I seem to have moved out of my Water phase that I was in earlier in the year. I am quite firmly in the arena of earth spirits at the moment with visits to caves and encounters with earth spirits. Here is another such encounter. This encounter happened a week after my Derbyshire cave encounter with a hobgoblin, although the scenery was altogether different.
The Background
I had been travelling from Arbor Low in Derbyshire to Christchurch in Dorset over a four day period. At the end of day one I ended up just south of Birmingham in the delightful Warwickshire town of Henley-in-Arden, Despite the sun having been out for the whole day it had remained bitterly cold, yet I was not going to contain myself in my small but neatly arranged hotel room. I wanted to see Henley, and I had an appointment with its only ancient site – Beaudesert Castle. Armed with my usual rucksack of goodies – incense, dowsing rods, crystals, assorted fruit – I marched into town eager to get to the top of the hill in order to watch the sunset. It was a race, but I made it into Henley whilst the sun was still “over the yardarm“, as they say. I made a mental note as I passed that The Bluebell looked like a good place to eat. It was – I highly recommend it if you’re visiting the town. However, make sure you’re prepared for the price tag!
Before all that, however, I was on the trail of an ancient “hillfort” called Beaudesert Castle sitting on a beautiful plateau to the North-East of the town. Apparently Time Team have excavated at the fort, but I wasn’t put off – I was still going to go. Just as I was wondering how I would get to the hill I was stopped by a sign in the church at the centre of the town advertising the local attraction including the castle. Stopping made me realise that the church was actually on the corner of Beaudesert Lane. Well, surely it couldn’t be far away then? It wasn’t. Just down Beaudesert Lane is St Nicholas’ Church, and then you arrive at a well-worn and well-used iron kissing gate with a steep slope beyond it. These are the first parts of the castle’s hill.
As I got to the top of the incredibly steep ‘ramparts’ it plateaued and then there was another small but steep rise onto the main castle area. I surveyed the scene and decided that my first act would be to watch the setting sun before I went off doing anything else. I set my bag down and then got the dowsing rods out. I walked into the middle of the plateau – where was the best place for me to sit – the most energetic and powerful? About two feet away from where I had placed my bag! On a little tuft of green grass facing the sun. So, that’s where I sat and watched the sun descend behind the hills beyond Henley.
Henley – the Old Ley
I got to watch the sun change colour from bright yellow to salmon pink then crimson red, and finally disappear. Then it went suddenly even colder – time to move! I knew I had only a short while before the light began to fade with the sun so it was time to dowse for the energy ley that I believed might come through some part of this castle’s remains.
“Hen” in Welsh, or perhaps the old Brythonic languages before Welsh, means “Old”. That makes Henley “The Old Ley”. Was I standing on an energy ley that had been coming through this part of the country fro a very long time? Within minutes I had located its position, width and strength. It was here – on the eastern edge of the plateau. I dowsed the male and female lines in the ley flowing north and south there were three of each, as expected.
The line was some 18-20 feet wide at that point as it flowed unchallenged and unchanged by obstructions or manipulations. It had a strength of six on my rough and ready scale of 1-10. Those were the facts and figures of this line that cut across the steep eastern ridge of the castle, but they were not the whole magic of the energies. Those would be revealed in a different way!
Encounter with an Earth Spirit
Having done my “duty” and gathered my facts and figures I felt inclined to see what the character of this hill might be like -was there more to be learned by a different method? This is where druidry comes in and dowsing is but a tool for easy guidance. I asked for the best place to meet Nature Spirits and used the dowsing rods to take me to the northern edge of the plateau, spiralling round at another tuft of green grass like the one that was my energy power centre.
I meditated there, putting up some protection in case I encountered anything that was not a compatible energy with mine, and soon after I felt my ethereal energy body descending into the castle mound, my vision going with it. I stopped inside a warm cave within the mound, lit by some undetectable light source but sufficient to make out the figure of a goblin-like creature, slightly humanoid with a long pointed nose and pale complexion. His eyes were dark as coal tar, but sparkled with a cheerful inner light that put me at my ease.
So comfortable was I that straight away I asked if we could share knowledge and he said we could, but first I would have to give him some gifts – a physical one, and intellectual one and a spiritual one. I agreed to this, of course, without knowing how I could fulfil these criteria, but knowing that I couldn’t resist the challenge.
Taking the challenge
To satisfy the intellectual gift I offered him the stories of my travels down the ley line so far. I offered this in the form of a ‘download’ of images and feelings from my memory-bank of experiences and the goblin happily accepted this transfer of energy to him. I didn’t know what I would do for the spiritual gift yet, but I knew what to do about the physical gift – I had come prepared just for such an occasion. I awoke and went over to my bag and got an apple out – something I carried just in case I would need an offering of some sort. I turned around to look for somewhere to place the apple where it would touch the earth properly, contemplating burying it. Right in front of me was a cubby-hole – a hole just big enough for an apple and round and ready to accept it!! I took a bite of it then placed the rest in the hole.
Two gifts down, and one to go, but I didn’t know what to do for the spiritual gift so I went back to the goblin. I stood once more on the tuft of grass and got back into the deep meditative mindset that put me back in touch with the goblin of the hill. Could he show me where I could make a spiritual gift, I asked? He directed me to the ley line and I awoke and went to the far side of the castle’s ramparts to stand in it. In my meditative state I felt the energies flowing and as I turned to the North I was being swept along, or hit in the back by the male lines, which felt quite…strong and stressful. I turned around and could feel the female lines hitting me. This direction felt better – more natural for me. I knew that I could use this energy to spiritually nourish the goblin and offer him a gift, so I tapped into the energy and using my own energy field I gathered energies together into a luminous ball around myself. I went back to the power centre where I could contact him and offered him the energy. He accepted it and then directed me to go back to the ley where he would show me something useful.
I went back and stood in the ley once more. The goblin told me to face South saying that I would work better that way. I felt the flow of the female lines pulling me towards the southern coast which I knew was 150 miles away yet. The goblin told me telepathically that I could send messages down the ley. I could use it to communicate if I wanted. The goblin suggested I try using some of my own energy to test this out. Having recently worked on opening chakras using sound this was an ideal opportunity to put that into practise, so I began to chant a deep “ahhh” sound which slowly opened my heart chakra. A ball of circular energy emerged from my heart, and I felt its loving energy being swept away along the energy lines as they flowed southwards. I filled the ball with loving energy and made a wish to see this energy at every point along the ley until the line came to an end.
I dowsed the spot that I had been standing on and found a sigil sign there that was a simple circle. A 2D representation of what I had sent! I suddenly understood that I had been following a two-dimensional representation of something that had more dimensions that I had noticed. I asked the goblin whether this energy ley was a 2D representation of the energies flowing through the land. He said it was, and would I like to see its real form? I said yes, and I was given a vision in which I saw the energy ley as a bicycle wheel of energy arcing over a straight line with varying widths but concentrated at its end points on the land – which were Christchurch and Lindisfarne by my reckoning.
Having achieved my mini-quest I gave thanks to the goblin-like creature for his help with my work and began to dis-entangle myself from the castle and its energies. I lit some incense sticks to clear the space and leave a nice trace when suddenly three people appeared from the lower ramparts of the castle plateau. Looks like the world had made everything I needed to experience fit into just the right time frame, yet again. When you’re in the Fl0w Of The Universe, this is how things work out.
Gwas.
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