Mitchells Fold 2011 – location, location, location

Kal has already posted on this visit so I’m not going to repeat any of what he has said, but I am going to add my own particular report  of what I did and what I found out at Mitchell’s Fold stone circle because it leads me into the New Year nicely.

I sub-titled this post “Location, location, location” for a couple of reasons. Later in the post I will talk about the effects of nearby megaliths on local residents, but I also wanted to draw attention to the delightful location of many of the remaining megalithic structures of this country. Whether in the depths of Winter or the height of Summer being at these sites stimulates the soul in a deep fashion. Mitchell’s Fold stone circle in particular is blessed with a stunning location fenced by the imposing Corndon Hill, yet having distant views to Wales. I recommend going out of your way to visit it if you can.

Of course, if you DO visit in Winter then be prepared for an interesting journey. I navigated the car along the smallest of roads and the most treacherous compacted snow and was thankful that I now drove an all-wheel drive car. There is no way the little blue Peugeot would have made this trip! No way at all. Thus we have managed to extend the site visits to almost all year round now, which I am thankfully well equipped for after my Canadian expedition.

The smell of birth and death

Wrapped from head to toe in warm and woolly gear I stifled a chuckle at Kal’s brave attempts to stave off the bitter winds that whipped up across the plateau upon which Mitchell’s Fold stone circle is perched. It was indeed a day for being quite specific about your dowsing questions – formulating them in your head then hurriedly removing gloves and doing the necessary connection with the divine knowledge source that is Nature.

The first thing I needed to do, I determined, was to mark the passing of two of my closest neighbours – one a human, one a tree. One of our favourite neighbours, old Dolly, had died whilst I was on holiday in Canada. This was not unexpected given how she had been in and out of hospital for weeks with heart problems, yet I felt a tremor of sadness nevertheless. Also while I was away the proposed destruction of the beloved beech tree that stood in our immediate neighbour’s front garden but which we had come to think of as ours too – this also went ahead. In a way I knew it while I was away. It had been on the cards – we knew it was coming. Yet, there was a pang of sadness one late evening that I couldn’t account for. I put it down to being stranded at Calgary airport, but I think it was a strand of nature’s web that was linked to me being stirred by the demise of either or both of my two homely connections. This was indeed a bitter Winter in so many ways.

I might have known I would have trouble lighting the four incense sticks for the tree and another four for Dolly. I huddled with a cheap lighter for ten minutes before they were all lit, and then had to re-visit the double square formation placed on a suitable power centre several times as the wind insisted on making the sticks go out on a regular basis. I only lightly grumbled, supposing that the effort was not wasted if it was going towards this mark of respect and mourning.

As I struggled back and forth breathing in the frankincense aroma I caught the irony of the scent at this time of year, and how it had come to mark the birth of a saviour, just as I was marking two deaths. Birth and death come to close together in the cycle.

The Yule part of the year

When I asked for advice from my spirit guidance about what I might turn my attentions to for the next part of the year I was told to “Write a book!“. Now I have to call upon some muses to work out what it should be about, or to get the motivation to write it. I have 5 weeks until February 1st! The first draft needs to be complete by then.

I wonder about this “guidance”. When I had been thinking about the lunar eclipse as a form of death of the year/moon I asked for guidance and got the response “Celebrate death“. Recently my father had asked me about how my book was coming along. I told him I’d be writing it this year. Next thing – my ‘guidance’ is saying “Write a book“. Hmmm…I am deeply suspicious that these short phrases are just my subconscious bubbling up a task in answer to my request for one. The Fates say a first draft needs to be ready by February! I’d better get typing….so I’ve made a start but it’s not likely to be done in any way, shape or form by February. Maybe if I get the concept formulated?

Maen Beuno – or is that Mean Beuno?

Saint bleeding Beuno gets everywhere in North Wales! He has a cave up near to Bodfari, an abbey on the Lyn Peninsula, and so many other namesake places and objects that he seems to pop up everywhere we go. So it was no surprise that when we scanned around the area on our way back home from Shropshire, close to the town of Welshpool, we found St.Beuno’s stone marked on the iMegalith app.

We decided to visit this stone because it looked easy to get to, and having seen how impossible it was to reach the yew tree we had planned to visit earlier (due to snow) we thought this was a good decision. Now I find that if we had ventured just a mile further into the town of Berriew we could have visited another Beuno stone AND an old yew tree at the same time. Oh, the irony!

It was easy to find (compared to many sites listed on that app) but the henge that it mentioned as being nearby was now merely the slightest of raised bumps in fields covered in snow. No henge now – but there was a stone and it had a snow-covered placard, so we stopped close by and skated over to the stone to check it out,

The stone is predominantly surrounded in male energy with only the slightest female energy. The shape alone indicated that it would be male – it has sharp edges and a square shape that goes into a point at the top. It is linked to a power centre that Kal discovered as being in the centre of the road that the stone stood next to, He also dowsed that it had been moved from its original location, but had been replaced on a place that had some earth energy – so it was a ‘knowledgeable’ move by someone long ago. This kind of thing is rarely considered these days by people who move megaliths around because they are “in the way”.

The interest thing we discovered was sparked by an observation we made as we drove down the lane. There is a cluster of houses, probably only eight along the lane. At least three of the houses had “For Sale” signs up outside them, and we thought that was a disproportionate ratio. So, we began to ask about whether there was any link between the stone and its human neighbours. After a while we discovered that the energies of the stone were overwhelmingly pagan, and that St.Beuno had been pagan too – later gathered into the sainthood of Christianity for their own purposes of adopting local notable figures as their own. This is our contention, and we explain our reasons below.

St Beuno’s strong energies were in this stone, and they were for some reason incompatible with the people who lived in the houses that were up for sale. Whether they realised it or not, they were being “forced” out of their homes due to this incompatibility between their energy fields and those that this stone was emitting. Of course, this is pure speculation, but that’s the conclusion we arrived at by careful questioning of the dowsing rods over the stone.

I later did a bit of digging on the background of St.Beuno to verify how true this idea might be. Here’s what I found out about him:-

“Beuno was born in Powys, supposedly at Berriew, the grandson of a prince of that realm. After education and ordination in the monastery of Bangor-on-Dee in north-east Wales, he became an active missionary, Cadfan, King of Gwynedd, being his generous benefactor. Cadwallon, Cadfan’s son and successor, deceived Beuno about some land and, when the saint demanded justice, proved unsympathetic. Thereupon, Cadwallon’s cousin Gwyddaint, in reparation, “gave to God and Beuno forever his township” of Clynnog Fawr in the Llŷn peninsula, where the saint founded a famous abbey.

Beuno became the guardian and restorer to life of his niece, the virgin Saint Gwenffrewi (Winefride; in modern English Winifred). He was relentless with hardened sinners, but full of compassion to those in distress. Before his death at Clynnog “on the seventh day of Easter” he had a wondrous vision.” (source Wikipedia)

A vision, eh? Very shamanic. I venture to suggest that his education may have been along the lines of many of the royal household in that area – schooled in the druidic teachings of the Western Mystery Schools. His celebration (or ‘Feast’) day is April 21st. That date in the pagan calendar is Parilia, described by the Pagan Calendar site as

“…a festival for protection and fertility for farms”. (source: Pagan Calendar).

St Beuno is also associated with the fertility and good health of farm animals. Coincidence again. This Beuno bloke begins to have echoes of former pagan celebrations – I wonder if his spirit was co-opted to ingratiate him with the farming community? Beuno is also listed on the Megalithic Portal due to some very old standing stones at his abbey on the Lyn Peninsula. I venture to suggest it was sited on an ancient pagan site. So I think it’s about time we paid his home territory to see what we can find out about Beuno and his possible pagan leanings.

Gwas.