The Hedge Druid

Chad’s Well in Romiley vale

When writing up these quests we tend to go for the salient and relevant points. However we have so often find that innocuous little details play significant parts and so, more for ourselves than anything else we add those bits here – just in case. Here is one such entry.

Gwas wanted to visit a well to begin with and I tended to agree with the idea so he picked me up around 9am and we were off. The well he had in mind was local to where I live and so having put the address (Vale Road) into the satnav and finding an overview of the map that seemed to fit what the map for the place looked like we headed off.

As we got close to our destination I noted with some surprise that we were in the area that my sister lived. What an odd thing. Some more minutes later we actually turned into the road that my sister lived on. Now I was really surprised. Why had we been taken to a site that was quite literally neighbouring my sisters home?

Parking up right next to a wooded area around the back of my sisters home we were out amongst the trees searching for Chad’s Well. Nothing! After many minutes wandering around we deduced that we were not in the right location. Even though the satnav map of this area seemed to match the map we had printed out of the wells location.

Further investigation revealed that there was another Vale road some five miles from our current location. What! That looked like a more likely candidate and so we were off again. This time we had it right and as we parked the car, the sun came streaming out and warmed the air and our being.

A short walk through some lovely houses led us to the easily accessible well. As you can see from the picture it was a place that had a lovely feeling to it. Relaxing in the sun against the wall of the well gave the feeling that this was definitely a place of cleansing and preparation. I dowsed for a place and facing direction to do this and ended up in the middle of the road facing the sun. Of course it was.

I spent some minutes in this pose letting the energies within myself balance out and be replenished. It was a lovely feeling. Particularly because this was the first bit of decent sun that we have had in a long while.

Some time later, after gifting the Genius Loci of the Well with some incense and thanks, we were ready to begin our purpose filled quest. For me this was to seek another question in the nine that I had been tasked with at Delphi.

All in all a good and interesting start. The interesting part being, why had we (I) been taken to my sisters home first? Was there a reason? Just to allay your inquisitiveness an answer wasn’t forth coming on this day…perhaps in time to come?

Kal Malik puzzled.

I had deliberately kept the number of site visits low for Beltane. The daylight hours are still short, the distance we had to travel to get there was sufficient to drain away the day, and I wanted to be able to feel ‘unhurried’ when we got to a site. Almost as if enhancing this mood I had parked at The Broad Oak pub car park in the village of Strelley. It took us ten minutes to walk to Catstone Hill, and really it would have been easier to park right on the corner of the road just before the main village where there was ample parking, and the distance would have been more than halved. Such is life!

That wasn’t the end of our woes finding the site. Intuitively, and with only the barest map navigation, we found our way on to the hill. We inspected the broad flat plateau but couldn’t find any “capstones” for burial chambers. Were they hidden by the brambles and gorse? We tried to find more accurate maps on our phones but failed, so we resorted to dowsing rods. The rods pointed us out in the direction of a ploughed field. Our rationality kicked in and caused us confusion. We split up and went searching. Eventually I found the right place. It was at the end of the ploughed field and off the plateau behind a line of trees. The M1 motorway was is view below. Nice! Being off the main plateau was why we hadn’t seen it. We also realised there was a much easier way in if we’d only taken the steep tracks up the hill instead of following the main path. Once you know, you know – hindsight is clear.

Catstone Hill’s buried chambers

We inspected the area around the capstones. No entry into these chambers, if ever there was any. They were silted up to the brim now. Disappointment began to set in. We stumbled around tripping over the tangle of briars and bramble thorns, the thick dead grass and the outcropping tangle of shrub branches. Our sense of frustration was compounded when we discovered that the site had no energy signature either. There were no earth energies running through the site at all. The disappointment grew. Should we turn away and go somewhere else?

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Hey – where have I been? Well, to Budapest, then back for Beltane, then off to Barcelona. I’ve been a busy bee! It’s all go at this time of year! Normal service is now resumed, and no neonicotinoids were ingested along the way.

For Beltane this year I decided to go over to the very edge of Derbyshire where it touched with Nottinghamshire. The meeting of counties seemed like the kind of liminal space where worlds collide and interesting things happen - a kind of amalgam which I’m calling ‘Derbinotts’. We would visit two new sites in the Nottingham area, and on the way back visit some favourites from Derbyshire, but first we had a “local” Cheshire site to do, because all good Fire Festivals should start with a cleansing.

Indeed, I had noticed that there was a pattern to the many years we have been marking these festival dates. For Beltane the pattern was this:-

1. Cleansing and purification through water
2. Concepts of birds, wings or flight while at a sacred site
3. A celebratory fire ritual, usually involving incense.

Chad’s Well in Romiley vale

Introducing ‘Derbinotts’

You may remember that I am following the route of some tarot cards that I drew and interpreted at the start of the year. For the four Celtic Fire Festivals there are specific readings and I was keen to discover the first of what I would term “the tricky encounters”.

The tarot has said:

Q. How do you see yourself?

Vision: “A picture – a person turning into a place and back again. A choice. Then a wilderness – dark trees, tangled thorns and branches. A despairing, Lost. Lost in many ways. A lady’s laughter.”

For Beltane the reading had shown the place as being “The Hermitage” and the associated character as being “Linet“. The main character of the reading was that I would be challenged and goaded into making an important decision regarding my progress on the path. If you like, my faith would be tested! I was feeling confidant, however, after having gone through the process of acquiring two energetic talismans – The Sword and The Shield of Galahad – and I felt that these tools would assist me greatly in dealing with anything “untoward” that might occur in my mind space during this quest.

Cleansing at Chad’s Well

To me Chad was that character who looked over the wall – the essence of childish curiosity, and a character which can be seen on many school walls. Apparently he’s also called Kilroy.

To the established Christian Church he was a saint of the 7th Century who lent his name to a well just outside of Stockport near Romiley in Cheshire. Maybe one day he’ll want it back? For now his name adorns a beautiful and well-constructed holy well that lies at the foot of a steep hill below the Peak Forest canal. The canal is the essence of tranquillity, and the whole area is suitably brushed with this soft and gentle quality.

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Our holiday to Hungary was supposed to be a whole week off, and particularly for me a whole week of spiritual interests. In large part it was, but somehow the forces of the wild managed to break through into my full-on Tourist Mode in the middle of the week. It happened to be a full moon – Milk Moon – so I guess that was a contributory factor too. Budapest is a splendid laid-back city and after a couple of days touring around on a bus we knew where the interesting places were.

View over Budapest from Gellert Hill

On a typically sunny April day we were finding our way around the base of Gellert Hill. This hill was renowned for being the haunt of witches, which is always bound to interest someone like me. I like a bit of witchiness in life. We had just come out of the underground quaintness of the restored Gellert Hill Cave – a site still peddling its special aura on the basis of a later Christianisation.

Entrance to Gellert Hill Cave Church

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I first came across the idea of Devas when reading a book that mentioned the work of the Findhorn Community in Scotland. I was intrigued that a group of people would dedicate their whole lives and lifestyles to the idea of working with the spirits of plants and elementals which governed the form of the physical vegetation. I wanted to know more and so I bought William Bloom’s book on the subject, and read anything else I could discover too, including Marko Pogacnik’s book on Deva forms.

This year we have finally transformed our patch of bare clay soil, with its patches of eternal dampness, into a landscaped concept garden that is in its nascent state. Having spent all of the early Spring digging, moving, turning and tilling the soil, adding conditioner and compost to it, finally it was in a state to accept some plants. The process took days, even though the space was only twenty feet by six.

Devas may help this magnolia tree grow

The concept of the garden was typically druidic. M had given me free reign to design as I saw fit. As the pressure mounted to produce a design I turned to the inspiration of Nature and with a blank sheet of paper a form emerged in the symmetrical rounded rectangle: a quadrant of elemental ideals.

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Appropriating the phrase that Bruce Lee made famous I am seeking within the small confines of this post to express an idea that is a little reflexive. That is – I want to write about the limitation to the power of the creative media to express the full impact and experience of magickal processes.

I was made aware, when writing recently about the futility of convincing sceptics - that one of the main reasons why I no longer try to speak to sceptics about magick is that I have rarely got enough time to be able to tell the fullness of the experience in a language that comes close to expressing the content, especially the emotional content of the moment.

I am aware that great literature of capable of creating within us a powerful and even life-changing set of emotions. i am aware that given enough time and space in any work a truly great artist can begin to shape the medium to produce something that may rouse and engender within the audience (at least some of them) a similar response to the original experience. Yet, a blog is a poor medium for such stories as ours. Even poetry is a mere snapshot of words who symbolism is of limited depth, despite the resonances of language and its complex structures.

Emotional ripples through our words and deeds

So what is missing from these tales of magickal adventure? The emotional content, the synchronistic ripples in time whose echo sweeps you off your feet when it hits, that turn your world view upside down to its rightful position. What may be missing is the heavenly glory of the light and shade of the meanings within the moment, and the full impact of the realisations. Remember your first birthday gift of real significance? Remember the impact that had upon you at the time? The joy, the potential!

Now bring that forward into adulthood, into a time where all of the magick is systematically removed from life through processes of levelling, uniformity, reason and ridicule…. and what remains is scant reward for life on a daily basis. Imagine now, that the magickal is re-inserted into your life’s adventure. Imagine that the joy and potential are rediscovered, but now they are no longer simply superficial joy and potential, now they chime within you  - the symbols, the links with other cultures around the world, the harmony, the knowing at a deep level of being which overtaken reason’s faltering jigsaw and shows the full picture  in one shot.

When I fail to recount the emotional content in the blog, when I fail to deliver the magickal feeling that comes with all of my work on a weekly basis… know that this post is one of my poor attempts at a reminder about the power of this druidical work. Let the magick of the year begin again!

Judy Hall – one of the foremost active authors on crystal working, has a new book out: Life-Changing Crystals. I was interested enough to consider whether the information that she was giving out in her book had general relevance – could anyone and everyone find the same uses for these crystals?

I dowsed each of the crystals she presents in the pages that can be viewed in Amazon’s preview, where she described the type of crystal and its properties. I asked the question “Would the stated energetic qualities of this crystal work for me?“. In every single case with one exception the answer was “No”. The one exception was Malachite, which apparently I can use for “stepping into my power”, whatever that means, I guess I’d have to buy the book to find out.

Can Judy’s book change your life?

Given that the other crystals had no correspondence with me I am not going to buy that book (although I did buy her book about crystal working at sacred sites – it was too enticing not to!).

So, what is the principle at work here? It’s not that crystals generally have properties and energetic uses that everyone can agree upon. It’s much more the case that crystals have properties that resonate with individual energy fields in very personal ways. You have to find out for yourself which crystals you can work with, and to what purposes they can be put. How do you do this? Who am I, Judy Hall?

I have a couple of methods.  They are:-

1. I shop for crystals in places where the energy feels good generally, and I feel like the crystals are powerful. Then I ask to be shown a crystal that I can use for a specific purpose. I am usually led to see or feel one that I can use.
2. I buy crystals that feel powerful and energetic. If I can dowse them I will. Then when I want to use crystals for a specific purpose I use my dowsing rods to dowse for suitable ones. I dowse for which type, how many I need, and sometimes even a configuration that I should lay them out in which best suits that purpose.

These methods have been continually proven to work for me. I have crystals whose uses have even changed over time as my energy has changed. So, even though some books may say “X crystal does Y” – does it always? Well, there may be some general guidance to be found from these ‘universal’ descriptions – they may lead you to consider what crystals can be used for. However, I have never found these general ‘uses’ the be useful for me.

I recommend picking crystals for yourself, for your own current purpose, and using them on a more personal basis than these guide books can every really inform you of. All such books are useful for is to suggest possibilities of uses generally. It’s then up to you to find or collect the types of crystals that you can make use of.

Gwas.