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Ros Briagha's website

Ros Briagha is a community leader
who ran OakDragon,
an outdoor educational organization that brings people back to Nature. She is a Wiccan teacher and ceremonialist who is also adept at divination.

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Who is Ros Briagha?

E-mail:ros@rosbriagha.org

A day trip to Tregaron, Strata Florida and Cwmystwyth, June 5th, 2005.

One of our WWDs group members, Wendy Seward, had done some interesting work on these places, so a group of us decided to go and visit them and see what we could find and feel. Part of what Wendy had said had been to do with these places being earth chakra points, relating to the solar plexus, the heart and the throat, so we started with Tregaron and the place that represents the solar plexus chakra. We met up in Tregaron town, and went out to a small bridge over the river Teifi, Pont Einon. There are actually two bridges here, only 10foot apart, one an old stone one and the other being quite new, to carry the new road. This is an outrageous place, as when you look down into the gap between the two bridges, the water goes north-south through one archway and south -north through the other! The river flows strongly from the north,and carries on doing so through one arch, and yet somehow flows north as well! When we did some dowsing here, several of us found a strong energy line going right through the middle of the bridges, with the two different flows either side of it. Quite a mystery! We then went down onto the land by the river to the exact chakra spot and did a very strong tuning in to the spirit of the place, visualising a huge yellow chakra “bubble” enclosing us. This was a lovely experience, allowing the strength and beauty of the place to enfold us and charge up our solar chakras, as the horses grazed nearby and the birds sang around us. This bog is now a noted site of rare plants and birds, and also has a very long history of being inhabited by humans, with many interesting finds emerging when peat was cut, though this no longer happens. This must have been both a safe and accessible space for our ancestors, with a good water supply and rich soil, and it felt very nice to connect with their energy as well. We then went on to Strata Florida abbey, which though ruined still has a strong atmosphere.

Ian Pegler had already visited here a number of times, and found some energy and water lines, so some of us did some dowsing to see what we found. It was exciting to see that we all picked up on the same features as him, which included a long energy line running down the lenght of the main central building, and a water line that came in to the main altar, then twisted round to go through a strange cist feature, and then shot out of the side of the main building. The cist is very intriguing, it consists of a small pit reached by four stone steps on the north and south sides, with stone walls on the east and west sides with holes in them that may have once had water come through, the whole thing being about 6 foot long by 4 foot wide by four foot deep. Interestingly, it is aligned exactly north south, while the rest of the building is slightly off set. The mythology of the place says that it was a druid temple long before the Cistercians came in the 1200s, and it is possible that the cist is a remnant of this. It is definitely a major spot where both energy and water lines cross, and several of us found it a powerful experience to walk down into it and up again. Although there is no water in it at present, it had a strong feel of being used for some form of watery immersion, or initiation.

There are also some side chapels, with energy lines and spirals in them, and in the graveyard adjacent is a 1200 year old yew tree with a grave stone claiming that this is the grave of Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the most famous welsh poets, from the 13th century. There is also an old church, which felt nice, though I don’t know if anyone dowsed it. However, we all agreed that this place felt very gentle and peaceful, a suitable place for the heart chakra to be nourished and strengthened. It is situated in a bowl of hills, quite different from the wide open space of Tregaron Bog, and was warm and sheltered. It is said that when the Dissolution of the monasterys happened in the reign of Henry VIII, the Holy Grail was brought here from Glastonbury Abbey, on its way to Nanteos, where it was held for hundreds of years. Certainly this shows how important this little place was held to be, as it would have been a long and difficult journey in those days. It is still a major sacred space, and has a good little museum as well, where old tiles and stone carvings may be seen.

We left here to go on to Cwmystwyth, the site of the throat chakra, but sadly our car got lost and did not get there, though two cars did make it. They will tell the story of that beautiful place in the next article.

For further information, please contact Ros Briagha ros@rosbriagha.org