Megalith vibes: Whether it’s a church, mother nature or a trusted home, people have always sought strength and comfort from spaces regarded as sacred. Here are two places where you can connect with the ancients through megalith energy portals.
The megaliths in Ireland are archaeological treasures that continue to captivate people with their incredible architectural essence. Modern-day people are drawn to their spiritual power and strength, thousands and thousands of years after they were created. Lucky for us in Ireland, our country is world-renowned for its incredible ancient sites steeped in history, mythology and mysticism. Many of these places still hold powerful energies to help and guide us in our life.
Megalith Magic
Megaliths (huge stones) were used wherever they were readily available to create monumental architecture. Prehistoric communities used them to build monuments, burial places, and sanctuaries. Megalithic monuments started to emerge when the roaming existence of the people changed to a more settled way of life. Megalithic tombs, dolmens and other monuments represent the oldest surviving indigenous architecture of Europe.
In Ireland, this heritage is essential to tracing the very origins of the country, as so many of these incredible places are still accessible. There are different categories of megalith structures. The largest is the burial chamber, which is subdivided into dolmens, passage graves, court tombs, and gallery graves.
Powerful Purpose
The most famous megaliths and majestic mounds throughout Ireland are older than Stonehenge or the pyramids of Giza. They show that the society of the time had a deeply held belief system that honoured ancestors, great deeds, heroes, chieftains, and deities. Nothing was recorded to confirm the purpose of each monument.
But we do know that many temples and tombs were built in the likeness of Mother Earth’s (the Goddess) womb. This provides the key to understanding megalithic structures and their floor plans. Megalithic monuments were built to be seen – they conveyed and held power.
Reconstructions
Years of meticulous excavations and reconstructions show that much attention was paid to their outer walls and facades. From the intricate decoration we see on stones at their entrances (such as at Newgrange), the implication is that ceremonies took place in front of the cairns.
Likewise, the exquisitely built and engraved inner walls and curbstones that were carved with symbols were believed to be powerful, sacred places. This is where funeral, calendrical, and initiation rites took place. Geometric engravings on Irish megaliths included crescents, circles, and concentric circles.
Serpentiform illustrations or zigzags have thirteen to seventeen turnings (the number of the moon’s waxing days). Or they have subdivisions into four, six, eight or twelve. This suggests a preoccupation with the cycles of time. In megalithic symbolic art we see the link between the time-measuring symbols and the symbols of Mother Earth’s regenerative power, source and rebirth.
Megalith Energy Connections
Many of these ancient sites today are protected and managed for generations more to experience. Even with restricted access, people who visit megalithic sites often describe feeling a different energy in the air when they are there.
Research has shown that this sensation stimulates the human body’s electro-magnetic circuitry. The standard explanation is that these feelings are from the ‘wow’ factor. This is the result of visual stimuli from the overwhelming impression generated by these megalithic constructions. However, some say otherwise.
Many teachers of meditation say that megaliths and other ancient sacred places are generating their own energy field. This can create an environment where one can enter an altered state of consciousness. Megalithic sites and ancient temples are places separate from the normal world, where people can connect with special energies. Two of the most powerful energy portals in Ireland are Newgrange and Carrowmore. If you haven’t been to either of these places, it is time to organise a trip there.
Newgrange, County Meath
Built as a ceremonial mound more than 5,000 years ago, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is both a feat of engineering and a gateway to an ancient way of life. Sitting atop a hill near the Boyne, it features 200,000 tons of rock, a 6-ton capstone, and other rocks weighing up to 16 tons each.
Incredibly, each stone fits perfectly in the overall pattern, and the result is a mortarless, watertight feat of engineering. Consisting of three separate Neolithic burial mounds, two of which are open to the public, this is one of the most important prehistoric megalith sites in Europe. Archaeologists initially classified Newgrange as a passage tomb, however it is now recognised to be much more.
A more fitting description is an ancient temple. It is a place of astrological, spiritual religious and ceremonial importance, to symbolize both death and birth. Newgrange is best known for the illumination of its passage and chamber by the winter solstice sun. Above the entrance to the passage at Newgrange there is an opening called a roof box. It is designed to allow sunlight to penetrate the chamber on the shortest days of the year.
Winter Solstice
It is spectacular on the winter solstice when the sunlight beam dramatically illuminates the whole room. But the roof box also served as portal for souls of the deceased to connect to the Divine Space of the sky. However, its primary purpose was to mark the passage of time and seasons for the people it served, informing them how the days would change in a time that revolved around farming.
For many years, the society at Newgrange worked in cycles of 120 days. This is different to our modern system of 90-day seasons. The roof box acted as an ancient calendar. The light kept their season and year on track and it acted as a way to record the births of people in the village. Newgrange represented the place of fertility to honour the womb.
And, for the priests and priestesses, village elders and ancient kings to honour their gods and Goddess. It offered protection to royalty and their subjects. Newgrange was a place to pray for strength in the future harvests and the fertility of the farming lands. It created and welcomed the next generation of priestesses representing Mother Earth.
Ancient Answers from Newgrange Megalith
Newgrange’s strong energy and spiritual power was cultivated by priests and priestesses over thousands of years. How can modern day people connect with this energy? The best way is to visit and spend some quiet time at the site, either meditating or practising mindfulness.
The site’s focus on fertility makes it very good for people who need help to heal relationships, particularly family relationships, and for people who have fertility concerns. It is also a place to pray to ask for something barren to be moved into being fertile.
For example, family and fertility, lifestyles and dreams, and the releasing of fears. The ancients would enter the space after taking the time to clear their minds and cleansing themselves to be emotionally, physically and spiritually vulnerable. They would work with the energy.
The intention was not to control what they felt or experienced. But they aimed to let the thoughts, messages and feelings come to them as needed from the Earth Mother Goddess and the Divine Space of the sky, while they stayed in the sensation of being in Newgrange. The same is possible when being in and near the space today.
Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, County Sligo
Carrowmore is one of the great sacred landscapes of the ancient world. At its centre is a massive passage grave and a stone circle. It is surrounded by as many as 200 additional stone circles and passage graves arranged in an intricate and mysterious design.
The site spreads out so far that many of the formations are today in farms adjacent to the preserved cemetery. Located in the northwest of Ireland, near Sligo town, Carrowmore is the keeper of nearly 6,000-yearold Bronze Age graves. It is Ireland’s largest megalithic graveyard, as well as one of its oldest. Celebrated for magnificent views from the site, Carrowmore is associated with myth and magic.
Legend says that the monuments were built by the Cailleach Garavogue who lived in her house in the Ballygawley mountains. A Cailleach, or hag, was a revered elder who had stepped down from her role as a high priestess into this position and was considered full of wisdom. While the term hag is used disparagingly today, it held reverence and power when Carrowmore was created.
The hag collective would have overseen the creation of the monument. They worked alongside the village leader and the kings to create one of the greatest and revered cemeteries of its time. Back when Carrowmore was built, cemeteries were not isolated as they are in modern times.
Thriving
Nowadays in cities and villages the cemeteries tend to be outlying, rather than an intricate part of daily life as they were then. The reason that Carrowmore was built specifically along the peninsula was because it was part of a bigger, thriving city. At the height of its civilization Carrowmore was part of a modern city. It had multitudes of domestic residences, commercial premises, businesses and centres of medicine, as well as a large market that thrived due to its port location.
Much of this ancient city has been destroyed over the years thanks to farming, quarrying and disrespectful archaeology. But at its peak it was built to elevate human existence into development, wealth and growth. Legend also says that Carrowmore is the burial place of Queen Medb (Maeve), the warrior queen of Connacht in Celtic mythology.
Thirty monuments remain at Carrowmore today, in varying states of preservation and completion, with the most perfect being the Kissing Stone. The largest monument is a cairn known as Listoghil. It is the only one at the site that is decorated with megalithic art. It may have been the focal point of the cemetery – the rest of the tombs are arranged in a roughly oval shape around it.
Newgrange, the most famous Irish megalith
Ancient Answers from Carrowmore Megalith
The spiritual power of Carrowmore is still palpable today, especially toward the centre of the site. However, the area up to 1.5km around the site still holds plentiful energy. As a cemetery it is filled with burial sites all over. Apologising to the ancients when walking at Carrowmore is a respectful way to honour the sacred location.
The best way to seek guidance here is to find a quiet spot, and be immersed in the atmosphere with a clear mind. Although it is a cemetery, it was teeming and thriving with life at its prime. It gave equal value to the living and the dead. So there is no negative energy, superstition or the need for fear in this ancient landscape. Carrowmore is a space of acceptance, and is a wonderful space for those in need of healing from ill health.
An Irish megalith
Energising the Ancients
Megalithic relics speak not only of a vivid, ancient past. They can also be of great comfort to contemporary humanity through the energy portals they retain today. They were gathering places for both the living and the dead.
Here, beliefs were celebrated, rites of fertility were conducted, and the acknowledgement of the circle of life happened. The lessons of these ancient stones can help modern society with reverence, celebration, and hope. Their energetic power can help to deliver guidance and clarity in a fast-paced, overwhelming world.
Meditation
Meditating at a sacred site or megalith allows you to connect with the past or the future of that site. This can help you gain clarity about what’s important to you. People meditate for different reasons, such as stress relief, anxiety, focus and physical and mental health.
Meditation can be done sitting, standing or in a specific position. It can be done in silence or with music or with a guide. In addition to spiritual and religious aspects, meditation has health benefits such as stress reduction, anxiety, blood pressure and blood sugar regulation, blood counts and heart rate management, and enhanced mental health.
To progress from beginner level to master level in meditation, you need to practice regularly. Meditating can be tough at first but with time it becomes easier and more effective with practice. And what better place to start than at an ancient, sacred site?
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