Harthill Moor, Derbyshire – Saturday 20th November 2010
We picked our way carefully down the slope towards Doll Tor. “Give me more details!” I hear you say, “How do I find Doll Tor?” You find it when you’re ready, and if you’re committed enough. Otherwise, just sit back and enjoy this tale instead. Where was I? Oh yes, we picked our way through the cow-rutted clods and across swamps of mud until our feet hit solid ground on the small path that takes you down to the circle, tucked away out of sight in a clump of trees. Kal, as usual, had taken an alternate route that didn’t endanger his trainer-shod feet, whereas I was sensibly attired and ploughed through the middle. Always taking the middle way, eh? It was a good job I had good balance.
I had been warned by our friendly druid at the Nine Stones that there were some ‘decorations’ (known colloquially as ‘clouties’) left at Doll Tor from the Samhain celebrations. Little did I realise quite how intrusive those decorations were until we arrived at the circle. May I just take a moment here to say this to all those who go celebrating at sacred sites – I was always told that the mark of a respectful pagan is that when they have finished you would hardly know they had been there. This has stuck with me, but some, it seems, never got the message. All the trees around the circle were covered in coloured ribbons, either tied around their trunks or wrapped around branches. Several mobiles hung from the trees too. Pretty, but as we were about to discover, not always beneficial.
We began dowsing to assess the the character of the site – always useful to have an impression of how the site is feeling and how it is reacting on any particular visit so that you can tune in to do your best work. This day we found that the energy was not very good there and it was because the good energy associated with the ribbons at the time of their placement had worn off. In fact, some of the people who had tied the ribbons were still energetically linked to them, and because they were not giving off good energies, so that was feeding into the site’s energy field too, by some form of quantum mechanical linkage (in the sense of action at a distance).
There was also a bunch of white flowers laid in the centre of the circle. This had been good, but now was allowing harmful energies to come into the site like some kind of conduit. There was an important lesson being learnt here: objects retain links to their donators unless those links are deliberately severed.
We worked out fairly quickly from discovering this that out purpose here today would be to break the links between the people and their ribbons, mobiles and flowers. Whilst we found that they had been drawing in good energies at the time they were given, some of the objects were not attracting bad energies through those links. Maybe the people who had donated them were giving off bad vibes, or having bad luck? Either way, the links had to be neutralised, and so we set about doing that.
Kal did one side while I did the other. We lit incense (on a still day for a change) because this seemed to offer a better option for cleansing than crystals. I walked once around the perimeter of the site, widdershins, cleansing its aura. Then I meditated to cleanse, power up and protect myself. I could see Kal doing the same. When ready we lit more incense and wafted it around the trunks of the trees affected by this bad energy connection (not all were).
The air was pungent and swirling with the wisps of opium incense as it wove its way around each tree , gathering curiously around the coloured ribbons and moving its cleansing air-force through the twirling diagonal mobiles. I imagined that the spirits of the air and fire were assisting with our work. When the last tree was done we planted incense around the decaying bunch of flowers in the centre of the circle and as we did so the air lifted indescribably and subtly as the last bond was released.
When we finished that was all there was to do here so we left, happy that we had done some useful work today. So, beware. If you intend to leave gifts for the goddess, please make the unconditional and unlinked gifts. By all means add your love and gratitude, but please disconnect your self from the act, leaving the gift quantumly untainted!
Gwas.
