By Gabriel Hartley • 4 October 2020
This morning I drove out to Degersjön (one of our nearby lakes here in Fiskars, Finland) to tend to our rowboat. After propping the boat up on boards to protect it from moisture damage, I was planning to return home when I was signaled by the local spirits to climb up on the rock cliff just to the north. As soon as I climbed up on the cliff I noticed an ancient ceremonial stone circle looking out towards both Degersjön to the west and Böletrasket just to the east. The two lakes are separated by a narrow isthmus dominated by the rock cliffs that open out to the west. Just west of this cliff is the magical island I refer to, following the poet William Butler Yeats, as the Lake Isle of Innisfree. Its official name is Tallholmen (Swedish for Pine Islet).
Monday, 5 October—Continuing
On an earlier hike, maybe six months ago, I had noticed the much larger ceremonial stone complex on the next hill just north of this spot, but I don’t recall seeing this smaller one. Perhaps I just forgot it. In any case, this was a “new” discovery for me yesterday morning. (The revelation is still unfolding twenty-four hours later.) More exciting than the discovery itself, however, was the realization of being called, of being invited to explore the area in more detail in order to become attuned to the energies of the place.
I have known since before coming to Finland that I have some important geomantic work to do here. In addition to my own intuition for almost a decade of such “being called,” here and elsewhere, I also have learned a good deal about the nature of my work here from the multidimensional collective entity known as Monitor and channeled by Harvey Grady in Sedona, Arizona. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, Monitor has provided us with a good deal of detail regarding the nature of our mission here.
So I was especially excited about getting to get back to that work after a year of getting grounded in the country and in the Fiskars area generally. As I looked over the stone circle, I engaged with the spirits of the place. Their representative did not provide me with a proper name but simply referred to themselves collectively as the Voice of the Ancestors.
The photo above reveals the structure common to many of the ancient ceremonial stone circles in the vicinity. This circular pile, as I recall, is about four meters in diameter. It has the characteristic dimple in the center that I have found in several other circles. I don’t yet know what the nature of these dimples is, whether they were originally enclosed chambers that have since collapsed or the remains of archaeological digs (although I am guessing that this one has never been officially excavated).
Especially because of the disconcerting nature of my first stone circle experience in the Fiskars area at the Skuruberget cliffs, which left me in a very confusing multidimensional state of consciousness for a few hours (see my entry on that muinaishauta or ancient grave), I stood at the eastern perimeter of this circle until I was invited by my High Self and the Voice of the Ancestors to step inside the circle.
After entering the circle and standing at the center, tuning in more deeply to this new spirit guide, I began to receive some information about the site. I was told that this circle was dedicated to ceremonies celebrating human engagement with the four primary elements—Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. Its positioning on the hilltop boulder on a narrow strip of land between two lakes made this fact suddenly appear obvious. Interestingly, closer to the western edge overlooking Degersjön I found a small recently-used campfire stone circle just west of the ceremonial circle, which filled out the immediate sense of the four elements. But I soon discovered that more than campfires or bonfires, the sun (which at this moment was rising from the east) was the primary representative of fire for these ancient peoples. The fire referred to, then, is a cosmic, celestial solar fire that provides warmth and light and the possibility of life itself. The human fires are simply smaller microcosmic versions of this same force.
The bulk of this communication event involved energetic flows or downloads more than explicit verbal structures, although the Voice of the Ancestors was speaking throughout in a way that seemed to function more as comforting background music than as direct statement for me to attend to, so I don’t have much detailed conscious recall of the conversation other than its welcoming aura. I was mostly being drawn to take in the effects of the physical placement of this circle on that particular spot on the hill-boulder, to bathe in the flows emanating from both lakes, the cool Fall breeze, the rustling of the leaves and swaying boughs, and the indistinct impression of birdcall. I was being grounded, plugged in.
Throughout the half hour or so that I spent on the cliffs and down on the lake shore I was directed to take in the energetic lines connecting these spots to the tiny island not far offshore. Earlier last week we took our rowboat out onto Degersjön and got our first chance to see the island from all angles. It turns out that there are two small cabins on the western side of the island, so I might not be able to do the extensive spirit dowsing I have been looking forward to since first seeing Tallholmen on our first journey to this spot in July of 2019. It was back then that first I experienced the connection between this island and Yeats’s Lake Isle of Innisfree, an example of the ways in which different spots and formations on the globe participate in a kind of overlapping energetic continuum, as if these spots around the globe somehow occupy the very same energetic space, one on top of the other. (I will have more to say on this topic in a future post.)
After a while the Voice of the Ancestors urged me to walk over to the stony peninsula that juts out into the lake not far from this hilltop. So I climbed down from this first cliff, passed through a bit of forest strewn with logging trash, and began to climb up the hill just to the north on the way to the peninsula. On my way I came across the four-foot high anthill (photo below) that you will find throughout Finland.
These anthills, like all anthills, are located on ley lines, drawn to the particular electrical resonance that is characteristic of ley lines. These massive ant mounds always give off a sense of conscious presence, a forest being of a special sort. (See this post for more information regarding a previous experience with the ants in Finland.) It seemed very fitting to find this anthill marker midway between the two cliffs, as a resonating point in this electrical Earth complex.
Like the other geological features of this complex, the stone penisula radiates an immense amount of energy that appears to influence—while being influenced by—the energies of Degersjön. There is a reciprocal interplay that takes place here and affects the human body register. This aspect of the peninsula is heightened by the inclusion of one of Finland’s most characteristic markers of the spirit-scape of the country—perfectly rounded holes, known in Finnish as Hiidenkirnut or Spirit Kettles, in auspicious boulders and rock surfaces. (Also see this link.) I plan to explore the nature of this Spirit Kettle some time in the future. At this point I was simply asked to include its presence in my overall grasp of the energetic topography of this spirit-place complex.
As I climbed back up the peninsula to the northern cliff I came upon the larger ceremonial stone circle that I had visited a few times on earlier hikes up here. What makes this “circle” different from the others typical of the area is that it is made up by larger stones. It appears that the medium-sized boulders had been arranged around and between several large boulders that don’t normally figure into ceremonial arrays such as this. I would be willing to characterize this array as simply a geological “anomoly,” a random natural occurrence, were it not for the powerful force emanating from the ring. This clearly had been the major ceremonial gathering spot for this whole complex that I was exploring on this day. After entertaining this possibility myself, the Voice of the Ancestors identified this spot as just such a ceremonial center for this between-the-lakes complex.
I spent some time tuning in to the power of the ring while listening to the Voice of the Ancestors tell me more about the spot, much of which I have forgotten on a conscious level but trust is still operative on a subconscious plane of memory. As I was glowing in this energetic fusion experience, my attention was drawn to the large central stone of this circle. The Voice invited me to climb up on top, which I did. The experience from this height was very powerful, again operating on mostly an intutitive rather than strictly conscious level.
After what felt like an appropriate amount of time (I was now growing eager to get back home and share these experiences with Anna), I climbed down from the boulder and started walking towards the birch grove that lies between this hilltop and the road. Just as I started, the Voice of the Ancestors said that I might want to take a small stone with me as an energetic token for tuning in to the akashic field of this spot while at home in meditation. I saw a smaller stone at the edge of the circle and tried to pick it up, but it remained firmly stuck in the ground. Remembering the experience Anna and I had in retrieving the Taos Stone years earlier, in which our attempts at lifting the stone proved futile until we asked for permission from the spirits of the place—after which the stone almost flew out of the ground by itself!—I repeated this invocative request, but to no avail. Realizing that this was obviously not the appropriate stone, I looked around, trying one and then another with the same results, until I saw a small hand-sized stone by itself on the edge of the circle. The stone was glowing faintly, indicating that this was the stone I was invited to pick up. I did so and immediately felt its power shoot through me as acknowledgement of this agreement between me and the spirits of the place.
I returned to the tiny boat ramp parking lot, facing the Lake Isle, said my thanks and goodbyes, and returned home with a sense of renewed enthusiasm.
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