The Vernal Equinox – How Demeter lost her Daughter and gave us Spring

 

March 21st –  SPRING EQUINOX;  also known as   ALBAN EILER, ASTORA, and the vernal equinox,  takes place when the Sun crosses the celestial equator – the imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator – from south to north. This marks the beginning of astrological spring. For three days, the world stands still as we reach this balance of star and stone.

As day begins to dominate night, and the weather grows warmer and lighter, we turn our thoughts to the progress we make through our lives. As birds return to mate and build their nests, and the first flowers of the year grace our gardens, as the crops are being sown, we can thing about decisions of the past and present and how they effect the pathways of our life. Now is a time to take stock, take a moment, to consolidate the pathways we have chosen to be on. 

Working with the goddess Demeter, and experiencing her daughter's journey into the Underworld of Hades, is a useful way to think about what is happening during the equinox, and how it can relate to our lives. 

First, listen to Demeter's story:

I am a mild Goddess; I have a gentle soul. I aim to do no harm to any being. My delight is to care for the land. When I am happy, the earth is happy. When I am ready to enjoy the fruits of nature, they blossom, flower and fruit for everyone. In my youth, I was always happy and the earth was always fruitful; every day way a day of bounty, of harvest, where each had what they needed, and more. 

Every part of the land had a cornocopia of plenty and no creature went without. Everyone was warm, sheltered, fed to fullness...and so they had time to turn to thoughts of love. 

It was my role to show you timid humans how to truly love each other; how to give pleasure in the showing of your love. I was not immune from my own counsel, I became inflamed with the nectar of love on occasion...too many occasions, perhaps. I lay upon the couch of love with my own brother, Zeus, and from this heady union came my dear and beautiful daughter, a goddess in her own right. Persephone. She is as fresh as a spring dawn. 

Her hair is as golden as ripened corn; her face is as clear as the spring moon. When she was still a maiden, she loved to run with her friends in the meadows among the flowers; I often did not know whither she had run, but trusted her to return to me, as a mother should. 

One glorious spring day, my brother, Hades, saw Persephone. She was kneeling close to a fast-running brook, and the glitter of the water shone fair upon her face. She was picking the flowers that grew along its bank, the pale lemon flowers of spring. As she plucked them, she took in their scent, and the look of wonder upon her young face was so radiant, that Hades fell in love with her on that instant. 

He knew, should he ask me for her hand in marriage, I would refuse. So he simply took her. He went to her in the meadow and abducted her. He forced her into his black carriage and drove the horses full speed down into the dark drear of his underworld. Who can blame him? He lived alone down there, amid the dead, with no companion and no sight of the light of the day or living beings. 

You see...I am a mild and forgiving Goddess. I can understand. I can forgive. But that does not lessen the pain of losing your daughter. I wandered far in search of Persephone, not understand why she did not run back to me, laughing. I called her name, I asked those I passed if they had see her. I wept for the loss of her. Food did not pass my lips as I searched. And, as I am the fruitfulness of the earth, as I did not eat, neither did it. It wasted away as I went upon my quest, neither seeding or fruiting. The rivers dried. The corn withered before it ripened. And the crops, once gathered, did not grow again.

Finally, I came upon old Hecate, my sister in Olympus, who told me her story. She had been walking early one morning when she’d heard a young girl crying RApe! Rape! She’d run to help her but found nothing. Together we approached Helius, for, as he makes his daily circuit of the earth, he sees everything. Finally, he admitted he had seen Hades take my daughter through a gaping hole in the earth. Now, we had our evidence, we approach Zeus. His pronouncement was that Hades should restore Persephone to me and to the light and the living...so long as she had not eaten the food of the dead. 

This gave me such hope; Persephone is a bright girl and would have taken care to do no such thing. But she had, without knowledge of it, consumed just seven pomegranate seeds.

I was consumed with rage. I am not a vengeful or wrathful goddess, but I spoke then, I cried out to heaven that I would never remove my curse from the earth if my daughter was not returned to me. It would continue to wither and die and there would be no harvest from now on.

And so, a compromise was reached. It was the time of the equinox, a time of balance and arbitration. Six months I was to have Persephone with me, her slight frame running with joy through the warm air, her nose buried into the scent of flowers. But for six months also, she would belong to Hades, and return to the underworld. And for that time, I would mourn and the earth would whither and die. 

And so it does. Every winter it remains in this dormant state while my daughter goes to do her duty to her so-called husband. And every spring, she returns to life and the to world and to me. Then, the earth begins to warm, the rains come, the soil bursts with life, the animals give birth and the corn grows tall, ripens, and before winter is upon us, it is cut down for the bread of life...

NOW IT IS YOUR TIME to experience Persephone’s journey into the Underworld. By making this journey, we have the opportunity to meditate upon the things that make up our own underworlds; the things that lie most deep and dark in our hearts and in our conscious and subconscious minds. 

Place on your alter a posy of spring flowers, narcissi, crocuses, snowdrops, almond blossom....whatever you chose and can find locally. Also have to hand somewhere comfortable to sit, and a pen and notebook.

Bury your face into the delicate scents of spring and breath in the perfume. Take in their scent and think about their own journey through the winter, in darkness deep below the earth's cold surface. Allow their perfume to slightly alter your perceptions of the moment and trigger a slight shifting of the veil of the underworld.

Visualise Persephone, walking through the meadow, gathering flowers, in innocence and delight.

Do not be concerned in passing through it; your time there will be but a brief moment. Return to your places immediately, find a comfortable position in which to meditate. Six months will become six minutes; time to explore your own Hades and perhaps, at this time of the equinox, to find restorative balance therein. 

What you find in your journey to the Underworld, may not reflect Persephone's journey. It is your own time here, in which you will be able to contemplate your  decisions of the past and present and how they effect the future pathways of your life. The spring equinox is a time to take stock, take a moment, to consolidate the pathways we have chosen to be on, and to think about action; as the seeds are scattered on the fertile soil, think about your hopes and desires, your goals and ambitions, and how they might germinate and grow as the sun continues to warm the earth.

At the end of this time, it is time to return, from the underworld. Come back into the room quietly and slowly, feel the floor beneath you again and watch the flickering candles. Now rise up from the underworld and pass, each of you, through the veil that will take you into the real world. Bring with you only the memories of your mediation and any resolves you have reached through this process.

Gaze once more on the posy of spring flowers you've gathered. Write of your  journey in the underworld, and allow the experience to grow and consolidate in your mind as you do so. You don't have to share this writing with anyone, but if you wish you can share it with me and my followers by leaving a comment to the blogpost.

Happy Spring Equinox to everyone!

If you'd like to use a ritual to enjoy the Vernal Equinox, look here

 

How My Sprit Guide was Born to Me

In a previous post, How Can your Otherworld Spirit Guide Help You?  I talked about my strongest spirit guide, Esmerelda, who has been with me for over 24 years, In the blog, I explained how she always nursed her baby… 

…for the first fifteen years that I knew her, and treasured our relationship, I hardly ever saw her without that child. A boy, with a blond head of curly hair. His eyes are blue, but more strangely, his body is golden.  When I asked the name of her babe, she told me to call him the Golden Boy...

But ten years ago, something happened in a shamanic journey that seemed remarkable.

I was at a Shamanic Gathering, over a hundred people, at the Earth Spirit Centre in 

Earth Spirit Centre

Compton Dundon, near Glastonbury, Somerset. Nick Breeze, the writer and editor of Sacred Hoop, was showing us how he starts his day. He takes his drum and strokes it, then gently begins to tap the skin with the beater. He walked our circle, to open the quarters, starting in the South as he is of the Tibetan tradition, and then encouraged us to move, sway, walk, even dance to the beat of his drum. 

I began to circle. my arms slightly out from my body, my eyes closed. Quite quickly, Esmerelda was there, behind my trance-eyes, drifting down from a cloud. She took my wrist and pulled me upwards until we were facing each other. As always, she was nursing her babe. She smiled at me, briefly (she's not one for over-effusive greetings) then took the Golden Boy from her breast and held him out for me. He yelled, of course,  and wriggled, his podgy legs beating against her stomach.

"Take him," she said.

I was a little worried, I'd never held him in all those years. But I put my hands under his arms and brought him to me, cuddling him into my body, chucking him up and down. 

I asked when I could pass him back; I felt really uncomfortable with him wriggling in my arms. 

"Never," said Esmerelda. "He's yours now."

She disappeared, and I found myself in my sacred grove, the circle of native British trees I use as my 'safe home'. I was still holding the Golden Boy, but when I looked at him, he'd grown...a lot.

Rather like children in the Branches of the Mabinogion, the Golden Boy was already big  enough to put down on his little legs. He ran around my circle widely, as if he'd be desperate for this day, and as he ran he grew, until he looked about ten, or eleven. 

When I heard Nick's call-back sign, heralding us to stop dancing and journeying, I called out to him. 

"I have to go now. Can you get back to your mother?"

He was splashing gladly in the stream. "I'm okay here," he called. "I'm yours now. Besides, I can look after myself – I'm nearly fifteen!"

And later, when I worked out the dates, I realised that he was right. 

Since then I find the Golden Boy comes to me as much as any of my guides, but especially when the journey is fast. Golden Boy doesn't seem to be able to walk at a stately pace, like older guides. He runs – everywhere. He runs, and I run behind, following his naked, golden body where it leads me. The glory of going on a shamanic journey is than running doesn't make you puffed, and flying, and swimming underwater, are both perfectly safe. 

When Esmerelda came to me during a journey, I asked her about her her son. 

"I love that boy. I dedicated myself to his care. He's young – he runs – but he's your own guardian now."

Only then did it occur to me that she had brought the Golden Boy up just for me, to represent her, when she was no longer able to be my guide.

Nowadays, she does look older, greyer. She has always been a strong woman whostood in her own sacred power, but now, there is a sense of aged, even agelessness divinity about her, a  rapture in her face that suggests she is elevated in blessedness. 

In shamanic work, I've encountered and work with a variety of spiritual allies – animal  guides and spiritual guardians, formed deep personal bonds with many of them. 

I believe that these guides and guardians choose us, even when it feels as if we are chasing...or even creating...them. 

Through deep journeying, it is believed by many shaman that there are many sorts of guides within the spirit world. As well as the animal guides, often a person's totem animal, which I think of as the 'gatekeepers' (almost the bouncers!), keeping us safe on. our journeys, there are many layers of guardian, including ancestors, angels, nature spirits and, it is said, ascended masters; those spiritual teachers who once lived on Earth but, after much elevated work, have ascended to a higher level of consciousness. I think Esmerelda is now an an ascended master; nursing the Golden Boy for fifteen years certainly deserves some sort of award! 

I honour her greatly, but thank her profoundly for gifting me such a young and vibrant Golden Boy!

The yew tree in Compton Dundon Churchyard

The Beautiful Tau Banner of Lady Dai; Duchess of Ancient China

 

 Xin Zhui, (better known as the Lady Dai)

In 1971 some builders stopped for a smoke as they dug out an air raid shelter on a hill in Hunan, China. They were puzzled; as they dug deeper into the hill, the soil crumbled away as if it had  previously been disturbed. They lit their cigarettes and noticed that the matches burned with a deep blue flame. They might not have known that decomposition of human remains can release highly flammable gasses, but they left the site quickly, and reported their finding. 




The outside cavity holding the three coffins

When the archeologists arrived a few months later, they established that this was the resting place of a noble family of the Han dynasty. Two tombs, of the Marquis of Dai, who died in 186 BC,  and  a male relative, who may have been a son or brother, had been disrupted and robbed. But the final tomb, built circa 163 BC, for the Marquis's wife, Xin Zhui, (better known as the Lady Dai), was intact, and the archaeologists discovered  an opulent, spectacular and surprising interior. 



One of the three inner caskets

• The tombs were accessed via rectangular vertical shafts dug deep into the earth, a method originating from the bronze age. Lady Dai's funnel-like crypt contained more than 1,000 precious artefacts, including makeup, toiletries, lacquerware, and 162 carved wooden figures which represented her staff of servants. A meal was even laid out to be enjoyed by the 50 year-old duchess in the afterlife. In the central area lay three nesting coffins. Inside many layers of silk was the beautifully preserved mummy, wrapped in her finest robe, her skin still soft to the touch. The fact that she was quite corpulent, from her amazingly rich diet – scorpion soup was apparently a favourite – may have helped the quality of her ancient skin.

  

  An artefact found in the tomb

• The outermost coffin was a plain box. Inside were the three nesting coffins painted with  hugely expensive lacquer in black, red, and white. This protected from water damage and bacterial invasion. I cannot imagine how awed the archeologists must have been as they steadily revealed each coffin.
• But even more magnificent than all of this, was the banner that lay on top of the innermost of the coffins. This almost intact piece of beautifully painted silk would have been part of the procession of the Marquise  to her resting place. And on it were full and intricate instructions for her soul. The banner instructed Xin Zhui's spirit how to reach her paradise. 
• This T-shaped silk banner was over six feet long and in excellent condition for 2000-year-old fabric. It is a very early example of pictorial art in China.
• I first encountered this breathtaking story of life in Ancient China at a lecture given at Lampeter University, in West Wales. Fabric specialist had travelled from across the country to learn more about Lady Dai’s banner, its art and its messages. 
• The banner is divided into four horizontal sections. In the first, Lady Dai is pictured standing on a platform, leaning on a staff, wearing an embroidered silk robe. Framing the scene are white and pink sinuous dragons, their bodies looping through a 'bi' (a disc with a hole,  representing the sky). This section is remarkable in itself, as it is the earliest example of a painted portrait of a specific individual in China.
• In the section below this scene, sacrificial funerary rituals are portrayed in a mourning hall. Tripod containers and vase-shaped vessels for offering food and wine stand in the foreground. In the middle ground, seated mourners line up in two rows.
•  On a mound in the  between  two rows of mourners there are the patterns on the silk that match the robe Lady Dai wears in the scene above this.
• Lady Dai’s banner helps the modern world understand the religion she followed two millennia ago, and how artists began to represent depth and space in early Chinese painting. They made efforts to indicate depth through the use of the overlapping bodies of the mourners. They also made objects in the foreground larger, and objects in the background smaller, to create that illusion of space.
• Above and below the scenes of Lady Dai and the mourning hall, are images of heaven and the underworld. Toward the top, near the cross of the “T,” two men face each other and guard the gate to the heavenly realm. Directly above the two men, at the very top of the banner, is  a deity with a human head and a dragon body.
• Dragons and other immortal being look down from the sky to a toad standing on a crescent moon flanks the dragon/human deity and  what looks like a three-legged crow within a pink sun. The moon and the sun are emblematic of a supernatural realm above the human world. In the lower register, beneath the mourning hall,  the underworld is painted with a red snake, a pair of blue goats, and an earthly deity, holding up the floor of the mourning hall Two giant black fish cross to form a circle beneath him. The beings in the underworld symbolize water and earth, and they indicate an underground domain below the human world. 
• 
  
• While other mummies tend to crumble at the slightest movement, Dai is the most well-preserved ancient corpse yet to be discovered. Unlike most of the mummies found in ancient Egypt, her organs were all intact –  there was still blood in her veins—Type A. This allowed pathologists the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform an autopsy on the preserved body, 2,100 years after her death, ultimately giving us a firsthand glimpse at how the richest of the rich lived during the Han Dynast and is arguably the most complete medical profile ever compiled on an ancient individual.
• Thanks to her luxurious lifestyle, the Marquise had osteoporosis, arteriosclerosis, gallstones, liver disease, diabetes, and high cholesterol. She must have been in pretty constant pain from a fused spinal disc.
• Immediately after she was exposed to oxygen for the first time in 2,000 years, her body started to break down, which caused some of the visible decay apparent in the photograp of her mummy at the top of this blog.  Her body and belongings were taken into  the care of the Hunan Museum, where she now lies in state.
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Spring Stirs, and Bridget casts her mantel Wide

 During my winter rambles around the garden and through the lanes at this time of the year, I’m on the lookout for those very first “stars of the ground”; snowdrops. As the push through the dark, cold soil, they shine like fairy lights, bringing little glimmers of hope and expectation. As I walk, this comes to me;

IMBOLC 

White ribbons in the breeze,

Snowdrops beneath the trees

Bridget’s welcome we await

The land regenerates

The days spread out more light

The sun is higher and bright

Bridies youth and passion spark

The song of wren and lark.

The sap begins to rise

First shoots burst in surprise

And the maiden’s green adorns 

The land she will transform

New lambs are filled with glee

Catkins drape every tree

Early birds are chorusing

As Brige invokes the spring

Imbolc Imbolc!

The goddess spreads her mantle wide

Brigantia has returned. Nina Milton

It is a great idea to hold or attending, an Imbolc ceremony to celebrate the beginning of spring. This is a “hearth ritual”, usually held in the warmth of someone’s living space, but if it’s a nice day, it often feels good to be outdoors enjoying every little bit of sunshine. Either way, a ritual, even a tiny one, will lift the spirits quicker than anything. 

Bridget's Cross

1^st February, 10am, Jim  is  at our kitchen table making a Bridget's cross; twisting thin, springy reeds into the pattern of a complicated four-armed pattern.We are   preparing for the celebration of Bridget – Imbolc it’s called by the Irish, meaning the coming of  the ewe’s milk. In England it is known as Candlemas...festival of nineteen candles, of well-dressing, of mother and child. It is the gateway into spring and was first imagined in Celtic times, the Iron Age, when for early farmers the tilling and harvesting of the land was the hub to the wheel of their lives.  Imbolc spoke of growing light, growing warmth, of hope for the new year. It still does; the grass grows anew, the waters flow free and lambs are being born in Britain's fields. It’s the time of quickening, when in the womb of the Earth, spring stirs and grows green.

Bridget was a saint, but prior to that she was a Celtic goddess of the Irish Pantheon – daughter of the great Dahgda. She is both gentle maiden and Queen of the South, Lady of the forge, goddess of fire, the year’s midwife who births the sun. She is also the Lady of the Well and goddess of healing water. She is Lady of the Bards, goddess of poetry, song and inspiration and goddess of the hearth, so it stands to reason she would have many names; Bridghid, Bridie, Bride, as well ad Bridget. 

snowdrops

But that is what Imbolc is all about. The Iron Age Celts were as keen to see things warm up as we are. They called it the greening of the land – the spreading of Bridget's green mantle across the earth, and that is already happening, right now, beneath our feet. When we talk about spring in this way, we aren't talking about the weather. February is well known to prone to snow, ice, sleeting rain. But through the white layer over the earth, the snowdrops bloom. Imbolc is about seasons, not weather. The land is stirring, as it does every February. Buds are black on the ash trees. Spears of daffodils are shooting up through hard ground. The birds are establishing their territories.

The frosts are still biting, the cold still stings our faces as we gather. And darkness maintains its hold on our lives, even as the year moves steadily towards the vernal equinox. Darkness is our memory of winter, but is still our experience at Imbolc. The mornings begin before the night is ready to leave; the evening dusk falls quickly. Some of the company continued to welcome and work with darkness, even half regretting its slow decline. Some enjoyed darkness and light in equal measure. But most of us were impatient for the light to return – desperate for the warmth and sun of spring. The people at Stanton Drew all came to Bridget as she stood in the centre of the stone circle and tied ribbons onto the girdle, their hopes imbedded in each ribbon.

In a few days time, some friends will come around to help celebrate the poetry, healing and inspiration that is Bridget. They'll share our Bridget crosses.   

And now, bit by bit, day by day, the sun will come, it will warm the land, the flowers of spring will bloom and all will be well.

Bluestone Mysteries: How the Ancestors Honoured these Stones

 

https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/
our-work/amesbury-arch

Opening a prehistoric grave, finding the skeleton of an ancient person, and sifting through  grave goods, placed with love, at the time of the burial, must be fantastically exciting. Full marks to the way archeologists go about their work nowadays, showing a wide understanding along with a growing respect for the people of the past.

 

When the Amesbury Archer was uncovered, in 2002, it was described as one of the richest finds in decades. The young man, who died around 2,300BC, was buried three miles from Stonehenge, and a companion (likely a relation), was buried very close. DNA has shown that he'd come from somewhere in what is now Switzerland, and that when he died he might have been in terrible pain for years, from a shattered kneecap and an abscess in his jaw. The idea was posed that such people might have come many miles to Stonehenge, because this was a centre of healing. And this has been reinforced by tiny fragments of stone found among the grave goods, that turn out to be chips of bluestone, possibly left in-situ in pockets or drawstring bags kept near their skin, something that reminds me of the way we love to wear or carry powerfully healing crystals nowadays.

Whatever made these tiny stones so precious and powerful? Maybe the answer is in the story of why bluestones were erected so far away from their origins. 

Carn Meini, the Dragon's Back

For over 1,500 years, sacred (and heavy!) work took place on Salisbury Plain in five constructional stages. That's the equivalent of working on a temple from the time of King Arthur to the present day.

The  bluestones were the third phase of this construction (after building the woodhenge and the earthworks). 

They were sourced from the Preseli Hills (Mynydd Preseli) in west Wales, only half an hour's drive from where I live, but more than 140 miles (225km) away from their resting place. This makes Stonehenge very unusual -– almost all the other stone circles are quarried from fairly local stone. 

There are two of the types of Bluestone present at Stonehenge; dolerite and rhyolite which can be found in three very specific outcrops in the Preseli Hil – Carn Goedog Carn Meini and Craig Rhos-y-felin. I am lucky enough to have been to two of these ancient quarries.

https://blog.stonehenge-stone-circle.co.uk/tag/craig-rhos-y-felin/

Carn Meini is an outcrop of spotted dolerite bluestone rock eroded into jagged shapes, locally called The Dragon’s Back. I've been past these wonderful stones many times, when walking the Golden Road, and when holding rituals at the Gors Fawr stone circle  which stands directly below the outcrop.

Carn Meini has a very strong radiant quality. It’s not surprising the bluestone found there was used and loved so much in the Neolithic. Even so, it is amazing that bluestones found their way from a very powerful and ancient site in Pembrokeshire to another very ancient and powerful site over two hundred miles away, but the truth is stranger even than any fiction by Bernard Cornwell.

Perhaps even more spiritually  energetic and atmospheric is Craig Rhos-y-felin, less than a mile north of Care Meini. The photo shows the excavations that took place a few years ago, by the National Museum Wales. What they found there excited them. Because bluestone outcrops are formed in huge, natural, vertical pillars, they think it would have been possible to break off ‘monolith-sized’ slabs by hammering wooden wedges into cracks and wetting them thoroughly. As the wood swelled, the slab would simply split, ready to be carted away. This would have been equally possible at Carnivore's Meini, but at Rhos-y-felin, these slabs are long and strong, and would make marvellous standing stones for a ritual circle.  

The last time I was there, it was August, and the sun was burning down on us. The sensations that came from the place were sacred and full of old god energy. The fallen stones were as hot to the touch as an iron.The little stream running to the side was clear and cool, and all around it grew wild flowers.  Rare marsh fritillary butterflies were flitting around as if it was just an ordinary day to them, while we were in absolute paradise, gazing up at the outcrop as it loomed out of the flat ground like a cathedral. 

I'm pretty sure that this had to be the first sacred place of these early people – think of Ayers Rock in Australia. So, why not take a bit of the sacred away and create a second sacred place? I lay flat on one of the fallen slabs and closed my eyes, sensing the still, silent power of this place. It was a profound experience to journey here, in what felt like a holy sanctuary.

I couldn't help tapping the slabs of rock with smaller pieces of bluestone. Scientists discovered that they give off metallic sounds when tapped. And they are also two to three times more magnetic than most stone. Did early man encounter the dragon of Carn Meini and the towering temple of Rhos-y-felin and discover these magical propensities?

The National Museum of Wales took much evidence away from their dig at this wonderful rock face, including quarrying tools (stone wedges and hammerstones), which confirmed that the site as a Stone Age quarry. Most importantly, hazelnut shells and charcoal from the quarry workers’ campfires have been radiocarbon-dated to reveal proof that people quarried at both sites from around 3400BC.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Institute of Archaeology) was puzzled at these early dates “It could have taken those Neolithic stone-draggers nearly 500 years to get them to Stonehenge, but that’s pretty improbable in my view. It’s more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then dismantled and dragged off to Wiltshire.”

Parker Pearson looked at the work of Welsh geologist Herbert Thomas, who in 1923 worked out that Stonehenge’s bluestones had been moved to Salisbury Plain by people – not carried, as some had speculated, by Ice Age glaciers. Thomas concluded that the bluestones originally formed a “venerated stone circle” somewhere in Wales. To prove this theory,  Parker Pearson needed to find that original site and set about searching for a Welsh stone circle that would conclusively link to the stones on Salisbury Plain.

Waun Mawn

They first looked at Waun Mawn, an arc of stones located just three miles from the quarries There are four remaining stones, one standing and three prostrate and they dismissed the site after a brief survey.

   He says; 'After having no luck with other circular monuments in the area, we returned to Waun Mawn for a final speculative dig.To everyone’s delight, our dig supervisor Dave Shaw discovered two empty stoneholes, one on each end of the arc of stones, where missing stones had once stood. Subsequent digs unearthed further stoneholes, arranged in a circle with an identical diameter to Stonehenge’s enclosing ditch.'

The next link in this chain of bluestone mysteries, would be to date these holes to find out when the bluestones were at Waun Mawn. Their erection and dismantlement turned out to be in the middle to latter part of the fourth millennium BC. This means there was a circle here, and it was constructed before the initial construction of Stonehenge.

'Most strikingly,' Parker Pearson revealed, 'we also discovered a stone chip in one of the stoneholes at Waun Mawn, which must have become detached from the bluestone pillar that originally stood there. It was confirmed as unspotted dolerite, a rock type represented by three stones at Stonehenge.

One exceptionally clear imprint  showed an unusual pentagonal cross-section. A computerised model of the Waun Mawn imprint and Stone 62 at Stonehenge showed that they fitted together perfectly: like a key in a lock.

The new discoveries also cast doubt on a popular theory that the bluestones were transported by sea to Stonehenge – taken southwards to Milford Haven, paddled up the Bristol Channel and along the Bristol Avon towards Salisbury Plain. But these quarries are on the north side of the Preseli hills, so the megaliths could have gone overland to Salisbury Plain. 

 But why would these stones be moved?

Posthole map

  I  think this might have to be to do with the

   Amesbury Archer, a young, sick man from

     Europe,  and the chip of bluestone found 

   in his pocket.   

   Ancient man may not have had Facebook, 

      but they were communicating; sharing. 

  engineering, astrological and scientific  

   knowledge, and also taking more deeply,

    about  spirituality, about shamanic

 experiences, about ancestors, and about

   the power of the naturally world. 

As someone who uses shamanic techniques in their day-to-day life, I know the importance of working with, and honouring, our ancestors. As a Druid, I'd say it is one of the main aspects of Druidry. But we shouldn't forget that the ancestors also honoured their ancestors; and within the hundreds of years that bluestone circle at Waun Man stood, and was ritually used, by those living around the Preseli Hills, those people had become the honoured dead to others around the British Isles; and beyond. It is unlikely we will every know why one circle was brought to another woodhenge, but what is clear is that now –– today in 2024 we can honour that, and bring those feelings of sacred work into our own lives. 

As ever your thoughts and comments are gratefully received.

You can watch the programme BBC TWO made on the finding of the original bluestone circle here