The Hidden Labyrinth at The Sanctuary

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and the White Sky Dragon

Some places are dramatic the moment you arrive. Others are much quieter and seem to reveal themselves slowly.

The Sanctuary at Avebury was like that for me.

It sits within an extraordinary landscape, close to Avebury, Silbury Hill and the West Kennet Avenue, but compared with the great stones at Avebury it can seem quite understated. Today, what you see are markers showing where circles of timber posts and stones once stood.

I had been there before, but on this particular visit I went in with my dowsing rods and asked a very simple question:

“Please show me what I need to know.”

That is often how I like to explore a place. I am interested in the archaeology and history, of course, but I also like to leave some space for the unexpected. It is probably the Indiana Jones part of me - follow the clue, see where it leads and try not to decide in advance what you are going to find.

This time, the rods began to guide me around the site in a way I hadn't expected.

Discovering a hidden labyrinth

As I followed the rods, I realised that the route felt like a labyrinth.

It wasn't something visible on the ground. I was following what I experienced as dowsed energy lines, moving through the circles and gradually towards the centre.

What struck me was that the journey seemed to have two different qualities. Moving inward felt intimate, quiet and deeply centring. Then, after reaching the centre, the outward route felt much more expansive and strengthening.

It was almost as though I had walked one labyrinth inwards and another one out.

I later sketched the route as best I could remember it, and that drawing became my first attempt at capturing what I had experienced there.

This was the first time I had consciously discovered what felt to me like a hidden labyrinth within an ancient landscape. It opened up a completely new line of enquiry for me. What else might be present at sacred sites that we don't immediately see? What happens if, instead of only looking at a place, we walk it and allow ourselves to feel our way through it?

In the discussion after my Labyrinths and Dragons talk (link below) another dowser also said that he had picked up a labyrinth at The Sanctuary and had followed a similar route. I loved hearing that, because until then this had simply been my own experience of the site.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

The most memorable part came when I reached the centre.

I was standing there looking out across the landscape towards the distant horizon when, quite unexpectedly, a song dropped into my awareness:

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

I hadn't been thinking about the song and I certainly wasn't trying to summon anything. It just arrived.

At the same time, I became very aware of what I experienced as a white dragon in the sky.

This was a real turning point for me.

Dragons had already begun to appear in my exploration. I had received the message “This is how dragons lie” while working with the labyrinth I had built in the woods at home, and the very next day my friend David Atkinson had lent me The Dance of the Dragon by Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst. On the back was an image of a dragon curled into a form that looked remarkably like a labyrinth.

That had started me wondering about the relationship between dragons, labyrinths and earth energy.

But The Sanctuary was different.

Standing at the centre of that hidden labyrinth was the first time I consciously experienced a dragon presence in the sky in such a powerful way.

It felt like a white air dragon - light, expansive and connected with the sky rather than the earth beneath my feet.

And there was something rather wonderful about the song arriving at exactly the same moment.

A connection I only understood later

At the time, I didn't actually know precisely what part of the landscape I was looking towards.

That came later.

When I went back to Google Earth and began tracing the direction of my view from the centre of The Sanctuary, I realised I had been looking westwards towards the landscape around Cherhill White Horse.

That immediately caught my attention.

I haven't visited Cherhill White Horse itself, so this wasn't a connection I had consciously made while standing at The Sanctuary. It was something I discovered afterwards.

When I then looked more closely at the landscape around Cherhill, I noticed the folds of the hills and was immediately reminded of another place that has become important in my dragon explorations - Dragon Hill at Uffington.

There is something about those long, rounded folds of chalk landscape that gives me the impression of a great creature resting in the land.

And of course both landscapes have a white horse.

The Uffington White Horse, to my eye, has always looked rather wonderfully dragon-like anyway.

Suddenly there seemed to be another little thread joining the pieces together: the white sky dragon I had experienced at The Sanctuary, the direction of the distant White Horse landscape, and those familiar folds in the hills.

I love the fact that I didn't know any of that at the time.

The experience came first. The connection emerged later.

That happens surprisingly often in this work.

Letting the meaning unfold

One of the things I have learned through Creative Alchemy is not to rush to explain an experience.

Sometimes I think we can be too quick to ask, “What does this mean?”

I increasingly prefer to notice what happened, make a note of it and then stay curious.

Another piece may appear later.

A book.

A conversation.

A landscape.

A song.

A synchronicity.

Or, in this case, a map.

For me, that is where dowsing becomes especially interesting. It isn't simply about getting a yes or no answer. It can become another way of entering into relationship with a place and asking, “What am I not noticing yet?”

The Sanctuary certainly gave me that.

I arrived at a relatively quiet ancient site and came away having discovered my first hidden labyrinth, experienced very different qualities on the inward and outward journeys, and consciously encountered a white dragon in the sky.

That is quite a lot for one afternoon.

And then the trail continued

The Sanctuary didn't answer my questions about dragons and labyrinths. If anything, it gave me many more.

Since then, I have found myself following the same thread through other landscapes - at Merrivale, Dragon Hill, The Hurlers and, more recently, Mont Saint-Michel.

Each place seems to offer another piece of the puzzle.

Sometimes the connection comes through dowsing. Sometimes through the shape of the landscape. Sometimes through myth, history or a completely unexpected inner experience.

And that is really what keeps me exploring.

I don't need to have a neat answer for what dragons are, or why labyrinths and dragon energy seem to keep appearing together in my own journey.

I am much more interested in following the breadcrumbs and seeing where they lead.

The Sanctuary was one of the first really important ones.

It showed me that a labyrinth doesn't necessarily have to be visible to be experienced.

And standing at its centre, looking out towards the horizon with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in my awareness and a white dragon in the sky, I had the sense that my exploration had just become much bigger.