363 Holly Worton ~ Visiting Sacred Sites: Spiritual Places to Visit

Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 363. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. It feels like ages since I have been recording a solo episode for you but actually it has only been a couple of weeks! Today, I am going to talk about sacred sites, visiting sacred sites. Why would you want to? What can you get out of it? Where would you go? What do you do when you get there? And I am super-excited about this topic.

I have been really getting some clarity over the last three weeks, I would say. I have been working with a blogging coach, and I will link to her in the show notes, her name is Yvette Morrisey and she has a blog called Wayfaring Kiwi, which is a travel blog, and hiking blog, an outdoors blog, mostly related around travel to Scotland and hiking in Scotland.

I started blogging-coaching with her about three weeks ago, we have had three sessions so far, and it has totally rekindled my passion for blogging and it has, for the first time since I started a blog in 2006, it has given me a clear strategy on what to write about, how to write SEO friendly blog posts, and just basically how to blog! {laughing} I have been kind of, as you may have noticed, sporadically and randomly writing things and they haven’t been very targeted and they have been all over the place, so I am really, really excited about writing new blog posts, I have been on fire with writing, I have been enjoying it so much. If you head over to my website at HollyWorton.com/blog you can find all the new posts there, but I have also gotten a lot of clarity on my path forward. I have been doing this weird mix of self-knowledge and personal development stuff, but also nature, and walking and hiking and trees; and now it has all really come together in a very clear vision for me. The overarching theme to my work is personal growth through nature, but what I am going to be blogging about primarily is plant-spirit-communication, talking to trees, talking to plant spirits, outdoor adventures like walking, hiking long-distance trails, that kind of thing and travel to sacred sites.

So that brings me to this week’s episode. As you probably know if you have been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, or if you have read any of my books, especially the tree book, you will know that I am huge fan of sacred sites here in the UK, particularly Avebury. There was a time when I was visiting Avebury twice a month, particularly when I was researching my tree book and preparing for that. It wasn’t just a matter of researching and talking to the trees in that area, it was really soaking up the energy of the place, I just felt drawn there like a magnet and I kept going back and back. I used to go there every other month and then, it kind of stepped up, it was more like twice a month. So, it was like this place that I was magnetically drawn to and I just needed to go there on a regular basis and Glastonbury is another one of those places. When I was visiting Avebury every other month, the other month that I wasn’t going to Avebury I was going to Glastonbury, and that is another place where I feel really drawn to, and a place that I feel is just deeply relaxing. It just feels like my whole system slows down in a good way when I am there.

And so these are I would say the two most important – and most well-known as well! – sites that I have visited on a regular basis, but there have been other smaller sites and there is this well, a sacred spring really, called Mag’s Well, that is here in the Surrey Hills, and back when I was organising walking groups for women, I organised a walk that went past this sacred spring. I came across this sacred spring on this website called megalithic.co.uk which has sacred sites in, not just UK, but around the world. I saw it on the map, and I thought: ooh, I wonder what that is? I went there and I just felt, again, magnetically drawn to this place and like I needed to kind of go back and go back and go back. I visited that site several times over the course of about, I don’t know, six months or so. So, that is my experience with sacred sites and holy places and power spots.

What are sacred sites?

So let’s get into: what are these things? What are sacred sites? They can also been called holy places, spiritual sites, sacred places, sometimes they are really obvious like a stone circle, or a holy well, or a sacred well, and a lot of times you will know that these wells are special places because you will see a clootie tree next to them, one of those trees with ribbons hanging off and that is a sign that it is a wishing well, that it is a place where people have come to make wishes or to pray. So sometimes they are really obvious and sometimes they are ancient sites like long barrows, like West Kennet Long Barrow, or tumuli, which are round barrows, and those are ancient burial sites. I tend to assume that these burial sites were put on those particular sites because they were special in some way, I don’t think they were just randomly chosen, and I say that because I do feel a special kind of energy when I go to places like West Kennett Long Barrow or places with large amounts of tumuli. I think it is, again, not just because there were a lot people living in that area, but I think these sites were chosen specifically for the energy in that area.

You might also have heard something called a “power spot”, or an “energy vortex”. So what are power spots? Usually they are sites of special or different energy that can be found again in springs, near mountains, near caves. I remember years ago, decades ago, actually visiting Sedona in Arizona, and researching the energy vortexes there in that area, it is known for its four energy vortexes. So they are called power spots because they have this concentration of energy, or vortex of energy, and oftentimes you can feel that special energy in the place.

How are sacred sites and power spots different from a pilgrimage?

A pilgrimage is a journey, sometimes to a foreign place, or a place we have never been before. It is when we go in search of something special, it could be self-knowledge, transformation, inspiration, motivation; it could be searching for higher meaning in life, a pilgrimage is often a journey that we take to a specific site, like the Camino de Santiago, which I have talked about a lot and I will link to that in the show notes, so you can learn more about that. 

A pilgrimage can lead to personal transformation. And a lot of times people would undertake these journeys and I know I have talked before about the journey vs the destination, but oftentimes it is like you are heading towards this special destination; but of course the journey, the pilgrimage, is part of the experience, it is probably the most important part of the experience, or one of the most important parts of the experience. There is also the integration time after which you return home and you are energetically — and mentally and emotionally and physically — integrating that journey, or that pilgrimage. So you have kind of got the journey to the site itself and then integration afterwards, it is kind of a three-part thing and I think this is really, really, important to remember, it is not just that site in and of itself, it is everything leading up to it, it is your journey to the place and then it is integration afterwards.

Why would you want to visit a sacred site? What is the purpose of visiting a sacred site?

Self-exploration is one. You can do journaling there, you can just explore, reflect, because these are sites of very special energy, they can bring things to light that perhaps we might not see in another environment. We can also use these sacred sites for meditation, for retreat, they can often be places, like I said, Glastonbury: Glastonbury, you walk down the high street and it is like very bubbling, lots of energy, lots of people, shops and things, normal life stuff – lots of tourists in the summer – and yet, I feel, I don’t spend a lot of time necessarily in the shops as I do at the White Spring, the Chalice Well Gardens, the Goddess Temple, these are the three main sites that I go to when I am in Glastonbury. Oftentimes I go in a day, back and forth between those sites, because they are places that are deeply relaxing to me, and restorative, and they give me that sense of slowing down, that sense of peace, that sense of retreat. And I have had some really spectacular reflections and understandings and self-knowledge happen in those places, in Glastonbury.

They are places where you can just slow down and soak up the energy of the site. A lot of times when I was going to Avebury I wasn’t really doing much, sometimes I wasn’t even walking that much, it was like I was just drawn to the place to just sit and soak up the energy of the site. There are many times when I would go to Avebury and I walk up to Windmill Hill and I wouldn’t even talk to the trees, I would just say hello, and then I would just sit and do nothing, but it was like my system needed to absorb the energy of the place.

So when you go to these sacred sites, you don’t even necessarily need to do anything, you don’t need to meditate if you don’t want to, you can just sit there and the energy of the place can be very transformative, it can give you a sense of peace, it can give you personal transformation, it can give you so many things that are kind of hard to understand but again it is that transformation of energy. So if you have ever experienced any kind of energy healing, like reiki, you can understand how energy can be very healing, can be very transformative and you can get that type of transformation from going to these sites. So rather than have someone hold their hands on you for healing, it is just being in those places. And that is something that really took me a long time to understand, I think it took me months after my obsession with Avebury, to really understand that I just kind of needed to feel that energy, and I needed to experience that energy and soak it up and bring it into my system.

Where are these sacred sites?

There are sacred sites all over the world. My favourite is obviously not just Avebury but that whole surrounding area. I recently wrote a blog post that I will link to in the show notes about my definitive guide to Avebury, which includes all the places that I always visit when I go there, but my favourite places in Avebury are the stone circle, I love, but it is not even my favourite part of the area, I really, really, like Windmill Hill, which is a beautiful, quiet, hill, with a little wood at the end, at the top of it. It is a site of round barrows and very few tourists end up there, actually no tourists end up there, very few people, it is very quiet, if you go up there you will probably be alone and the energy up that is very, very, special, so that is one of my favourite places.

And West Kennet Long Barrow, which you have heard me talk about (probably many, many, times) and I certainly mentioned it in my tree book. From the moment I first walked in there which is before I walked the Ridgeway in 2016, I felt the energy in there, it felt like a special place. I didn’t even understand at the time the concept of sacred sites, I guess I did, I don’t know, I wasn’t expecting to have that kind of experience when I walked in there. I was getting ready to walk the Ridgeway, I was doing the circular walk around Avebury, the day before I started the Ridgeway, and this was one of the historical sites on the day and I just walked in there and boom there was this energy. It was so special that it was getting late that day, and it was raining, and I was cold and tired and so I walked to my B and B, which was in East Kennet, stayed the night, had breakfast the next morning and before I got started on the Ridgeway the next morning, I went back to West Kennet Long Barrow, visited it again, really early in the morning and then walked back to the start of the Ridgeway; it probably added I don’t know at least a mile onto my walk that day but I knew I needed to go back, because I needed to feel the energy of that place, and I ended up going back many, many, times, over the following years, to West Kennet Long Barrow and it is one of my favourite places.

Those are just some examples of sacred sites in the Avebury area. Stonehenge, I had conflicting feelings about Stonehenge, because the first couple of times I had been there, I had only been there during tourist times, with tourist crowds and I didn’t really feel the energy there. I felt it in the surrounding area, there is this line of tumuli, very near Stonehenge, you can actually walk to it from Stonehenge. I felt a lot of energy there, I felt a lot of energy in the surrounding area, but not in the stones themselves, until I went to my first ceremony with my Druid order, OBOD, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. We had, the first time it was a sunrise ceremony, because they had booked us wrong and it was really early in the morning, and the sun was coming up and when you have a private ceremony there you are allowed to go amongst the stones, you are not supposed to touch them, but you can be amongst the stones for the ceremony and there is something completely different about that experience. It was after I had that experience, and I have since then returned to Stonehenge with OBOD for other ceremonies, it was after that first time that I realised: yes, this is a special place. It is also a very touristy place which is why you sometimes can’t feel the energy, but the energy is here.

Other places around the world that you might have heard of: Mount Shasta, Machu Picchu, and a lot of smaller places, a lot of sacred wells, as I have said. They don’t have to be big name places for you to get something out of it, there is this sacred spring near Avebury that I mention in the tree book and that place is, I have taken people to that place and they have said: wow, you can tell this is a special bubble of energy and I think that is another way to describe it. This spring in particular, you have to cross this field to get to it, then you go over a fence, and it is like the second you go over the fence and you have to cross this river, you feel like you are in a different world, a different dimension, the energy feels so different.

When you feel that sense of the energy shifting, pay attention to that, because that will give you the idea, when you are out in nature, when you are in places, that this might be a sacred site, or it might be a power spot, or an energy vortex, whatever you want to call it. So pay attention to that feeling when you are out in nature because, for example, that sacred spring that I mentioned, Mag’s Well, it is at this crossways of bridleways, it is not a particularly beautiful spot, if I hadn’t known it was on the map I wouldn’t have even seen it, but yet I can feel the energy when I am there. People, from what I have seen when I have done research about that, it has been a site of healing ever since Victorian times and before, but it has been registered, recorded, written down that people would visit those waters for healing. So it is very, very, subtle sometimes, but at the same time, very deep and powerful?

When to Visit Sacred Sites?

One of my blog posts recently was called Leave No Trace: How to Reduce Ritual Rubbish at Sacred Sites, because one of the things that I have noticed when I go to West Kennet Long Barrow is that people leave trash, they leave their tea light cups, they leave incense sticks, all kinds of crap in there. I know these are things they have used for ceremony, but they don’t pack them out when they leave. I will link to this blog post in the show notes but please check it out as an idea of how to behave when you visit these sacred sites.

So when should you visit them? One of the things that I say in that article about leave no trace, is that it is a really good idea to visit these sacred sites outside of peak hours, or outside of peak season. So if you know that the summer is really busy, don’t go on the summer, go in the spring or the fall, outside of peak hours. West Kennet Long Barrow, I often visit before sunrise, or after sunset, I even visited once at nighttime, when I was there with a friend, and it is just a completely different experience. Not everyone is going to be comfortable being at these places or being out alone in nature in the dark, but it’s probably safe to do so, obviously use your common sense. I certainly feel safe visiting these sites outside of normal hours and even in the dark. I would say if you want to have a really meaningful experience where you won’t be interrupted try to visit out of peak hours or season, so you are not contributing to the traffic to these sites.

Ethics

Along with that goes ethics, so what are the ethics of visiting a sacred site? Obviously don’t trespass, if the site is on private land, ask for permission before entering. In a foreign country know the local customs, do your research beforehand, or ask a local. If you think that photography might be sensitive, ask permission. In the UK I think it is probably safe to say that places like Avebury. Stonehenge, they are very touristy, in addition to being special, sacred, sites, so photography is perfectly normal, but just treat it with respect. This is something that I have seen many times in Avebury, I have seen people climbing on the stones, I have seen people climb to the top of one of the big stones and stand on it and I just think, okay maybe they don’t realise where they are, maybe they don’t see it as a sacred site, but it is clear that they have no respect for the site.

I love the fact that Avebury is open to the public, you can touch the stones, you can feel their texture, you can connect with them and I think that it is important for us to preserve that for future visitors and future generations, because if lots of people start disrespecting the site we are going to have our options taken away from us. It will be very difficult to rope off Avebury, like Stonehenge id, but it could be done, they could have I don’t know guards telling people not to touch the stones, I don’t know, so it is very important to be respectful. Again, if you are in a different country you might not know what is respectful to you might not be respectful to the local people, so be sure that you look up what to do, customs, ethics, before visiting a sacred site in another land.

What to do when you get there?

Finally, what to do when you get there? As I have said you don’t have to do anything, you can just sit in silence, close your eyes, whatever, just soak up the energy of the site, especially if you are in a place that doesn’t have a lot of foot traffic, like Windmill Hill, or West Kennet Long Barrow, during/outside of normal visiting hours. Avebury it is a bit harder because there is quite a bit of traffic especially in the stones, however I have gone to the stone circle at night, oftentimes I would go after dinner and would just sit in the dark with the stones. It is about experiencing the energy of the place and absorbing the energy of the place.

You could also meditate, I used to meditate inside West Kennet Long Barrow quite a bit, I stopped doing it during the day because people would get freaked out when they would walk in and they would see me, so I have started doing that before or after hours. You could sit and journal and just reflect on whatever comes to mind, do some free writing, just write whatever comes to mind, and just enjoy the energy of the site, that is really all you need to do.

So, as we are starting to lift, or adjust, regulations and restrictions during COVID, here in the UK, I think it is time to start planning our new adventures, so I would recommend, now that you have listened to this podcast episode to go online, make a list of the all the sites that you would like to visit and maybe do some research about other sites, in your area, in other countries. The megalithic portal is really, really, good for that, it is http://megalithic.co.uk, it is this website that dates back, I think it is 19 years old and it is a massive, massive, portal of information about these sites. They have a map where you can zoom in and see all of the sites in your area and that is something that I have used to find sites that I didn’t know existed, even if my area.

So make a list of all the places that you would like to visit if you need ideas or suggestions let me know, drop me a line at: [email protected] and I would love to help if I can. I am obviously based in the UK and could probably give you some tips about where to go in England, or maybe I can point you in the right direction if you have questions about other places. But I would love to hear from you as well, so also feel free to drop me a line and let me know what is your bucket list for sacred sites, wherever it is that you live or want to go, I would love to hear from you.

If you have any questions about the sites that I do know very well, like Avebury and the surrounding areas, do check out that blog post, it is http://HollyWorton.com/Avebury and email me if you would like to.

So that is all for now. As always please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode and also feel free to send me any ideas for future episodes, you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

Also, I would love for you to join me on Patreon, if you head to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there, membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff I don’t share anywhere else, including free eBooks depending on the tier that you sign up at.

Thank you so much for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/363 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.