The Tammisaari Linnanmäki—Hidden in Plain Site

Prologue: A Note on Spirit Dowsing

A key element of my geomantic practice is what I can only refer to (at this moment, anyway) as my intuitive sensitivity to ancient sacred sites, whether or not they have been officially recognised as such. In 2011 I engaged in a month-long intensive apprenticeship of sorts, during which I learned the techniques for using the tools and practice of classical dowsing. While I share the goals and assumptions of that practice, I am often led to a slightly different mode when it comes to the use of rods and measurements and such—a difference I see as in alignment with the magic of traditional dowsing. This is not a judgment regarding either mode, for I see great value in both approaches.

In line with my own relationship to place, David Yarrow has written:

The Earth is not before us as something distant and different from ourselves. We have the Earth within us. We are the Earth itself that, as we evolve, has reached the stage of feeling, understanding, will, responsibility and veneration. We are the Earth in its moment of self-realization and self-consciousness. We are Land that thinks, feels, sings and loves.
— Eco-spirituality: to be and feel like Earth (Website)

I find that I most often tap into a universal faculty (which I believe everyone has available to varying degrees of manifestation) that allows the body-mind complex itself to serve as the divining rod. In some cases people can perceive the energetic information that tools such as dowsing rods reveal without the external tools themselves. The external tools (rods, pendulums, etc.) offer modes of confirmation as they tap into the energetic field of knowing that is already available to us without them.

I have not yet attempted to lay out a clear description of the mechanics involved in my own spirit dowsing (that is, intuitive dowsing without the aid of external tools), but I should probably try to say a few things at this point:

First, often I initially find myself telepathically alerted to a particular “spot” by some outer spirit consciousness or force. I could use the word “site” here rather than “spot,” but “site” often implies a spot already recognized and charged in order to serve some sacred function. “Spot” suggests to me an earthly point of energetic condensation that might or might not currently be generally recognized as such a power point. Again, I often initially find myself telepathically alerted to a particular “spot” by some outer spirit consciousness or force that draws my attention to that spot in order for me to take that spot into my conscousness, to weave it into my energetic internal map of such spots and sites. The suggestion is that there is something in this spot that I should pay attention to, either at the moment or in some future moment. And often I see that spot glowing, lit up against the backdrop of the larger surrounding terrain. I literally see an etheric plane of light that makes this spot stand out in the larger energetic field. (I have a lot more to say about this perception of glowing spots of light, but I will save that for another discussion.)

Second, sometimes my attention is drawn to a particular spot because of some external interaction on that spot. For instance, a bird might land on top of a particular stone, and so the bird’s movement draws my attention to that spot. Or I might find a deer standing on a particular hilltop and then, after being drawn to the deer, I notice the energetic power of that standing spot. Or I might simply be walking or driving by and then suddenly notice the power of some particular spot resonating against the energetic field backdrop of the surrounding terrain.

And third, as I write these words in these descriptions of these processes, I am telepathically reminded that in all of these cases I am not simply drawn to these spots by some visual phenomenon; I am always responding to some telepathic call. I literally hear a voice—both internal and external—that shouts “Hey! Look over here! This spot deserves your attention!” And it is this inner-outer voice that grounds me in the certainty of the moment, of the energetic exchange of information that becomes (or recalls) at that moment the validation of my own growing body of relational knowledge.

Hidden in Plain Sight, or, “Finding” the Castle

So the prologue above concerning my own particular mode of Spirit Dowsing is a way of presenting an explanation of how I came to “see” the hilltop castle stones in Tammisaari (Finnish for Oak Island) for the first time last month (October 2021). My family and I had decided to spend the afternoon in Tammisaari (known in Swedish as Ekenäs, meaning Oak Isthmus) as a way to celebrate the Finnish Fall Break, a time when most families drive north up to Lapland or east to Saimaa or west to Åland for a brief vacation before getting back to school business before the winter. Given our continuing hesitation to spend much time in public spaces during the time of Covid, we spent most of the break in our home in Fiskars, the safest (and most comfortable) place for us to be right now. But with the vacation coming to a close, we felt that we should try to take advantage of the final weekend of this break. So we drove to Tammisaari, which is not only one of our favorite spots in Finland but which is also only 29km (18mi) from our house.

I am going into this homely detail because my point here is that significant discoveries are often gained during the simplest of daily acts. After an hour-long nature-spirit hike on Ramsholmen, a beautiful park on the southern end of the Tammisaari peninsula, we drove back into the downtown area for a meal at the kebab restaurant (another thing we almost never do during this time of Covid seclusion). While looking for a good nearby parking spot, we ended up driving up onto a hilltop that we for some reason had never visited before in all of our trips to Tammisaari. It turns out that this hilltop is called Linnanmäki (in Finnish) or Slottsbacken (in Swedish), which translates to Castle Hill in English. (This is not the much more famous large castle in the forest.)

As we pulled up beside the foundation stones that now are all that remains of the early Sixteenth-Century castle structure, I was immediately entranced. I do not use the word “entranced” here lightly. As so often happens, I was magnetically drawn to the “park,” the playground, recognizing that geomantic rush characteristic of sacred sites. Although in the past I had had a sense that there was something charged in this neighborhood, I had never had reason to venture up here and so had never seen or heard of this site before that moment. And yet I knew it immediately—that fast slide into past life memory, that familial recognition of this piece of Earth.

I noticed that this spot had been “repurposed” in the present moment as a playground park. In other words, its function as a public space came after my recognition of the power of the place. This is one aspect of so many sacred sites that fascinates me so much: the way these sites are converted into newer and newer functions over time in ways that might at first seem profane. But I think the opposite is true: turning an ancient sacred site into a contemporary public space—whether as a church or a graveyard or a military base or a playground—illustrates the unconscious drive humans have to tap into the power of a place and continue to benefit from its radiation. For example, the public library in Marietta, Ohio is built right into an old sacred mound built long ago by ancient peoples.

While on one level this seems like a simple case of colonial cooptation (which on that one level it is), it also illustrates our ongoing unconscious drive to transform the power of place for other purposes. A modern library’s function as a site for learning and a repository of knowledge is heightened by this connection and thereby transformed into something sacred in itself. A Christian church built on top of an acient ceremonial mound benefits from the imprinted historical resonance of sacred rites. The key now, as I see it, is to acknowledge the ancient power of the place, to admit to whatever violence took place in the movement of peoples in place (in conquest), and to create a kind of truth-telling service that can serve the path to higher truth.

Facing South from the Northern Hill and Wall

Sacred Playgrounds

linnanmaki 02 — Photo from 23 October 2021

So what is the long history of this spot called Linnanmäki, Castle Hill? That is the question I have only just begun to try to answer. The internet has already provided me with a wealth of information spanning the past five hundred or so years, which I will document in more detail below and in later posts. But what I have learned in general so far is that the large stones of this current playground park in the center of the city had been been the foundation stones of a castle that was begun (but evidently never completed) in 1571 by the Swedish royalty who occupied the spot, Tammisaari itself having been officially founded in 1546.

Duchy of Finland 16th Century (with today’s political boundaries)

But I have a strong intuition that leads me to believe that this site, like so many others in Raaespori that I have discussed elsewhere in this blog, was yet another hilltop stone site on the seashore. If I am right, this means that the stone castle begun by Ebba Månsdotter Lilliehöök in 1571 had long before that been a sacred Bronze Age site and likely extending even into the Stone Age. It seems unlikely to me that, given the power emanating from the spot, this site would not have been used in very ancient times for ceremonial purposes, just as so many other radiant hilltops in the region had been. But I have a lot more research, both historical and geomantic, to do in this regard.

What I do understand so far about this Sixteenth-Century Swedish history in Raasepori is that the major personages involved were part of an extended family group filled with the Shakespearean sorts of political battles that we often imagine—a world of familial power and intrigue, as well as a developing feudal aristocracy dominating the local farmers. We learn from the Finnish Wikipedia entry “Tammisaaren Linnanmäki” that this pesumably never-completed castle was, as I mention above, started by Ebba Månsdotter Lilliehöök. Ebba was the widow of Sten Eriksson Leijonhufvud (perhaps the Leijonhufvud the main castle street is named after, although it seems more likely that the street would have been named after Count Gustaf Adolf Lewenhaupt [1619-165], instrumental in building the Tammisaari Church and a descendant of Sten and Ebba, as well as Sten’s sister Queen Margaret). It appears likely that Leijonhufvud himself never set foot in Raasepori but was granted the Dukedom of Raseborg on his deathbed by John III of Sweden. The county was then inherited by Ebba and their children.

Enclosure of the Commons

After writing the few words above about the Swedish nobility who turned southwestern Finland into a medieval fiefdom as part of international intrigue among the occupying landlords, I dove a bit into the family history behind this story of Sten Eriksson Leijonhufvud and Ebba Månsdotter Lilliehöök, looking for clues about what might have been going on in the background as this little castle project was begun and then ultimately abandoned. I am far from having learned much of that historical background yet, but I did get a little sense of the violence behind these struggles for power and land.

Connections Among Swedish Royalty

I was having trouble sorting out the various lines of familial relationships among the people behind the construction of this little castle in Tammisaari, so I put together this abbreviated genealogical chart:

As was common among royalty in Europe (and elsewhere), we see here a remarkable degree of both familial warfare (including murder and executions) as well as incest in order to maintain lines of power and wealth. This little castle project was not at all unique in this sense. Nor is it unique in the way the landscape resonates with the energetic effects of these acts of violence, intrigue, and inherited trauma. And this is one aspect of ancient sites that I have learned to approach with care: the residual dynamics of past traumatic events. These sites are so often themselves sites of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

And yet these sites ALSO continue to register the influence of the initial geomantic power that drew peoples to these spots over the millenia. In other words, it is probably fair to say that every ancient site, whether we are talking about Cahokia or Stonehenge or Angkor Wat, maintains a troubled state of imbalance among the powers that are simultaneously healing and destructive. In any case, once we obtain the ability to communicate telepathically with the spiritual resonances of such sites, we are able to tap into akashic information that provides us with lessons not just about the past but about the present as well.

As will be clear in my future posts regarding this little Tammisaari Castle, it is this project of akashic retrieval that I am committed to and seek to develop here and elsewhere.