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The magic of the megaliths
An insight into a lifelong fascination with the old stones of Britain and Ireland
Even as a child I was attracted to, and moved by, prehistoric stone circles, standing stones, dolmens and earthworks as well as the patterns which the stars made in the night sky, although at that time, as an 11-year-old, I had no idea how earth and sky were connected at places where the earth forces were concentrated.
I have a vivid memory, for example, of, at that young age, climbing under the capstone of a dolmen in North Devon in the west of England, while on holiday with my parents, and lying there, listening to the wind seemingly about to whisper ancient secrets into my ears.
In dream symbolism, megaliths (‘great stones’) are often seen as representing the forces of the spirit emerging from the unconscious, or out of the affairs of life. For me, the old stones also stand as reminders — to jog our collective memory, as it were — of something important the human race has lost, or at least forgotten, yet might find again.
They are mystical places of ‘earth magic‘ where one can sense that the veil between the worlds is thin, especially at solstice and equinox sunrises and sunsets, with which many of them are aligned.
In one of my short stories, The Dream Stone (in A Raft of Dreams, 2015), set at the time of the…
