My guides have ‘suggested’ I do readings for each of the festivals of the year, and for the new moons, anchoring into the grid the energies for the coming months. I begin with a crystal grid meditation for the summer solstice, which feels to me like Stonehenge, but it is also all the circles that fulfill this fertility function. I used the Woodhenge essence a friend and I made on Mayday at both Woodhenge and the Cuckoo stone. It connects us to the Cosmic elements of Stonehenge. An appropriate essence, I thought.
The grid needed to have more fire than usual, so four candles were placed, each one in its own corner. Once the flames were lit, I was instructed to place water in the center. Next, the quartz crystal circle was aranged around the water. This circle felt like a representation of the stone circles. Then an amethyst point was placed in North, South, East and West of the grid, connecting the circle to each of the four directions and holding all in balance.
Lastly, I was told to use flowers. Flowers? I mentally scanned my house. Where was I to find flowers? Then I heard: ‘Don’t you have roses in your garden?’ Why didn’t I think of that? So, I gathered some petals from two roses and placed them in the grid. These represent the love and beauty of the Mother in Nature.
Listen to the meditation and feel yourself there. You can put yourself in the grid by imagining you are standing inside it. I’ve put the image of the grid below the recording so you can see where to put yourself. In placing yourself in the grid, or simply listening to the recording (done on my iPhone so excuse the quality), you are bringing the fertility of Mother earth and Father Sun/Sky into your auric field and hence into your life. May it bring you abundance, connection and healing.
The Music in the background is by Deya Dova who sings in sacred sites around the world. This music was called: Isles of the Great Goddess and you can find more of her music on Youtube.
I have made an essence with the water in the centre of the grid, so if you want me to send you some, just send me, via a donation, enough to cover the bottle and postage (approx £5 if you are in the UK), along with your snail mail address and I’ll send you off a small stock bottle which you can use to make more with. It contains all the energy of the Mother and Father’s abundance, and the healing intention of the White Dragon of Albion for the British Isles and Ireland.
I began writing this post in December 2023, before I went to Stonehenge for the Solstice. Seeing the image of the Stonehenge Cup online must have triggered something in me because a week later I had a strong impulse to go and visit Salisbury Plain. The excitement of finding the story behind this object opened a way forward. Often this is how we are led towards a place we need to work in. Something triggers an energy deep inside and we are propelled by a sense of exploration and adventure towards discovering a new piece of the puzzle.
This particular part of the puzzle is still playing out for me, and may well last the entire year, maybe longer. We’ll see. Here is the object that triggered my excitement and the post I had begun to write about it…
While doing some work online, I came across an image that made my heart flutter. It was an image that told me something about Stonehenge that I probably would not have accepted before, but because this information came from the burial of a woman in a round barrow close to Stonehenge, and within its sacred boundaries, it was impossible not to accept. Not only could I not not accept it, it opened my eyes to what I had been unable to see before, and which explained an aspect of the rituals in Stonehenge that made absolute sense to me.
The cup is not a cup, as such, but a replica of the stone circle itself … complete with a thatched roof and a large opening in the centre. Stonehenge must have looked like this at some point in its long life and light, part of its ritual use. When a light is placed inside the model, it shines out through the gaps … when lit in the dark. Effectively, it is like the solar light shining out through the stones. It made me wonder whether there was any evidence of fires having been burned in the centre of the circle or purely energetic.
During sacred solar ceremonies, the sun’s light is energetically ‘brought down’ into the centre to fertilise the waiting womb beneath the earth. I know this is part of Stonehenge’s function because it is one of the things I recognised early on in my work when I did Reiki attunements in the circle. My later experiences at Broomrigg stone circle in Cumbria also taught me what the sacred ceremonies in the circles were really about and inspired me as to why and how Stone circles may have been created.
The opening at the roof of this thatched building is like the cervix, the entrance to the womb, opening to the fertilising energies of the sun during the Winter Solstice and on into February. Stonehenge, like many sites, is a Sheelagh na Gig site, a Winter/Crone site that opens to the masculine solar light when it becomes the maiden of Spring. Priests and priestesses, channels for this light, would bring the sun’s energy through their bodies and energy fields, allowing solar energy to pass into the waiting, receptive earth beneath their feet.
The light of larger sites, such as the Stonehenge Complex, travelled along energy lines connected to the henge. Other places, such as menhirs, smaller circles and especially rivers, then sent that energy further into the landscape benefitting all who lived upon it. Light is life. Our ancestors understood the earth to be the body of the Mother. She fed them; nurtured them; gave them shelter, and in death, they returned to her.
I can just imagine what it might have been like to participate in one of their rituals. Standing under the cover of the thatched roof, waiting expectantly for the sun to shine its rays of light, both physical and energetic, into the womb of the waiting mother. Everyone is watching. They can feel the energies radiate, touching them all, making their skin tingle, their bodies fill with light. A sense of elation as energy leads to lightheadedness. Awe as the sun’s rays move into the landscape – their landscape – fills them with joyful, and trusting, anticipation of the abundance that will follow. The unshakable knowledge that they are loved and supported by both Mother Earth and Father Sun, gives them assurance that all will be well. It is a joyful, uplifting and connecting celebration as all the tribes gather to participate in the yearly ritual of abundance and sharing.
We get some sense of this wonder and attunement at modern gatherings at the Solstice. But in the past, they knew what they were doing. They knew this ritual of bringing down the light would benefit everyone. What we see now is a good start, however. People are feeling the old energies again. Wanting to join together in the ancient ritual of tribal celebration. There is a powerful sense of connection in these gatherings as people from everywhere come on this night to be together, each understanding why the other is there. There is something magical about the atmosphere. We are All One, together, honouring and loving the ancient place, taking in the special energies of the time.
The discovery of the miniature ceramic Stonehenge Cup made me wonder who the buried woman was. Burial mounds contain the bodies, or ashes, of significant people who both ruled, and carried out sacred service. Their energies remain at these sites and can be accessed with intention and a willingness to serve the whole. She may have been a priestess, a ‘Mother’ connected to the sacred landscape. In life, she may have had a replica Stonehenge to burn incense in, possibly to maintain her intention for the henge and to hold the sacred site within her energy-field. It is much the same as having an altar space in your home, lighting candles and incense and connecting to the energy of a place, or people. It might have been a loved object , connecting her to the place she loved, the place of the Mother. And, of course, it may not be the only one, simply the only one they have found, so far.
On the other hand, the incense cup could have been buried with her to allow her to take the light of Stonehenge into the earth, back to the Mother, a little part of the light she might have worked with most of her life. It reminds me of my aunt’s funeral in southern Ireland. She was a very devoted Catholic. After the traditional wake, which was wonderful to attend because her spirit was joyful that she was ‘still alive’, we went to the funeral mass. Afterwards, her coffin was brought to the cemetery in Kilmacow, beside St Senan’s Church, where it was put in the ground, on top of my great-grandmother Johanna’s coffin; her favourite grandmother. (My mother was one of the models used for an angel mural in the Church of St Senan, when she was a child. She is the third angel from the right, lower three, playing a trumpet).
When my aunt’s coffin was in the ground, I saw a vertical shaft of pink light enter her heart area, through the wood of the coffin. It remained anchored there, a pillar of pink energy, as though her physical body was its anchor. The pink was the ray of Love and would be henceforth accessible to all who visited the graveyard. A lovely gift to leave after physical life. I have seen the same thing with ancient burial sites too.
Our ancestors held different beliefs, but energy is energy, and they knew it far better than we do. We are only learning what they knew, thanks to their physical remains and ability to communicate with us, thousands of years later. Their bodies, within the burial mounds, can still share energy and information, if we remain open. I have learned to understand the ancient rituals through connecting with the spirit of these people who are happy to share their history and knowledge. They want us to know how to venerate the earth and its many dimensions. They want us to remember. And we can, by going to their places, tuning in, and trusting what they give us.
Although we are now in Brigit’s time, I am completing the Winter Solstice Journey we did back in December 2023. Sometimes it takes time to integrate energies and to be ready for the new. This seems to be one of those times. It also seems to fit the energy of the Solstice, when after that day, when the seeds in the earth are energised by the solar light, they then need time to germinate in the darkness before poking through into the light…
How do they do that?
The Solstice journey began before we even got to Stonehenge. Having decided to drive via Stockbridge, instead of the A303, we were being energetically prepared while we travelled there from Winchester. Past Woolbury Hillfort, just outside Stockbridge, I was aware that we were driving through ancestral/Tribal land, the energy being awake and accessible which it isn’t always.
On the other side of Stockbridge, we turned off the main road to go past Danebury, but this time, the gold disc we had noticed last time we were here, just before the Solstice, was now larger, reaching almost to where we had turned into the road. Because Danebury is an active fertility site, a place like Stonehenge, where the sun is brought into the womb of the earth to fertilise the land and all upon it, its golden solar energy radiates out all around it. The disc indicates the extent of the radiance around the Hillfort, the land that is influenced by the solar energy. Today it was wider than it had been last time when we brought down the gold ray in the centre of the Hillfort and met the local elemental guardian of the place.
As we passed through this gold energetic disc I felt my consciousness raised to a higher level of awareness. I was reminded of a meditation a couple of weeks ago, when my Turkish guide came in and gave me a large gold key, then showed me how he would lift me to a higher level, like jumping onto a platform. At the time I did not know where it referred to but it soon became clear, literally. A Bronze Age king appeared in my vision and told me he was waiting for us at the King’s Barrows and then my chakras opened and activated. I received the understanding that I had to plug myself into the Stonehenge energies by connecting with each barrow in turn until seven chakras were plugged into the seven barrows. It has been many years since we first activated these barrows, nearly twenty years, in fact, but we knew them to be an integral part of the Salisbury plain circuitry. Perhaps more than I previously thought…
We parked in Larkhill because English Heritage had blocked all the usual parking places closer to Woodhenge in preparation for the people due to visit for the following day’s sunrise. After a long, interesting walk, where we met a couple of deer and some lovely sheep, we reached the end of the cursus. The energy was stronger than I have ever felt there and I could feel the back of my heart heating up making me feel nauseous. There was originally a Longbarrow at this at the cursus which has been ploughed out, but the energy obviously still remains.
It has been a long time since a site has made me feel physically sick, although, as soon as we moved off the site of the Longbarrow the nausea left.
We made our way to the King’s Barrows, but there are two groups of King’s Barrows, the Old, and the New. Which ones were we supposed to go to? The only way to know was to trust our intuition and check each one energetically. It was rainy and blustery on the Plain and areas were cordoned off, but we got to one which was not. Four large beech trees grew on it and as I walked towards it, the wind suddenly blew up strongly. Too strongly. I could see a branch had already broken off and now lay on the middle of the burial mound. I wondered if I should risk it, and continued towards it. The wind blew up even stronger so I decided not to. As I made my decision and walked away, the wind died down. Perhaps the trees were warning me…
The next barrow we came to was ‘a’wake’, so the first thing I did was walk around it once, anti-clockwise, to open its energies. But as I finished I was instructed to continue walking in a spiral until I reached the top of the mound. I have never had to do that before. I stood on the top waiting for the next part but that became Chris’s job. He walked onto the mound and stood facing the stone circle. He was then ‘told’ to raise his arms. He saw himself holding the golden orb of the sun in his hands, like a beach ball, which he slowly brought down. When he had finished he said, with some amazement, that he had anchored it in the stone circle. The force had been so powerful, he said, that he was pulled physically towards the circle and thought, at one point, that he was going to lose his balance.
We got to the New King’s barrows and, beginning with the first in the row, climbed to the top and tuned in. Immediately, I felt the red energy of my base chakra extend to connect deeply with the barrow. I waited until the right time to proceed to the next mound.
I did the same for each of the burial mounds, connecting each corresponding chakra, from base to crown. But at the heart level barrow, something different happened. Often, before we visit a site to do energy-work, we are instructed to bring a bottle of water. When this occurs, we know an essence will be made. Standing on the Heart Barrow, I opened the bottle, held it in my hands and waited. I immediately saw the energies of all the burial mounds and the people buried/cremated within them pouring into the bottle. This was all the knowledge of our ancestors from across time and space.
A white-robed priest appeared in front of me and placed a wand in the bottle. He used it to stir its energy into the essence. This magical object was made of wood and had crystals along it, like chakras, and he gave me the information that the essence would also energise the chakra system, aligning it with the energies of Stonehenge and the people who built it. The experience of using the essence is like having a line of light plugged into the back of each chakra, connecting you to each of the barrows.
As it turned out, it does a lot more.
We continued to the other barrows, connecting and aligning until we had completed them all. The last one, the crown, was a little tricky because it was part of the garden belonging to some local authority but we discovered we could access it from the road. When we did, it felt like it was like a cap on a bottle, completing the seven-barrow circuit.
The essence, as well as connecting the seven chakras to the seven barrows also has the effect of pulling in the energy-field, so that personal energy is contained and focused. This was a surprising effect, but I imagine that if we are scattered in our energy, then we are unable to manifest well, or focus on what is important. Somehow, the essence creates an energetic boundary in our field. I have been using it every day since the solstice and I am managing to write the second draft of the book every day, without fail, as if I now have a boundary I never really had before. The Stonehenge plug-ins are specifically connected to the back of the chakras and to the crown and base chakras. When fully plugged in, it feels like I am lying down on the barrows, like they are a bed of energy beneath me.
I used the essence the following day, the 22nd December and this is what I recorded:
Standing at my landing window with the sun coming up, I am Stonehenge. I feel myself as the stones and the sun is filling me up. I draw the solar light into my body of stones, the womb of the earth, and absorb the golden radiance. When I feel full, I allow it to simply be. The stones hold the light there, even when the sun has gone down, and rises and falls every day. It holds the energy of the people, like a light in the henge, suspended and available.
Next, I saw Cerrunos in the circle, dancing around the centre. Then I see the Was sceptre in the circle, and it anchors the sun to the water layer beneath the stones as though the sun is fertilising the waters around the circle too. The horned man is very much the stag energy of winter and fertility, dancing the male fertility into being.
A male priest then appears in the circle, wearing a holly/yew headdress. He is the energy of vegetation, ensuring that the tribes are fed with nature’s abundance too. Both he and the stag king are bringing in their intent for the following year, ensuring these two energies of abundance are manifested for the year. This is the time to manifest the years coming needs.
Lastly, I see a frilled dragon, multicoloured, but it is held within the circle, and only ‘allowed out’ at certain times of the year, Such as like Mayday, etc. This reminds me of the Quetzal serpent at Chitzen Itza which also descends to the land during the Winter solstice. Then I am told that the ceremonies happened over three days, but the festival feasting lasted a week, so that people could bond and connect with each other, tying the tribes together as one People. Sounds like a powerful and very enjoyable festival and the modern gatherings at stonehenge certainly reflect the desire to reconnect with the old ways.
The algiz rune appeared, connecting Iceland, Norway, and Orkney to the south of England. At the top of the line, which we have already anchored, there is a white flame and the Orkney dragon, orange and yellow, comes spiralling down the line to the south, but it’s tail is still in Orkney. This, I imagine,represents both the present, and the past, as People from Orkney built stonehenge and we are now rebuilding those connections energetically. But importantly, the dragon, connects both South and North, the North being the origin of that particular vibration of dragon energy.
Two months later, I am still holding my energy open and using the essence every day, and every day I am plugged into the Stonehenge people and their earth wisdom, earth wisdom which is far older than Stonehenge itself. I continue to hold myself open to its energy and on MayDay will return to see what happens then, as instructed.
An email popped into my inbox which I was so happy to receive (something I cannot say about some of them!). It was from LiDAR, the digital terrain mapping people. Not only was it exciting to have something that we have long known confirmed, but it also gave us additional information about why certain energies were placed where they were.
Many years ago, in 2006, Chris and I spent time exploring Salisbury Plain, doing energy-work with the barrows (burial Mounds), and the Cursus. During this exploration, I was given a glimpse of the Bronze Age people who served the temple, and the Mother Goddess. (It would be useful to read this for context).
At the time we received the information, which came in the form of inner-vision and telepathic understanding, I had no way of verifying the existence of the spring we had seen on the previous occasion, or why the Initiatic gateway was along the cursus and not in the circle of Stones (Stonehenge). But, having received the email from LiDAR, I was excited to see that my intuitive vision was correct, at least as far as the Spring is concerned.
This is how the LiDAR people put it (and rather beautifully, I thought):
“The LiDAR image unfurls a captivating tapestry, revealing the profound significance of Stonehenge’s position. No longer a mere coincidence, its placement appears divinely orchestrated, guided by an ancient wisdom that intertwined the monument with the very essence of the land. Observe the enigmatic “avenue,” a mysterious earthwork extending from the henge itself. It stretches forward, seemingly guided by an otherworldly force, tracing an invisible path toward the fateful convergence of these long-lost waterways. What hidden meaning lies within this alignment? What cosmic forces were at play when this extraordinary design was conceived?
“The Stonehenge, the cursus, and the ancient river channels intertwine in a symphony of celestial geometry and earthly harmony. The landscape becomes a living tapestry, where the past whispers its secrets, waiting to be deciphered by those who dare to seek the truth.
“What does this profound relationship signify? Could it be a celestial map etched upon the Earth’s canvas, guiding ancient minds to comprehend the mysteries of the cosmos? Or does it hold the key to forgotten rituals and sacred ceremonies, enacted by our ancestors in harmony with the celestial and terrestrial realms?
“The LiDAR images, combined with historical mapping, grant us an extraordinary glimpse into the past, igniting our curiosity and fueling our imagination. It invites us to explore the profound interplay between humanity and the landscape, where Stonehenge emerges as a portal to a realm of ancient knowledge and cosmic connection.
“So, let us embark on a journey of discovery, armed with the LiDAR’s revelations and the courage to unravel the enigmatic relationship between Stonehenge, the coursing rivers of old, and the mystical cursus. With each step, we inch closer to unearthing the profound truths that lie dormant within these sacred grounds.
“The mysteries await your arrival, dear seeker of knowledge. Unlock the secrets of Stonehenge and immerse yourself in the mesmerizing dance between monument, landscape, and the enigmatic forces that shaped our ancient past.”
I mean, could they have put it any better?
According to what I saw in that ‘memory’, the rivers were no longer there. On the surface, at least. But the bournes (or springs) still rose, giving them water; but perhaps only at certain times of the year when the, now, underground channels filled up after a long rainy season. (These rivers were obviously much wider than the river Avon, where Durrington Walls was built close to).
By the time Stonehenge was built, there may have been only winter rivers, but this would still have been seen as a gift of fertility from the Mother to humankind.
Many years ago, when I worked in post-excavation in Winchester, before the new council chairman got rid of the Winchester Archaeology team, a skull and longbones of a Neolithic woman came in to be cleaned up. Her bones had lain in a long barrow, near Barton Stacey, and rescued before the barrow had been completely ploughed out. I was given permission to explore them, so, using psychometry I tuned into the skull of this ancient woman.
From the images that came into my head, I gathered that she was the head priestess of a group of people who lived there six thousand years ago, and part of her role was to care for the spring close to their settlement. She placed flowers there, at particular times of the year, and made sure it was clear, clean and energetically active. She had a daughter, which her own mother, the girl’s grandmother, took care of. The woman herself had responsibility for the welfare, both spiritual and physical, of the tribal unit and was too busy to teach her daughter. Instead, the role fell to her mother who trained the child in all the ways of the priestess so she could take her mother’s role when the time came for her to do so. This seemed to be the way they did things. Grandmother taught the granddaughter, freeing up the mother.
Barton Stacey Bourne.
This was fascinating because it gave me a wonderful insight into how the matrilineal knowledge was passed down. It also highlighted the importance placed on the sacred springs. However, at the time, I was not aware of any springs around Barton Stacey. I mentioned it to my then brother-in-law, who told me there was a winter-bourne in the field (Belonging to Cocum Farm) across from where the long barrow once stood. In very wet winters, this bourne still rises in the field and runs down to the River Dever where it joins it.
The old stories tell of the Maidens of the Wells, spirit women who guard the sacred springs. I imagine the stories are part of our collective memory, reminding us of a time when we honoured the waters that fertilised our lands and gave us food to eat. It is interesting too, to see that the rituals of the Neolithic remained in the Bronze Age, and still remain today, albeit in a different form.
Apart from this lovely confirmation of previous intuitions, I was also struck by the fact that at Stonehenge, the large energetic gateway was immediately on top of where the rivers originally divided.
If you are sensitive enough you will feel the energy of water as you pass over it, or get close to it. It has a very recognisable feel. The gate’s placement over where the river divided, might have been planned, or they may have simply felt the water energy below. We now need dowsers to find this water, but I know that it can be psychically experienced too, although dowsing is a great way to learn sensitivity.
The energetic gateway we perceived might have been an energy, built up over years of working with the place, in a sacred way. The gateway itself seems to be at one junction and the stone circle avenue at the other. (The gate is the pink triangle, and the blue circle is the site of the spring). The gateway might also have energised the flow of water as it passed close to the circles, on its way to the sea, like the River Avon close by.
Tom Graves‘ books tell us that many stone circle sites were built on underground water channels – as were Cathedrals and old churches. Tom was a dowser and did amazing work at many sacred sites, mapping out the energies of the stones, and their placement over water channels deep in the earth. His work opened the doors of understanding around how our ancestors ensured the survival of their community while honouring the earth. His books are well worth the read.
In doing these explorations into the past, we are relearning the ways our ancestors placed their sites and how they worked with them. In many ways, we are intuitively doing the same when we dress the wells and hang ribbons on ancient trees. The knowledge is in the landscape, and all of it is accessible. All we have to do is become sensitive enough to feel it and then act on what we perceive. Even if it seems like we are making it up. Because, when another technology finds the same information, it is so wonderfully affirming.
Try it out for yourself, if you ever have the chance to go to Salisbury Plain. I might have to go back myself … if ever I have the time…
On the 2nd of January, we felt an impulse to drive to Durrington Walls, near Stonehenge. It was our first trip to do energy-work in months and it felt really good to connect to the ancestors again. I had been weighed down by the darkness of winter, and the constant rain, and felt permanently rooted in modern life and its stresses having been in the UK for far longer than originally intended. As result, I had lost my focus, so the trip to Durrington felt like a positive step and as we drove there, feeling the intention, I remembered how much I loved doing this work.
Durrington Walls, Wiltshire.
When we arrived, we walked into the henge, looking with archaeological eyes at how the settlement had been constructed. We then tried to find the site of the two circles that originally lay within it. It felt very Avebury-ish and we thought about how close the settlement had been built to the river Avon that passed just below.
Having spent time discussing the possible thinking of the original settlers, we wandered back, but as I crossed what would have been one of the entranceways to the river, I felt the urge to connect. In my mind, I raised my arms to the sun, or to where the sun would have been, had it been a cloudless day. (I am far too self-conscious to do physical arm-raising in public so I see myself doing it in my mind). I raised up and connected to the sun. As I did so, two ancient people, one male, one female, appeared. The man held a brown book which he handed to me. It felt like a bible, and he explained that it was the spiritual and historical beliefs of his people; the two being connected, just like the Old Testament is both the history, and spiritual beliefs, of the Israelites.
Avon River from the settlement.
I began to get an understanding of what had brought these people here and why they had left. I was told that they had originally come from the north – it felt like Orkney – and they came to create a new colony down south, where they had people they were connected to. They had been told that it was warm here and that the land was fertile, good for crop growing. This felt like the beginnings of agriculture when they were learning how to work with the fertility in the landscape in a new way. At first, it was good, and they were successful enough but then the climate changed. It became wetter and there was less sun to ripen the corn.
The bad weather continued for several years and they could not survive, forcing them to go back to an older way of life – more a foraging and hunting lifestyle. There was a feeling, that in their fear, they focussed more on learning how to work with the earth’s energy-field, and the serpent lines, and less on the more physical aspects of survival. In the past, hunting and gathering had been their way. It was a shamanic way of living. In order to survive, rituals were performed before the hunt, rituals that connected them to the essence of the animal, ensuring the creature’s participation in the hunt. They had no real control over the animals. All they could do was connect with their essence, communicating on subtle levels their intention and need to feed themselves. We are familiar with the Nat. American way of life. Our ancestors were no different.
Transitioning to agriculture took a long time. Not only were they learning how to farm, and how to tame animals that originally roamed free, they were also learning how to work with the earth’s forces differently. It was an entirely new world for them.
However, the efforts of the early people of Durrington Walls were not successful. With the change in weather patterns, food supplies ran out and their people dwindled in number until eventually, they decided to return to where they had come from. They knew there would be food there. Fish was always plentiful, as were mammals, so they had to go backwards for a time. This feels like an important message for us in our time too. Climates have cycles, they change. We are currently in one such change. There may come a time when we too have to go ‘backwards’ for a time, back to an older way of doing things. But it is a temporary going backwards. Things will move forward again and things will progress.
The Ring of Brodgar
Some of the tribe did not want to return, telling the others that if they only waited the weather would get better. But they did not know how long it would remain like this so they opted to leave. Before they left, before it got too bad, they had tried to improve the fertility of the soil by working energetically in the landscape but all their work was for nothing. They spent too much time doing that without realising that they could not control the world’s weather pattern changes. They could only improve the earth’s fertility in the soil. (This also answered a question I have had for years! You can improve the soil and growing conditions but not the global weather).
After receiving this information, which continued coming in as we walked and explored, we next made our way to The Cuckoo Stone. Before we had left the house, we had been instructed to take a bottle of water to make an essence and as soon as we got to the stone, ( which I never knew about), I understood why.
The Cuckoo Stone
Our first impulse was to walk three times around it sun-wise, (clockwise). This meant that it was a masculine sun-stone. (At feminine sites, you usually walk anti-clockwise. When you walk around a stone, or site, it energetically opens it, creating a doorway into its energies and functions.) Walking around this stone made me feel dizzy on the third pass, which I thought I was imagining, until Chris said it was making him dizzy too. It’s always good to have confirmation. Again, this dizziness is something I have experienced before at the stones at Avebury. Years ago, a friend and I were at that circle. It was my first visit, and I felt so excited to be there having wanted to see it since I was a teenager in Dublin watching Children of the Stones on TV. Coming close to the circle at Avebury then was like coming home after many years away.
At that time, my friend and I walked around the stones but experienced a dizziness as we did so. It was as if each stone was a battery with both positive/negative energies. Each stone too was either male or female making a huge force-field around the circle. The entire Avebury complex was a giant male-female balancing in the landscape.
This Cuckoo stone also had a magnetic field, even though it no longer occupied the same site it had originally, and was only half the size of what it once had been. But it was close enough.
Once we had activated the stone, we sat on it and tuned in. Almost immediately, we saw a youngish woman with dark, curly hair and wearing a band of flowers around her head. Behind her stood a male priest dressed in a creamy white robe. He was older than her and seemed to be her mentor. He remained behind her while she carried out the ritual. This felt to be a later time than had our previous Durrington information.
While we sat on the stone it was as if we were both the stone, and ourselves. The young woman placed a garland of flowers around our shoulders but she was really dressing the stone, just as they still do in Ireland at holy wells. The ritual was to welcome the sun from the east after the long winter. It was an acknowledgement of the life it brings and in recognition of the stone and its importance to the vitality that flowed from the sun, through the stone, and into the earth’s energy-circuit. The couple placed the garlands facing Woodhenge, where the sun came up, but we did not feel that Woodhenge was significant to the ritual. Chris was aware of a Mayday reference to this too, so perhaps the stone was dressed at more than one time of year.
West Kennet Long Barrow. What our Long Barrow might have looked like.
Once they had finished at the stone, I saw the woman, followed by the priest, carrying a shallow, pottery, bowl of water with flowers in it, over to where the Neolithic long barrow once stood, meters away from the them. The bowl had been at the foot of the monolith while she did the ritual dressing and the water in the bowl was charged by stone and sun. The barrow was still there in their time and we could see it’s energy clearly. The woman laid the bowl at the entrance, as a gift to the ancestors and an acknowledgement to them. Their line of kinship was still intact and important. If it hadn’t been for the lessons learned by their ancestors, these people would not have survived and thrived, so they offered their gratitude. Death and life were One, the two sides of life. The ancestors still lived, but in another form, their presence still recognised.
(This reminded me of the St. Mullin’s Pattern when I was young. At the feast day of St. Moling, all the locals from local towns came to the ruins of St. Moling’s monastery and his holy well. Traditionally, the people walked three times around the well, sun-wise – called ‘Doing the Rounds’ – in their bare feet. They then dressed the graves of their family; ancestors who had been buried there for generations, and some more recently. There were certain other traditions associated with the day, namely that of spending a number of hours in the only pub in St. Mullins and spending money on the stalls. The water of the holy well was reputed to cure all manner of illnesses and everyone in my town had a bottle).
St. Moling’s Well.
Next we were instructed to make the essence. I put the bottle on the stone and saw the dark-haired woman place a garland of flowers around it, as if the bottle of water was also the stone. Next, to my surprise, she put a fat earthworm in it then told me to close the bottle quickly. The worm had to do with the fertility of the soil as though there had to be a combination of both energy-work and physical work to ensure fertility. Energy alone cannot grow things.
Next, we were told to bring some of that blessed water to the site of the long barrow. As we walked towards it, I felt a sudden powerful flowing in of energy that made my whole body tingle. I love that feeling! I poured the water onto where the barrow once stood, connecting to the ancestors and sending our gratitude to them and once we were finished we began to walk back to the car, towards Woodhenge. As I did, I became aware of an image of the long Barrow behind me and I stopped walking. It was as if we were walking out of the darkness of the winter/death and into the light of a new phase and I had to walk with that intention.
It was a very welcome ending to a very satisfying day’s work.
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.
Banjo Enclosure.
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 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.
Danebury Hillfort.
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.
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 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.
The Tuatha De Danaan are a race of people traditionally known as the faery folk of Ireland. They are said to reside in burial mounds and long barrows, and deep under the earth; places which are both physical and liminal. The stories tell us that they came from islands north of Ireland and that when they came, they brought their skills and arts with them, including a belief in the Great Mother. They also brought a magical tool from each of the four great cities they had left behind and when they arrived on Ireland’s shores, they burned their boats ensuring there was no possibility of return to their own country. (see info below about Dorset Cursus).
When I first began to receive the Gaia Method Earthways system of healing my first elemental contact, after my tree experience, was with elemental Beings who called themselves the Tuatha De Danann. They appeared as very tall, slim beings who were fairylike but also human with pale skin and long hair. I think the best representation of them is in the art of Brian Froud.
At first, they watched me from a distance, staying behind trees and appearing out of the woods only to pop back in again when I tried to communicate with them. It was as if they were trying to determine whether I could be trusted, or not. Soon, however, I was assigned a guide from these beings, another gatekeeper, who gave me access into the world of the Elemental Beings, or Sidhe (pronounced shee).
The more I interacted with these beings, the more I learned. They live in a world of nature and yet our human history tells us that they were once human. My own understanding is that they were a race of beings who came to Ireland with their beliefs in the Great Mother. But with the coming of other races, namely the Celtic peoples from the Steppes, with their horses, iron weapons and warlike ways, the ways and beliefs of the people of the Goddess went ‘underground’, to preserve the knowledge of the earth and its energy grids.
Today we know them as the Sidhe. The old stories of how the Irish ‘fairy folk’ can not abide the dense vibration of Iron attests to this possibility. It is well known among the Irish that iron can kill a fairy being. The Celtic peoples brought iron-working with them, and a vastly different belief system, so for me, this story makes sense. The knowledge of Iron-working did indeed kill the softer beliefs of the Bronze Age inhabitants of Ireland and of the British Isles.
Yet, as collective energies, they still exist on other dimensional levels, at least their collective wisdom still exists. They, as the Sidhe, now choose to assist humanity, training them to use the land and its magic and to expand into other realms. They became the stuff of legend and myth, but their energies remain in the collective unconscious.
Slowly they gave me information about who they had once been.
One early piece of information was whilst working at the Dorset Cursus, an ancient Neolithic route that stretches for miles across the Dorset landscape. At one end of the cursus, there is a mound and when I stood on this mound, it felt like I was standing on an upturned boat. Then I began to receive images of people coming to Britain to escape a flood that had destroyed their homelands, thousands of years ago.
Travelling in boats, these people took their belief in the Great Mother with them, establishing an entire network of Mother-focussed settlements. I hear the ancestors clairaudiently and this is what they said: “We built them to stabilise the imbalance which had resulted from the catastrophe that caused the flooding.” As soon as I got home, I tried to find information about this flooding. It felt like it had happened somewhere in the Mediterranean. Seven thousand years ago, the Mediterranean did indeed flood. Before it was a sea it was a river delta but the melting of the ice, at the end of the ice age, broke through the land barrier between Spain and Africa creating the sea.
It had taken them time to come to England’s shores. It too was recovering after the retreating of the ice, and only hunter-gatherers, Mesolithic people, lived here, close to the sea’s edge. But these newcomers established their colonies, and their beliefs, using their knowledge to re-establish planetary balance. It took many years for the land to become workable and, thanks to their energetic assistance, England became fertile enough for the farmers to grow crops and keep animals, rather than existing off the produce of the sea, as the Mesolithic people had done.
They built Megalithic structures, just as they had around the Mediterranean; energetic complexes like giant Motherboards created on and in the landscape; a Motherboard that still exists and which we are now rediscovering.
When I was researching this event and the megalithic culture, I discovered that the people who built these structures carried the I2 haplogroup in their DNA and that they had displaced the earlier inhabitants who had a different genetic inheritance. This came as a surprise to me because the I2 haplogroup is also mine. But then I thought, perhaps that is why I can tap into this knowledge. Because they really are my ancestors. They could also be yours.
Bronze Age Round Barrow, Micheldever Woods, Winchester.
Later, that I2 haplogroup was displaced by another people of a different haplogroup: the Beaker People. Although genetic history has come to the conclusion that the beaker people ousted the megalithic builders, in my experience they also worked with the energetic network in the landscape, albeit in a slightly different way. Their beliefs were still Mother-focussed. For instance, they built burial mounds in many shapes and sizes; the person buried there becoming the guardian of that energy point. In Ireland, these places are still thought of today as places of the Sidhe (Shee). The portals, however, are in the older megalithic structures like Newgrange, Knowth and Stonehenge and the many henges around the British Isles. These remain portals into the Mother’s world, places where the forces of solar fertility meet the seed of the Mother’s creations.
In every culture, there are the Ancient Ones, the memories and knowledge held by the people who first worked with it. In Ireland, and the United Kingdom, the Tuatha De Danaan are the Wisdom Keepers, and you can access their knowledge by working with their ‘layer’ of history. It is a form of energetic archaeology.
The awareness of the earth as Mother existed for many years but with the coming of the more war-like ‘Celtic’ peoples from the Steppes, the beliefs were eroded and went underground, back into the mounds and sacred places The ‘knowledge’ of the Goddess people had to become secret, or at least less visible, to protect it. It was encoded in the myths, and stories they told each other preserving, in art and writing, the knowledge of how to keep the earth in balance.
Over time, the knowledge contained in the stories was lost, but now it is returning. All the stories and myths have a truth hidden in them, if you look hard enough. New stories are also being written; stories that hold the codes and keys to the knowledge of the ancestors and the Tuatha de Danann, the People of The Goddess. Many are remembering.
The world needs rebalancing once again which is why this knowledge is returning. Many people with ancestry in the British Isles and Ireland have this memory in their cells. It only needs reactivating to access it. Your guides are only too willing for you to ask them, and you will receive the knowledge if you really want it. It is the sincere desire to know something that opens the door to receiving.
Film of the round barrow in Micheldever Woods by Chris Bishop.
The Gaia Method Earthways 