Chapter 5: The Psyche and Healing in a Stone Circle

On impulse and on a warm fall day for Fairbanks, I took a client to the Stone Sanctuary for the first time.

I had worked with this client for a number of years; she was one of the few clients I have worked with who experienced multiple personalities.

She sat in the middle of the Sunken Enso and then spontaneously cycled through all her personalities. She would rubher left eye and shift her posture, signaling the emergence of a different personality; each personality looked carefully and with amazement at the surrounding stone landscape.

Much to my surprise, she suddenly and spontaneously drew a circle with a cross in the center in the sand. The voice of a young boy whispered, “Nobody knows I am here… I have been hiding in the woods.”

After getting over being totally startled, I suggested that the others would indeed like to know he was there. He said, “What should I call myself?” and looked around. He then said, “Rocky….  No, that might scare them…. Sky, I think I will call myself Sky.”

I said, “Hello, Sky….  I looked up and found myself saying, “You know, the sky connects everything…”

……….The next session she brought in an arrowhead that she had grown up with, and said, “We all would like to thank you… We have been like a broken arrow… and you have pointed the way. We would like to bury this at the Sanctuary so that we could always find our way back.”

As we headed for the Sanctuary, I passed by and spontaneously picked up the shaft of a feathered arrow that I had happened to find in the woods several months before, thinking that it might be useful at some time.

In a ceremony, we took the arrow and the arrowhead, put them together, and buried them pointing into the Sanctuary.

After that session, the client said, “For the first time in my life I feel whole… I am not afraid of leaving town… I know there will always be a place for us and I can always find myself.”

…..

For those familiar with Jung, the image she drew–  of a circle with a cross in it– is a quaternity mandala, a symbol of the Self.

This woman was un-educated in Jung, and this is nothing that she would have known about on a conscious level.

It was a profound experience for me to see this  healing take place within her, to see just how much a stone circle, a stone sanctuary, can make such a difference, can become a place of healing.

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