Slimbridge Dowsing Group with speaker Peter Knight

WE BRITS tend to think that natural sacred sites such as mountains, waterfalls and rock formations are exclusively to be found abroad.

We are all familiar with Ayers Rock in Australia, known to the Aborigines as Uluru; Cathedral Rock in Sedona, USA; Mount Kailash in Tibet; and hundreds of monoliths, petroglyphs and mysterious caves throughout India, Thailand and Asia.

And yet, as we so often do, we Brits underestimate ourselves, because we too have an amazing selection of natural sacred sites on our own doorstep, revered by man for centuries, but not created by him.

Our speaker on Saturday, February 25, Peter Knight, loves Dartmoor, and suggested that the rock tors to be found there are sacred too.

Formed of granite and shaped and tumbled by a rare glacier further south than it should have been, granite is so hard it has only eroded a couple of millimetres since Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze age times.

Peter felt he was not the only passerby to see their fascinating shapes resembling faces, animals, and mythological dragons, which stone-age man associated with gods and goddesses, and worshipped them too.

Granite sparkles with quartz throughout, contains mica, feldspar and other crystals, each vibrating at its own level, and putting out an energy you can literally feel if you touch it or even lie on it, close your eyes, and give yourself up to it.

Early man would have felt that too, more in touch with such things than we are today.

He used the smaller stones to build cairns, and the larger rocks to create Dolmans, simple Megaliithic tombs.

Many of the rocks contain rock basins that surely led to the spirit world below?

Filled with rainwater, that precious and vital resource, and reflecting the moon, rock basins were revered too.

Early man was inspired enough by Dartmoor, and other natural sacred sites in this country, to build his stone circles there, with stone walls and stone rows to direct your path.

Peter’s theory is that almost all their efforts were concerned with water, without which life could not survive.

Your steps are nudged, directed, in the way you should go, and what could be more natural and more spiritual than that?

Next meeting Thursday, March 9 – Bea Martin and David Johnson with Tibetan singing bowls.

Our last meeting at Slimbridge Village Hall; thereafter meet in Kingshill House, Dursley.