Still the first day of our Summer Solstice outing in Cornwall. Dragging on a bit, isn’t it? Well, there are a lot of places to see in that area, and we had all day to see them in. Long warm days full of sunshine make us go a little bit crazy. However, this was our last site for this first day, and it would turn out to be the one that had the biggest impact on me personally because I would be taught a very strong lesson about attachment.
Death and the Maidens
Finding the Merry Maidens stone circle should have been easy. Kal had been there a few times before, and he told me “you can see it from the road“. Well, we scoured the road, passing by sights which Kal recognised and then we got into that grey area of “…and it’s somewhere around here.” Next thing you know Kal was putting the anchors on, “We’ve definitely gone past it.” We had been approaching from the Penzance end through Newlyn on the B3315, but if the site is approached from the other side, then it’s much easier to find. Soon we were parked up in a layby next to an information board, and then over the stile and up the slight hill through a green meadow towards the visible stones on the top of the slope.
As I parked myself by the outlying “heel” stone Kal zoomed off towards a stone which was seemingly embedded into the nearby hedgerow. I waited for a while and then couldn’t resist going over there too after he wandered off elsewhere. Something was inviting me to take a look, and the dowsing rods confirmed that the spot had some form of energy. But what? I peered into a circle of flattened grass – there was the corpse of a dead rabbit! It looked like a natural predatory death, but everything like this raises suspicions of peculiar rituals when they are close to stone circles.
The Outlier and The Outer Layer
I have noticed a pattern to my energy work at sacred sites. The first place I am taken to is often outside of the main site’s boundaries. At this first place I usually need to divest myself of Modern World energies, and to allow myself time to come to a balanced, cleansed and harmonious energy state before I can move into the site to do some work. This has become so routine that I no longer question why I am at the first place – I now assume that this is the purpose because it always is!
Therefore I sat next to the outlier or heel stone of the Merry Maidens circle, knowing that my only purpose was to allow the stone to remove my outer casing of energy, and allow the inner core of my energy body to re-tune itself to harmonise with the space around me.
Kal isn’t difficult to spot. He’s head, shoulders and body above the short stones in the Maidens circle. Given how beautiful the circle is – the setting, the symmetry, the number of stones – this made me think: Why do some circles consist of lots of small stones, and others consist of a few large ones? Time available to build, manpower, availability of local stone? Why are some short and others tall, yet most circles have a uniformity of size, irrespective of whether they use small or larger stones?
My power centre is at the outlier, but soon I feel that I should move inside the circle to meet with the Spirit of Place who wants to tell me a story! I dowse for the exact location where we can meet, and am taken to one side of the path which runs through the centre of the circle. I lie down in the grass and the world begins to slip away as I move my mind into a more dream-like state….
The Story of Attachment
I am invited to meet a spirit – an energy form, or Faery – who proceeds to tell me this story. He is called Chachbar (pronounced ‘Chack-bar’). He attached himself to a baby which had been passed through the holed stone at the Men-An-Tol site. After this the baby had been cleansed at a holy well – this may have been Boswarthan – no specific information was given about that. Finally, as a final part of this ritual, the baby had been walked in and out of the merry maidens stones. As this was probably not the ritual associated with just any and every baby born in the area, it may be supposed that there were certain expectations or high hopes for this particular child.
It was not explained how Chachbar had come to be associated with the child. I didn’t feel like that was something I could interject. I was the recipient of a tale in this situation, and my job was to watch and learn, so I did. So, I don’t know how this Faery had managed to get himself so inextricably bound up with the baby, yet the connection was strong, and meant to last for the life of the child.
The child turned out to be a very nasty human and Chachbar was unable to disentangle himself from the boy. As the boy got older and even nastier so Chachbar’s entanglement, his attachment, made him angry and bitter against humans generally. Even after the human died Chachbar continued to express his resentment by haunting the circle, playing tricks on visitors and souring the atmosphere, until some healers noticed him and finally dispelled him, sending his back across the veil between the worlds and banishing him to The Otherworld.
As the story concluded I expressed a wish to know what the lesson of the tale was. The lesson was to make sure your energetic attachments are light and passing. Through those attachments you can safely deliver sympathy and energy without fear of personal change through bad energies. Therefore don’t fear interaction, but don’t attach deeply to situations you encounter. Keep a light touch to avoid being drained. Don’t become too attached to places, people or objects.
I considered that this is a very strange tale to be told. The day was glorious, the setting beautiful, and the atmosphere sublimely tranquil – yet here I was listening to the tale of an embittered Faery figure. It felt vaguely uncomfortable, and I wondered why I was being told this story. I’ve never been to a sacred site and had such a “lesson” given to me. Having finished our respective work we walk down to the car, and I ponder what all this could mean.
As we reached the car and I was about to open all the windows and doors to let the hot air out, when Kal makes an observation. “Er….Where’s your staff?” he asks. Where is my most prized possession? Good question! It’s not in the car!!
We had been considering going to the Piper’s Stones nearby. All thoughts of anything else except recovering my beloved ash staff were gone now. A quick scan through the sites we had visited that day revealed that it must have been Boscawen Un – the first site of the day – where the staff had been left, perched up against the old hawthorn bush near to the entrance.
I set a course for the nearest point to the circle by road and then drove off down more tight and twisting country road, heading in a direct route. My heart was racing too. Would it still be there? What would do if it wasn’t? Was I about to encounter a real-life lesson in loss and attachment?
