The second instalment of our Imbolc trip to Dyserth village in North Wales. In this part we visited the mammary-gland sculpted hilltop of Graig Fawr where we suspected a standing stone may be lurking, and then discover a breath-taking surprise both large and small at the site of Castle Dyserth.
Graig Fawr hill
The air was cold enough to steal your breath as the occasional intrusive wind took away our warm car glow all too soon. Graig Fawr hill in January. We must be slightly unhinged. We headed up the at-first gentle slope but soon I stopped Kal. “Let’s see if we can trace the male and female energies to see how they inter-relate.” I suggested. Ever ready to embrace an interesting pastime Kal began searching around for a male line, whilst I swept the area for a female line. Within a minute we each had a connection to the respective lines and marched off uphill, Kal to the left and I to the right.
I soon lost sight of Kal as his superior fitness and manic dedication to dowsing propelled him like a whippet straight up the main path. He wasn’t hanging around! I, on the other hand, was being taken hither and thither in a slowly wavering dance across the right-hand side of the hill. As I passed the occasional man-sized hollow the energy would go towards it and curve into a spiral inside it. At each stop I dowsed for the direction of any energy coming out of the edge of the hollow and found a continuation of the network of female spirals as I was walked in long S-shapes up the hill.
Whenever there was a mound or a pair of mounds, the female energy made its way towards them and then spiralled atop them. The chain was unbroken – a continuous line of female energy snaking its way curvily up the hill, attracted to the curvier features, gaps and hollows that marked the features of the hill. Occasionally a hawthorn tree’s energy would also contribute to the energy patterns and seemed to either be feeding into it or drawing from it. It was too cold to even think with the scything wind sometimes pulling the rods aside for a moment until they bounced back onto the line.
I saw Kal at the top waiting, trying to keep warm. I increased my pace as the hill’s slope wore off near the summit and joined him. “Where did the male line go?” I asked. “Straight up the path. Very little deviation. I just came straight here!” said Kal. “Well, I was taken all over the place – into hollows, back and forth across the hill, over those mounds.” I don’t think I sounded like I was complaining. It had been a rollercoaster ride in this increasing wind!
We quickly dowsed for a standing stone in the area but were lead around the peak and into the trigonometry marker on the top. Oh, very funny! “Trickster.” muttered Kal in response to his oddly-crossed rods – this was the Trickster’s call sign. We smiled. All that way for a trig. point, in the freez…. we had learned that sometimes our enthusiasm and expectations have to be more…contained. It’s a state of mind necessary to become delighted by surprises – the state required for transformative experiences. Things are revealed to you as you are ready and willing to experience them. It’s not Fate – it’s a preparation of mind, a sort of cleansing, a cleansing of the mind of that which you are seeking. If you pay it attention, if you seek it, you get the booby prize – every time. It has to be a long-term goal, a quest, a purpose. If you yearn for it, no pudding for naughty boys. You get The Slap. In this mindset, this state of grace, more things become possible, and more improbable things are manifested. But you want to hear about the flowing lines, right? Back to the energies!
Dyserth Castle – small
A quick warm up in the car and it was time to unholster those copper rods and put away childish flasks. This is Winter Dowsing, making a bid for the 2010 Winter Olympics in a string vest and no gloves in a blizzard. Actually, it had calmed down a bit, but the sky was still leaden with snow and the wind still made it difficult to talk without shouting. We checked the map and stomped off down the Graig Fawr hill even further, across the road next to the car park, and down a narrow high-hedged lane until the footpath sign on the right. We hopped into the field making remarks about the austere temperature and the level of inappropriateness of Kal’s attire, when we passed a group of rocks and breeze blocks in the middle of the sloping field. We noticed them, then stopped. “Did we just both seem drawn to these rocks?” I asked. Kal nodded, “Yeah, we did.” It was a dowsing cue.
We wandered around the small stack for a moment assessing it. It didn’t look particularly interesting. There were three small breeze blocks in amongst the larger boulders. They formed an ovoid ring shape. There was a bare patch of oval earth off-centre, and it was slightly concave. I dowsed for its nemeton edge. As I dowsed towards it I felt uneasy and stopped. Why had I stopped? What was that feeling? It was a feeling of being unwelcome – “like being an unwelcome guest at a party and everyone turns to wonder why you’re there when you enter.” I later explained it. I stepped back and paused. Strong male energy was the response. Not a frequency I attune to well.
Kal, on the other hand was straight onto the bare patch, turning to face the hill to the West. He quickly adopted a serene half-smile that told me he was not going to be moving any time soon. Thirty seconds later the sun broke through the clouds in the one break in the sky and it fell straight onto us. It was above a pyramid-shaped hill to the West of us – the direction Kal was facing. It was one of those coincidences that makes you wonder about the joy of coincidence. Had we been rewarded with some warm sun for obeying the rules by my staying out of this very male-oriented spot? It doesn’t need to be thought about. It just happened and we paid it attention.
I dowsed for the edge of Kal’s aura, his nemeton as I approached again. I found it about 12-15 feet away from the small ring cairn’s centre. I followed it around both sides and behind Kal. Behind him the nemeton was very thin, only several inches wide, but at each side and out in front it expanded into an large ellipse shape, like a pair of butterfly wings. The clouds were quickly disappearing now as the sun burned through.
I dowsed for Kal’s rainbow chakra colour field to see if it was any different from his aura. Indeed it was. His violet coloured boundary was a further ten feet beyond the edge of his aura. Again the bands decreased in width as I approached Kal. His red band was a mere inch from his body as he stood on that spot. Well, he is very groundless at the moment. Mind you, I thought he’d taken root on this spot the amount of time he stood there.
Kal opened his eyes again and was awash with a surge of energy. He bounded off the centre, grabbed his stuff as we prepared to leave, and ran from side to side down the hill enthusiastically. “Come on!” he was smiling and encouraging. “Let’s find this castle!” and he was off over a stile like a goat eating chillies. What is this, a chapter from The Famous Five? Blimey. I hurried along with staff and pack to keep him in sight. Loon.
Dyserth Castle – large
Kal was of course the first to catch sight of the site of the castle. He bounded back to inform me that I was about to be impressed. He wasn’t wrong. As I rounded the bare bramble bushes lining the path a vista opened up to me that drew my breath from my body in admiration. The photographs barely do it justice.
We drank in the atmosphere for a few moments then set to work. Where were the sources of male and female energies in this arena of rock, this cauldron of cliffs? We rapidly identified several sources. Kal found some power centres (crossing points of water generating vertical vortices of male and female counter-spiralling energy). I located the primary source of female earth energies – it was a large break in the western cliff face, and the largest rock at the base of that crack (pardon) was the primary source of male energies. However, Kal had also found male energies coming from a power centre next to the large mound of piled stones on the eastern side of the castle’s floor.
The gap between the stones dowsed for the return of the female energy flow and was acting as a kind of attractor – just as David Cowan had described in his books. The rest of the area was quiet – there was a male line and a female line with occasional power centres uncoiling into short waves and ending in spirals. One or two rocks tested for being energetic.
Make your own stone circles
As we dowsed I noticed that some stones on the castle floor were connected to the flow of male or female energies emerging from the cliff side. I was dowsing just such a connection when Kal decided to move one of the rocks – “I wonder what happens if you move it?” he quizzed as he struggled to roll the square stone. When he stopped I dowsed the connection again – it had moves with the stone. Hmm…so the attraction point was the stone and not the position. At once we both had the same thought – let’s create two circles. I described the image that had just popped into my head – two circles that overlapped each other – one built of male energy and the other female. First – would it work, and second – what would happen at the overlap? Pictures of Venn diagrams flooded my memory but I swept them away and started shifting some of the stones – dowsing to find the correct stones and for where I should place them.
Soon I had eight stones in position, only two of which I actually placed myself. Two others were from the overlap with Kal’s circle, and four were already in the correct position! Kal complained that I was stealing his stones – he had five in his slightly smaller circle. I reminded him that was the purpose of the exercise! We dowsed our own circles, walked them a few times clockwise, and then dowsed each others’ circles. Kal’s was definitely a Male Sun circle, whilst mine tested for Female Moon energy. Both rings felt energetic, even though some of the rocks we had in the circles didn’t seem to have energy in them.
At the intersection where the two circles overlapped there were male and female spirals. Did this mean that spirals were caused by the interplay between male and female frequencies, much like light or sound, or magnetic waves in form? We had lots to think about and made our way back to Dyserth. Kal briefly stood back in the little ring cairn and seemed reluctant to move until I reminded him of his obligations to his stomach. We made for the car and sustenance from the Spar shop in the village.
Tricky Picnic Places and The Mighty Falls
Frost, the American poet, said those immortal lines about picking paths through the forest by wear and tear factor, but essentially I have ingrained in me a similar annoying trait. So we find ourselves above Dyserth Waterfall, looking for it, but I pick a path the leads us down a narrower and steeper section as it unwinds next to the river that drops so suddenly nearby. The path ends in a hair-raising arched tree that fords the 15ft wide river. Can’t jump. Have to climb. So I do. Videoed by Kal. Thanks mate. Needed the extra pressure! 😉 So I return the favour when it’s Kal’s turn, adding the occasional giggle and encouraging words when he decides to wade across the icy river instead of walking the bent tree. Oh what? Oh yes. YouTube beckons.
We have lunch in the small caves there in tranquil peace while the sun continues to shine through a gap in the tree canopy to hit the very spot where we’re sitting. Ahhh…things are going just fine at this point. After lunch we head back to the car admiring the waterfall as we go.
Now we’re heading out towards the Golden Grove. It’s marked on the OS map I’ve printed off using MultiMap and seems to be in the middle of open farmland. OK – let’s go see what a golden grove looks like! We park and head off over the field of sheep along the last vestiges of a path now obliterated by hoof marks. As the slope gets steeper it gives me more time to notice that we are walking next to a fenced off avenue of tall and wide beech trees. As I followed their natural line of interlacing pairs up the slope I could see they were leading somewhere. Great. We were spurred on.
At the top the green and brown fields stretched down the other side. To the right, more fields. To the left, a deciduous wood. Could that be the Golden Grove? It seemed to far away from the map’s placement, but they can occasionally be slightly obtuse in their placement of names, and there was no structure marked. And indeed, the Golden Grove seems to no longer have a structure. It has gone. We sloped back to the car, tired from trekking but happy at the rest of the day’s results.
Lost : one slightly used staff
There had been something nagging me as we had arrived at the rude lay-by that we parked in – I didn’t have my staff. Where had I left it? What should I do, apart from wonder whether I should get emotionally attached to a snapped branch? I decided to go in search of it. I’ll take you through it in a separate post. 🙂
Gwas
Following a golden thread back to my staff