Geomantics and Shamanics - Ancient Penwith | Cornwall

Practised by a loose caucus of freethinkers, geomantic ideas can be variegated, at times wildly imaginative and at times seriously technical, though they can be refreshingly commonsensical too.

Without this understanding, dialogue on the purpose of ancient sites cannot progress beyond physical description, taped together with speculations that sometimes point in the right direction and at other times are pseudo-scientific guesswork.

This said, we understand only snippets of megalithic science. The megalith builders utilised advanced mathematics, astronomy, geometry and proportion – the Golden Mean, Platonic spheres, Pythagorean and Euclidian geometry. They understood the dimensions of the earth, the periodicity of the planets, eclipse cycles, the precession of the equinoxes and the vibrational and deeper aspects of acoustics. They embodied these principles in the design, size and shape of stone circles and other sites.

Bronze Age peoples plugged their technology into a natural network, to generate a subtle upstepping and consecration of sites, coupling them by alignment with sites of more ancient heritage. Astronomical, underground water, landscape placing and other subtle energy considerations were used in their choices of location and design. The purpose was to raise energy-levels in the land

Examining positioning reveals important clues. The location of stone circles in West Penwith is determined in large part by backbone alignments established in the Neolithic 3000s, long before the stone circles were built. Stone circles are aligned with Neolithic tor enclosures and cliff sanctuaries, key landscape sites of the Neolithic, giving them a certain sense of heritage and derivative legitimacy.

Each tribe and locality would have had its own culture and shamanic ways, developed from localised experience, from collective imagination and from the daily facts of its life. Shamanic culture is non-institutional, there’s no scripture and it isn’t a religion.

It is an indigenous, local, naturalesque, home-grown and magical approach to life and spirit, born and bred where it stands, rooted in inner experience and in what are now called meditation, channelling, spiritual healing and earth healing.

A shaman is a knowledge-holder, healer, counsellor, magician, teacher and pastoral minder who can use trance, meditation, psychic capabilities and mind-medicines to enter deeper realms, talk with the wind and engage face-to-face with deeper forces that affect the community and its world.

A person became a shaman through innate aptitude, or through selection or self-selection, or through inheritance. Individuals were frequently identified early in life and then trained. There would be lineages through which the ways, insights and practices were transmitted from mentor to neophyte, though much of the training would have been in isolation since spiritual skills had to be developed within – this was experiential learning.