We have discovered that the Celtic priesthood of the Irish and ancient Britons practised the same Etruscan principle of divination from nature portents and the ancient science of geomancy and there are cities and towns in Britain that still retain a central crossroads where north–south and east–west roads meet. We also found that in ancient times Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the old Kingdom of Cornwall were all have within their boundaries the greatest example of ‘as above so below’ cosmology through dividing the land into four territorial provinces with its own kingship sites around a national geographical centre. This was a place that once held the most important national assemblies ruled over by a High King. The ancient divined their sacred centres with the belief that the ancient landscape was a canvas where points on the ground relate to star systems in the night’s sky.
Like the Etruscans, we found at these British centre places a shrine dedicated to the ancient British goddess Brigantia, Bride or Brigid often in the form of a holy well. In Ireland she guards a perpetual flame. The Great Mother and her sacred flame represent the flame or light within us, the spiritual energy that ignites our soul at the core of our being and all things. She is the protector at the hearth of our home, goddess of sovereignty. The centre or navel was a place to communicate with the Earth Mother, and we have found that almost all the genuine centres of our landscape have some history, myth or physical evidence associated with the worship of the divine feminine. It is also a place to contact the ancestors, where, according to the world tree principle, the veils between heaven or the centre of our galaxy and Earth are thin.
Many of the old omphalos sites revered by our ancient ancestors have survived and become popular tourist destinations, like the Hill of Uisneach in Ireland. Old methods of sacred planning found at many of the British centres were created to help enchant and to rebalance the land using the omphalos as a focal place of power and therefore the most effective place to perform ceremony and healing. During our research, we discovered that within the British Isles and Ireland each country, district or old kingdom still has remnants of a revered centre, with evidence of Earth goddess worship and kingship ceremonies, often within the shadow of a holy mountain or hill, which led us on a fascinating journey.
