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Powers and Presences

Living with a fogou in the garden has convinced me that its secrets will not be discovered by bowling in, taking the odd photograph and peering at the stones. You need to be around it for a while, listen, let its presence work on you, and then it can begin to speak.

The nature of the work done at CAER has incidentally enabled a considerable amount of research on the fogou, not only by myself, but also by respected psychics, shamans from Native American and Aboriginal cultures, researchers into altered states of consciousness, and also some of the several hundred people who visit the centre each year for courses concerned with personal and spiritual development.

What emerges is a pattern involving synchronous imagery, inner voices and visions, and energy effects experienced at a bodily level. From these experiences, it seems clear that the fogou was used as a focal point for spiritual practices involving death and rebirth, vision quests, healing, inner guidance and soul-making.

The reason it is located underground seems to be because it is contained in the body of the earth - the ground from which we emerge and to which we return - the Mother. In this respect it is similar to the Native American Kiva, another underground structure for spiritual practice.

The fogou is also located directly on a line of earth energy. The current of this line appears to fluctuate with the time of day, moon's phases and the season - testable by dowsing. The fogou's location and orientation is not therefore accidental.

The legends associating the fogou with dark forms of witchcraft confirm this view. Black magic is a distortion and manipulation of white magic for selfish ends. The energy is there anyway. What makes it 'good' or 'bad' is how you use it. Before we were able to use the fogou for private meditation, ceremony or research, it had to be thoroughly exorcised and cleansed - a testimonial to its former abuse.

The kind of phenomena experienced in the fogou - on several occasions by a number of people simultaneously - include: inner voices giving uncannily pertinent guidance, sometimes forecasting events before they happen; subjective perceptions of powers and presences - usually of female figures, frequently described as 'women in white' or priestesses; visions involving fire, symbolic, perhaps, of inner cleansing; visions involving the laying out of the dead - usually bedecked with flowers - in preparation for the soul's journey to another realm; visions of enforced entombment for the purpose of confronting the dark side of the soul in order to re-emerge reborn; experiences of people being 'called' to the fogou in order to symbolically 'die' or else to collectively grieve someone who actually has died; experiences of waves of peace or comfort, and stilling of inner turmoil.

From "Fogou - A Journey into the Underworld", by Jo May, published by Gothic Image.

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