Newgrange – Part 1: Inside the magick chamber

Friday 28th May 2010 – Newgrange, County Meath

On our second day on the Ireland megalithic tour we were going around the main Boyne Valley sights. It would be rude not to, seeing as we were in the vicinity. It would be interesting to contrast how the Irish valued their sites compared to the English, Welsh and Scottish. That said, I don’t think were were prepared for the…organisation levels that we were about to encounter.

To get to Newgrange from Knowth you have to…er…go past Newgrange, back to the bus terminal near the Visitor Centre and catch the bus back to Newgrange. Of course you do! On arrival we had to wait for the guide to, er…open the small two feet high unlocked gate and to tell us to walk up to the standing stones in front of Newgrange’s famous entrance. The arrangements are all a bit of a faff, but it began to dawn on us that this was necessary to control the number of people at the site and make the experience rewarding for everyone. In the end we capitulated, although Kal still went off and did his own thing whilst I endured the guided tour to get some background on the site first. Later we walked back rather than hurry for the scheduled bus. We wanted time to dowse, of course.

I’m going to recount things out of chronological order now, because I want to relate the interesting stuff together, so bear with me! We found that the constant influx of tourists into the mound was causing a build-up of negative energies. It was only slight, and took a while to accumulate, but was there.

The accretion effect I suspect may be due to the fact that tourists in no way “prepare” themselves for entering such sites. Why would they? Of course they wouldn’t, and yet in my experience this can often be a necessary part of approaching these sacred places – to cleanse oneself of the subtle energies from the places we have visited (or live in) that is like wearing a smelly coat!

We walked around it the ‘correct’ way – clockwise, sunwise. This ancient (and now partly modern) construction  was a chamber whose energies we left were in synchrony with the Sun’s movements primarily. We wondered as to why the main path invited tourists to walk around it in a contrary, widdershins, direction. This was something that we found to be the case at Stonehenge too, Tourists were ‘invited’ to walk around the structure in a way that would neutralise positive energy flows and keep the place feeling…drained. It would take quite a strength of will for a tourist to walk around in the opposite direction to the flow of everyone else. Of course, we did just that! Swim against the stream, young salmon!

One thing we did wonder about was this: if the flow of energies during Spring was clockwise, would it change direction at other times of the year? Perhaps someone who lives closer might be able to tell us that?

As we stood outside the entrance being given the known history of the site both Kal and I were separately thinking about the hidden history of the place. Kal had gone off exploring, and my mind was split between taking in the historical information and feeling for the energy coming from the nearby standing stones. As my eye wandered absently along the line of the stones I saw that there was an alignment with nearby tumuli (or mounds) closer to the Boyne River down in the valley floor. Interesting that all these sites are aligned to the path of the Sun, and that they all were built within the bounds of this wide bow bend in the river.

Now it was time for the guided tour of the inside of the Newgrange chamber. We all filed into the chamber, careful not the scratch the artwork, and emerged in the central corbelled chamber. Then Kal appeared again and I could see that he was holding his dowsing rods. He wouldn’t, would he?

Inside Newgrange there are three chambers – one with a triple spiral inscription, another with a white bowl in it. We didn’t get to see the third too well due to the number of people in there, but if you want to have a look around yourself then you can do so on this wonderful site – go take a virtual tour!

The guide was very eloquent, speculating as to how it was used, what the bowls might have been for, what the inscriptions might have meant. The Irish have a long history as bards and story-tellers. Of course, it was all labelled as speculation, and no-one took it as anything else. Some asked questions, most realised there was no more sensible reaction to this place than to try to absorb its atmosphere and take some of that home.

We were given a demonstration of the way in which the passage had been designed to allow a slight shaft of sunlight through and the mound was plunged into sudden darkness as the guide talked us through the sequence. It was quite amazing to see the cleverness of the design which allowed the light of Midwinter sunrise to penetrate so deeply into the chamber for 17 minutes over the course of several days around the Midwinter Solstice of 21st December.

The lights came back on but the atmosphere did not alleviate – instead it deepened for me. I felt distinctly odd in there. At one point, as I stood directly underneath the “square” roof cap (it looked five-sided from where I was standing) my head began to swim. I had felt like this many times – this was the onset of the trance state that I enjoyed during magickal episodes. Was something about to happen here? My whole body shivered with the swelling magickal atmosphere developing as people began to file out, having seen all they wanted to see.

Just then Kal handed me some dowsing rods and whispered “Try dowsing the chamber as you go out. See what you get.” I realised we were the last to leave now and so I began to hang back and dowse the passage. I followed a weaving male line down the passage, and then found a neutral one next to it, in opposition to the male line (in terms of amplitude). Kal confided that the line was not very positive, and we began to speculate that this might be linked to the way the site was being treated, unwittingly of course.

Before we leave the main mound, let me just talk about the triple spiral that appears on the left-hand side of the entrance stone and again in the left-hand chamber of the mound itself. I feel this is a symbol of the coming together of the three frequencies of energy : male, female and neutral. We call this formation a White Power Centre, as it tends to form as either a triple-headed spiral pattern or as three spirals overlaying each other on the same spot. Whenever we find it at sites it signifies the presence of an active and powerful  Genius Loci. The energy in this form is highly beneficial to humans, especially when seeking to transform one’s consciousness or perform other magickal acts, including healing processes.

Interesting then about the way I felt inside that central chamber…it made me wish we had more time inside to work it all out properly. In the next post about Newgrange we discover something that no-one else seems to have discussed about that site. That will be interesting reading!

Gwas.