Notes

Systematic research into the psychoactive and subtle-energy workings of ancient sites in Penwith, with longterm a view to generating publicly-accessible and useful results.

Group research - teamwork and systematic 'energy-surveying';
Individual or small-group research, contributing to the bigger body of work;
Study or focus group - buildup of knowledge and understanding.

This means keeping to modest, doable aims that can actually be achieved, over, say, a three-year period.

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• Better to do small things well than big things badly. Limit activities in any time period in order to complete them before moving on to other things.

• Design the research programme clearly at the outset and stay on course. If a need arises to modify aims and methods, think it through carefully, perhaps in periodic reviews, so that everyone is clearly informed and may add their bit if needed.

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Success rests on a caucus and quorum of people who make it happen, with a virtuous cycle of interest and involvement that creates lift-off - ideally!

Since the group research involves teamwork, we propose one large-group meeting per month. Time and availability will be an issue, particularly regarding consistency and momentum in the work. Hopefully, by September 2025 we will understand individuals' situation more clearly, to get the time-and-focus issue working as well as possible.

Small-group research can evolve more flexibly and by discussion, but one meeting per month might be useful for each group. Personal research takes place at its own pace.

The Group

A central core of people is needed, with a longer-term and reasonably consistent commitment. It often hangs around three people driving and holding a group project like this.

Then there’s often an inner ring of people around them who, by turning up and doing what needs doing, become those who should set the parameters and membership rules and make the key decisions.

Then there will be an outer ring of more occasional participants, contributors, supporters and people with useful skills (such as mapping, internet or making tea). Usually they're happy to go along with what’s happening, contributing what they can, when they can. New people need to understand the project's aims before they attend. (Observation: in recent decades a certain dilettantism has developed, which can weaken group projects.)

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Too many occasional helpers and too few committed regulars can lead to mission-creep. The group can absorb a certain number of visitors and guests before these become a drag-factor.
Once the project has started, new entrants might need a trial period: that is, turn up (say) three times, show consistency, and you’re in. Otherwise, you’re ‘pending’, an associate. Have an entry procedure so that entrants check their motivation and staying power. This will help the group to remain reasonably consistent in its aims and outcomes.
Everyone enters the group as an individual. It's unhealthy if in some cases a person joins or expects preferment because of their partner, friend or connections.
Beware of zealous incomers with glittery plans and aspirations, and takeover-merchants or groupies! They can sometimes pull a group hither and thither.

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A few key roles are visible (they might or might not be separate):

a coordinator to keep everyone informed and moderate discussions;
an archivist-editor (to collate useful material from past articles and records, Meyn Mamvro, websites and other sources);
a web-person/networker to manage a website or online facility;
a writer-editor to produce good quality output.

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Members need to live in West Cornwall and to have lived here at least one year. This sounds restrictive, but incomers, however enthusiastic, would benefit the group more if they first spent a year getting to know the landscape and becoming more Cornish in viewpoint. They need to get used to Penwith, familiar with its sites and stabilised in living here. The further they live from Penwith, the less they are likely to know it or resonate with far-west Cornish consciousness, the more they're likely to import outside ideas, and the more their travel will cost (therefore they can be unreliable). Positively, give such people the idea that, when they're ready, they may join, and they might well keep the project going longterm.

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This is more a 'study group' than a course or training. A lot of learning and skill-development can result from participating, but a modicum of prior experience, thought and knowledge is needed. Everyone is a learner and teacher.

It's an energy-survey of the magical landscape of Penwith, to try to get an overall picture of life in the megalithic period and the knowledge that Penwithians of that time held.

The Process

Geomantic considerations...

Don’t all rush off to Boscawen-ûn! There are lots of sites. Visit sites you're not so familiar with.
Work on intuitive skills – energy-sensitivity, psychometric capacity, dowsing skills, inner openness, personal gifts – with some objectivity thrown in. Each person has their own gifts and calling which they can contribute to the whole.
Study stuff – whatever interests you. Knowledge contributions and intelligent treatment of the subject are important.
Sometimes the archaeological and geomantic approaches complement one another and sometimes they contradict. This requires some filtering. Commonsense works well.
Focus on the people of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages and their likely lives and thoughts. Life was hard then too: there were plenteous times and hungry times, most people lived just thirty to forty years, and some probably got killed while building quoits or quarrying stones.
The ‘true’ Neolithic was 500 years long (25ish generations), and the Bronze Age megalithic period lasted 1,300 years (65ish generations). We're looking at long periods of time within which things will have changed with the generations and changing times.

Much progress can be made by following the personal interests of members. This fires people up. One or two people have suggested a sound/acoustics group. Experiments could be carried out to investigate the effects of working with sound, or to see whether certain frequencies prevail at certain sites, or whether certain stones at some sites are tuned to particular sounds.

Other potential areas of focus are underground water and overground energy-lines, astronomicals, geometry, alignments, geology, landscape placing, place memory, atmospherics, inner journeying and psychometrically-derived impressions.

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It is unlikely that funding can be found for such a project, or that the effort to do so is worth it, and it takes time and can add complications. However, ten people contributing £5 per month yields £600 per year, which can be used for funding expenses, if deemed necessary.

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If it works, I’ll be happy for the group or an individual to inherit management of the Ancient Penwith website and my work pertaining to Penwith (such as the online maps), whether to preserve or progress the work I’ve done. I also own the web-address belerion.org, which I am happy to hand over.

Imposition of ideas

We all have our ideas about things, tending to see things through that lens. Many of these ideas have been formed in response to events and cultural developments that occurred after the Megalithic period, affecting us today.

Here's an example of unconscious imposition. Neolithic Penwithians would not have thought of themselves as living in a Goddess culture, since they hadn't invented God (or St Michael) and didn't think that way. This is a Christian import of later times. While the idea of Goddess cultures help us understand ancient times today, it didn't worry Neolithics. Their society was different - we'd call it a Goddess culture and they'd call it life. So the challenge is to try to get inside the way they're actually likely to have thought, from their perspective.

A key aim is thus to try to avoid imposing ideas and partialities of our own. Megalithic Penwithians were not native Americans, Iron Age Druids, Saxons, Renaissance witches, English antiquarians or 19th Century Romantics. They possibly didn't care about the dramas happening up at Stonehenge at the time, and they certainly weren't bothered to satisfy academic rationalists of 4-5,000 later. They had their own world-view and cosmology, doing what they felt like doing.

This also applies to the landscape. At the peaks of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages the climate was marginally warmer, more equable and less wet, windy and stormy. In the Neolithic 3000s the land was heavily forested with some clearings, and at the peak of the Bronze Age around 1800 BCE Penwith was roughly half-forested - and probably somewhat intentionally landscaped. It's possible that areas of Penwith with fewer ancient sites were more forested than other areas.

Certain 'great trees' probably served as special sites and centres - now lost to us. The moorlands, the agricultural landscape, roads, villages and towns of today distort our way of seeing things. People walked everywhere in ancient times.

So use a little imagination or 'second sight' when you're out in the landscape. Tregeseal double circle was in a green and pleasant, partially-wooded parkland vale with a lovely view of the Scillies in the setting sun. Boscawen-ûn had no field hedges but an array of open pastures, vistas and menhirs instead, and the Nine Maidens sat on a green hillbrow with flowery cairns, Carn Galva and panoramas, standing at the centre of things in Penwith.

Research Design

We are dealing with non-tangible evidence, with a large subjective component, but the idea is to make some sense of the impressions, imagery, ideas and experiences that do come up. To some extent we’re asking the sites and spirits to guide us and give us useful snippets to work on.

It would be most valuable if each participant kept notes of their experiences and findings, for eventual sharing or collation – including observations they might not consider relevant. It';s good to note everything, including things that might seem insignificant (such as a body-pain, or a random thought, or a feeling of hunger, feeling hot or cold, or preoccupation with an idea).

Two-pronged approach: each member plays a part in the group project as well as taking on a specific area of focus that interests them – such as the geology of stones, the orientations of landscape features, what each site feels like, or its traces of place-memory.

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The group project involves agreeing certain basic parameters and topics at the beginning, so that a variety of researchers (such as dowsers or sensitives) seek the same things according to agreed parameters, so that results (data, maps, drawings, notes) can be collated, compared and cross-referenced.

Individual projects involve freestyle investigation by each person or a sub-group, using their own methods and terminology. Specific tracks of research can follow the abilities, interests and inspiration of the people doing it. These should be framed with a view to sharing the research and contributing to the overall body of work. (Here’s an example of specific research by Ian McNeil Cooke: The Menhirs of Penwith).

Findings can be recorded as notes, audio or video, so that they can be compared to see where commonalities, corroborations and differences exist, and records can be kept. The aim is to produce a coherent record which will be useful to people in future.

At meetings, one person each month can perhaps offer a sharing or 20 minute workshop on that subject or where they have got to thus far, for the group’s interest and benefit. There’s a study-group element to this.

‘Data’ includes not just tangible, measurable items but impressions. Examples: “On a scale of 1-10, do you feel this site is relatively dormant today, or relatively alive?” Or: “Please visualise a typical day four millennia ago during the building of this site, to find how many people were involved, what the issues were that concerned them, and how they did it”. Or: “See if you can identify an energy-centre and where it is”

Group Site Visits

For group site visits, here’s a method. After arriving as a group at a chosen site, settle down and spend 20ish minutes meditating and floating off together silently and quietly. Any method is welcome as long as it doesn't disturb others. It’s a ‘fishing’ meditation. Then sit in a circle and use a talking stick, passing it around so that everyone contributes in turn, for as long as it needs. This can start with a recounting of experiences gained during the meditation, but soon it can lift off into a group-inspiration zone where new stuff starts coming up through deep group discussion. It’s about giving the spirits or presences a chance to nudge us or speak through us, and for members to drop their observations and insights into the centre – an inspired, intuitive, group deep-thinking process. If there’s a good note-taker present, that helps. Or an audio recorder can be used.

Research Aims

The overall aim is to increase our understanding of the way that earth energy and ‘consciousness engineering’ work at Penwith’s ancient sites, through observation and experimentation. This field has already been opened up, though unsystematically so, and patchy, and often reflecting the idiosyncrasies of people making the investigations, or pertaining to a single ancient site only.

It might not be the case that there are simple or single answers to many questions, but at least the group can move things forward, leaving evidence of what it did, what it found and where it came to.

Coordinated Group Research

Suggested details to gather, record and tabulate consistently and comprehensively for every chosen site:

• the energy vortex or field at the site, underground water patterns, overground energy-lines;

• astronomical orientations, if they exist at that site;

• intervisible sites and prominent landscape features, and their angles;

• terrestrial alignments (as in the alignments maps);

• landscape setting and particular features;

• noteworthy characteristics of the site - make a map or annotated aerial photo, and take photos or videos for records;

• date dowse for significant events at the site – its building, its peak(s) of use, its decline;

• an ‘inner scan’ (by, say, five people, together or separately, for comparison) for the qualities and atmosphere of the site, and anything that can be picked up to suggest its purpose or events that have happened there. Take notes.

Individual Research

This can involve anything that is considered useful. What’s important is that it is systematic. So, if a person chooses to write poetry at each site, or doing pencil sketches, it still needs doing comprehensively, with a view to adding it to the overall research. It can then, theoretically, be compared with notes from other people who take psychic-intuitive readings, or who make geomantic observations. It can be used as a component in the final presentation of the work.