Early in my stay at the l’Hameau de l’Etoile (Hamlet of the Star), the refurbished 17th century village in southern France where I’ve been teaching Active Dreaming over the past two weeks, I dreamed of a prehistoric standing stone. The stone was the kind known as a menhir, and I witnessed important ancient rituals that were practiced here, for the renewal of the Earth and of the bond between humans and the Earth powers. In my night vision, male potency was raised here, in the service of the Goddess, for baby-making and for the defense of her people.
I knew, in my dream, that the great standing stone was known to the people who gathered here, thousands of years ago, as Le Poignard (The Dagger).
I recounted this dream over lunch at a long refectory table with members of my training, many of whom were natives of the Pays d’Oc, the region where we were dreaming together. Nobody had heard of a menhir called the Poignard, but a passionate amateur archeologist in the group, Jean Alain, volunteered to research my dream.
A few days later, Jean Alain joined a group of intrepid adventurers who had agreed to show me the countryside on a free day between my workshops. It was pouring with rain in this generally dry region, so there were no objections to sharing a leisurely lunch at the Auberge de Saugras, a 12th century inn on the old pilgrimage route that ends at Santiago de Compostela. We tasted a local wine whose name evoked the feelings of my dream: Les Noces de la Terre et du Ciel. The Marriage of Earth and Heaven.
As the mises en bouche were offered, Jean Alain would not contain his excitement. The previous day, he revealed, he and his partner – following an internet search – had spent several hours driving the back roads around Ganges (no relation to the river in India) and talking to locals. They believed they had found the menhir from my dream.
After the dessert and cheese, we piled into the cars and followed our dream archeologist through medieval villages, past a stone house to a turnoff with a signpost for Ginestous leaning at a crazy angle. A short walk along a rocky trail, through the scrub, brought us to…the standing stone from my dream.
In profile, it looks very much like a narrow blade. The broad side resembles and arrow head, or perhaps a spear head. I felt shivers of recognition. Jean Alain told me that this menhir, standing alone, is unique in France, quite different from the other 250 he has researched. And that the scholars have been unable to determine how it was used by those who raised it and may have shaped it. I think I have seen what this stone meant for those who set it upright 4,000 years ago. And that I have received confirmation, yet again, that we can dream with the land.
My companions insisted on taking my photo with the stone and laughed that I looked like a “man of the country” in the little black cap I had purchased that morning in an effort to keep some of the rain off my head.
I shall now follow the clues from other phrases that came to me in dreams and visions from the speaking land in southern France.
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