Anglesey – Part 1: Bryn Celli Ddu, Caer Leb and Ty Mawr

Anglesey, Wales – August 25th, 2008

This is Part 1 of a three-part write-up of a visit by Kal and I to Anglesey. We visited several interesting ancient sites, dowsed them all, and as ever we both learned more and were more puzzled by some of the results. In Part 2 and 3 you can read about the visions we experienced in a chambered site, and about the amazing energy pattern we were able to produce at three standing stones. In this part I will describe taking Kal to Bryn Celli Ddu – the fantastic chambered mound – as well as various sites nearby the village of Brynsiencyn that we both visited for the first time.

BRYN CELLI DDU

A chamber remembered and the Hippy Oz Brother.

When we visit a site these days we hardly notice other people wandering around unless they take an interest in our activities. This arises from an increasing confidence on our part, rather than a desire to be distant. Most families out for a day trip to ‘do the sights’ because the weather looks crap, these generally consist of parents herding their children away from the crazy dudes with the metal sticks, and exiting once the children have bounced around for five minutes. Others, though, seem hell bent on satisfying their curiosity by enquiring as to whether we have found water yet. Another type altogether engages us in meaningful conversation, and that was our experience this day.

Bryncelli Ddu is a short way down the A4080 as you take the first turn off the Menai Bridge onto Anglesey island. Left again at the next turning signposted for ‘Newborough’. From there it’s got a brown sign indicating a right turn near to Plas Coch. What, cock? Don’t be tempted to translate – you’ll only be disappointed!

We arrived at the site just thankful it wasn’t raining and that we could spend some leisurely time looking around. The site, as always, was either letting people out or letting them in – it’s amazing how many people are visiting these sites! Before we began dowsing I was swept by an urge to stand on the top in the immense winds that were sweeping the site from the West. As I got to the top I watched Kal walking around the outside of the mound, looking for a ‘entrance’, I supposed. Indeed he was. I had found the entrance by ‘feeling’ for it on my last visit, now Kal walked up to the mound via the same entrance way, and I laughed into the wind. How extraordinary! I wondered if other people did that without consciously noticing? A group of middle-aged gentlemen, well attired, wandered into the site. Within moments one of their number went through the same entrance way. Another non-obvious occurrence!

Kal began to dowse the place, and I’ll leave him to describe the exact findings as he did most of the work.

The energy findings at Bryn Celli Ddu

Kal takes up the story….

“What a fantastic site this was. I got some really fabulous readings as well as a new discovery which makes me want to go back to Arbor Low!. And so it begins…

I started dowsing as soon as I stepped into the mound area from the main gate and found that there was a Male energy bound (band?) surrounding the mound. The band began about two feet outside of the ditch and included the ditch area (diagram to come). I followed this around the mound ‘expecting’ to find the Male energy surrounding the whole of the mound, when much to my perplexity I found that the energy shifted to Female energy about a third of the way round. It then remained Female until just before the entrance of the mound where it turned into male energy. Then about 3/4 of the away around the mound it turned to Female energy, finally ending up at Male at the starting point.

Having my expectations broken in such a spectacular way, I actually walked off into a corner of the field (to get away from other visitors at the site) and pondered this mystery. And how to proceed? I wanted to see if the energy was just around the outside of the mound or over it too! But before doing that I decided to check a my findings a few more times so as to confirm the results. This I did, always walking counter-clockwise, which seems to be a habit with me. The results were confirmed thrice! The site was gaining more visitors now and at what point I was forced to work my way around the mound in a clockwise manner and this really and truly confused me – for what I found was that walking clockwise my results were completed opposite to walking ‘widdershins’! For where it was Male in one direction it would be Female in the other!!!

Again, the doubting Debbie that I am, I checked my results again and again and found it to be so every time. These two results have totally made me rethink the Tao of things –

1. That the bands of energy surrounding an area do not have to be of one type
2. That walking in the opposite direction gives opposite results

I am still puzzling over this finding and in much need of coffee and cake to discuss these and other matters with Gwas.”

A chance meeting of minds

Whilst Kal was dowsing I was still atop the mound enjoying the feel of the powerful westerly wind that was roaring in from the Irish Sea that day. As I watched him from my perch atop the mound I saw the group of gentlemen entering the innards of the mound by the main entrance at the rear of the site. Moments later a pleasing whiff of sweet-smelling herbs wafted up to me, and I ‘dis-mounted’ to investigate, as the smell was new to me.

A wise tanned face appeared out of the entrance tunnel and smiled at me. “Nice smell!” I ventured. “Just smudging.” came the response. I didn’t flinch at the phrase. I was familiar with the term from reading druidry books. I watched him put his herbal bag back into his pouch, then smiled back, and began to dowse around the mound. I had some catching up to do, and I was eager to see whether I got anything similar to my last visit’s results. Also, the entrance way itself had a curious configuration that I hadn’t seen anywhere else, and I needed to get Kal’s results and then enlist his help in sorting out the energy patterns that had baffled me last time. Perhaps he had another view? He seemed able to dowse ‘areas’ where I would dowse lines, and this may be helpful in this case.

I think it would be better at this stage just to deliver some main points of the dowsing:-

1) There are points around the mound where standing stones once stood in the original site – confirmation from my last visit

2) The mound is surrounded by a quadrant of male and female energies

3) The five stones (not four, as I may have written previously) with their two ‘guardian’ stones either side (one is missing) form an eye shaped area of male/sun energies, possibly fed by the strong sun line that passes through the mound’s interior and out the entrance portal. Each of the five small stones has its own male energy forming in concentric circles.

The theme of the site, though, was the finding that dowsing in particular directions (either with or against ‘the flow’ of the lines) caused an opposite reaction of polarities. What I mean is, male lines gave female readings when traced backward, and vice versa. This was Kal’s baffling finding.

Then we got interrupted by the group of gentlemen: two brothers and their friend. One of the brothers was a schoolteacher and the other was visiting him from Australia – this was the wise-looking smiling man who had been smudging the interior. We chatted generally about our findings, which I reviewed for them, and then, for some inexplicable reason, I was talking with the wise man, and Kal was chatting to the other two. Minutes later, I saw the schoolteacher walking around with Kal’s rods! And they crossed! He was simply walking backwards and forwards around the site of the old standing stone spots shouting “I don’t believe it! They’re crossing! Look at this!” every time he walked over a ‘hot spot’ of energy.

The wise man, called Russell (hope I remembered that correctly), was a very engaging man. We chatted intently for a good while about shamanic practises, dowsing theory, crop circles (I’ll need to look at those again), and druidic history and practises. Never once did I let on that I was a practising druid, even though I felt I could discuss anything with him, we had so much in common. Or rather, I felt I could learn so much from him; I wouldn’t flatter myself that I have anything worth passing on yet! It was the kind of conversation that I wished could have taken place for hours.

He noticed his brother dowsing and smiled broadly: “You have no idea how wonderful it is to see that.” he said. “I’ve been the crazy hippy in the family, and slowly I’ve been moving him towards some of my ideas, and now look!“. We observed the bemused grin on his brother’s face, then launched into a talk about Terence McKenna. Russell said he’d met him once, and performed the most startlingly realistic mimicry of TMcK’s voice that I nearly wet myself, and had to stop him.

The gentlemen took their leave of us. We moved into the chambered area itself to get the ambience of the place. I showed Kal the markings on the standing stone in the chamber, then noticed some other marks on the opposite wall, which I hadn’t seen before. They made me think of a ruler, or a time marker set at the kind of level that might measure the low point of where the beam of sunlight would enter the chamber through a gap in the back. Interesting. Something to think about, and maybe check that theory at sunset on singificant pagan dates? When were the marks made though, and would precession affect any readings taken in today’s orbits?

We soon departed ourselves. On to the next site on our maps – Caer Leb. It was listed as an ‘ancient settlement’. Ok – let’s see what one of those looks like!

CAER LEB

We traveled further along the A4080 through the village of Brynsiencyn. Just outside the village we took a small B-road off to the right, and were soon in the right area for both Caer Leb and the Ty Mawr stone(s). As we parked in a small lay-by next to the site it held promise – an expansive 6 foot high earthwork spanned our vision to the west, and one of those “historical summary” signs beckoned us to the pathway into the site.

The ground was marshy. This was late summer, and there had been rain on and off for the last fortnight. We ‘gowned up’ and walked the short distance to the official entrance, oddly barred by a sliding wooden fence plank. As we approached we got out our dowsing L-rods and began searching for the ‘proper’ energetic entrance point. We still don’t know the full significance of this, but it feels right to ask for it, and usually leads us along a strong energy line into a site. The first corner reached twitched a response from the copper rods and in we walked – into a boggy marshy mass of grass and standing water! Abandon ship! Kal veered off to survey the inner raised earthwork, whilst I trekked stupidly across the floor of the site, getting my feet wet in the process.

At the far end we quickly decided there wasn’t much here, and the energy was weak, and wet! A small pile of three stones had ended my dowsing trail, so Kal asked if the stones had been used to mark something special. “Yes.” Was it a site of ritual practises, he enquired. “Yes.” That as enough. We were wet, and there was nothing else to it. Kal finished by asking if the site was simply a settlement, or something more. Just a settlement, came the rods’ answer. Then we’ll move on. That kind of thing is for the historians.

A TY MAWR STONE

Across and just down the road from Caer Leb we started looking for a standing stone marked on our printed-off OS map. Somewhere over to the right hand side of the road? At a grand stone pillar entrance to a field I indicated we should enter. I had no idea why, so I started to dowse to see whether I was just making it up, or if I had reacted appropriately. Apparently a stone was close, and the rods led us past some increasingly inquisitive cows, down a trackway beside a long hedge. Nothing in sight! “Are you sure it’s down here?” Kal asked. He had every right to be questioning my direction-finding abilities recently, so I double-checked by asking the rods to point straight at the stone. They moved to the right, pointing into the hawthorn hedge. Oh…..what’s going on?

I glanced through a gap in the hedge to be confronted by the sight of a large standing stone about twenty feet away. This was one of the Ty Mawr stones. Today, I was back on form, which made me more comfortable. We clambered into the field and spent a good half hour dowsing around. The theme of the day seemed to be “reversing the readings”. Kal could identify the opposite types of energies to me (as usual), but then could get the same readings from the stone if he dowsed in the opposite direction! Still puzzling, so I wondered if the male and female lines going through and around the stone were very close to each other (male through, female around – another common finding). We dowsed very closely, slowly, watching the reaction of the rods with every small step to gauge the changeover points. Indeed they did run side-by-side, only parting at the stone. We noticed that dowsing to one side of the stone would naturally lead you to think the energy line was feminine, whilst an inch to the other side of stone would give a male response. Aha! We were on to something to reconcile our frequently differing findings concerning the qualities of the energy lines. Perhaps this ‘coincidence’ of lines happened more often than we thought?

We agreed that whenever we got such crossed readings at other sites we would dowse the type of line very closely to see if there were actually two energy lines, not one. With that, we left to go further around Anglesey to pick up some of the sites nearer the north coast, which you can read about in Part 2.

Gwas,

Follow your true path.