Avebury: "How Do We Speak With the Earth"?

"Speak to the Earth and it shall teach thee"

.....Job 12:8

I didn't realize it before I set out, but I knew that I was going on a pilgrimage when I set foot in the airport for this trip, which  I booked without any real  planning, but a lot of intuitive and spontaneous desire, in summer.  The Metaphor here is the Circle, and the  Circle has no end.

I was googling around last summer when I learned of the Gatekeepers    Conference "Dreaming the Land" in Pewsey, U.K., in the cold month of November.  For  fun, I checked to see if there were any discount tickets to London during that off season time of the year, and indeed there were.  I'm not sure what possessed me, but the next thing I noticed was that I had my credit card out, and I was going to Great Britain again, after some 7 years. (The Isles of Bride, Bridget, Bree, the Roman Britannia...I wonder how many people know that Britan is linked to the name of the most ancient Celtic Goddess? ) 

I decided to  go to those special places I went to before,  and listen to the land, to any conversations that might occur, and any  synchronicities or insights as well as I entered into the  liminal zone of being a traveller .  I didn't realize until I found myself uncomfortably standing in a long customs line at Heathrow (you can do a lot of thinking, in a long customs line) that I was completing a few personal Circles as well as well as seeking them on ancient sites.  I was last here  for the Goddess Conference in 2011, and when I returned to the U.S.  I became caretaker and for my mother and my brother,  until they passed on in 2015.  Now I find that my life calls for a new direction, but I don't know what that really might be.  

But it came to me, as I waited at the gate for entry  to both the UK and my personal journey of  pilgrimage that I had arrived with a  Question I hoped would inform my future work:   "How do we speak with the Earth?  And how does the Earth speak to us?" What does such a question mean? How is it important for us as beings inhabiting Gaia?

"We are living IN the Earth.  Not ON the Earth, but IN the Earth.

  And what we do to the Earth we are doing to ourselves."

...... Rachel Rosenthal

From Customs at last I made my way  to Paddington Station in London, then to to Swindon by train, then to Avebury by bus, and wholly  exhausted I stepped from the bus to see,  perfectly aligned  across from the bus stop in the mist,  the great prehistoric structure of Silbury Hill.  Before  me rose the great  Belly of the Goddess, the Omphalos of an ancient world.  

And  ever since, I believe  answers began to come to my question, as well as loops within my many "Circles".


At my AIRBNB  my host, Liam, had a deep relationship with  Avebury, and he told me about the placement and  names of stones and sites,  as well as introducing me to his library, including a book called THE SILBURY TREASURE  by Michael  Dames.  Situated just south of Avebury, Silbury Hill is Europe's tallest prehistoric structure.  Dames argues that Silbury, like other "neolithic Harvest Hills" represents the pregnant belly of the Great Mother in one phase of Her universal life.  Dames' brilliant exploration of an ancient theology in which the land itself, all of it's rivers, waters, stones and invisible currents was the very  Deity Herself............gives a whole new meaning to the "Return of the Goddess" concept.  Gaia, the Great Mother, long before she became Demeter, or Mary, or..........more on this in another post.

When I walked out to the Avebury complex through the little village of Avebury  I found the high and sparkling energies I remembered so well, an intensification of a deep life force vitality I have come to recognize when i am in sacred places, places of numinosity and  telleric force.  There is no doubt in my mind (or body mind) that these prehistoric sites marked places of power, as well as serving to intensify or channel the  animating, life giving  Earth energies  present  through placement of the stones.  I believe that these prehistoric sacred landscapes also augmented the healing and consciousness changing properties through the  interaction  of the people themselves with the "spirit of the land".  John Steele called this "geomantic reciprocity" . 

I stood before a  megalith that is part of two stones called "the Cove", one wide, one tall and narrow.  I think these impressive stones mark  one of the "entrances" to the inner circle, marking one of the avenues or processional paths.  Originally there were three stones in alignment with each other at that point, but one of the three was pulled down and broken by villagers.  Many of the original stones of Avebury became building material for the village of Avebury.

"Many people believe that every sacred place has its spiritual as well as physical guardians, and a physical guardian can manifest in many ways, including people who don't even know that that is what they are."....Gary Biltcliffe

I met a man who was dowsing the area, and we struck up a conversation. So immediate and friendly was recognition between the two of us  that although we must have talked and walked around for over an hour, I never did get his name.  


He told me  he had many times dowsed at Avebury, and that there were  "male and female" polarities or lines connected to the site and even particular stones.  He spoke about the St. Micheal Line and the St. Mary line, ley lines that extend for many miles across the lands of Britain.  They intersect at certain points at  Avebury.  He also spoke about "dragon lines" that were different although often complimentary to the ley lines,  serpentine lines or currents  of (force?  energy?) that interact with different points within the empowered landscape.      I need to inquire more about this, but I think, again, about a life long (and cultural) fascination with the serpent, the dragon, and the continual weaving of this motif through mythology and art.  

And there I was, among the winding Dragons under my very feet, the great Stones before me.

A journey ahead, an adventure, and I was just at the beginning!

Sacred Places and "Talking with the Gods"

"Australian dream time seems strange to us because we distinguish stories from places.  For the aborigines places are stories:  song-lines.  To "settle" a wild place means to create not only houses and farms, but also the stories that make them a home.  For native Australians, their deserts are home because they are verdant with stories."

David Loy, The World is Made of Stories

I have acquired a rare video called GEOSOPHY - An Overview of Earth Mysteries, produced and directed by Vakasha Brenman (Mystic Fire Video) in 1988  which features interviews with John Steele and Paul Devereux, authors of EARTHMIND and co-creators of the Dragon Project, a decade long investigation into the phenomena associated with Neolithic sacred sites in Great Britain.  Earth Mysteries has always been my passion, and the sense of Gaia, the living Earth, always speaking to us beneath our feet and in our cells..........is the fundamental truth I am always seeking to speak of in my art.  Gaia.  Mother Earth.  So very much we have lost and forgotten.  I feel the work of these people is very important, and should not be lost.  So I intend to put excerpts from this documentary on this Blog (and hope I don't get in trouble for it), and to pursue the subject of "Talking with the Earth" in future posts.  In this time of political and ecological despair, this matters to me.  This is worth sharing!   

There are so many stories I could tell as I look back on how this subject informed my art, worldview, spirituality, and sense of purpose.   I often credit a  synchronistic encounter  with geomancer and spiritual dowser  Sig Lonegren, in 1982, that planted the seed of a whole new way of seeing life for me, as well as teaching me to dowse.  I had a studio in Putney, Vermont in 1982, and it was my habit to meander down to the Putney Inn for coffee on a Saturday morning.  But that particular morning in June there were people everywhere - tables with brochures set up, discussions going on, buses and vans out front.  Coffee in hand, I saw an interesting group of people sitting on the grass in a circle in front of the building, and for some reason I sat down and joined them.  Sig, who was leading this group to one of Putney's mysterious stone chambers on Putney mountain, ushered us all into a van, and invited me to come along as well.  So that's how I found myself before a stone cairn in the woods, roofed with a massive stone, and with an entrance that faced perfectly the rising of the sun on the Summer Solstice.  Sig put a pair of divining rods in my hands, and I was  amazed to learn, with the others, that two "leys", each about 6 feet wide, ran through and crossed at this chamber.  When I held one of the rods at the center of the "roof" it "helicoptered"......turned rapidly as if it was a windmill for earth energies! 

It was many years later that I had the privilege of visiting  Sig and his wife Karen at their home in Glastonbury, England.  Sig was one of the trustees of the Chalice Well, and had spent many years exploring the sacred sites of the British Isles. I celebrated Lammas with them at the Chalice Well, an event I shall always treasure.   Sig is  currently on the faculty of the Fellowship of the Spirit near Lilydale, N.Y., he has a fascinating website:  http://www.geomancy.org/       and now lives with his wife in the Netherlands.   One of Sig's books, Spiritual Dowsing, goes into the phenomena of dowsing for Earth energies. 

As a dowser myself, I've experienced shifts in energy - which means also shifts in  consciousness and perception -many times when visiting areas that are geomantically potent, be it the henge of Avebury,  or the labyrinth at Unity Church in Tucson. Sites are able to change consciousness (raise energy) because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and  they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, what the Greeks called "genus loci".  John Steele coined the term "Geomantic reciprocity" - as human beings bring intentionality, reverence and focus to a particular place, building sacred architecture, or engaging in ritual.  The conversation becomes more active as place accrues myth and story in the memory of the people, and the memory of the land.   Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to transform consciousness.  And the power of myth is important if we wish to engage the numinous presence, to  "talk to the Goddess and petition the Gods".

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

R.F. Foster

Why would the ancient people who built Stonehenge spend generations hauling monstrous (and apparently specific) stones hundreds of miles to pose them in  circles, laid  in various alignments with the skies, seasons, and land?   

According to Sig, who references psychologistcontroversial book from the 80's  The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, possibly because, as human culture and language became increasingly complex,  we began to lose mediumistic consciousness,  a daily, conversational Gnosis with "Spirit".  We became more individuated.  With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning he suggests the ancients developed a concern with how to continue contact with the gods, the ancestors, the numina of the land.  Stonehenge was a temple on a sacred landscape - according to Sig, it may also represent a "last ditch effort" to keep in touch with the spirit world, to enhance communal experience.   As the rift between personal gnosis and spiritual contact deepened, and especially with the later development of patriarchal institutions, gradually the tribal and individual Gnosis was replaced by complex religious institutions that removed individuals from the earlier tribal mind, and rendered spiritual authority to priests who were often viewed as  the sole representatives of  the  Gods or God.

Perhaps this capacity is returning to us, a new evolutionary balance. As crisis engulfs us, we need, once again, to re-member how to  "speak to the Earth". 

"I have been arguing for decades that these (sacred) spaces were special places that enhance the possibility of connection to the other side - to the One.  Please judge what follows in that context. You may well find that it challenges some of your paradigms you hold about the past.  It combines two separate lines of investigation that support the perception that these spaces really “did what’s on the box.”  The gods came to earth.  And us humans in great numbers communicated directly with them.  (I end with a counter argument just to keep things in balance.

Since the mid-seventies when I began work on my Masters’ degree on Sacred Space, one of the major themes I have chewed on has been the shift from the dominance of that more intuitive right brain in prehistory to the analytical left brain brought to us by (IMHO) the increase of influence of the Patriarchy.  The book that really turned me on initially was The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, first published in 1976 (see "Works Cited" at the bottom for all book references).  

 I must say that this has been one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books I've ever read, and is a must in the development of consciousness studies.  I don’t agree with some of what he has to say, for example, his choice of a particular word to describe how our prehistoric ancestors received their right brain information - "hallucinations."  I don't think that's what they were, and later on, I'll go in to why I think so.  But on the whole, I found his thesis most useful in forming my perception of this shift in consciousness.

It began with the Neolithic Revolution - the increasing use of agriculture rather than hunter gathering.  It facilitated a shift in consciousness.  My understanding was that the driving factor in the construction of purpose-built sacred spaces in prehistoric times was the loss of the ability of more and more of humanity to connect on a conscious level with the world of spirit.  I felt, and still do, that the archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry and Earth Energies all enhanced the ability of this connection as we became more and more left-brain/rational.  I wrote about this at great length in my first book, Spiritual Dowsing, initially published in 1986."

Sig Lonegren
www.geomancy.org
www.sunnybankglastonbury.co.uk

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Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Lonegren, Sig. 2007. Spiritual Dowsing. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Image. History of the earth energies, healing and other uses of dowsing today. A book for the spiritual pilgrim. Initially published 1986. 

Revisiting the Bosnian Pyramids

When I was in Glastonbury, and attending the Symposium, everyone was much excited about the Bosnian Pyramids, a topic that has only become newsworthy for the past 5 years or so.  I had never heard of them, but the prospect of a huge ceremonial complex, consisting of 3 pyramids and some other possible structures in Bosnia is now becoming acredited by the archeological community, thanks to the work of Dr. Osmanagic, a Bosnian archeologist who has studied extensively the pyramid complexes of South America.  He is  currently teaching in the U.S. as well as excavating in Bosnia, and he is responsible for naming them the "Pyramid of the Sun", and "Pyramid of the Moon".

Apparently (surprise!) some studies have shown that electro magnetic energies are different around, and within, pyramids than normal earth energetic fields.  It could be possible that when ancients built pyramids, a phenomenon found throughout the world, they were demonstrating an understanding of geomancy  we've lost, an understanding, perhaps, of how to focus and utilize geo-magnetic forces and "earth currents", possibly to promote shifts in consciousness, facilitate trance states, and for health benefits as well.

What's surfaced recently about the Bosnian pyramids is that they may not only include the largest pyramid in the world, but also their antiquity may be astoundingly ancient.  Dr. Osmanagic has sought extensively some kind of  organic material on or within the pyramids to be used for radiocarbon dating,  in order to  determine the approximate age of the structures.  Finally, in 2010 excavations,  organic materials have apparently been found (at Sonda 20)  on the "Pyramid of the Moon" Pyramid. The  remains were found in the surface layers of some of the large stone blocks that had been uncovered and were sent to labs for radiocarbon dating at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, Poland.

Radiocarbon dating showed the organic material to have an age of 10.350 years........which could mean that the terrace of the pyramid might have been built 10.000 years ago. "This could  completely change our understanding of what European history and the first advanced civilizations were"  Osmanagic remarked.  For myself, I've always been fascinated by the legends of Atlantis, the mythic civilization Edgar Cayce said had its final demise 10,000 years ago.  It's been pretty much established that the legend of Atlantis stems from the ancient explosion of the volcano Thera in the island of Santini, an eruption that sent a devastating tsunami throughout the ancient world and was probably responsible for the demise of the Minoan civilization, about 3,600 years..

But if these pyramids are indeed 10,000 years old..........how astounding.  Perhaps they did represent a truly ancient civilization that had advanced knowledge, advanced enough at least to comprehend earth energies and how to focus them.  Fun to speculate............


Article from: bosnian-pyramid.com