lunasa – The Hedge Druid

Lammas 2015 P6 Light In The Darkness

October 13, 2015October 1, 2015 Chris No Comments

Ancient Sites, Celestial, Circles and Stones, Wheel of the Year

We wandered along the darkening roads around the floor off the valley. Bats swooped at us, as though sensing our excitement and wanting to join us. The steady trickle of the Kilmartin Burn accompanied us as the scoured the dark profile of the hills behind us looking for the full moon.

We diverted ourselves with an encounter at a ruined chamber which I will recount later. Then we returned down the parallel road which would take us to Temple Wood Circle. The full moon appeared above the hills just as we could see the stone circle as we approached it. Timing. We noted that the circle was also known as “Moon Temple“. This was a Blue Moon tonight. What a lovely coincidence!

Blue Moon from Temple Wood circle - Lammas 2015 (1) — Blue Moon from Temple Wood circle

As I walked around the periphery of the stone circle’s rock-laden mound, I felt there was no need to approach the centre this time. The work was to be done outside initially in the small grove of birch trees nearby, I felt. I sat in the moonlight, and waited for inspiration as I connected to the Spirit of Place.

Lammas 2013 – The Faery Feast

August 27, 2013August 25, 2013 Gwas No Comments

Faery, Hedge Druidry, Ritual, Trees, Wheel of the Year

In the culmination of the Lammas work I describe a long-awaited meeting between the Lord of the Underworld – Gwyn Ap Nudd – and little old me.

Now, I have some caveats about this post which I will point out straight away. The location was given to me by a devotee of this site along with a request not to divulge the location of the site. I will honour that promise entirely – so you will need to use your imagination for this one because there will be no photos or definitive descriptions of the place – just general references.

I began that morning by collecting some fresh wild flowers. I know people disagree with the concept – I know. However, I don’t go around doing it for no reason, or simply to decorate my house. These flowers were a one-off offering that I had been specifically asked to collect as part of the ritual. Yes, I could have refused on principle, but we are ‘sacrificing’ vegetables all the time for things Like Harvest Festival celebrations. This was the same sort of enterprise – a dedication of the finest ‘fruits’ of the land to create a banquet as an offering to a major spirit form. I felt it was necessary in this case. Please forgive me if it causes you distress. And take care where you walk when you go out in the countryside. Those blades of grass don’t repair themselves, you know?

Next we had to find the right place. I had a set of printed instructions that had been left deliberately vague. Well, lets’ say there was margin for error anyway. Once you knew where you were going you realised the instructions were dead on, but you need to read between the lines. Luckily I had my Druid Glasses on. Both Kal and I walked to the spot we believed was the right one. Actually, I had been intending to go alone, but it worked out that the best time was when Kal was there too. So be it.

As soon as I got the end of the known instructions I knew the rest of the way myself. I could feel the draw, the magnetic pull of the place. Yes, this was the right spot indeed – I knew that even from the outside. A suitable entrance needed to be found, and duly I was led there by forces unseen and sympathetic to my cause. I was still carrying a large bounty of flowers, most now wilting in the harsh heat we were having this Lammas day. I got them inside the sacred site unscathed. Now what?

Lammas 2013 – Lunasa, Lunacy and Re-balancing

August 23, 2013August 21, 2013 Gwas No Comments

Faery, Wheel of the Year

August has been a busy month – socially, and in terms of holidays and druidry. So at the end of August begins our stories about Lammas, Lughnasah, or Lunasa – whichever you prefer. I used to call it Lammas, but I’m coming around to the ideas of using Lunasa, as it contains a more direct reference to the inspiration for the day.

Lammas (or Lunasa, Lughnasagh – The Assembly of Lugh) was about a meeting with a faery. It seems so obvious now, but the signs were constructed in a long draw-out jigsaw, and the final pieces only came together as I write this post. Sometimes the obvious is not obvious until it makes itself so. I discovered that I would be having this meeting, this assembly, at the Summer Solstice on Glastonbury Tor. I think even then, because it was Glastonbury Tor, I knew which faery I would be meeting – Gwyn Ap Nudd. He is also known as Lugh (Light), and Herne (The Hunter).

Certainly all the indications were such – it had to be someone powerful, I needed to go through an elaborate ritual of gathering the fruits of the summer, and I would need to provide a gift of these fruits at a banquet where I would meet him. A few words of advice had come through from Kal’s spiritual mentor Cailleach too. She had advised that I “must find the banquet“. Indeed, I would have to gather the flowers of the land on the day of the festival from all the places I visited that day. The flowers did have to be found. The place and the time had also to be right, astronomically and in terms of the time of the year. After a chance encounter on this blog I knew the place. The time and star positions were going to be Lammas and in view of the constellation Orion – The Hunter. Gwyn, of course, is also The Hunter, hunting the Scorpio constellation across the sky, so I’m told.

As a courtesy to my “informant” I will not be discussing the place where the meeting would take place, but I will describe what happened. However, that’s a few posts away. For now, there were preparations to be made, and the first was a suggestion of Kal’s – Bryn Celli Ddu.

The site is usually very well maintained, energetically speaking, but this day we both independently discovered that some balancing work could be done. When we conferred about it we decided to go about it in our own ways, but agreed that it needed doing. Only a marginal tinkering, this time, just to being the site into harmony with our energies, and vice versa.

I dowsed for the place to do this work from and found a place to the upper side of the entrance to the mound. On the opposite side Kal was already sat so I asked him if that was “his spot” to which he responded that it was indeed. Of all the places we could have chosen, we chose opposite sides of the entrance. I sent female energy around the outside of the site and dowsed later that it blended with the existing female flow.

Kal, it turns out, had been sending male energy the other way round. Without any preparation we found ourselves working harmoniously in a balanced way until the site dowsed as being perfectly in harmony between male and female, and that this was consistent with the energies of the moment (positions of moon, sun and stars at this time of the year). The female outer ring and male inner ring around the mound were moving freely, and flowing to a design that we had dowsed on several occasions now (see our site maps of Wales for a clue to that formation’s general layout).

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