young women holding hands, and dancing in an anticlockwise direction around the centre of the hill. They were dressed in while linen and all had a circlet of May flowers around their heads.

Inside their circle, dancing in a clockwise direction, were the young men. Circles within circles, sunwise and widdershins. The pair who had been chosen to hold the creative energies for the year, and who represented the male and female energies of creation, appeared in the centre of the dancing circles. They did not participate in the dance but appeared to be ‘holding’ the energies that the dancers were building.

When they had completed their dance, both groups of dancers moved in a line and took their place behind each of the pair, the girls in one line, the boys in another. Then they moved forwards, following their leader in a procession, separating once they had reached the outer limit of the hilltop. The girls moved east, and the boys west, still in a line, moving to the eastern and western bottom of the hill where they encircled the base of the hill and re-joined, taking the energy down to the flood-plain.

The rites were complete and they would spend the night feasting and celebrating.

Once I had witnessed this, I walked back towards the outer boundary, but glanced back towards the summit and saw a huge flame burning, the same colour as the dragon, red and gold. I heard the words: ‘the flame burns for another year’.

Reaching the inner bank of the hill, the dragon appeared again. It was only visible from the bank, for some reason, as I had not been aware of it while I was inside the trees. But now, it was large and alive, and I was told to open the essence bottle. This large dragon then popped a miniature version of itself into the water and once it was inside, I replaced the cap.

I returned to the river, where Chris was waiting, and we walked back the way we had come. When we were crossing the river again, I was instructed to pour some of this essence back into the water, completing the circle of fertility.

The most important aspect of this entire season’s learning, from February through to May was the marriage of water and earth. The Hill, the pregnant mound of the Mother, marries the water energies of the River to maintain the fertility of the land, so that food was assured for the coming season. In the past, the Itchen overflowed at certain of the years, bringing fertile silt from up-river. This reminds me of the Nile flooding, when rituals like this were also carried out at the Temple below the great pyramid. Many sacred Mother sites, to do with fertility, were connected to a river. Stonehenge, Stanton Drew, and of course, Winchester, etc.

The observance of these rites kept the energy flowing, each element dancing together. There was no sense of male energy, or female energy, being more important than the other, but a recognition of the necessary interplay between the two. To our detriment, we have lost this understanding but perhaps it is time we resurrected it, like the dragon.