#23. The Elves Up on Moose Hill
Adventures in Backyard Geomancy
5 May 2022
A year ago I carried out an activity that I refer to as Backyard Geomancy. Had other people accompanied me in this activity, I would also call it an Akashic Field Trip. As I have mentioned earlier in my Mission Statement for this Substack Project I am calling Soul Planet Channel, among the activities I devote these posts to are my accounts of “Backyard Magical Encounters” and “Akashic Field Trips.”
By “Backyard Geomancy” or “Backyard Magical Encounters” I mean the conscious use of our subtle intuitive faculties to attune ourselves to the energetic elements (both in terms of spirit entities and geographic vibratory strata) in our very backyards. My goal in this kind of activity is to highlight the fact that we do not need to travel to famous sacred sites in order to recognize and participate in the sacred nature of the spaces we call home. The very fact that we have been led to inhabit a place suggests that we have something to learn through that experience.
When I speak of Akashic Field Trips, I am referring to group activites where people gather together to develop their awareness of and sensitivity to the sacred features of place. Just as school children go on educational trips together—to museums or zoos or parks—we can also lead and participate in esoteric journeys of exploration of sacred landscapes in adulthood. The term “Akashic Field” designates the complex cache of information stretching across space and time, including the histories of the local terrain and its inhabitants, human and otherwise. We can attune ourselves to this Akashic record through a variety of means and intentions. We can devote our conscious energies to recovering lost knowledges and practices from ancient sites such as mounds, stone circles, and power points.
Power points in the hills and fields; elemental spirits in the creeks, rocks, stones, and forests; energetic complexes specific to the terrain: all of these features reach out and speak to those ready to listen to the heart of our local landscape. On such trips we can:
Discuss the nature of power points, vortexes, and portals;
Learn the elements of dowsing;
Open up our bodily senses to the energies of the natural world;
Communicate with the local forest spirits;
Learn about the history of the place by accessing its unique Akashic Field;
Appreciate the role of human action and consciousness in the web of earth energies that we constantly participate in but so rarely perceive.
I present this blog post from last year as just such an example of an activity where Backyard Magic and Akashic Fields combine. Given the way this particular site near our house has been calling to me again this week, I am also presenting this story here as a personal encouragement to listen to these inner callings and discover what the place and its elementals have to tell me this year.
Stay tuned for that report in the near future!
By Gabriel Hartley • 10 May 2021
Today just after lunch I was called out to the Järnvik Cairn area again.
Just as I was about to leave, Anna suggested that I return a deer skull to the tree along the creek between Svartkärr and Storkärr. About a year ago we found the skull hung on a branch on a young tree there and, at first assuming it had been placed there just on a whim, we decided to bring it home and give it a more “proper” resting place where its profound nature might be more respected. But as the year went by and we got more attuned to the power of this location where the swamps (kärren) join together, we started to imagine that it might have actually been hung on the tree for a sacred purpose in the first place.
In either case, one thing I have learned over the past ten years in this geomantic work is that there really are no accidents or mistakes. Whatever the original conscious intention there might been that led to the initial placement of the skull on the tree, the end result is that such an act produces a sacred set of conditions determined by the powers of the earth, the skull, and the conscious or unconscious paths of the humans involved. So the right thing for us to do, I realized, was to return the skull to the tree as Anna had suggested and consciously celebrate its sacred nature.
After returning the skull to its original spot, I ducked into the forested edge of Storkärr in order to avoid damaging any of the grain crop that the local farmers harvest each year. Even though this is too early for much to be seen—May is called Toukokuu or Sowing Month in Finnish—the fresh new shoots could still be damaged if I walked on them. As I got to a point in the trees parallel with a hilltop cairn site called Svartkärr (named after the field by that name to the west), I realized that I should alter ny original plans and go up to that cairn. I hadn’t visited that spot in about a year, and it was now clear that I needed to weave its energies into my current mapping exploration of this entire complex.
One reason I have avoided this cairn site is that someone in the recent past had cut down all the trees in the vicinity right up to the very edge of the stones. This is still an oozing site of destruction, paying no regard whatsoever for the trees, the shrubs, or the local wildlife. The harmony of forces of the spot has been shaken and agitated, which—were I now to give it much thought—all the more calls for some ceremonial restoration of the balance of forces, even if the physical site itself would be very difficult to restore.
This destruction, as I have mentioned earlier, comes right up to the edge of the cairn and disturbs my ability to tune in clearly to the energy of the cairn. This is probably something for me to work with in the future, both in the sense of expanding my general ability to work in complicated environments as well as to help convert the negativity of the atmosphere there more specifically.
Shortly after I had entertained ideas such as these, my attention was drawn to the big stone hill to the west that we call Moose Hill (Hirvenmäki in Finnish or Älgberget in Swedish if it actually had such a name). We call it that because the highest point, forming a massive stone stage that looks out over the meadow called Svartkärr, is completely covered with moose droppings. This is clearly a spot where the moose gather, just as they do at some of the other high stone cliff platforms in the area.
On our second evening after moving to Fiskars back in August 2019, a mother moose and her calf came out of these woods at the base of “Moose Hill” to stand out on the edge of the Svartkärr looking towards the few houses that make up our tiny neighborhood. This was a magical moment because, after two and a half months in Finland, we had only seen one other moose, whereas back in 2012 we saw moose out at Porkkala almost daily. To this day this mother and her calf turn out to have been the only moose we have seen so far in Fiskars, despite the fact that their poop and tracks in the snow are everywhere, including in our yard right up against our house. I am confident that when the time is right we will be seeing them everywhere once again as we had in Porkkala.
Anyway, I slowly and meditatively walked up the slope to the stone base at the top of the hill, making my way around all of the piles of moose and deer poop. I understood that I was being prepared for another encounter of some sort, just like my fox encounter less than a week before this. I was assuming (hoping) that I would see a moose or two come drifting over to the clifftop right where I was standing, looking out over the meadow towards the few houses on my street.
After five minutes or so I was drawn to what I would call a secondary stone hilltop just a bit below the highest point. Knowing by now that I was in fact being prepared for an encounter of some kind, I walked over and stood in the center of this point. I tuned in to the energies of the spot. I had done my chakra clearing and activation at home just prior to coming out here, so I just slipped automatically into the etheric visionary state that I call the Mists of Avalon. I felt myself drawn deeper and deeper into a connective state, the mists swirling around me and the stone beneath my feet breathing and lightly rocking like ocean waves. I could feel the arrival of some kind of being or beings and assumed there was a moose about to peek around the corner on its way to the lookout point just above me.
In five minutes or so after I had gone deeper into this communal energetic state, my High Self (Adam Kadmon) pointed out a small boulder in front of me and suggested that I sit there and wait. My first thought was that this would make me less visible to any approaching moose and make my chance of encountering one more likely. Soon I found myself chanting in the ancient language that I slip into in these states—the “talking in tongues” that I have inherited from Asherah, my Female Self. I went deeper and deeper into a transportive state, chanting away, swaying in the midst of the swirling mists.
Soon I saw a ring of Elves dancing in a circle around me at a radius of about two meters from my body. I began singing with them, slipping into an ecstatic state of communion. I asked them if they were related to the Elven Circle that often visited me in the forest above our blue house in Athens County, Ohio and they said yes. They were from a related tribe, so to speak, that maintains a deep connection to the other Elven Rings I have found myself in the company of, whether in Athens or Austin or now here in Fiskars.
The Elves told me that the Iron Age peoples who had used this area for their high ceremonies about 2,000 years ago considered their own communcation with these Elves as a critical part of their spititual planetary mission here. Part of my own work here, they continued, will involve reviving this Elven-Human communion so that the people here today can tap into the magic of those earlier days.
The Elves then told me that part of this work would involve clearing the energy that has arisen due to the devastation brought on by the thoughtless deforestation of the area. That was one reason I had been led to this spot on this day by passing through the ruined forest stumps at the base of the Svartkärr Cairn. A return to this Elven-Human communion is key to the revival of the planetary balance here and elsewhere. Communion ceremonies involving such Devic and Human encounters will be necessary if we hope to ease the burden of climate change in the years to come.
