This Is How Dragons Lie…
There are some moments that seem quite small when they happen, but when you look back you realise they changed the direction of everything.
For me, one of those moments happened in a little labyrinth in the woods at the end of my garden.
I had received what felt like a very clear inner instruction to build a labyrinth there. It was nothing grand - just a simple three-circuit path made from leaves, held within a little temple of trees. I had already been exploring labyrinths, sacred geometry, dowsing and the subtle relationship between people and place, so creating one on the land felt like a natural next step.
Dragons, though, were not yet part of the story.
Then one day, while walking and working with the labyrinth, a message came through very clearly:
“This is how dragons lie.”
I had never consciously connected dragons with labyrinths before, so I didn't really know what to do with the information. But I was intrigued. And when something mysterious appears in my life, curiosity tends to get the better of me.
So I began to wonder what on earth it might mean.
The breadcrumb arrives
The very next day, my friend and fellow dowser David Atkinson lent me a book by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst called The Dance of the Dragon.
The timing alone made me smile, but when I turned the book over and looked at the image on the back, I stopped. There was a dragon curled into a form that looked remarkably like a labyrinth.
It was one of those synchronicities that feels almost like life has placed a breadcrumb directly in front of you.
Not necessarily an explanation. More of a nudge.
Keep going.
That was really the beginning of a much bigger exploration.
Following the dragon
Since then, labyrinths and dragons have become one of the deepest threads in my work with earth energies.
I have followed dowsing rods through ancient landscapes and discovered what feel to me like hidden labyrinths. I have begun noticing dragon forms in sacred geometry, old maps, earth-energy lines and even in the shape of the landscape itself.
I have also experienced dragons through inner vision, symbolism and synchronicity, and over time all of those strands have started to weave together.
The questions that keep returning are surprisingly simple. What is the relationship between dragons and the Earth? Why do labyrinths and dragon symbolism seem to appear together? And when we walk a labyrinth, are we in some way walking the dragon?
I don't feel I need to arrive at a tidy answer.
For me, the exploration is part of the magic.
Dowsing, curiosity and my inner Indiana Jones
Perhaps the best way to describe this part of my work is that it combines dowsing with a great deal of curiosity.
There is definitely a little Indiana Jones part of me that loves an ancient site, an unexplained pattern or a trail of clues.
I like to go somewhere, look around, get a feel for the place and then ask, what am I not seeing yet?
Sometimes the next clue comes through the dowsing rods. Sometimes it comes through mythology or archaeology. Sometimes a song unexpectedly drops into my awareness, or someone hands me a book at exactly the right moment.
And sometimes it is simply the shape of the land that makes me stop and look again.
What I enjoy most is allowing those different ways of knowing to sit alongside one another. The history is interesting. The mythology is interesting. The dowsing adds another layer. Then there is our own experience of actually being in a place - what we notice, what we feel and what captures our attention.
That is where things become really fascinating for me.
An unfolding journey
That message in the woods - “This is how dragons lie” - opened a door that I am still walking through.
It has led me into an ongoing exploration of labyrinths, dragons and the living landscape, and to places including The Sanctuary at Avebury, Merrivale, Dragon Hill at Uffington, The Hurlers and Mont Saint-Michel.
Each place has its own story and seems to reveal something different. Sometimes it is through dowsing, sometimes through the landscape or mythology, and sometimes through an unexpected moment of stillness, connection or synchronicity.
I want to share those stories separately because each deserves the space to unfold in its own way.
The first takes me to The Sanctuary at Avebury, where I discovered my first hidden labyrinth and had one of my most powerful early experiences of a dragon presence - a white dragon in the sky, accompanied by the rather unexpected arrival of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
But that story comes next.
For me, it all began here, in a small labyrinth in the woods, with a message I didn't yet understand:
“This is how dragons lie.”
And a book arriving the very next day that made me think perhaps I had better keep following the trail.