Shining Land The Ancient Sites of West , and what they tell us about megalithic civilisation Palden Jenkins Botrea Farm, Newbridge, Penzance, Cornwall TR20 8PP, UK 01736-785 967 (+44-1736-785 967) | palden.co.uk | [email protected]

What it’s about Shining Land is about the magical district of West Penwith in the far west of Cornwall, UK. It’s about megalithic civilisation and the reasons why the people of the and bronze ages built stone circles, standing stones, hill camps, cairns and other sacred sites. Penwith has a greater density of these than anywhere in Europe. The book proposes that the ancients engaged in megalithic geoengineering of consciousness – a magical and spiritual approach to regulating the ecosystem, climate and human society. It shows how this was done. Shining Land will thus be of interest to anyone who loves Cornwall and anyone who is interested in the ancient sites of the megalithic period, four to six millennia ago. It includes a history of the whole prehistoric period in West Penwith, together with observations on the megalithic world in the rest of Cornwall. The hidden twist of this book concerns what we can learn from this that is relevant to the issues of the 21st Century. The result of fifty years of work, this is a book of ideas, pushing the limits of our thinking on prehistory and the early life of the people of Britain. It was written in Cornwall, one of its ancient kingdoms, now a peripheral country but, once upon a time, centrally placed in the megalithic civilisation of Atlantic coast Europe – one of the world’s great civilisations in ancient times. It gives a taste of the magic of West Penwith, once known as Belerion, the shining land.

Themes • Earth energies, consciousness and ancient sites as a form of geoengineering – affecting climate, environment, social welfare and ‘the heart of the world’. • The effect of ancient sites on awareness and the shamanistic maintenance of the world. • Alternative geomantic approaches to archaeology and prehistory. • Types of sites in West Penwith and their purposes. West Penwith as one big ancient site. • A history of prehistoric Cornwall: the neolithic, bronze and iron ages. • How megalithic locational factors work: geomancy, alignment of sites, archaeoastronomy and their relation to landscape engineering. • Comparing Penwith with the neighbouring areas of Scilly, Lizard and Kerrier. • Maintaining the ‘heart of the world’ and its relevance to the 21st Century.

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Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters

Production details • 125,000 words (not including online Appendices). • Ready now, can deliver as a .docx or .pdf with images sent separately. • Over 100 photos and 12 maps available for use in colour or greyscale. Maps and photos can be printed in the book where viable and otherwise they can go online. Photos can be reduced in number. All photos are my own. The only copyright issues are: Google Maps backgrounds to some maps. • Website for the book, in construction: www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/

Palden Jenkins Born 1950, East Grinstead, Sussex, raised Cardiff (1950s) and Liverpool (1960s). Grammar school (Liverpool, 4 A-levels). University: LSE (geography and social sciences) Ten previous books 1987-2015 (www.palden.co.uk/books-by-palden.html), including The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia (1999, Kingfisher), The Only Planet of Choice (1993, Gateway Books), Pictures of Palestine (2011, self-published), Power Points in Time (2015, Penwith Press), Possibilities 2050 (2018, online). Total book sales around 100,000. Former editor with Gateway Books, Element and other presses (1990-2005). Photographer. Webmaster and content creator. Long track record in the movement for change, starting in 1960s Liverpool and LSE. Founder of Glastonbury Camps, OakDragon Camps, Hundredth Monkey Project, Jerusalem Peacemakers, Isle of Avalon and Ancient Penwith websites. Central in Glastonbury for 25 years, resident in Cornwall for 10 years. Humanitarian peacemaker (N Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine, Syria, Tuareg Sahel). Astrologer, geomancer; historian, geopolitics, antiquarian. Aspie polymath. Now living on an organic farm near Penzance, Cornwall. Online outreach, original thinker, blogger, broadcaster. Diagnosed with bone marrow cancer (2019) and being treated for it.

Structure Five parts: 1. Megalithic Sites. An introduction to the basics. 2. Sacred Places, Holy Landscape. About the different kinds of ancient sites in West Penwith. 3. Archaeological Ages in Prehistory. A prehistory of Penwith in the megalithic era, age by age. 4. Neighbours. About Scilly, the Lizard and Mid-Cornwall. 5. Megalithic Geoengineering. About alignments, power points, earth energy and consciousness.

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Chapters

A Brief Introduction Trinitarian Prehistorians

Part One | Megalithic Sites 1. Energy-fields 2. Why were Built? 3. Laying the Footings

Part Two | Sacred Places, Holy Landscape 4. Central Places in a Wildscape | Neolithic Tor Enclosures 5. Peering over the Rolling Seas | Cliff Sanctuaries 6. Capping Energy Wells | The Quoits of Penwith 7. Adapted Geology | Propped, Placed and Oriented Stones 8. A Variety of Holy Bumps | Cairns, Barrows and Tumuli 9. Landscape Inoculation Technology | Standing Stones 10. Cathedrals of the Bronze Age | Stone Circles 11. Megalithic Constellations | Complexes 12. Gathering Places of the Iron Age | Hill Camps, Enclosures and Forts 13. Desirable Residences | Settlements and Homesteads 14. Subterranean Mysteries | Fogous, Springs and Holy Wells

Part Three | A History of Penwith’s Prehistory 15. The Megalithic Era and what came before it 16. Sanctifiers of Belerion | the Neolithic 17. Age of the Longstone Builders | the Bronze Age 18. Druids, Roundhuts and Smithies | Iron Age Penwith

Part Four | Neighbours 19. Scilly, Lizard, Kerrier and Penwith 20. Scillina

Part Five | Megalithic Geoengineering 21. Why Align Ancient Sites? 22. Power Points 23. Reality Fields 24. Psychogeoengineering 25. The Heart of the World

Appendices (online): Making the Maps, Photos, Megalithic Astronomy, Lists, Links, Glossary, Maps, Supplementals.

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Sample Chapters

A Brief Introduction

Shining Land is a result of fiftyish years of exploration of ancient sites in Orkney, Snowdonia, Sweden, Palestine, Somerset, Wiltshire and Cornwall. It started when, as a hippy student protester at the London School of Economics around 1970, I hitch-hiked out of London to escape the revolution and find some clarity. I was rather burned out. I landed up on Orkney, of all places. It was a nice summer’s night and, wow, perchance I found an enormous stone circle – the . Rather naively I got out my sleeping bag and slept in the middle of it. During the night I dreamt of hordes of ancients dressed in clothes that definitely weren’t from Marks and Spencer, dancing, chanting and stomping rhythmically around the circle in a deeply stirring way. One of them came to me, reaching out and saying, come and join us. I did. A long path started there and I’ve found out since then that it has a strange way of never ending. Half a century later I landed up writing this book, leading on from that initial defining experience. It might be worth reflecting on the occasion you were first prompted to join this prehistory malarky, for this has a way of indicating what we’re personally searching for on this quest. In 2019 I was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer and this made me think about my life, what I am happy with and what I could not yet put to rest. One thing that came up was to write down my thoughts and perspectives on archaeology, geomancy and prehistory, just for the record. Throughout my life I’ve been more of a geomancer than an archaeologist, though there’s a bit of both in me, and at times it has been challenging to reconcile them. I’m a strange combination of a polymath historian, antiquarian, geopolitics buff, astrologer, crop circle researcher, social activist and humanitarian – or, at least, I have been so. My adult life started in swinging 1960s Liverpool, progressing to the revolution at LSE. I’ve matured a bit since then (some would disagree), coming to understand how revolution, when framed as overthrowing regimes, makes a splash in history but doesn’t bring true, full-spectrum change. Real change is deeper and more thorough, and the shifting of historic megatrends takes time. More time than we often would prefer. This book concerns ways of seeing things and what we start seeing when we look at things in another way. It’s a book of ideas that might or might not stand the test of time or majority agreement, but my hope is that the discussion is widened and deepened hereby. It’s all a question of interpretation. What do we choose to see as evidence? What does such evidence really show? For prehistorians of all kinds, understanding the ancients involves guesswork based on patchy evidence with an abundance of holes and gaps. We don’t know what went on in the heads of the builders and we can deduce it only from the remains they left behind. But they left clues, and sometimes a little intuition and empathic logic help a lot with interpretation. We need to stand in the ancients’ home-made shoes to see how things look from there. They occupied a different world, living by a very different worldview. It’s important to move our understanding toward theirs rather than to attempt to fit their world into ours. This is a big challenge. So do enjoy the ride. It might be a bit bumpy to some readers. The idea is to shake things around and see what emerges. Here’s a reading tip: each part is a mini-book, so you don’t have to read each part in sequence. The primary research behind this book takes the form of the author’s online Maps of Cornwall, found here: www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/maps.html Palden Jenkins Grumbla, Cornwall, 2021

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Trinitarian Prehistorians

Let me clarify what I mean by antiquarian, archaeologist and geomancer, since all three represent approaches to our shared subject that need to work together more than they currently do. An antiquarian has a personal fascination with ancient times, taking a generalist or a specialist approach. Amateurs and the first archaeologists, some antiquarians have had crazy ideas and some have hit the nail right on the head. Some were the forerunners of archaeologists and some are never accepted by them. Some have contributed key pieces to the puzzle, even if their ideas take time to go mainstream. A century or two ago, they were the archaeologists of the time, and many people fascinated with ancient sites today would qualify as modern antiquarians. An archaeologist, professional, academic or pursuing a mainly left-brained approach to prehistory, cleaves to a methodology and paradigm that explores many worthy details, closely examining physical evidence, and this qualifies them for grants, posts and book sales, public and institutional respect and media access. In so doing they contribute to much of the heavy lifting in field investigation, empirical research and explanation, though there’s a problem interpreting ancient sites owing to conceptual problems that we shall come upon as this book progresses. Technological advances have brought an unfolding revolution in archaeology. A new generation of archaeologists has emerged who are a bit more stretchy in viewpoint. Regrettably, archaeology has been subject to paradigm limitations and denial of evidence in recent decades, as people like me are wont to harp on about – and this has consequences. Even so, both archaeologists and antiquarians have done admirable work in Penwith, gathering and interpreting field data, though much of the prehistory of this under-researched part of the world has relied on comparison with sites elsewhere and on judgements rooted in ideas formed and data culled from elsewhere. A geomancer studies prehistory, ancient sites and whole landscapes from an earth energy viewpoint, using dowsing, sacred geometry, alignments, archaeoastronomy and cosmology, utilising a more right-brained, intuitive logic that is usually regarded as countercultural and thus baseless and unfounded. This brings conceptual problems because thinking in geomancy is variegated, at times wildly free-thinking and at times refreshingly commonsensical. Geomancers are adventurous, sometimes ahead of their time and sometimes going off at a tangent, yet this cutting-edge zone provides rich ideas, holding fundamental keys to understanding ancient cultures – and some improperly thought-through and unsystematic ideas that need sorting out too. Archaeologists tend not to consider the full range of evidence that is available – much is rejected because it does not fit today’s academic framework or current groupthink, though this filtration is a human condition that is not unique to them. So we get skewed results and interpretative problems, with a tendency to fit evidence round current theories, viewpoints and cultural biases. Strangely, geomancers understand and accept archaeology more than archaeologists understand or accept geomancy. Archaeologists with a genuine eye and intuition for ancient sites do brilliant work, though at times their best hunches and theories can remain quiet for fear of misjudgement or disadvantage, and this is problematic. When it seems I’m critical, it’s inflexible orthodoxy I’m critical of. Similarly, with antiquarians and geomancers, there’s a fundamental question to answer: does it grow corn? Does it work? We need to set aside ideology and idealism. I encourage readers to adopt an inclusive position. I learned this in my humanitarian work, dealing with freedom fighters, Israeli settlers, soldiers, aggrieved women and frustrated teenagers: everyone has a slice of truth, this is an ongoing process, everyone has something to contribute and everything is worth considering – even when some of it turns out to be incorrect or only partially correct. All of us need to widen our spectrum of admissible evidence, willing to adjust our viewpoints. Astrologer friends of mine helped NASA saving a Mars lander by providing accurate, corrected planetary motion calculations, and Albert Einstein was a dowser – it’s doable.

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Part One | Megalithic Sites 1. Energy-fields

The nub of this book concerns energy-fields and the way that the ancients worked with them – and, if you think about it, it’s possibly a key unconscious reason why you might be rather smitten with visiting ancient sites. But before we go into that, let me introduce you to West Penwith, where I live, and why it’s a surprisingly important area for megalithic sites. West Penwith or Belerion is the ‘toe’ at the far end of Cornwall, in the southwest of the Isles of Britain. Dense with ancient sites, its rich prehistory goes back 6,000 years. The achievements of Britain’s megalithic civilisation are well represented on the peninsula. In the bronze age it was a source of tin, also gold and copper, sitting at the centre of a European maritime Atlantic-coast culture – these two assets played a large part in Penwith’s prehistoric evolution. About West Penwith West Penwith is roughly 16×12 km (10×8 miles) in size. Originally it had over 700 ancient sites big and small. Many are now destroyed or melted into the ground but lots remain. These include neolithic tor enclosures, cliff sanctuaries and quoits around 5,700 years old; stone circles, , cairns and barrows around 4,000 years old; and also fogous, hill camps, rounds, holy wells, early Christian crosses and churches, a mere five centuries to 2,500 years old. There was system to the way Penwith’s megalithic sites were located and built, knitting into an integrated network covering the peninsula. This suggests a purpose greater than the simple erection of individual megalithic sites. This book suggests why the ancients went to such trouble humping around earth and stones for their constructions – big capital investments they no doubt sought a favourable return from, however they saw that. They invested more inspiration and perspiration in their sacred sites than in their homes, villages and material wellbeing. West Penwith is a good place to research ancient sites. It’s a concise area, distinct in size, defined by sea cliffs on three sides and a landward threshold in the east formed by St Michael’s Mount, Trencrom Hill and St Ives’ Head. You don’t have to hike too far or burn up too much fuel to pursue this particular kind of madness. Many people who live in Penwith or who visit here are interested in prehistory, so over time there has been quite a lot of thinking going on. Penwith has a rather special magic atmosphere today – you can feel it. Its landscapes, cliffscapes and seascapes are uplifting and spectacular. It has pretty much the highest density of ancient sites in Europe – strange, for such a small area. Orkney is comparable, at the other end of the isles of Britain – equally strange. But then, in ancient times Penwith was a hub for seagoing traffic across the megalithic world – not as peripheral as it is nowadays. Europe’s megalithic culture stretched along the Atlantic seaboard from today’s Portugal and Galicia in NW Spain to Brittany, Ireland, Britain and southern Scandinavia, also affecting parts of France, Germany, the Low Countries, Sardinia and Malta.1 In Cornwall things hotted up with the building of the first megalithic sites around 3700 BCE and this continued intermittently for two millennia until at least 1500, if not 1200 BCE. That’s a very long time. The British and Irish neolithic and bronze age cultures ran in parallel with advanced

1 Paulsson, B. Schulz, Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe, PNAS, 2019. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/9/3460 9

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters

Old World cultures of the time in Crete, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Harappa (Pakistan) and China. Cornwall’s tin, copper and gold were traded as far as Germany, Spain, Syria and Gaza. Knowledge and protocols established in the megalithic era were known and emulated in the iron age – in Cornwall it lasted for 1,000 years from roughly 800 BCE on – and these principles, mainly mathematical and geomantic, were much later incorporated into the building of medieval churches up to the 1300s, surviving only amongst esotericists and freemasons in the centuries after that. In its heyday, West Penwith had around ten stone circles, of which four survive. Many of its menhirs have been destroyed by farmers, landowners and miners, and half of its quoits are nowadays in a poor state. Many cairns and barrows have melted into the landscape through weather erosion or ploughed down or removed by landowners. Cliff sanctuaries, hilltop enclosures and hill camps (hillforts) are all still there though, protected by the wildness of their locations.

Click here to see this map in detail. Even so, Penwith has around 250 cairns and barrows, nearly 200 known or suspected menhirs and stones (roughly half of them gone) and 250ish other sites. Those that survive are well worth a visit. If you like walking, you can cover a number of them in one hike, and if you’re not so good at walking, some sites can be visited with but a little legwork, but wheelchair access is difficult since

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Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters there are stiles to climb, rough ground to cross and muddy patches in wet weather. Amenable sites for disabled people who can walk 200 metres are the Merry Maidens stone circle, Ballowall Barrow, Lanyon Quoit, Cape Cornwall, Pendeen Watch, St Ives’ Head and St Michael’s Mount. Trencrom Hill with Carn Brea in the distance – two neolithic tor enclosures Welcome to Belerion – the shining land – a name noted down by Greek historian Diodorus Siculus in 60 BCE and still rather pertinent today. It’s the earliest recorded place-name in Britain. The name Penwith is generally accepted to mean ‘far end’ or ‘extremity’. Another possible interpretation, ‘end’ and ‘trees’, was ruled out by etymologist P A S Pool as topographically impossible,2 though perhaps he underestimated how much Penwith indeed was tree-covered in the neolithic before serious felling started. Whatever is the case, Penwith certainly is at the end. In a way it is the heartland of Cornwall, where its traditions and language have lasted longest – though heartlands are usually around the centre of a land. The megalithic era in West Penwith and across Britain spanned more than two millennia – a hundred generations. It was the longest-lasting civilisation Britain has ever seen, comprising two main periods of development. The first lasted several centuries between about 3700 and 3200 BCE. The second lasted a millennium from around 2500 to around 1500 BCE, with its final end around 1200. These two phases were quite different but they had a certain continuity – they’re covered more fully in part three. The Neolithic Period The first period, a half-millennium in the neolithic around 3700-3200, saw the building of the hilltop tor enclosures. In Penwith these are found at St Michael’s Mount, Trencrom Hill, Carn Galva and , and they’re unique to the southwestern peninsula of Britain, though there are similar sites in the Preseli Mountains of Wales and the Peak District of the Pennines. The first such enclosure to be identified was at Carn Brea above Camborne east of Penwith, in sight of Trencrom Hill and many other locations. Important also to neolithic people were the cliff sanctuaries (customarily called cliff castles). These are normally dated to the iron age around 400 BCE to 100 CE, but I urge reconsideration and will present good reasons later. Archaeologists identify the boundary ‘ramparts’ of cliff sanctuaries as iron age in origin, but this decides only the antiquity of those earth and stone banks. The most remarkable megalithic constructions of this time were the quoits (cromlechs or ), located in the northern, upland part of Penwith, the centre of activity in the neolithic. Chûn Quoit In engineering terms, these were the trickiest and most advanced constructions of the whole megalithic period, involving the raising of multi-ton capstones. Moving capstones and keeping them intact would have been an enormous challenge. The quoits were not built

2 Pool, P A S, The Place Names of West Penwith, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, 1973. 11

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters to be tombs, as they are often described: I suggest they served as energy-chambers. Again, this will all be explained later. The neolithic 3000s also saw the erection of placed, propped and oriented stones. Placed stones were rocks that were moved short distances to install them in interesting, rather artistic locations, as if to enhance nature’s enchanting visual magic – rather like a prehistoric art installation. Some even have a certain humour to their placing. Placed stone on Sperris Croft (Zennor Hill) Propped stones were rocks raised up from the ground, often at one end, with one or a few smaller stones placed underneath. There were probably a few different purposes behind them, but propped stones remain a mystery. You can find quite a few up on Zennor Hill and Carn Galva but it helps to have a ‘magical eye’ when seeking them. Later, in the bronze age, some menhirs were propped too. Oriented stones are mostly found around the coast of Penwith. They have at least one flattish edge, and they were dug into the ground to stand vertically with the flattish edge oriented toward a distant site such as a hill or headland. Oriented stones have not been noticed by archaeologists. There’s more about all these later. The Bronze Age Things went very quiet for around 700 years. Around 2500 BCE things changed. The culture of that time developed new ideas and a new class of ancient sites gradually appeared across Britain. Archaeologists in Penwith tend not to date such sites earlier than 2500 and they’re probably largely correct, but revisions to this dating might be necessary – this long gap in Penwith’s prehistory is a wee bit spurious. Nothing happened? New ideas and people were entering Cornwall from Brittany and Iberia in the centuries around 2500-2200, bringing with them new knowledge, as well as capability in working in copper and, later, bronze. But the chances are that many bronze age trends in Britain were first developed by the locals before the incomers came, who then gave it new impetus. The beaker influx is so named after a characteristic style of drinking pot these people brought with them (they brought social boozing too). They are thought by some to have been forerunners of the Celts and, with their arrival, the bronze age lifted off. The megalithic era took on a new shape and, over the centuries, a profusion of stone circles, menhirs, cairns and barrows, sacred enclosures and other sites appeared. The principles developed in the neolithic were taken much further, with more science and system involved. The had intuitively located their sites on top of energy-vortices generated by upwelling blind springs and intersections of underground water lines. They also made use of astronomical, landscape and other factors. Penwith evolved into a kind of megalithic national park: bronze age people created a large-scale project that eventually covered the Penwith peninsula – and they turned sacred site location and design into a science. They did this, amongst other things, by expanding the principle of aligning ancient sites. There was a naturalesque, organic evolution to the way they did it, without the kind of logical master-plan we moderns might cook up. But there was system to it nonetheless. The neolithic was more like poetry, more intuitive, while the bronze age was more like prose, more formulaic and designed.

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Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters

Energy-Fields One reason many people like visiting ancient sites is that they affect our feelings and mood. You come away with your view of life subtly reset, a smile comes to your face, you feel rather different and sometimes you come out shining. Something about them is special, distinct in tone and atmosphere, even when compared with other special or beautiful places out in nature. This is because, when you visit them, you are entering a multidimensional energy-field. It’s heretical to say this, sad to say. The evidence lies in noticing and observing your feelings, registering those feelings and taking them seriously. Somehow the depth and significance of experience is magnified. When you leave, note whatever has changed in you between the time you entered and the time you left. What is different in your state, mood and optic? Mȇn an Tol, originally a stone circle The character of this experience depends on several factors, depending on the time you visit, your motivation and respect, how openly you and the place interact with each other, what you do, and don’t do, how the place itself is feeling at the time, and also there’s a mysterious ‘factor X’, a magical concatenation of conditions that makes some visits to an ancient site extra memorable. These kinds of variables influence the character of our experience of ancient sites when we visit them on different occasions – and perhaps their experience of us, too. We don’t understand how this consciousness effect works. The principle here is that containing, fixing and enhancing energy-fields seems to be a key reason why ancient sites were built, and why they were placed and designed as they were. These energy-fields are neither easy to measure nor to understand rationally. This presents a problem. It isn’t difficult to feel or sense subtle energy, instinctually or semi-consciously – if you’re capable of feeling love, you’re capable of feeling energy, and it started at birth. But it is more difficult to square it with our overlaid, educated rationality which, together with fears, conditioning and deep- seated emotional armouring, tends to edit, obstruct, corrupt or suppress our sensitivities. It’s also difficult to develop instrumentation to measure the full range of frequencies involved. That’s where things get stuck. We tend to want to understand ancient sites and their builders on our terms, as if our current evidential systems and worldview are the only ones possible or valid. But prehistoric sites exist on terms of their own, revealing another order of things. A classic example is the excuse used to discard the remarkable stone circle and astronomical surveying work of Prof Alexander Thom in the 1940s-70s. Archaeologists such as Aubrey Burl and Clive Ruggles reject large swathes of it, insisting that astronomical orientations as seen from stone circles – the rising or setting points of sun or moon at different times of year – must point toward a visible man-made object or ‘foresight’ such as a , not toward a natural feature on the horizon, since ‘a tempting notch in a hillside is unacceptable because it cannot be proved to have mattered to the builders of a megalithic ring’ (to quote Burl).3 This, despite the evidence that, at large numbers of ancient sites around Britain, including in Penwith, natural landscape features are clearly and repeatedly highlighted by sun and moon rises and sets. Their objection happens conveniently to disqualify much of the evidence that exists, for reasons that aren’t entirely rational or evidential. It sounds like a rational objection when in actuality it reinforces an ideological position and bias. It’s a bit like saying that if you don’t eat fish and chips you aren’t British.

3 Burl, Aubrey, A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany, Yale Univ, 1995 & 2005, p18. 13

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So, unless archaeoastronomical evidence conforms to the requirements of the modern mindset, it cannot be accepted. Yet orientations toward distant notches, peaks and slopes on the horizon are very common and far more accurate than orientations to standing stones – to be visible, the latter must often be closer than features on the horizon, and thus less accurate for astronomical readings. Megalith builders did not build sites to please sceptics of 4,000 years in the future, and modern thinkers find the idea that the ancients could take accurate astronomical readings to be abhorrent. That ancient sites exist on their own terms is an awkward issue, so it’s mostly disregarded, and many good theories and observations are thus rejected. But it’s a key issue. The late philosopher Stanley Messenger called this problem, for short, APICHTID: a priori it cannot happen, therefore it doesn’t – the matter is pre-decided so we won’t investigate. However, there is a strong counter-argument to this too: ancient sites cannot be understood without recognising and studying their energy-fields. Shamanic Culture The ancients’ perception of life and the world is what we could call shamanic. This is crucial to our understanding of the megalithic era. A shaman, female or male, is a knowledge-holder, healer, counsellor, magician, teacher and tribal minder who can use trance, meditation and psychic capacities to enter deeper realms, to become the deity, to talk with the wind, to engage face-to-face with deeper, hidden influences that affect the community and the world. A person became a shaman through innate aptitude, though it also passed down genetic lines, and they were frequently identified early in life and then trained up. There would be lineages of shamans through which the ways, insights and practices were transmitted from mentor to neophyte, but much of the practice would have been in isolation since spiritual skills and the source of truth had to be developed within. ‘God’ was immanent, within all things, more than transcendent, above all things. Each tribe and locality would have had its own culture and shamanic ways, developed from collective dreaming, localised experience and the facts of its life. It is non-institutional, spiritual and magical, there’s no scripture to it and it isn’t a religion. It’s an indigenous, autochthonous naturalesque approach to life and spirit, born and bred where it stands. People felt a need to harmonise with the subtleties, parameters, periodicities and laws of heaven and earth, with the invisible realms, forces and beings within and around them. We don’t know how they saw this, but there are good signs that they had ways of doing it, and that all of the people were involved. The wider tribe needed contact with those realms through the tribe’s natural psychics, intuitives, shamans and medicine-people, some probably being the autistics of the tribe. Even so, in the neolithic this wasn’t a priesthood. Each person had their own path to follow, and their ancestors, guardians and deities were seen to be involved with the conduct of their lives. Different shamans had differing forms of expertise. Some were geomancers, knowledgeable in location and design of sacred sites and in the subtle energy technologies that made sacred sites work. By the bronze age, things had moved on from a ‘tribal shaman’ stage to a more widespread, organised, partially mendicant, class of what in the iron age became known as druids – oak seers. Their knowledge spanned engineering, astronomy, astrology, surveying, logistics, geometry, metrology (measurement systems), esoterics, law and leadership, and they took it to an academic level. Ancient geomancers sought to engineer the consciousness and intelligence within nature, creating sacred spaces in which shamanic inner work could be amplified. That’s a key theme of this book – consciousness engineering. This was a practical, economic, ecological and psychosocial issue rolled into one, and this kind of idea is coming into a new focus today with our current concerns about sustainability – an issue that goes deeper than we like to believe, to a subtle energy level. Our world is in trouble environmentally, economically, technologically, socially and psychospiritually. Studying ancient sites is not just a fascination with the past: it has something to do with the present and the future. 14

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Alignments So what is all this about alignments? Criticised, disregarded and discredited, this phenomenon, dubbed leylines and popularised in the late 1960s by John Michell, is not just a fancy or spurious idea. All of the alignments marked on the maps made for this research, with some exceptions detailed later, are accurate to within just three metres, on alignments stretching a long way. They are easy to check on maps and they’re solidly evidential. Their crucial importance in the design and location of ancient sites is grossly overlooked, even though their capacity to shed light on the purpose and meaning of megalithic sites is enormous. Alignments are fully covered in Part Five. You can find the various ancient site and alignments maps of West Cornwall online here: www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/maps.html. The maps are in two formats: one is on Google Maps – the most regularly updated, zoomable and informative version – and the other is in the form of JPG images you can download and keep. Both are free to access online.

For a detailed online version of this map, click here. The ancients deliberately aligned their prehistoric sites with each other – not every site to every other site, but selectively, for specific reasons. These alignments are exact. They are not actual

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Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters lines across the landscape: the lines we draw are mapping devices showing where ancient sites are aligned with each other. We mark them as lines to indicate their presence and test their accuracy. Aligned sites are like objects spaced in an exact row on a table with nothing connecting them. These alignments form a complete system covering Penwith, with some extending to the Scillies, the Lizard, the rest of Cornwall and further afield. Alignments often stretch between sites with some sort of connection with each other, when judged by type of site, age of construction or other commonalities. With some alignments, certain kinds of site such as menhirs or barrows predominate. In some cases it is also clear that newer sites, built in the iron age or later, were deliberately located on pre-existing alignments. I’m surprised and bewildered at the number of alignments that have appeared. I started by mapping alignments found by preceding researchers and, in the process, found many more. These are not manufactured, quite a few have been rejected and, if even further rigorous checking were done, only a few alignments would legitimately be removed. This leaves the remaining, evidentially-sound alignments. My preference would be to have fewer alignments – it would involve less work! The foundation of the alignments network was laid down in the mid-neolithic around 3700 BCE and, from the very beginning, the ancients seem to have been thinking big, establishing backbone alignments over quite long distances. How they worked these out is anybody’s guess. Backbone alignments (marked in yellow on the maps) signify a burst of genius, suggesting that there was a caucus of brainy people working on this idea. The idea might have been imported, indigenous or a fusion. The neolithic backbone alignments formed a substructure onto which the more complex bronze age alignments system was later grafted. Most bronze age sites were placed on an ever more complex array of local alignments (marked on the maps in red). The location of Chûn Quoit on the slope below Chûn Castle makes little logical sense when you first see it, yet it was placed on top of the upwelling vortex of a blind spring – and this is likely to be the main reason for its location. It was also positioned so that the winter solstice sun set neatly behind a nick in the outline of Carn Kenidjack a mile away. Brilliant. A few alignments pass to or through it from St Ives Head, Bosigran Castle, Carn Galva, Zennor Quoit, Bosiliack Barrow, Carfury menhir and Lanyon Quoit. Some of these will have been established at the time of building Chûn Quoit and some would have come afterwards. They did all this for good reasons. We must assume this. They had reasons good enough to justify going to all the sweat and bother of building a big stone quoit – including sourcing and transporting the constituent rocks, erection and consecration – which probably took quite a few seasons’ hard work for a team of people and their support network. Later, in the bronze age, geomancers applied a more sophisticated kind of science, locating sites such as menhirs or cairns not solely because of the perceived significance the place itself – its spirit of place – but also because these sites networked well with others. Sites were located for far more calculated reasons, with mathematical, geometric, astronomical or subtle-energy principles behind them. Good work on this subject has been done by researchers over the decades and there is yet far more to find out. How Alignments Work To demonstrate how alignments affect the location of ancient sites, let’s look at the three bright red alignments shown on the map below. These three alignments define the positions of Lanyon Quoit, Boscawen-ûn and the Nine Maidens – three key sites. Staking down these alignments are several coastal cliff sanctuaries – St Michael’s Mount, Treryn Dinas, Maen Castle and Pendeen Watch – plus two tor enclosures – Trencrom Hill and Carn Brea above Camborne. (St Michael’s Mount is regarded both as a neolithic tor and as a cliff sanctuary). Without these neolithic sites, Lanyon Quoit could not be located where it was put. 16

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These alignments suggest that cliff sanctuaries were neolithic in first use, around 3700-3500 BCE. They stand on natural coastal headlands, and the three backbone alignments shown on the map, plus others like them, involve cliff sanctuaries and neolithic tor enclosures, thus associating both with each other. The importance in the earlier 3000s of these two kinds of sites lay in the fact that Britain was then mostly covered in endless forest and, in Penwith, these were places where people could get out of the wildwood – thus they were important sites at that time. The alignments define the position of Lanyon Quoit, which was built around 3700-3500 BCE. Thus use of the cliff sanctuaries must be of a similar or greater antiquity to Lanyon Quoit, since their location defines its position. While the stone circles were built later, around 2500-2200 BCE, these alignments suggest that their sites might have been known and revered in the neolithic, even though the stone circles themselves came much later. An alignment from St Michael’s Mount to Boscawen-ûn continues exactly through Maen Castle to the Chapel Downs cairns on St Martin’s, Scilly, ending at the prominent Samson Hill on Bryher, which on a clear day is visible from the Penwith mainland. Meanwhile, an alignment from Treryn Dinas to Boscawen-ûn continues through Lanyon Quoit and the chambered cairn of Bosiliack Barrow, ending at a menhir (now just a stump) only thirty paces NW of Nine Maidens stone circle. So Lanyon Quoit’s position is defined by these alignments, and also by another from Carn Brea to Trencrom Hill (both neolithic tors), then to Lanyon Quoit, then to Boswens menhir, a feeder, relay or proxy menhir for the Tregeseal stone circle complex. Thus we can say that the bronze age stone circle complexes are positioned in relation to the neolithic tor enclosures and cliff castles. Backbone alignments are demonstrated to be neolithic in origin, and Lanyon Quoit’s location verifies this. The backbone alignments are anchored in the cliff sanctuaries – thus they too are neolithic. The alignments shown on the map demonstrate that there is no way that they can be accidental, as sceptics might assert. They involve key sites in Penwith, and the chances of their being accidentally aligned with each other in multiple cases are close to zero. These alignments are deliberately built, accurate, verifiable and solidly evidential. Nationalisation The discovery of an integrated system covering Penwith has implications for our understanding of ancient sites across Britain, since similar systems presumably existed in other regions. West Penwith has a concentration of sites of a kind found in about fifteen comparable areas across Britain. Two neighbouring concentrations are on Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor. Most of these core areas are located in the west and north of Britain, also in Ireland, though all parts of Britain and

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Ireland are variously covered with ancient sites and alignments, with a variety of densities. Penwith is Britain’s densest. Although areas where these concentrations are found were enhanced, enchanted and upgraded by such landscape-engineering work, each area also contributed to a larger national network of megalithic regions – the technical similarities between sites across Britain indicate this – and there was a purpose behind it. It was a national project with core commonalities across the country, though with many local uniquenesses, and it suggests that a caucus of knowledge-holders and artisans travelled the land sharing their expertise – the sophistication of the mathematics and astronomy involved suggest that megalithic knowledge was not simply passed around amongst ordinary laypeople. The existence of this caucus suggests a level of connectivity that rendered Britain, Ireland and Brittany into one culture-zone and Britain into a loose proto-nation, albeit with regional variations. We shall next look at the reasons why the ancients built their megalithic sites. Or at least, those reasons that are identifiable in our time, with our current knowledge.

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2. Why were Megaliths built?

Ah, this is the big question. In the megalithic era people were thoroughly dependent on nature and its cycles. Their beliefs involved a sympathetic magic that sought to engage with hidden forces in nature and the invisible world. Yet they were well enough organised to carry out considerable engineering works and knowledgeable enough to incorporate astronomy, mathematics and ancient sciences into these works. This shamanic culture was rural and ‘primitive’ yet sophisticated.

The megalith-builders lived relatively simply, materially speaking. Their biggest investments of effort went into megalithic sites, not so much into villages and farmland improvement. Initially ancient Penwithians impacted minimally on the landscape – they were far outsized by it. Their ecological impacts were small-scale. Their megalithic constructions were placed in remarkable locations with amazing settings and vistas, with artistry, love and magical intent. Stone circles and menhirs were not just monuments – a lot of sophisticated thought went into them. Evidential Issues One of archaeology’s difficulties is that much of the best evidence used in research such as radiocarbon dating is by necessity organic. This, over the centuries, dissolves in the rainy acid soils of Cornwall, and modern instruments don’t do well with dating stones, the more enduring remains. So there is a dating problem. Another difficulty is the secular nature of archaeology, weak in understanding shamanic, prehistoric perceptions, knowledge and practices – the depth and profundity of human reverence for nature has largely been missed. This reverence was a big driver for ancient peoples – if you doubt this, just go camping under the stars for a few months and you’ll get it, especially on a sopping wet day after a Cornish gale has just screeched through. One way through this evidential problem is experimental archaeology, and the irony here is that the most advanced researchers in this area are dirty hippies. Living outside under rain and stars in improvised, lightweight dwellings, baking flatbreads on a fire, getting a damp ass, learning how to poo without toilet paper and having insects crawl over you in your sleep reveal many things about the daily-life realities of Penwithians four to six millennia ago. This can help in understanding what this lightweight, shamanic lifestyle involves and, as a result, quite a few archaeological questions can be sorted out with the application of a little commonsense out in the field. But this has a lot to do with worldviews, what is accepted as admissible evidence, how such evidence is interpreted and who judges it. Archaeology nevertheless carries out valuable work in producing physical evidence and data. New, less intrusive technologies and means of data analysis are revealing much without the need to dig up and destroy sites or disturb their innate integrity. Archaeology’s weakness lies in biases of interpretation that sometimes make it resemble the pseudo-science that archaeologists accuse geomancers of practising, and if neolithic and bronze age people were alive today, archaeologists would legitimately be accused of cultural superiority and racism. In Penwith, archaeologists ascribe defensive and funerary purposes to far more ancient sites than is warranted – these errors began 2-3 centuries ago and remain largely uncorrected. The elephant in the room is geomancy, which can throw much light on our understanding of prehistoric sites. There is virtue in widening the evidential spectrum. Here’s an example. A local archaeologist discovered a menhir (now dubbed the Seal Stone at Bosistow, SW 3653 2338), but he wasn’t sure about it – plenty of stones in Penwith could be menhirs but they are not. This was an unusually- shaped stone, uncannily resembling a seal – but then, close by, seal caves lie under Carn Barra and the stone points straight toward them. Here, a magical eye comes in useful!

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After a little research, I found that the stone lies at the exact intersection of three alignments and the terminus of one, three of them extending to significant sites across Penwith. The chances of this being accidental when it’s accurate to within three metres are very slim, so this evidence verifies the authenticity of the stone. The Seal Stone can be recognised as a legitimate menhir sitting in its proper location. The Bosistow Seal Stone Thus inadmissible evidence provided by geomancy can add evidential value to an archaeological discovery. Without such evidence, this menhir would fail to have been recognised as genuine, or we would remain unsure. There now follow a succession of propositions derived from geomancy and dowsing that outline how ancient sites operate from an earth energy viewpoint. There is both variation and commonality of opinion on these issues, and this is an attempted summation. Frequencies The earth is an energy-resonator vibrating at around 7.83 Hertz (the Schumann Resonance4), and this modulates marginally over time. This fluctuation has a measurable effect on bioregulation and human psychology.5 Modern instrumentation can measure magnetic and radiation anomalies, infrared, infrasound and ultrasonic effects, electronic charge, heat and other such frequencies but not the full spectrum and range that dowsers and sensitives pick up when they discover what is rather inadequately called earth energy.6 Soviet scientists got closer to this than Western ones. In the West we think of particles, things, as the fundamental building blocks of matter – and our concepts unfold accordingly from there. In the Soviet Union scientists looked more closely at frequencies and wavelengths. This permitted them to encompass neurological, psychological, paraphysical and borderline areas of research7 – psychobiophysics or parapsychology. In the 1970s I met a Soviet scientist who had discovered that the chimes of Russian church bells measurably affected soil fertility to a distance of many kilometres. He found that their infrasound frequencies reached at least four times further than their audible sound, producing similar soil fertility effects further afield. Seeing things like this in terms of wavelengths, it starts becoming more plausible that stone circles act as energy-resonators affecting the wider landscape. The grinding of the earth’s inner core with its outer shell generates planet-scale energy-fields that organise themselves on the surface in distributive arteries and capillaries, concentrating in some locations more than others. West Penwith sits on a granite raft that pushes deeper into the earth than the crust in many other places – underground it is the hottest place in Europe, a massive geothermal generator. The roots of such rafts go deep. Penwith’s geological taproots are deepest at tors and carns (outcrops), and this makes these into natural energy-centres. They are tors and carns because of this too – it’s all in the variable consistency of granite and how it formed.

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances 5 Schumann Resonances and their Effect on Human Bioregulation, Bioregulatory Medicine Inst, 2019. https://www.brmi.online/post/2019/09/20/schumann-resonances-and-their-effect-on-human-bioregulation 6 The Dragon Project and the Talking Stones, Don Robins, New Scientist, 21 Oct 1982. Online republication: https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/ns_robins/pages/main.html | The Dragon Project Trust: http://www.dragonprojecttrust.org/research 7 For a Soviet list of references on parapsychology, try this: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP96-00788R001300230001-3.pdf 20

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The crystalline structure of Penwith’s granite raft resonates at frequencies not found everywhere. Quartz and mica, around 20% of granite’s composition, act like a battery, an information and memory store or a transformer. You can feel this in Penwith – there is something about the subtle magic of the peninsula that is not so easily felt elsewhere, and it’s not just the scenery. The quartz stone at Boscawen-ûn Penwith is dense in earth energy. This loose term covers a range of frequencies unsatisfactorily described by other means. The frequencies that dowsers pick up transmit easiest through the medium of water, a relatively good conductor compared with rock, as well as through veins of metal and faultlines – and rock itself varies in its conductivity or resistance. These millivolt frequencies concentrate in places where underground water-flow conditions are right or metal deposits exist. Penwith has plenty of both, and many ancient sites are associated with them. Underground Water It all centres around blind springs (water domes). These are upward-moving seepages or flows of primary water or juvenile water – a by-product of electrochemical reactions and grinding power generation deep within the earth. This water has neither seen the light of day nor has it been part of the rainfall cycle. These flows carry nutrients and charged geo-electromagnetic and subtle energies upwards.8 They meet relatively impervious layers of rock at different depths, being forced to splay out into roughly radial underground streamlets or seepages moving more horizontally than before – wherever the rock strata guide it. But while the water is diverted sideways, carrying energy with it, the vertical riser (there are also sinks) radiates a vortex or whorl of subtle energy to the surface – this is a blind spring. It’s an energy spring from deep down, not a water spring. So two kinds of energy are picked up by dowsers and sensitives: the vertical vortex and the splaying patterns of streamlets and seepages that were sent sideways, registering at the surface as energy lines, spirals and other patterns. Different dowsers pick up different things, but the general gist of what they pick up is similar. Blind springs are crucial in determining the location of major ancient sites such as stone circles, which seem always to be located on top of them. Primary water has no hydrological connection with secondary water, derived from the rainfall cycle. Rain falls to earth, soaks into the soil, forming its own flows and seepages, and it is released through springs, streams, underground rivers, evaporation and plant evapotranspiration, to be recycled into the atmosphere, the sea or underground aquifers. Primary water, pressurised and pushed up from below, energy-charged though not always as voluminous as secondary water, rises through fissures, cracks and porous rocks in veins and underground trickles. Primary and secondary water thus have different sources and properties. Going far back in geological time, primary water is probably the source of all, or nearly all, water on earth.9 Primary water veins form what, on the surface, appear to dowsers as sinuous subtle-energy lines, radiating out across the ground from blind springs, emanating energy radiations that can be dowsed. A blind spring creates an energy-vortex, rising into the air like a plasmic bubble, a concentrated energy-field and energy-gusher that can be captured and entrained. To add spice to the formula, straight overground energy-lines (energy leys) are observed to connect these vortices

8 Brooker, Charles, Magnetism and the Standing Stones, New Scientist, 13 Jan 1983. See also, Gawn, Billy, Up & Down & Round & Round, Mid-Atlantic Geomancy, 1996. https://www.geomancy.org/index.php/mag-e-zine/mag-e- zine-1996/no-4-winter-solstice/up-down-round-round 9 About primary water: https://akvopedia.org/wiki/Primary_water and http://www.primarywaterinstitute.org 21

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters into an uncanny latticework across the landscape – and this is remarkable. Sinuous underground lines can be regarded as negatively-charged or yin, while straight overgrounds can be regarded as positively-charged or yang in character, and this dual circuitry is interactive. However, these energy-lines are different from ancient site alignments – this is explained later. A blind spring can rise to a level that is nevertheless quite deep down, but those under stone circles and certain other sites seem to come higher up – and this makes their energy-fields at the surface quite powerful. The level and strength of this emanation can vary with such things as the phases of the moon (higher at fullmoon, lower at newmoon), seasonal changes and energy-fluxes connected with planetary line-ups. Understanding this much about blind springs is crucial to understanding stone circles, which thus can be seen to be focused, concentrated energy-resonators, energy-containers and amplifiers, enhancing and fixing energy-fields. As you might observe when visiting a stone circle, they affect your state of mind and your spirits. This psychoactive effect is important. It might be the most important issue. Meanwhile, underground water-lines can mosey on for some distance. Sometimes two of them cross at different levels, while flowing through different strata, and an energy-vortex forms at ground level over that crossing point. These have less intensity than blind springs, but the ancients were interested in them nonetheless, often locating menhirs, cairns and barrows on top of them. Such a vortex seems to have an alternating up-down directionality, pulsing in tune with the cycles and configurations of the moon, sun and planets. This periodicity has not been fully and systematically studied in the field (it’s an enormous task), so we don’t know for sure what its patterns and cycles are, or how much they vary from site to site. But it has been studied patchily and it does happen, observably – you can feel it, dowse it or muscle-test it, if you visit a site repeatedly over time to observe its periodicities and variations. The up-down movement of such a vortex seems to alternate or reverse on roughly the sixth day after a new or full moon, just before the waxing or waning halfmoons – according to dowser Tom Graves in his seminal 1970s book Needles of Stone.10 The maximum upward rate of motion, he observed, is in the two days before fullmoon, and the maximum downward motion is in the two days before newmoon, before they peak and trough respectively at full and new moon time. Solar eclipse over Sancreed Beacon, spring equinox 2015 This fluctuation is emphasised at eclipses. In terms of energy-strength, lunar eclipses are super-fullmoons and solar eclipses are super- newmoons – the lining up of sun, earth and moon are more exact than at most new and full moons. By observing eclipses, the ancients could fix their measurement of solar and lunar cycles, gaining accurate readings that otherwise were not possible – total eclipses occur only when the line-up is precise and accurate since, amazingly, the sun and moon are both the same size in the sky. They could also map out the periodicities of subtle energy and its relationship with soil fertility, weather, tides, rainfall, river flows, bird migration, psychosocial dynamics and consciousness states. But eclipses are special too as magical moments when the doors of perception are opened, portentous and uncannily still moments can arise, and things begin and end – they are potent switch-points in the behaviour of energy and its effect on nature and humans. Planetary line-ups are important. Each planet is a thrumming energy-resonator, as is our planet, with radiated energy-fields that spread along the plane of the solar system, interacting with other planets’ energy-fields, pulsing and causing reverberations in them. Planets don’t influence us as if

10 Graves, Tom, Needles of Stone, Turnstone Books, 1978, Grey House in the Woods, 2008. 22

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters we were puppets on a string: they hum and cross-resonate with each other, affecting us on earth by modulating earth’s own frequency-patterns. We don’t live on earth but in it, inside its energy-field and completely affected by it, our main option being to have either a conscious or an unconscious relationship, to be in tune with it or to be at its effect. Much of the scientific research on this has been stuffed in the back of drawers or blatantly suppressed, but a key clue came from an RCA radio engineer in the 1940s who was researching fluctuations in short wave radio waves, who found distinct correlations with the motion of planets and the angles (aspects) they form between each other.11 Neither an astrologer nor interested in it, he sought to understand radio interference patterns, trying all options. Some planetary alignments can be powerful in the way they affect events and developments. The Covid-19 pandemic, and all that went with it, took place during a drawn-out line-up of Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, and the progression of pandemic-related developments can be tracked by looking at the angles the sun formed to this line-up during the course of 2020. Energy follows paths of least resistance, and such fluctuations in energy-weather are funnelled and reverberate through power points in the landscape, since they are centres of connectivity and energy-flow. Energy-weather affects all living systems, especially during energy-surges, turbulence or storms and, in doing so, it winkles out vulnerabilities, be they in events, traffic flows, hospital A&E units, financial markets, swarms of insects or virus outbreaks, or in situations we find ourselves in. The critical issue for megalith-builders was to engineer energy-conductors or transducers, channelling energy through the right places in what they deemed to be the best way, to smooth out spikes and surges and to entrain and harness energy-tides and surges. As with the wind when sailing, they had to catch the breeze when it was blowing. At ancient sites you have to catch the energy-fluxes to get the best results in magical-spiritual work. This is why, when you visit Boscawen-ûn or any other site on multiple occasions, some visits might be pleasant though unremarkable, while others can be really special and memorable. It has a lot to do with the overall energy configuration and your own state of being at that time. Since energy follows the path of least resistance, it becomes a question of the degree to which we ourselves resist or permit ourselves to feel such energy and allow it to work through us. At vortex locations the ancients built mounds and quoits, stones or stone circles, and they probably also planted special trees, now long gone. The Algonquin people of New England planted ‘talking trees’ on special spots, training tree branches into unusual shapes. They would hang offerings in the trees. These trees spoke, and they were situated in places where you could get the message. If you hang out at ancient sites – some are better for this than others, and everyone has their preferences – they will talk to you too. In their language. To hear and understand at least a few whispers, relax, give it time, set aside brain-chattering, let your psyche freewheel and see what comes up. Just be. Whatever comes up – impressions, images, ideas or feelings – might not make immediate sense, or you might get it later. Or subsequent experiences or events might suddenly make things click. It might concern personal issues, seemingly random impressions, feelings about the place or occasional blitzing insights but, in some way, everything is relevant. This is intuitive archaeology or psychometry. Hold a pebble or sit by a stone and see what it says. Reality-fields There’s a connection between underground water, subtle energy concentrations and consciousness, and the ancients sought to exploit this connection. This is a key proposition of this book. At an ancient site you will notice a change in your mood, thoughts, understanding and state of being. If you practice meditation or have other ways of generating altered states, you will discover

11 http://www.planetaryeffects.com (scroll down to ‘John Henry Nelson’); https://www.eham.net/article/8828 23

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters properties of such energy-spaces that are not present elsewhere. They aren’t even the same as other inspiring places such as a beauty spot or a medieval cathedral. These properties might include a capacity to feel your way imaginally to the centre of the earth, or upwards to the far reaches of the universe, or horizontally toward distant people and places. You might experience healing or the resolution or relaxation of issues that trouble you. You might go back in time. You might think of someone you haven’t thought of for thirty years. You might see something in your mind’s eye. You might believe nothing special is happening and that you’re utterly useless at it, but try not to be harsh in self-judgement and look further – something is happening. Wait for it. It’s not uncommon to meet interesting people at such sites – this too is one of their mysterious and illogical properties. Or, when you arrive, people are leaving, and when you are leaving, someone else arrives – this happens to me quite often at Boscawen-ûn, as if the place has a will of its own. You might have time-warps when twenty minutes seem like three hours, or hear strange sounds or… somethings… or you might sense presences, or see someone else’s energy-field, or you might experience peace, openness or stimulus. Serendipities are amplified. The Mȇn an Tol There’s more to this. By containing and funnelling energy in stone circles, sacred enclosures or kerbed cairns, the subtle-energy connectivity between the earth and the heavens is enhanced, becoming increasingly psychoactive. A super-concentrated reality-field is created within which the rules and the way things work operate rather differently – there’s a sense of magnified intensity of hereness or focality at ancient sites that isn’t only psychologically subjective but also psycho-geographic – that is, it affects our space-perception and even the landscape or weather itself. Hm, now that’s a stretch, but wait: here are a few anecdotes that might help you remember similar experiences you might have had. Around 1990 I participated in a ceremony drawn from the oldest recorded ceremony known, a Roman invocation of Venus, translated from Latin, brought to our group of 80ish people by an academic historian who conducted the ceremony. It even involved blood sacrifice – each of us pricking a finger to extract a drop to add to a bowl of blood contributed by the people present (the blood was later buried ceremonially). It was deeply moving and, at the end, we were all suitably transmogrified – that ‘incredible lightness of being’ feeling. It had been persistently cloudy and a bit cold but, as we ended, the skies suddenly cleared. Guess what, unforeseen by us, in the west a beautiful conjunction of the crescent moon and Venus emerged, with Venus positioned exactly between the outstretched arms of the moon. Spellbinding. Yeah, pure coincidence, of course. Even the professor was gobsmacked. Some people were moved to shed a tear. On another occasion in 1985, at the end of a conference I ran in Glastonbury, a hundred or so of us trooped up the Tor, sang, wove round in human chains and landed up chanting in a big group hug that went on for ages. Then someone said, “Look!”. There above us was a big, bright rainbow. In another instance I spoke from the main stage at the Glastonbury Festival. It had been cloudy, dull and rainy for a long time. I asked the sea of faces, perhaps 50,000 strong, to raise their hands, to yell and ask for a hole to appear in the clouds. Nothing happened. Oh well. I finished off and went offstage. Then, suddenly, out came the sun – and with it, an enormous roar from the crowd. The next band, just offstage and ready to roll, were looking at me, thinking, “Shit, who is this guy?”. Want more? In Bethlehem in the West Bank of Palestine, where I was sitting working on a report on my computer, a racket started up. I learned later that an Islamic Jihad fighter was being chased.

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Israeli army vehicles were pouring into the city and helicopters were menacing overhead. It had been a bright, sunny day in the 30s. Suddenly, out of nowhere, and very unusually, clouds came in off the Judaean Desert (yes, off a desert) and, even more unusually, they shrouded the town in mist, forcing the helicopters to retreat. Losing their cover, the army had to retreat. Alhamdulillah (thanks be to God), said my workmate, and we got back to our computers. Well, magic happens. Or try this. I initiated the Hundredth Monkey Project in the mid-1990s.12 We ran spiritual work- camps for 120ish people, to work in meditation and group process with the geopolitical and humanitarian issues of the day. One year, we gave five hours of focused attention to forest fires in the Amazon basin, happening at that time. We worked on it for hours, using meditation and group- process, and it was a powerful experience for everyone – hard work too. Next day, on the news, to our surprise we heard that rain had indeed fallen and the fires were damping down in Amazonia. But then floods came and several people were killed. This was sobering – we debated this at length. Be careful what you pray for. Next year there were fires in Indonesia. This time we visualised gradual, consistent drizzle. Amazingly, it worked. The fires were dead in one week. Now, we cannot claim to have created this outcome in a simple cause-and-effect sense, and it is unwise to make such claims. But we can say that we worked on these issues at the very time, on the very day that something critical shifted, and that was significant – presumably we played a part in the process. Believe me, it was profound and moving stuff. When we were on form we were visualising things so strongly that we were there. To sceptics this is plain nuts, wishful thinking and even dangerous – and yes, so it seems to be, when seen from a sceptical viewpoint. But such things have been done over time by many people in many parts of the world, and they still are being done today. This isn’t new. And, at times it felt like tedious hard work, all for nothing – it is important to continue with such work without seeking prescribed results. The idea for that project had started ten years earlier. In spring 1986 I was running an earth mysteries camp for about 200 people. On the arrivals day people came with news, heard on their car radios, that Chernobyl had melted down. OMG. End-of-the-world feelings came up. We debated this intensely for several days. Tears were cried, angst was gone through. One day, a man came to me, saying he was going to take his wife and kids home because they couldn’t be out there under nuclear rain. Later that day I saw him in the dinner queue. “Weren’t you going home?”. “Yes, we drove 25 miles and realised that, if we were going to die, we’d prefer to die with you lot, not alone, so we came back.” Amazing. A day later we did a big group meditation, imaginally joining hands to fly together to Chernobyl to cover the reactor with our bodies. Phew, that was strong, and everyone felt it. But we didn’t actually expect outcomes. Next day on the news, a person at the camp heard that the engineers in Ukraine had started to regain control of the disaster at the very moment we had covered the reactor. It brought up joy, relief and also a sobering sense of responsibility, and it was a critical moment in everyone’s lives. The point behind these anecdotes is to establish a connection between consciousness, particularly consciousness-work, and the unfolding of events and trends in the wider world, affecting even the weather. This grates badly with modern rationality. So badly that some interests try to stop it happening. Yet everyone has experiences like these at some time in their life, even if forgotten or re-edited in memory. Magical experiences can be acknowledged as valid only when one steps into a more magical-spiritual realm where such things make sense. Virtually no scientific research is done into this, except by bodies such as the CIA or a few academics whose research is then carefully filed away. Back to ancient sites. Menhirs seem to act as vertical conductors that smooth out fluctuating energy-charges and potentials that build up between earth and sky. Thunderstorms are an extreme example of such discharges, but what we’re looking at here is a more continuous process of multi- frequency interaction between the earth, its ionosphere and the cosmos. Weather patterns are

12 For an online record, see: http://palden.co.uk/m100-1.html (it’s an archive version of an old 1990s website) 25

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters electronically generated and pumped up by this means: when it rains, that’s because of energy- conditions in the clouds and between the clouds and earth, which electronically wring the rain out of the clouds. Inserting a standing stone plugged into the underground water system can thus influence weather by moderating the buildup of charge potentials and thus of weather extremes. It is extremes – flooding, drought, storms – that do the most damage, with longterm effects. In modern parlance, this concerns climate control. Take it a bit further: megalithic geoengineering. It has been argued that barrows and cairns, often built with alternating layers of organic (soil) and inorganic (stone) materials, some with a stone kerb around them or an urn, cist or chamber inside, act as accumulators, batteries or buffers, or what scientist Wilhelm Reich called orgone accumulators. These are mounds or boxes made of alternating layers of organic and inorganic matter, acting both as an insulator and a way of building up charge that affects and enlivens organic matter and living species inside the accumulator.13 Many mounds are built on top of energy-vortices arising from underground streams, so from this it can be construed that they were so built to accumulate, contain or store that energy. Orgone was Reich’s word for life-energy – traditionally, Chinese call it ch’i and Indians call it praña, while western science is reluctant to consider it, calling this way of thinking vitalism – supposedly discredited over a century ago. Ancient sites operate not only with vertically-oriented energy-motions but also horizontally – hence energy-leys between sites and also alignments of sites, forming a network of energy-centres big and small to act as one integrated and interactive system covering West Penwith. This integration seems not to be so marked in neighbouring parts of Cornwall (though Bodmin Moor might qualify). While it is probably not unique, it is marked in West Penwith. Looking into Chûn Quoit through the main gap, with the blocking stone opposite Chambered cairns and quoits can serve as supercharged energy-concentrators so that items or a person inside them are subjected to a focused, intense energy-field – very quiet and yet highly charged. Chambers function as a kind of Faraday Cage, insulating the inner space from outside influences and noise. They are places of sensory deprivation and subtle or sixth-sense attenuation. In the case of chambered cairns, oriented to the rising points of sun or moon at certain times of year, external light entering the chamber is engineered to illuminate the hidden light inside it, rather like neon lighting up when it is charged. The orientation of the chamber highlights a time-point in the year and its qualities of light and energy. The chambers gather up- welling energy from a blind spring (in the case of quoits) or a water-line intersection (in the case of chambered cairns) below them. This influences the subtle atomic structure and frequency- resonance of objects placed inside them, or of the energy-bodies and consciousness of people. This leads us to dimensions beyond vertical or horizontal space where our normal perceptual sense of location here in this place and now in this time weakens. In such a consciousness-field we can access wider dimensions of time and awareness, if only momentarily. You don’t have to be advanced in meditation or psychic work for this: simply give yourself permission to relax and float off unselfconsciously, allowing things to come up and observing your psyche. It gets better with practice. Analyse and review the experience afterwards, not during. Keep notes.

13 Yuksel, Serdar & Eroğlu, Özgür, The Role of Orgone Accumulators and Electromagnetıc Waves in Plant Development, 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337679695_The_Role_Of_Orgone_Accumulators_And_Electromagnetic_ Waves_In_Plant_Development | Blasband, R A, The Orgone Energy Accumulator in the Treatment of Cancer in Mice, J Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, Vol 2, 2, https://journals.sfu.ca/seemj/index.php/seemj/article/view/435 26

Shining Land | Palden Jenkins | Synopsis and Sample Chapters

This concerns an energy-technology that entrains the natural forces in earth and sky, focusing and making use of it. When this is scaled up, landscape-wide, it gets serious. It makes West Penwith into a larger-scale energy-engineering project. Ultimately the aim would be to benefit human contentment, natural bioproductivity, weather and a sense of connection with other realms. If this analysis is correct, it constitutes an important matter for today since our planet is in trouble. We are also in trouble with our worldviews and beliefs, and our global situation today pushes us to change our way of seeing things. Not just a bit, but fundamentally. Geomantic Engineering Underground water and its associated energy-fields are not all there is to the location of ancient sites. Remarkably, a number of factors or principles coincide magically at each energy-centre. How this was achieved, we can only guess. But a fortuitous coincidence of contributory locational factors comes together at ancient sites, such as these: • ancient site alignments, • astronomical orientations (the rising and setting points of sun and moon), • underground water flows (energy-fields from blind springs and intersecting water veins), • subtle energy patterns and lines, underground and overground (these can be dowsed), • intervisibility between sites (as seen in the field), • landscape placing (topography and visual impression), • mathematics, proportion and geometry (complex forms and dimensions), • sagas, narratives and myths (some survive today as folk-tales) and, • spirit of place or genius loci, the atmosphere, presence or soul of a place. This combination of factors defies modern logic, yet it is observable in the field. It all adds together to build an energy-field: at many ancient sites there is a presence, an intelligence, a numinosity or a beingness with personality, the nature and character of which is not defined solely by the physical situation and landscape. Genius loci magnetically attracts us toward ancient sites. That’s why we like them. There’s a strange sense of coming home at some sites, of familiarity and alrightness. They are beings, and if you possess sufficient madness to talk to your dog, cat or plants, you’re well capable of dialogue with the presences at ancient sites! In our culture this can be taken as a mental health symptom, and the rational mind cruelly judges subjective perceptions – and that very judgementalism is what creates those mental health problems. The psychological impact of spending time at ancient sites is a key factor that needs far more attention than it gets. Some might say that they feel nothing but, in my experience with hundreds of people, the issue here is simply one of conscious and unconscious perception, and giving permission to feel. Genius loci helps us understand why quoits, stone circles, menhirs and mounds were built, and where they were built, in the form they were built. It concerns consciousness engineering, building physical spaces to affect our psychospiritual state and modify the subtle conditions of the world around. Without understanding or accepting principles such as this, we are left with little significant understanding of ancient sites and their raison d’être. That’s a wee bit problematic.

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