Tag: lost

Lost in Pisa

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How To, Spirit of Place

This tale is actually the start of my Italian tour, so if you’re reading them in order, then this is first, but published last. What was I thinking? I had landed in Pisa and according to my map I was about 2 miles from my hotel, Now of course you are thinking…”grab a cab” however, … Read More “Lost in Pisa” »

Solstice 2013 – A Cautionary Tale about Attachment

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Ancient Sites

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.

Merry Maidens - Solstice 2013 (15)

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Sister and the Well: Beltane 2013 – 1

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Quests

When writing up these quests we tend to go for the salient and relevant points. However we have so often find that innocuous little details play significant parts and so, more for ourselves than anything else we add those bits here – just in case. Here is one such entry. Gwas wanted to visit a well … Read More “Sister and the Well: Beltane 2013 – 1” »

Beltane 2013 Pt2 – Wilderness and Laughter

Posted on By Gwas No Comments on Beltane 2013 Pt2 – Wilderness and Laughter
Ancient Sites, Dowsing, Energy work, Hedge Druidry, Telluric, Wheel of the Year

I had deliberately kept the number of site visits low for Beltane. The daylight hours are still short, the distance we had to travel to get there was sufficient to drain away the day, and I wanted to be able to feel ‘unhurried’ when we got to a site. Almost as if enhancing this mood I had parked at The Broad Oak pub car park in the village of Strelley. It took us ten minutes to walk to Catstone Hill, and really it would have been easier to park right on the corner of the road just before the main village where there was ample parking, and the distance would have been more than halved. Such is life!

That wasn’t the end of our woes finding the site. Intuitively, and with only the barest map navigation, we found our way on to the hill. We inspected the broad flat plateau but couldn’t find any “capstones” for burial chambers. Were they hidden by the brambles and gorse? We tried to find more accurate maps on our phones but failed, so we resorted to dowsing rods. The rods pointed us out in the direction of a ploughed field. Our rationality kicked in and caused us confusion. We split up and went searching. Eventually I found the right place. It was at the end of the ploughed field and off the plateau behind a line of trees. The M1 motorway was is view below. Nice! Being off the main plateau was why we hadn’t seen it. We also realised there was a much easier way in if we’d only taken the steep tracks up the hill instead of following the main path. Once you know, you know – hindsight is clear.

Catstone Hill's buried chambers
Catstone Hill’s buried chambers

We inspected the area around the capstones. No entry into these chambers, if ever there was any. They were silted up to the brim now. Disappointment began to set in. We stumbled around tripping over the tangle of briars and bramble thorns, the thick dead grass and the outcropping tangle of shrub branches. Our sense of frustration was compounded when we discovered that the site had no energy signature either. There were no earth energies running through the site at all. The disappointment grew. Should we turn away and go somewhere else?

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