Ancient lands and sacred sites carry immense power, because they bring us face-to-face with our own.
- Jun 8
- 5 min read
Ancient lands and sacred sites carry immense power.
What I am now realizing is that they are not powerful because they contain power.
They are powerful because they bring us face-to-face with our own.
Since April, I have been in France and the UK, visiting sacred sites on these ancient lands. Back in 2022, when I was in meditation, there was a clear message: to go to ancient sites and do sound ceremonies.
I didn’t understand the impact, nor the reason or logic. It didn’t make much sense at that point, I had no experience with sound healing, nor had I yet discovered a deep love for visiting sacred sites.
So I left that message be, and continued with my life.
Funnily enough, the unfolding my life since then has truly been a wondrous labyrinth, bringing this oracle into expression.
Since October last year, I have unexpectedly uprooted (very soft roots) from the Sunshine Coast and have been living between Bali and Singapore. Along the way, I took another unexpected turn: a deep dive into voice and sound healing.
And it completely took me over – I feel like a new pathway of expression has opened within me, for energies within to move through. It feels like going even deeper into somatic healing, holding space for the various aspects of my psyche to share their voice and form beyond cognitive understanding of the ego consciousness.
Thinking back, I have been doing this since I was young, my father (Sagittarius sun and Gemini moon) loves exploring historic places, with his inquisitive mind, so our family vacations would often include seeing giant rocks and stones that I didn’t care for, back then. I found the stories interesting, and how old they were, fascinating, but they didn’t move me beyond that.
Now, I find myself travelling across Britain with a car full of elemental instruments, gleefully traipsing across stone circles, holy wells, ancient churches, sacred springs, and convergences of ley lines, offering sound and voice to the land and the elements.
What struck me deeply is how these expressions bring me into an altered consciousness – a trance. In this state, images show themselves vividly and knowing comes in like a lightning bolt. It is a direct, living conversation with the land, the place.
And it feels far more alive than anything I have ever read in a history book – it is direct experience, direct knowledge, gnosis.
When we offer our ears, our bodies, the land animates, and speaks to us – through thought, feeling, emotion, images, and imagination.
It is what all of us have access to: our intuition. Our deep knowing. Gnosis.
Very readily, very easily, we give this up and turn it over to what’s been published, what’s been taught, and agreed upon.
But who’s to know what’s really real, when thousands and thousands of books of ancient wisdom have been burnt?
You do. We all do.
Because we all are the descendants of the wisdom keepers, the wise ones, medicine women and men, who have worked with the earth and the elements, the cycles of the sun, the natural world.
We have this knowing in our bodies, in our consciousness.
It is easy to ignore and deflect and doubt it when these things arise that don’t make sense or logic. Or when we are heavily distracted by the modern material world.
What I’ve been personally exploring is what it might be like to have one foot in both worlds – one in the unseen imaginal realm, and the other in this world of tangible form.
But both of which, we can see and touch and feel and hear and sense.
These ancient sacred sites are acupuncture points along the meridians of our earth body. There are multiple currents pulsing and flowing, within the land. Ancient, alive, electric.
When we go to these places, we don’t leave unchanged.
Our cells change. Our perception changes.
So even though I thought nothing much of the sites I visited as a little girl, I know now that they have had an impact on me, my worldview, my way of being.
These ancient sites carry immense power.
What I am now realizing, is that being here at these places, the power of these sites bring up our innate power.
And there is so much we do, consciously and unconsciously, to push down, away, and aside this power. Most of us are frightened or at least daunted by how powerful we can really be.
It is why we give our decisions away, for someone else to make it for us. Or constantly say “I don’t know”. I am guilty of this. Afraid of the repercussions of making my own decision, especially when it can be life-altering. A decision that is deeply truthful, even if I can’t understand why at that time.
It takes mammoth-level trust in ourselves. Most of us were never taught this kind of trust. We were taught to trust something, someone, a book, a teaching, but not ourselves.
What happens when more and more people begin to actually trust themselves?
What would happen to the ‘experts’, authorities, and systems then?
It would be the biggest revolution society will have ever experienced.
And that is why we’ve been conditioned to devalue our inner knowing; turn our power over; listen, obey, and follow the pack.
Pilgrimage, in my experience, is one of the most direct pathways back to it.
Not because the land gives us power.
But because it reveals the ways we have abandoned our own.
The stories and conditioning and habitual patterns and beliefs – that pushes our power down, cut ourselves short, and play very, very small.
Pilgrimage brings these ways of being to the surface in a way that is impossible to ignore.
It is deeply transformative,
deeply powerful,
deeply healing.
It is the remembrance of who we are beneath the layers.
The reclaiming of our sovereignty.
The willingness to see ourselves clearly.
Because once we see what we are doing, it becomes much harder to keep abandoning ourselves in the same ways.
This is the work I stand for.
A pilgrimage of the outer lands, but even more so, a pilgrimage through our inner labyrinth.
If something in this email speaks to you, strikes a chord, or tugs gently at your heartstrings,
Come with me on pilgrimage this August.
Cornwall
16 – 22 August
Glastonbury
23 – 29 August
This pilgrimage is for you, if:
· you feel called to sacred sites
· you are in a life transition
· you feel something is ending
· you long for more meaning in your life
· you feel disconnected from your intuition
· you are seeking a rite of passage
· you don’t want to do this journey by yourself
The groups are intentionally kept small to create an intimate container for deep transformation, deep connections, and deep encounter with the land.
You will know if you are meant to be there.
It would be my honour to walk this descent and ascent alongside you.
If you're curious but unsure, email journey@somapsychealchemy.com
We can have a conversation and feel into whether this pilgrimage is right for you.
Yours in devotion,
Stephanie
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