Brittany 2011 – The Needles of Stone

On a recent holiday to Brittany I was able to visit some new amazingly tall menhirs, standing stones, and some ones that I had visited before. As ever I was impressed by their sheer size, and I briefly had the chance to try to extract some more information about the stones and their properties. In this post I will discuss some of those properties, and how I think they may be generally applicable to standing stones.

Before I go on to my theories, however, I want to hark back to one of the pioneering ideas concerning standing stones. As you may know, we at the Hedge Druid Blog do not stand on ceremony and are more than willing to fly in the face of any established theory providing we have our own evidence to back such statements up. Just preparing the ground a little, you might say. Now, Mr Tom Graves is the expert on the matter of standing stones, and his theories are expressed in his book “Needles of Stone” (download the book in HTML format here).

“Return to that stone circle that we saw before, glowing and pulsing with points and lines and zones of coloured light. As you watch, the battered and timeworn stones seem to dislimn, becoming smoother, finer, sharper: needles of stone set in the body of the earth, to match the needles of bone the ancient Chinese set in the body of man. Stone or bone, the needles controlled, and still control, the flow of energy through each body.

But stand back – you stand too close to see. Rise up into the air, higher, higher, like a hawk: the stone circle recedes to a glowing dot in a landscape that rolls away into the distance below you, a patchwork quilt of light. Around the circle the glowing lines spread out to connect every cell of that body: you see a fine filigree of threads just below the surface, weaving their way outward from the centre that glows; you see harsh beams of light connecting centre to centre across the country in straight lines. These centres are dotted along every line, but here and there you can see major intersections of the straight lines and the filigree, like focal points in a vast multi-layered cobweb. In some ways the whole scene is reminiscent of a micrograph of nerve cells and their ganglia, but on a much larger and brightly-coloured scale: in a sense, that is what the centres are, for in a sense what we see here is the circulation and nervous system of the body of the earth.

The focal points, the node-points in this matrix of energies, are the equivalent of acupuncture-points on a landscape scale. And set into these points are ‘needles’ not just of stone, but of all the five elements: a lone Scots Pine on a One-Tree Hill for wood, a sacred well for water, a barrow-mound for earth, and an ancient beacon for fire. For metal, a modern steel microwave mast, or the post-box that replaced the mark-stone on a lonely crossroad. The pattern of the past repeats itself in the present.” (Ch.5 ‘Needles of Stone’ –  Tom Graves)

“Dislimn” – that’s a great word, isn’t it? The WordPress spell-checker threw a wobbly at that one! It means to efface, or to cause to become indistinct. Such a poetic and infrequently used word, but so gorgeously succinct. You’ve got to hand it to the man – he can write beautiful phrases, and he sweeps you away with his ideas.

So, the idea he is expressing is that standing stones are just one aspect of the many megalithic or natural features that form the energetic body of the land. He is stating that they serve a purpose in pinning, locating, diverting or alleviating the subtle energetic forces within the landscape just as a practitioner of Chinese systems of medicine would do with their methods.

Next I will discuss my own theories on the way in which these tall stones work.

Transformer stones – thoughts on their purpose and positioning

I have my own theory on standing stones. I agree with Mr.Graves that they have a purpose in changing or charging the subtle energy forces of the earth, but I take his analogy with Chinese medicine one steps further in that I also believe they draw down the subtle energies of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars whose energy pervades our planet. They act as antennae due to their shape, and then via their crystalline geological structure they transmute and transmit the energies of these radiant celestial objects.

Once these energies have been drawn down they act upon the earth into which these stones are placed. The result can be many different forms of subtle energy: a radiating ring of frequencies; a pool of energy around the stone; lines that come into the stone can feed it; lines that come out take nourishing fertilising energies into the landscape; earth energies arising at the base of the stone can become enjoined into a positive, ‘white stream’ energy with beneficial effects for humans, plants and animals. Finally, as the original analogy indicates, geopathic stresses can be neutralised by the presence of the stone, and its abilities to disperse, diffuse or re-direct those energies out of harm’s way for humans.

So, my theory is that the so-called needles of stone can act as attractors for subtle energies, site of  energy transformation, and energy radiators too. How complex these simple structures are! What multi-faceted features are entombed in their simple crafting, erection and location! But that’s not the end of it – there’s one more thing I found out about these standing stones….

The Batteries of Brittany

I have been working on promoting my healing abilities since the Summer Solstice this year. Being on holiday did not stop me from using the opportunity of being in the company of a fine standing stone to try to advance this knowledge even further. I visited two stones – one above the village of Quintin, and another near to the town of Dol de Bretagne. At the Quintin stone I meditated at the base of the menhir and asked for information about how I might progress with my healing abilities. The response was to see myself glowing from head to foot along the major axes of my limbs and head! I was aglow like the logo for The Saint, the old 1970’s TV programme starring Ian Ogilvy as Simon Templar.

I had received a vision of the paths along my body that the healing energy takes as it travels through me. The Saint logo shape was a map of the subtle energy meridians, just like the Chinese concept of chi meridians. I will post more about this soon, as I learn more about it.

The second stone I visited a few days later was one that I had been to before, however this time the stone was subtly different. Le Champ Dolent (The Doleful Field – “Expressing sorrow; mournful”) stone near Dol de Bretagne really does live up to its name now – being in a very sorrowful field, as I will explain. As we approached the stone we realised what the difference was from our previous visit two years ago – all of the surrounding hawthorn bushes had been cut down completely leaving the stone completely exposed! This subtly changed the atmosphere of the site – whereas last year people seemed to come here to picnic, or have their lunch in the aura of the stone, now they still visited in numbers but because there was no shelter from the winds they only stayed a matter of a minute or two and then left again. No-one sat at the picnic tables and enjoyed the sunny day like last time.