Induction into the Stone Circle

By Gabriel Hartley, 29 April 2021

I had an especially powerful experience in the spiritzone on Tuesday afternoon. For days now I had been getting an insistent call from the stone circles in the Järnvik muinaishaudat ancient stone complex here near our house. I didn’t immediately respond because I am still healing from a cracked rib I got during a fall on the ice on a hillside three and a half weeks ago. The hike through the now soggy spring-thaw landscape would have been too discomforting. But I had also been feeling a little distracted this week, down in the dumps, feeling a bit adrift in terms of my life projects here on this planet. So I took this as a good sign for my own Spring Thaw.

On the way to the site, I noticed that the local farmers have been cutting down the smaller trees along the edges of the road. This is one of the distressing features of the Finnish countryside—the habit of clearcutting patches of forest, presumably for lumber and firewood. Unfortunately, there seem to be no requirements for cleaning up the deforested sections, with massive stumps and rejected branches scattered over the denuded landscape. While my response is in part aesthetic, I am also sensitive to the ways in which this practice complicates the life patterns of the local wildlife, forcing the deer and moose to create new pathlines around the fallen debris. I am also sensitive as well to the impact—I would even use the word “pain”—of this cutting on the trees and brush, which are often simply hacked down with no attention to the future of the vegetation health and growth.

I saw that this cutting—which luckily wasn’t so destructive as many sites—continued all along the edges of the Storkärr pastures, including possible penetration of the protected ancient gravesites of the immediate area (although I cannot say for sure where the exact boundaries are). During the past few years the hillside leading up to the ancient (supposedly protected) Svartkärr site, in contrast, has been almost totally denuded and basically left impassable.

The Järnvik Stone Site

After walking through the Storrkärr meadow up to the village ski trail (which also showed signs of recent tree cutting), I entered the darker forested hilltop where the Järnvik Stone Site is situated. The spot that has been calling to me, number 15 on the map above, is slightly uphill on the right (or to the west) as you enter the trees southward from the ski trail. This stone cairn (röykkö), more substantial in its compactness of stone layout than many of the others in the Järnvik complex, sits on its small hill a bit higher than the surrounding cairns. For me, at least, it serves as the primary stone grouping in the whole Järnvik complex, although others there are also compelling in various ways (some with larger stones, some with a warmer energy field, etc.).

I was curious as I approached the mound, wondering what it might have in store for me. The call had seemed vaguely urgent for over a week, and now I was finally coming round. I immediately felt a sense of the power of the place, as I have in the past. Slowly I let myself become attuned to the cairn’s energy and intention as I stood there grounding myself in order to be able to begotiate whatever spirit forces might be allowed to present themselves to me. (Having been overwhelmed by my first encounter with the Skuruberget cairn on the cliff above Pohja Bay, I have learned to address myself to the representative spirit and not let my consciousness be flooded by too many communicators at once.)

Within just the first minute my visual field filled with the etheric mists that I have come to call the Mists of Avalon, a sign that I have entered into a multidimensional communicative state of consciousness. I soon saw the cairn moving up and down as though breathing, which reminded me that earlier that morning as Anna and I were walking back from Kivi’s school I had seen our main road (Gästerbyntie) breathing like a serpent stretched out along the edge of the Svartkärr meadow, which was also undulating in the bright morning sun like some psychedelic scene out of a Van Gogh painting. So it seems that I had been primed for this Järnvik cairn experience much earlier in the day.

The breathlike motion of the cairn increased, easing me into a swoonlike state as I saw the stone pile begin to glow in gradual intensity. As the hieght of the visual display I saw the stone at the top of pile begin glowly in a rich blue flame, much like the blue flame of a gas kitchen stove burner. I gradually became totally enveloped in this ecstatic visionscape.

All along both my High Self (Adam Kadmon) and the representative spirit of the cairn were speaking to me, assuring me that this experience was both valid and appropriate. I relaxed into the flow of voices, not wishing to impose my own desires onto the experience. Gradually a light being about two meters tall came into view on my left at the edge of the mound. Its glowing intensity increased as it slowly floated towards me, the spirit voices speaking all the while, until this light being enveloped me within its glowing oval shape.

At some point in this light being encounter I also noticed a man standing on the southern edge of the mound. He was dressed in what I would have to characterize as the garb of a Viking warrior, with small breastplate armor over woven garments. He was leaning against a tall spear as he looked back at me. I was resistant to the vision of this Viking-like being, both because I have never been very intrigued by the whole Viking thing and because I knew this cairn to have been built long before any actual Vikings could have come to this spot. As it turns out, it seems that the Iron Age inhabitants of this region who had last used this cairn site did in fact dress in garb that would look very similar to what Vikings wore around 1000 A.D. I told the spirits of this communication that such a figure seemed out of place here, and they ssured me both that I was right about the cairn site having been built long before this Iron Age warrior era (500 B.C.-1400 A.D. in this part of Finland) but also that such warriors did in fact make use of the site as well.

I at some point asked the cairn representative what my role might be in my engagements with this site, and their response was that this would be revealed over time as I engage with them further. This experience at this moment was to serve as my induction into the Circle of Stone. I take this expression “Circle of Stone” to refer to the entire complex of megalithic sites throughout Finland and beyond. I was reminded that when Anna and I were travelling through the mountains south of Inverness, Scotland, we had been told that our role was to be the Lighters of the Stones. This was simply one more aspect of that larger role in our geomantic service to the Planetary Being.

The glow and the breathing motion of the cairn eventually subsided. I thanked the spirits of the place and my High Self and slowly walked back home across the fields of Storrkärr, where I relayed this tale to Anna and spent the rest of the day in an ecstatic state of exhaustion.