Confessions of a Hedge Witch

I survived, though whether I’m actually a changeling now remains to be seen! I’ve written very briefly about my experience on my weekly column at Patheos Pagan, A Sense of Place : A Night In The Mound

As you can imagine, a 1000 word column doesn’t allow more than a scratch of the surface for an experience like that, while still including substantive background information. One concept I wanted to speak more about is the unequivocally Ancestral focus of the mounds. Yes, they may have significant alignments (solar, lunar, and stellar); yes, they were actively engaged with by their living communities (ritual use); yes, folklore sprang up regarding them because their original function slipped from active use and memory to nostalgia (fairy), but they remain first and foremost Ancestral.

This YouTube video, while all over the shop with its focus, and anglophilic tone, does correlate the Stones, themselves, to the Ancestors in a direct and literal way, which is how I interact with them as well. It is also a view expressed by more than one presenter at The Archeology of Darkness conference last hear at Sligo IT (I promise, I will post those notes eventually). Have a look:

I was struck most, on the day, by the elusive Otherness of the mounds and the way they were sited on the land. They slipped in and out of view, in unexpected ways. As you walked along the trail, a mound would suddenly appear before you. A few steps later, it vanished from sight. Some mounds were visible while standing in front of a certain cairn, that were unseen when you moved to another. The necropolis is home to an estimated 14 passage cairns, which are oriented differently. I stayed in one that opens to the North.

In the recess, or side ‘bed’, where I slept, I had a sense of downward momentum. You do crawl down to enter the cairn, and it is a tight fit before opening first to the somewhat larger antechamber, then to the main chamber with its tall corbeled roof (you can easily stand in there). In cruciform shaped cairns, there are three recesses off the main chamber–small side ‘rooms’, if you will. I only spent time in my western recess, as my intention was to become familiar with a specific energy (I have a feeling each recess was used for different functions and has different energy). The western recess, where the Reek stone is, had its own mini corbeled roof. Because I know Croagh Patrick is sacred to Crom Dubh, that chthonic deity was on my mind heavily.

At one point I strongly felt an underground presence, specifically looking for sacrifice. I won’t say anymore about that here.

I slept more easily than I imagined I would. With nothing but rock for cushion, I thought I would toss and turn. I also thought I would be awake longer: drinking, feasting, being With the Ancestors, but I was asleep by 21:00! My sleep did seem to happen in cycles though, and each time I woke I had a sense of light in the cairn and found myself disoriented as to the source of the light, i.e., I thought I knew the source, which in hindsight could not have been the case. I also did not wake until almost 11! And even then, it took longer to gather my things and leave, than I thought it did. Time was distorted. I think I could have easily spent 3 days and nights there! It was a very ‘sleepy’ –pulling you down–energy.

When I left though, I had an amazing sensation of lightness. As though my atoms were effervescent. The experience was very like a sensory deprivation chamber (another point made during the Archeology of Darkness symposium). I would like to see descendants of these wonderful ancestors visiting these sites to commune with their dead in a real way. However, some prohibitions: