Sacred sites have very humble beginnings, often as far back as the Mesolithic. From small henges to settled sites, hillforts, henges and stone circles, they all have one thing in common: they were created to bring fertility to the land so that those who lived on it, could thrive. 

In much the same way as current practices of prayer and ceremony create energy where they are held, the energies of ancient ritual would also have built over time, allowing the energy to grow steadily and to expand. The people who worked them chose sites that we now call Chakra sites; points where the energy of the Universe, the sun, moon and stars, could enter, and feed, the body of the Mother/Earth. These points are still intuitively found, and I imagine that the ancient peoples coming back into Britain after the Ice Age would have discovered these sites easily and known what they were.

Food would have been a primary concern and so working with the forces of creation: water, sun, light etc., would have been their main focus. They were moving from a hunter-gatherer nomadic culture to a settled, agricultural culture and bringing their knowledge with them. The landscape was very different then. The last vestiges of the ice had pulled back, the landscape regrown, and it must have been a very fertile time. But, as nomads, they must have needed to know where these sites were,  earmarking them for future habitation. They would have returned to these sites, year after year, their connection to the forces of nature petitioned, just as we pray/manifest now. Although the predominant energy I have always picked up at these places has been one of gratitude. They honoured the land. They honoured what it gave them. They took nothing for granted. And it is this energy that is readily available at working and active sites.

Over time, the energies they built expanded into the surrounding landscape and were eventually joined to other sites. A uniting of the tribes.  Then new cultures came in, adding their knowledge and life evolved.

Henges and Stone circles. 

Henges are circular banked enclosures with a focus on yearly celebrations and fertility rituals. These eventually evolved to become stone circles, often built on underground sources of water, or as a focus for solar rituals. 

Hillforts.

Hillforts, before they became fortified settlements, were large fertility sites and would have housed an entire village. Their focus too was on grain, both growing and storing. They were experienced as sites of the Great Mother, and until the horse people came from the Steppes, were places of abundance and safety. Nearly every hillfort we have visited had an earlier Bronze Age settlement site beneath it which was enlarged over time, so these sites were ancient, even to the people who lived there. 

Banjo Enclosures.

Often energetically connected to Hillforts are the smaller Banjo enclosures. These are small farms, but with a focus on energy and of ‘holding’ sacred energies. A small group of people worked these farms, either a family or a small tribal group. Some are quite large, but not as large as the bigger hillforts.

Burial Mounds.

Burial mounds come in different sizes, and designs, but so far, we have found that every one of them is a place of ceremony and sacredness, often built on and marking a ‘point’ in the sacred landscape, such as a cross-over of energy lines kept alive by the rituals carried out there.

All of these places are places where you can contact both the energy of the people who created them, and where you can connect with the knowledge held in them. The information is held as a template, each one layered on top of another, like a stacks of CDs, and is layered over time, changing the atmosphere around them. The knowledge is both a historical record and a record of the energies they guard. These records are designed to re-balance and nurture the landscape, influencing future generations of people.

Everything of a sacred nature, buildings, stone circles, burials mounds, etc, has an energetic blueprint, a plan of its energies and intention. It starts out as a point in time and space and gradually evolves into a large site of power and connection. Much like Christian sacred sites grow from their humble wooden chapels to become great edifices of stone. The place begins as a thoughtform, created by those who hold it sacred, and eventually that energy becomes physicalised by successive generations as they follow the intuitive promptings of the previously anchored energies.

Some sites are destined to remain small, and unobtrusive, while others become huge, affecting whole areas of the landscape. But all are connected, and all are part of an overall Motherboard, ensuring the fertility of the land and the balance of nature.

At specific points of high energy in the cycle of the year, often marked by astrological observations, the sites were collectively energised, thereby reinforcing the original intention for the site: to ensure the people’s survival. The planet’s energy body needs to be kept flowing and healthy, and both sacred ceremony and intention, through collective imagining does that. A healthy energy body is a healthy body and the ancestors knew that well.

The earth was perceived to be a Mother, a giver of abundance and in those terms, each site had its own particular function in the landscape. Some sites were celebrated in Spring, when the sun energises the seeds and makes the Winter Goddess, young again.

Other sites, such as Uffington, celebrated the Mayday energies, a time for human fertility, ensuring a good harvest; ‘Mother’ sites, such as Fosbury Hillfort, the Itchen Banjo and Danebury, etc., hold the energies of the Fecund Mother, holding her human children in her sacred womb.

Other sites, Long Barrows, celebrate the ancestors and the journey into the void, the Crone. Returning to the void of creation. They are the burial place of the sacred families, whose bones anchor the energies of death and rebirth.

Every site has its function and celebrations, not one of empty ritual, but that of energy-work, renewing the land for the future stability of the tribes.

Other energy points were created and ‘held’ by a person who, in life, had been a wielder of Spiritual power. That power was in her bones, in her physical body, and it was this energy that was placed in sacred burial places or Barrow burials. As long as the barrow and its inhabitant were honoured the energy flowed. Barrows too were part of the overall blueprint, each barrow fulfilling its own function and guarded by the energy of the person buried inside it. 

You can also see this belief in early Christianity as ‘relics’. The bones, or possessions of the ‘Saint’ still hold its original owner’s saintly energy. Every church or chapel had its own relics, even if, in later years, they were not actually the real saint’s bones, but people still believed in them.

Some sites were destined to be lived in, to be holders of sacred life, but others, such as stone circles, were designed to be places of power, ritual and creation. The circles were gateways, allowing energy to flow in or flow out, places considered to be the Divine Womb, where the sun fertilised the seeds of the Mother.

They had other uses too, of course, but in terms of energy work in the landscape, I am focusing on this purpose. Circles like Avebury were used as a clearer of local energies. They acted like giant demanifesters, clearing old energies and allowing them to be renewed. Energies, thoughtforms no longer valid, negative human emotions, are all pulled into the void to be transformed and birthed anew. A good place for ‘letting go’ if you tune into that aspect of the circle. It makes me think of giant snakes eating and destroying, with its body, the negative or outmoded creations of others.

Avebury started life in much the same way as other sacred circles: as a home, a simple wooden structure. Perhaps the person who inhabited the house created the initial energies which ultimately, over hundreds of years, became the Avebury Complex. This is how many of them began. The person creates the necessary thoughtforms, anchors the layers of energy over years, and the people who come after him or her, continue the creation of the anchored blueprint. Even today, this is how sites evolve. You only have to look at how Findhorn began, to get an idea of what I mean. Who knows what Findhorn will become in a few hundred years.

So you see how these massive complexes can have had very humble beginnings. A small family of people who have brought their sacred knowldege with them and who anchor the foundations of very important sites for generations of people into the future. Thousands of years later, and we are learning how to access this energy and renew the sacred work that our ancestors did. Bringing back the balance, anchoring the new seed ideas and changing our ways of life so that future generations can survive and thrive.

This is a very brief explanation, as there are probably books worth of information needed to explain all of this, but I hope it gives you a flavour of how sites began, so that when you tune into one, you carry this knowledge with you.