Men an Tol Ritual - Goddess in Kernow 09

Last Friday, I walked the heather clad moors to Men an Tol holed stone to meet up with the participants of the Goddess in Kernow for a rebirthing ritual. The spot was significant personally and I felt a need to enter into ritual space and be rebirthed. The moors were bright with mauves and purples, gorse and heather blending in a patchwork of colour that only nature's canvas can create. The skies were September mild blue with scudding clouds and the rooves of old barns stood starkly in rusty reds and ocres. The path to the stones was clad in brambles blessed with helpings of glossy blackberries and the mine at Green Barrow stood starkly sentinel on the horizon..the group of women came into my view as I sat bathing in the melting September sun.I joined the group and we chanted to the goddess and joined hands in a dance. The ritual had begun.

Afterwards, I felt lighter and less heavy with the loss of things over which I had no control..it was a feeling of letting go and of trusting what would be and what would come in. I felt at one with myself and also it re enforced my strong sense of guardianship of these sites and rootedness in my homeland of Kernow..I had recently returned to West Penwith and the moors seemed to celebrate the return with me as they danced with the joy of a mellow breeze and the starlings swirled in the skies.The women moved naturally into a healing ritual and into a close circle.There was also the need to feel rooted to these stones to this place as a solace from the bustle of city and town and a temporary release from everyday roles and responsibility.

The Men an Tol (Cornish:maen=stone; tol=hole) is a strange site...some say it is the remains of a stone circle, a worn rock basin weathered by the elements,the entrance to a chambered tomb,others more cynical, that it was drilled by miners.It was first recorded by Thomas Tonkin in about 1700. He noted that it was reknowned for curing pains in the back by going through the hole, 3,5, or 9 times.To destroy disease you must move anti clockwise but to get better again you must move with the sun. It nevertheless has a profound mystery which goes with all great sacred spaces; we shall never know its true origin or purpose, but it is ours to want to crawl through it head first, or breach and to touch it and stroke it, to hug it and to dance around it. With the two upright stones it has a sacred symbolic code...like the female womb it sits between two phallic pillars, it is the hole of memory, of entry into the underworld, of renewel and rebirth as we shed our own trappings and enter like mud babies, ungainly, our own naked need for healing screaming from the depths of our psyche. We naturally enter this strange, magical ritual when we visit this space with its allignment to Chun Quoit and Mulfra Quoit and its promimity to the Nine Maidens Stone Circle at Boskednan and Men Scryfa..the lone menir opposite.That entry is significant for women...we are borne through the womb of the goddess and rebirther into our new, healed selves with other women chanting, stroking, guiding us as midwives and elders; initiating us anew into her mysteries.