The Isles of Scilly are further from Lands End than Dover is from Calais. Perhaps this is one reason why the IoS have a different feel - sharper, clearer, less trawled over. As such, the energies there feel subtly crisper and certainly distinctly individual.
There are many parallels with other Celtic locations, notably the many similar types of site in Brittany - and in some ways perhaps more so there, than with comparable places on the English/Cornish mainland. Indeed, some locations actually appear to have ‘sister’ sites in Brittany.
Several of the ‘natural’ megalithic sites appear to have been sculpted or modified by man - even though they also dowse as having had the trademark energy patterns of sacred sites that would have existed prior to human occupation.
This tends to blur the boundary between the human and the landscape - and it forces us to reconsider what is ‘natural’? Dowsing can be a seminal skill in understanding this interface.
A number of sites on the IoS seem to us to have an overwhelmingly sense of the feminine about them - especially the stand out piece of Scillonian archaeology, Porth Hellick, a circular ‘entrance grave’, which actually dowses as having been a potential ‘place of birthing’ (see image below).
The IoS is littered with these ‘entrance graves’ - most of which are more linear and have been capped by a series of cut stone slabs, which have proved to be very useful as gate-posts and building material. However, we failed to find any of them on St Martins, despite clear weather, decent maps and us being in good health. Was this, as Cheryl Staffon suggests, Piskies at work?
It certainly seemed that way at the time.
IoS entrance graves often have energy patterns in the form of lemniscates (infinity symbols) - and we have located a number of these both on the IoS and elsewhere in ‘Celtic’ countries, where the lemniscates rotate in the form of a propeller - and occasionally even have a double, interconnected, yin/yang arrangement.
As with locations elsewhere, there was much evidence of the sequential use of sites - across time and between generations and cultures - with more parallels with Brittany, and also with Dartmoor.
For all the hectic tourism of recent decades, stray a bit away from the honeypots and the better-known attractions and you will find that The Isles of Scilly remain a valuable source and liminal experience for dowsers at all levels of experience.
Nigel Twinn
Tamar Dowsers
December 2022
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