Remembering the Power of 8: My magical journey visiting ancient wells in North Wales

“I have to be in Wales for Summer Solstice.”

The words whooshed round my mind as though caught in a washing machine stuck on rinse and spin.

No matter how many times I tried to ease the need to go, telling myself  - ‘you can’t afford it,’ ‘it’s too last minute,’ ‘YOU’VE ALREADY MADE PLANS!’ - the words only got louder. In the end I didn’t see I had a choice but surrender to them. 

To Wales I would go.

All this started after my trip to Mother Shipton’s Cave, where the lady I mentioned in my first blog, Hilary, talked about the ‘Lourdes of Wales’, St Winefride’s Well, a sacred shrine that people have been visiting for over a thousand years (and probably longer). Apparently, many experience healing miracles after bathing in its holy waters.

I could do with one of those, I remember thinking.

I ended up booking a room at St Winefride’s Guest House, attached to the convent run by an order of Bridgettine Sisters: www.bridgettineholywell.org.uk

The rooms are clean and comfortable and the nuns feed every guest ABUNDANTLY. You eat what they eat, so there’s no menu to choose from. For example, evening meals included a large bowl of creamy mushroom soup and slices of soft bread, a generous portion of meat with a side of roast potatoes and vegetables for the main (of which I had seconds because who can say no to a nun?), finished with thick apple crumble and a large dollop of vanilla ice cream. 

It was all delicious and I have the extra half a stone around my belly to prove it.

The guest house is a two minute walk from St Winefride’s Well, which I first visited on Friday, the day before Summer Solstice. It’s a site of Christian pilgrimage, believed to be the oldest continuously visited pilgrimage site in Britain, dating back to the 7th century (which takes place on the 22nd June each year). The well is associated with the legend of St. Winefride, a Welsh Christian princess who, according to legend, was beheaded by a spurned suitor and miraculously restored to life by her uncle, St. Beuno, with the spring forming where her head fell. 

Now, apparently Winefride and Beuno were real people, however, this account wasn’t documented until about 500 years after their death. As I read their story, a book called The Black Madonna came to mind - a fiction novel based on historical fact, of how the Catholic Church changed the pagan stories and goddesses associated with each sacred well and spring across Europe, Britain and Ireland to get people to convert to Christianity. The church had to keep most of these places associated with a female entity, which now take on the name of a Christian Saint, like St Winefride, or St Bridget, because our ancestors needed various representatives of the Divine Feminine to pray to. 

One male god was never going to be enough.

For those interested, The Black Madonna is an incredible read, and written in the style of a thriller. It’s got the same vibe as The Da Vinci Code.

What was the pagan story associated with this well, I wondered, and was there any way of finding out?

Check out the image below of St Winefride and St Beuno, have you ever seen a more Druid looking pair?

I feel there's something quietly symbolic here, how the Christian crosses they hold hang low, almost as if they're secondary. The one St Winefride is holding is on a chain, like it’s more of burden that anything else. And what’s between St Beuno’s feet which his cross is pointing to, a weight…? While his finger is raised toward the crown at the top of the image. A nod to the crown chakra? A silent gesture toward wisdom through connection to higher realms, something at the core of Druidic tradition. I appreciate I have a tendency to look too deeply into things, but there’s just something about this image…

Another thing that struck me on my first visit was that the well itself looked to be held in the shape of a star. Or what looked like it should have been an eight pointed star, if one of the sides wasn’t misshapen. How odd, I thought.

Whether you believe in the healing power of ancient sites or not, I’m certain anyone who visits can’t help but feel the special energy of this place. The feeling of love coming from the land and waters was so strong, I couldn’t help but cry. I even received a beautiful message as I cleansed my feet with the well water, something I was intuitively guided to do when I arrived. It went something like this - 

“There is not a part of you I cannot love. Every shadow, every broken edge, all the parts that make you want to run and hide, my love embraces all of it. In time you will learn that you too have the capacity to love the same way, that’s how powerful you are.”

Was it the land, the water, or my own mind making it up? Either way it had a strong effect and the pains I’d been carrying physically in my body for some time, eased.

My first night at the Convent/Guest House was filled with dreams of women in white robes singing around streams, as well images of all the Jesus statues that filled the building. There was one in particular I struggled to look at as I passed, a huge FABRIC Jesus at the top of the stairs. I even had to put the crucifix above my bed in the draw. Couldn’t risk my heathen soul bursting into flames in the middle of the night (don’t worry, I put Jesus back where I found him before I left).

Originally, my mini pilgrimage plan included visiting stone circle sites and ancient trees around North Wales. Life had other ideas, and on the morning of Summer Solstice, I ended up at St Dyfnog’s Well in Llanrhaeadr. Or should I say, I ended up IN it.

Talk about being REBORN. The waters were so cold, I felt every limiting belief and mask I’ve carried throughout my life shed like frost under a blow-torch. 

I drummed, I sang, and explored the area with a heart full of joy and curiosity. I found it interesting that this well is named after a male monk who apparently guarded the area during his life. Although the waters felt feminine, they did feel masculine too, which could be because the well itself is made up of waters from two streams, each with a different mineral content - something that makes the waters so special and why many drink it.

I was lucky enough to meet a beautiful couple during my visit here, who were also drumming up the Summer Solstice. When Claire told me she was a shamanic womb healer, I put my hand over my own womb and realised I’d had no pain or discomfort since getting into the well. The healing of my womb is one of the main reasons I set off on this journey, to see if connecting to sacred sites can help bring about healing and transformation. With great hope that I won’t have to continue down the path of invasive surgeries to treat the endometriosis I was diagnosed with back in 2023.

They told me about another sacred well that was near by, St Mary’s. A place not many know about or get to visit as it’s on private land and hard to find. Before I knew it I was speaking to a farmer on the phone, asking for permission to visit. 30 minutes later I’m climbing over locked gates, treading ankle deep through streams and walking through vast fields - scaring the crap out of a bunch of rams, before finally finding the most magical place I’ve ever seen.

Hidden amongst old chapel ruins is St Mary’s well, surrounded by untamed wilderness that has grown, as if with the purpose to protect this sacred place, since it was abandoned many years ago. Although little of its history is known, what does remain are the stories of people once traveling from near and far with the hope of being healed by its miracle waters.

As I got closer to the well, which sits in the middle of a stream that gushes down over rocks and tree roots, I was struck by its shape. I was looking at the same star formation I had seen the day before at St Winefride’s. It too even looked as though it had been misshapen on the same side, as if at one point in time, it had taken the form of a perfect 8 pointed star.

  There was no other human near by so I sang my little heart out whilst I was there, maybe to the annoyance of the rams, but they didn’t complain. When I got into a meditative state, I had visions of 8 women stood around the star shaped well, singing to it, as if infusing it with high vibrational frequencies of love and harmony. That may sound like an odd thing for someone to do to some people, but to those familiar with Dr Massaru Emoto’s water experiment, it probably doesn’t. His experiment proposes that water can be influenced by thoughts and emotions, with positive stimuli resulting in aesthetically pleasing sacred geometric ice crystal formations and negative stimuli resulting in distorted formations. Emoto's experiments involved exposing water to various words, pictures, and music, then freezing it and photographing the resulting ice crystals under a microscope.

Pretty cool, huh?

Although it wasn’t safe for me take a dip in the well, rain poured in buckets at one point so I ended up dancing as it fell, making sure the water covered as much of my body as possible. This happened after I sang to the stream. I’ve got into the habit of singing to the land when I’m out and about. I don’t usually like singing in front of others since I don’t consider myself to have a very good singing voice. My friend Sri has been super encouraging about my love for singing, however, and has been helping me build my confidence. So I’ve decided to do something pretty daring and share a recording of me singing to the stream in case anyone find its soothing, or is looking for a song to help them connect to water. The song in the video is A Water Hymn, which I came across on Instagram by an incredible artist called Milck. I fell in love with it and sing it every time I’m around water now! Whether you believe yourself to be a ‘good’ singer or not, there’s something pretty magical about singing to the land. 

My dreams were WILD that night. And when I woke up, I kept drawing octagon shapes like some kind of mad woman, the words ‘remember the power of 8…remember the portal of 8’ going round in my head.

Aware that this could all just be a coincidence, and that I could perhaps just be looking for magic where there was none, I calmed down and said to the all encompassing presence, ‘ok, if this 8 thing is a thing, show me another site associated with the number 8 before I leave.’

A few hours later, as I was on my way home, I randomly stopped off at a stone circle site called Bagillt Stonehenge. This is not an ancient site, it was created more recently in reference to another stone circle that had existed nearby. Ancient or not, I was looking at 8 stones, making a perfect star shape, circled around another in the middle. The 10th stone was off to one side, likely referencing an alignment with a star - which is usually the case with ancient stone sites. 

When I thought what the 10th stone could be linking to, if anything, an answer came loud and clear - 

The star of Venus. 

I’d totally forgotten the 8 pointed star having links to Venus, a planet associated with the qualities of love, beauty, freedom, harmony, and learning. 

The image of 8 singing women came to mind again, along with all the research I’ve done over the years about ancient female oracles and channels, who apparently had the ability to connect with higher realms and dispense prophecy and healing. Did at one point in history, 8 women coming together really have the power to create a portal? A way to channel high vibrational frequency codes from higher realms onto this planet? Could this be one of the reasons the Catholic Church was hell bent on creating fear among the masses about any woman showing even a drop of intuitive ability or healing power?

Who knows.

I don’t know if life actually did guide me on a journey to remember ancient wisdom. As someone who’s always have a vidid imagination, and a belief in magic, I naturally would like to believe so. But if not, something I can take away from this trip is that it’s totally changed my perspective around the numerology of the number 8.

Which just so happens to be my birth number. A number I've always felt has a heaviness to it, linked to karma and wrapped in the teachings of destruction and the gaining of wisdom and transformation through chaos. A rhythm that has been the undercurrent of much of my life, with destruction as my teacher and pain as my guide.

But on this trip, something shifted. In the cold waters and the quiet spaces, I began to see the beauty threaded through the pain. I began to understand that all of it, even the messiest pieces, forms a perfect whole. 

A perfect star. 

Perhaps I can choose other parts of my perfect whole to be my guide from now on. And that by bringing more awareness to those parts, such as peace, love, and harmony, I can become a portal for those things, to flow through me more easily and manifest as form in someway in my life.

Maybe I already am.

Maybe we all are.