Durrington Walls and the Cuckoo Stone.

January 14, 2022January 13, 2022 / Ann Murphy / Leave a comment

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Energetic development of a Stone Circle.

October 2, 2019December 13, 2019 / Ann Murphy / 7 Comments

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/28/avebury-stone-circle-weird-square-archaeologists-find/

This article shows how the Avebury stone circle began, archaeologically. But what does this show us about how these huge sacred sites evolved energetically?

In the beginning…

From all of the work I, and others, have done we have found that sacred sites have very humble beginnings. What begins with one person, and his family, living on a small energy point, often put there by his own skills of earth energy-work, and through the slow growth of that site, a site of major significance would eventually be created. Like concentric circles of energy expanding out into the surrounding landscape, these sites are built up over time.

The energy-point itself can be an ancient, dormant point, or it could be newly established. But whatever the reason for its creation the person anchoring it does so in stages. He/She lives on the site, infusing it with their own energy. Visiting holy people would also add to it and slowly it would grow,. The energy templates, like stacks of CDs, are layered over time, changing the atmosphere around them. Planting ideas and energies designed to re-balance and nurture the landscape, influencing future generations of people.

The site would have had a home, with energetic boundaries, to begin with, then perhaps a bank and ditch. The building, lived in by the family of the earth-worker (or shaman if you prefer) would become the central point, although not necessarily geographically in the centre of the circle created by the banks that surrounded it. The family would have acted as the guardians of the sacred place, holding the energy, allowing it to grow, adding energies to it as the site needed.

Everything of a sacred nature, i.e. buildings, stone circles etc, has an energetic blueprint. Physicalising the energies of the site falls to successive generations; they follow the intuitive promptings of the previously anchored energies. Sites are anchored firstly by tree trunks, and later by stones, which act as acupuncture needles, allowing particular energies to flow in the desired directions, energies that are needed depending on the original blueprint.

Some are destined to remain small, yet others become massive, affecting whole areas of the landscape. But all are connected, 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, the sites would be collectively energised, ensuring the people’s survival, and balance, with that of their land. This is the origin of the Festivals. Each site has its own particular function in the landscape. Some are Spring, when the sun energises the seeds and awakens the Winter Goddess, the crone, making her young again, the land becoming ‘virgin’ once more, ready to begin the process of planting.

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 empty ritual, but 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 power. That power was in her bones, in her physical body, and it was this energy that was placed in sacred burial places, Barrow burials. As long as the barrow and its inhabitant was 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 holding 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 energywork 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.

But, according to the article above, 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 begin, so that when you tune into one, you carry this knowledge with you.

Who are the Tuatha De Danaan?

September 24, 2016May 24, 2023 / Ann Murphy / Leave a comment

The Tuatha De Danaan are a race of people who are traditionally known as the faery folk of Ireland and who live in Sidhes: burial mounds and long barrows, etc. Places which are both physical and liminal. The stories tell us that they came from islands north of Ireland and that when they came to ancient Ireland, 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 so they could not go back to their own country.

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. 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, I was assigned a guide from these beings, another gatekeeper, allowing me into the world of the Elemental Beings. They live in a world of nature and yet our human history tells us that they were once human. And perhaps they were. Yet, as collective energies, they still exist on the Astral levels, choosing to assist humanity and training them in how to use the land – and its magic. 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 doing work 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 retreat 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 living 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.

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, in order to protect it. It was encoded in the myths, and stories they told each other in order to preserve, 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.