A Solstice Summer Ritual at Gors Fawr Stone Circle

Gors Fawr

We met at Gors Fawr stone circle in time on midsummer’s day. The views that confronted us were magnificent. The summer solstice, June 21st this year, was a clear, hot, bright day – the hottest in 40 years – and being there was powerfully invigorating. 

 We were in a bleak, but strikingly beautiful place – a moorland full of gorse and reeds and sheep, lying quite flat for a mile or more until the hills suddenly loom up as a backdrop. We’d come to hold a ritual at the very place in Pembrokeshire where Neolithic worshipers also gathered, to watch the sunrise on the solstice. 

We were at Gors Fawr Stone Circle.

Bedd Arther

Gors Fawrs dates from the Neolithic. It is part of a surprisingly large and active sacred landscape at the foot of the Preseli Hills called the Glandy Cross. This is an area rich in Neolithic burial chambers, Bronze age settlements, barrows, standing stones and a chambered tomb. There were once three stone circles, but one is lost. The smaller of the remaining two, Bedd Arthur (Arthur’s Bed), is a small, boat-shaped horseshoe of stones high in the hills, while at the foot of the hills on the flat plateau of moorland is the larger circle – Gors Fawr, whose name translates as 'great wasteland'. 

The inner bluestones against the
Stonehenge Trilithons

The circle has a very special atmosphere. It consists of 16 small remaining stones about 22 metres in diameter. They are small stones, unprepossessing on the north side of the circle, but getting bigger towards the south until they’re about a metre in height. Eight of the stones are composed of local glacial erratic boulders, but, very excitingly, the other eight stones in this circle are bluestones, the same stone as the smaller stone arc inside that far more famous circle…Stonehenge. 

We were here to hold a ritual on the summer solstice, which is called Alban Hefin by Druids and Litha by Wiccans. The solstice is the peak of the power and radiance of the sun. It’s union with the earth at its zenith. Over the last week, the sun had shone above us, strongly and brightly.

It had been so hot, records were being broken. In fact, the 21st became, the hottest day since 1976. I recall that summer very well, as I was pregnant with my first child, so ‘hot’ was what I remained most of the time.

Carn Meini, the Dragon's Back

As we prepared the circle, and met up with the people who had been here for the sun’s rising in the very early morning, I looked up to the hills above us. I could see a  short area of jagged rocks running along the ridgeway of the Preseli's. This is the Dragon’s Back –  the peak of Carn Meini, a natural outcrop of Blue Spotted Dolerite – the place where the Stonehenge bluestones originated.

Carn Meini has a very strong radiant quality. On some level it feels like the yang counterpart to the Yin Gors Fawr. It’s not surprising the bluestone found there was used and loved so much in the Neolithic. As well as being used for the building of an early stage at Stonehenge, ‘crystal-sized’ pieces have been found in Neolithic burial chambers around the Salisbury Plain area, as if people kept these beautiful stones close as talismans, perhaps for healing. I constantly find it amazing that bluestones found their way from a very powerful and ancient site in Pembrokeshire to another very ancient and powerful site a couple of hundred or so miles away. How they were moved is still debated, but around Pembrokeshire, the story goes that in ancient times, the ceremonial route of the bluestones from Carn Meini to Stonehenge followed the streams down the hill and past Gors Fawr. 

The two Outliers

There are two outlying stones to the north-east of the Gors Fawr circle. These align to the sunrise on the summer solstice. As you walk towards them from the stone circle, the first you meet is about five feet high, much larger than the stones in the circle, and this makes one think it must have been of importance. The larger of these, a few metres on, is around six feet in height, and is known as "The Dreaming Stone". Some accounts suggest that they were originally part of an avenue leading off from the circle. The dreaming stone has been shown to be strongly magnetic, especially where one’s head would rest if one sat on the little seat. And the seat itself does not look inviting – one imagines one would slide off, but once there, it’s wonderfully comfy, and I have sat there for twenty minutes and more.

We gathered outside the circle. Some of us had been there all night, to wait until the dawn came up on the solstice day, while other of us had arrived for this ceremony.

As everyone walked towards it, the Spirit of the Stones came towards us, and challenged us…what was our purpose here? This is how our Herald replied… “Spirit of  this place! We come in peace at this time of the summer solstice, to honour the spirit of these stones and to honour the spirits of our ancestors. We come to work in peace and love.” 

The Spirit of the Stones replied. “Then know this –  as you step beyond the boundary of this circle, you will enter the magic of Gors Fawr, where time itself has no meaning and experience is unlimited, for this realm is full of spirit and is interconnected in every direction. These stones wash a blessing over each being who works within it. So  enter this place in peace, and you shall leave renewed and refreshed.”

Once we’d set up our ritual circle, and passed an oaken branch around to each talk about how we felt about this time of the year, we called upon the Lady of the Land, who represented the landscape itself. She spoke  thus; 

“All ancient circles like this one have a fay presence which is a lovely summer bonus, but do not forget how careful you need to be when dealing with faeries; they need to be given due respect or they can play tricks. Here in my basket I have the blossoms of the Elder Tree. Celtic lore indicates that if you stand near an elder tree at Midsummer's Eve the land of the fairies will be revealed to your searching eyes. The blossom of the elder protects from fay trickery yet helps those who use it wisely to come closer to the world of Celtic faerie lands. It can also induce vivid dreams, particularly of the Faerie realms; why not take your spray to the dreaming stone and see what happens. “

The Lady of the Land then walked around the circle of people, handing out the sprays. Everyone had brought something to entertain us with, pipes to play, poems to read, and stories they wanted to tell. By the time we took our circle of ritual and celebration down, we were all starving and laid out our picnics in the circle to share. 

The sun stayed hot, but luckily the breeze coming from the coast kept us cool. Even so, after eating, some of us lay in the circle and closed our eyes. But we had to take care not to fall to sleep, as it is said that if you fall asleep inside a stone circle, you will wake to find yourself in Fairyland, and none of us wanted to drive home still enchanted by the fay…

If you live in West Wales, you can find Gors Fawr Stone Circle just outside the village of Mynachlog-ddu, Pembrokeshire,  OS Map Ref SN135294
OS Maps - Landranger 145 (Cardigan & Mynydd Preseli), Explorer OL35 (North Pembrokeshire)

The Beginning of February

The first of February and we celebrated the beginning of spring with our pagan friends in this area at Mara Freeman's house, enjoying some of the traditions that surround the festival of Bridget which is held this day. We dressed and blessed a Bridie Doll in her cradle, went out to pick reeds and make Bridget crosses, sang songs and carols for this time of year, read out our own poetry, and did some circle dancing and saw a profusion of snowdrops growing on the banks.

Sadly, that meant that we couldn't be at Stanton Drew, where the very final ritual was being held by our old Bristol group of Druids.

December Poems

Here are some poems I have written in deep midwinter: 

Nina Milton

WINTER TREES

They are matchless,

My trees in winter. 

While I watch telly and eat carbs, 

Put the fire on, the heating up, 

They stand naked to the battle;

Steady for storm, ready for gale. 

Winter trees communicate in semaphore

Black flags against the half-day’s light.

They are gallows for bats,

Rigging for gulls,

Blue cages for robins 

Steeples for stormcocks.

In the cold sun, 

The oaks glow emerald with moss;

The planes strike piebald patterns;

Birch trunks shimmer like a high moon. 

I pull on gloves, hat, scarves,

Brave the cold to watch 

As they wait secure, 

Dreaming sap dreams,

Expectant for spring.

CAILLIACH 

                                                                                   Scrag End,

                                                                                   Hag wending

                                                                                   Her cackling flight

                                                                                   Over the mushroom yews.

                                                                                   The Samhuin night holds her,

                                                                                    Unfolds her soaring cloak

                                                                                    As she rides her birch broom high.

http://themotherhouseofthegoddess.com/

2013/12/21/winter-solstice-reflections-on-an-cailleach/

Storm Eye

Borne higher 

Than Circling wind,

A vortex for a throne.

Below, as we run for cover

She shrieks a laugh and spins

Stridng the tides.

Boughs creak

Clouds flapping

Seas flooding, seeing blood.

She shakes the earth 

Till fire spews.

Life’s elemental horrors are hers

As she beats out the storm

Enough! 

Misshapen crone, 

Winter harpy - time for home,

Let late winter snows gentle 

Lambs and snowdrops into life,

I implore, beseech you, hag,

It’s Bridget’s time, so pack your bag.

(the Cailliach is a Scottish Goddess, whose legend states she epitomizes hard winter)

STANTON DREW STONE CIRCLES

Photograph of Stanton Drew
 by the late Carni Tipton

Suppose the dolmen that squats high on the track

Are three petrified shepherds who never sleep – 

Moonbeam white, resting as they watch their sheep

Leaning to rest each on the other’s back?

While down in the valley, three circles lie,

Earth-rooted like old men’s molars, they stare

Past the earth’s harried timekeeping to where 

Stars wheel backwards and the moon’s phases fly

To the beat of these sandstone hearts. One ring

Lies fallow, resting in the weedy grass, 

The grandest circle is spaced wide and fast

The third stays tight, upright; I hear it sing.

It breaths the pulse notes of a well-tuned harp

It holds the secrets of a trusted chart.

BLACK MOUNTAIN, BRECONS.

My feet stand deep by your heel in the gloom

Of your towering wilds.

Storm wave, Wailing Wall,

They named you Black Hill,

The back end of Brecon’s

Mountain range where, disconsolate, you loom.

Ceridwen loves to feel the dusk enslave,

Wrap wild anguish round

A heart. Black Mountain must

Belong to her,

Stirring an iron-cast pot

Inside a hollow crag, some dark-eyed cave

Murky shadows move me;  are you

Goddess, hag, or just a tale 

From old-folk years?

No answer.

Only the wind, steep with dread

Flap of umbrella bat, bleak caw of crow,

As they soar into the desolate air.

From the break of dawn to moon-slivered night,

Herbs lie in curling steam.

Cauldron-sour on the tongue,

Perilous to steal, it will devour,

Turn you mad or

Offer transformation into light.

I turn upon my heel, can’t hold my place.

The barren cliffside sucks

At hope, drags away cheer.

My shoulders shudder 

At the goddess glowering in her crag

I want to weep at your heartbreaking face.

It doesn't matter which of the mountains of Wales you visit, in January, they loom over you in a very Welsh way; powerfully depressing. Recently we've passed under the shadow of several; the Preselis, the Cambrians, Carreg Cennan where our friend Gill lives, the Berwyn Range a little northeast from us, and the Black Mountain, which is the closest part of the Brecons to us. 

In fact, none of these are mountains in the true sense, all being less that 1000 metres in height. We all know that the only mountain in Wales is Snowdonia, which tops the 1000 by just a metre or so. But every hill and mound is a mountain to the Welsh; even we live on a mountain; the Gernos Mountain, which peaks (just above our cottage) at less than 300 metres.

We passed the very eastern end of the Black Mountain quite recently, as we drove through the village of Ynstadgynlais, and the hill loomed up against us like some sort of malevolent spirit about to do terrrible things to our car. That's how it felt, anyhow, and as soon as I had paper to write on, I had to record the weird things I'd felt, in the poem above. 

Winter Poems by Nina Milton

Writing the Pagan Life – the Shaman Mysteries

(available online, from Amazon
as a paperbacks as well as on Kindle)

In the Moors was the first of the Shaman Mysteries published by Midnight Ink.  On The Gallows 

(Unraveled Visions in the US)

 continues to follow Sabbie’s adventures as she runs a therapeutic shamanic business in Bridgwater. The third in the trilogy, 

Beneath the Tor, 

was released in November 2015 with a Glastonbury Launch Party

Through the Floodgates

was released in 2020

and continues the story of therapeutic shaman  

Sabbie Dare –  and her life in paganism and shamanism.

 

The Weird Genesis to the Shaman Mysteries

When I became a druid, in the late 1990’s, I’d been on a search towards the deeper meanings of life for a long time as a Rosicrucian, but I knew that something was missing for me in those teachings…a true love and honouring of the land and the ancient deities that still look over this land. I found this aspect in druidry. 

I’m an OBOD, which means moving through the three ‘grades’ of Bard, Ovate

and Druid. There’s a saying, among Ovates, that moving into this middle grade will change your life, and for me, that happened in spades.

The summer I became an Ovate, I had my star chart read at a Rainbow Camp. “Something’s afoot in your chart,” the astrologist told me. “Things are on the move for you. Tremendous changes.”

I told him I was booked on a Shamanic Training weekend. Maybe that was it? I already knew that once you begin to walk between the worlds, nothing is the same again – you are not the same again. “That’ll be it, then,” said the astrologer. He was right, but neither of us guessed quite how.

On a sunny morning that autumn, I shipped up in Bath, at John Matthews’ introductory workshop. Thirty of us, making hot drinks in a tiny kitchen, chatting a bit nervously and introducing ourselves. Like a lot of the participants, I had read John and Caitlin Matthew’s books, and knew their reputation went before them, but John looked ordinary, sitting cross-legged between us, and he opened the workshop in a quiet, almost muted voice. 

He reminded us that although shamanism can be a spiritual path, from its very early beginnings, it had been a tool; a method of getting close to another world – the world of spirits. It’s a very ancient practice indeed; there are those who think shamans are depicted in the Neolithic cave paintings found all over Europe. Shamans are thought of as special people by the communities they function within.  By entering a trance, often using nothing more than a drum beat or the rhythm of a dance, they move between the solid world we all live in, and the otherworlds, bringing back answers to questions that have no answers. 

It is said that to become a shaman, one must be called by spirits, but I think the spirits are calling us all...it’s just that only some people listen. When I talked to the other work-shoppers that weekend, I found several who described having the ‘shaman’s sickness’, a health crisis that had brought them visionary dreams. Other had found their minds opening during a ‘vision quest’ in wild country or during a dark night.

The more I delved, the more fascinated I became. By closing my eyes, listening to a fast, regular drum beat and allowing my mind to steady and focus, I found I was able to walk between the worlds, accompanied by my spirit ally who came to me in the guise of a mole, able to burrow down into lower realms. When I stroked his back with one finger, his coat felt as soft, warm and sleek as any mole of this world. Mole and I would come upon otherworldly presences who spoke to me, either in perfectly normal conversations or in mysterious symbols and signs. They often advised or directed me, or offered a gift of significance. I’d emerge feeling refreshed...amazed. 

I was already a writer at this time. In fact, I think I’ve always been one, ever since, when I was five, my first infant school teacher, Mrs Marsden, read an animal fable to the class, then asked us to write a similar sort of story. I was dumfounded – for the first time I realized that the books I loved had actually been written by real human beings. Before that, I believed they must have fallen from some sort of story heaven. It was a revelation – from then on I was scribbling down stories all the time, and I wrote my first novel at the age of fifteen. Well, okay, I started to write a novel which I never finished. But by the time I started work as a nurse, I was regularly publishing short stories in women’s magazines, and when my children were born, I began my career as a children’s writer. But I’d never had much success writing for adults and sometimes wondered if I ever would.

I had been moving through Caitlin Matthew’s series of shamanic workshops, and working with other British shaman too, building up my skills, and using them to some degree in my work as a palliative care nurse, when a new character walked into my head.

“Hi,” she said. I was driving to work, at the time, and she seemed almost to plonk herself down on the passenger seat. “I’m Sabbie Dare.” 

She looked like a woman in her late twenties, of mixed race, with a cute little gap between her teeth and very long, almost black hair, which kinked as it fell. “I’m a shaman,” she went on. “A therapeutic shaman.” 

“Ah, I responded,” (in my head, and keeping my eyes on the road, of course), “you take clients with problems. Probably problems they’ve already seen a gamut of professionals about; doctors, chiropractors, even hypnotherapists.”

She’d nodded.  “Some have souls that are complete shattered. And some bring me some very...difficult problems. They are people on the edge.”

She isn’t the sort to use the word ‘scary’. I’ve discovered that not much scares Sabbie Dare. But in my first Shaman Mystery, In the Moors, things get very scary indeed for Sabbie, as she tries to help someone in trouble. She’s a girl who only wants the best for those she meets, and she’ll regularly put herself on the line for her clients, not only in the spirit world, but also in the apparent world, because of course, The Shaman Mysteries, published by Llewellyn’s Midnight Ink imprint, are thrillers, albeit with an edge of spiritually. 

I write them for pagans and crime fiction lovers alike, so I have to be careful to walk a line between the truth of my own spiritual path, and the fictions I create. I don’t want to spin a line, that shamanism can ‘solve crime’ or ‘get people out of trouble’. And as the series progresses I am trying to introduce some of the aspects of shamanism, and paganism that might enlighten the ‘muggle reader’. Book one, In the Moors explains the shamanic journey, and introduces Sabbie’s animal ally, an otter called Trendle. In the second book, I begin to develop Sabbie’s otherworld associations, especially her guardian, a river goddess who she doesn’t yet quite trust. Book three, Beneath the Tor, uses a theme of transformation, including shapeshifting.This book is set in Glastonbury, and it was my great delight to be able to use some of the legends of the Vale of Avalon I also introduce the reader to the lower realms of the otherworld. 

Meanwhile Sabbie herself begins to understand who she is. She was brought up in the care system, after her mother died when she was six, and she’s never known her father. As the books develop, she uses her shamanic pathways to find out more about her own past.

One thing I love about the Shaman Mysteries is the landscapes I’m able to describe. I set the books in the Somerset Levels, a place with a truly fay and mysterious atmosphere, which can turn tricksy and dark, when mists come down, or floods rise. We visit Bridgewater Bay with its looming hulk of a nuclear power station in book two,  walk through the mysteries of Glastonbury in book three and, in book four, visit the devastating floods that swept over the levels in 2014. 

That conversation I had on Druid Camp five years ago, is beginning to ring true. Something did move and shake in my life, when I signed up to the Matthews shamanic workshops. Once you know how to access the world of spirits, you really never know what might happen next. 

What happened to me was that I now write books I love, and that people seem to love reading them. It was the one thing I’d longed to be able to do, and I am sure that the spirit world brought me this blessing.