Last weekend, I visited two more sites where Slavs are known to have settled in the 700-1200 timeframe. The first was Pohansko south of Braclav. To visit the site, you need to park up and walk through a remarkable forest that is full of large ancient trees – often dead – surrounded by vibrant living ones. The ancient trees are huge and are identified by signposts as ‘Ents’. As we walked down the lane to the site, we stopped to marvel at several of these old Ents.
The forest opens up to a flat area of land surrounded by an embankment and at the very end of the flat area of land, is the Pohansko Castle. Around the sides of that flat area are a few WW2 bunkers that are worth a quick look.
The flat area of land is where the Slavic settlement was and the embankment marks where the wooden walls would have been protecting the people within. On the basis of archaeological and geophysical surveys, the maximum extent of Pohansko at the time of the Great Moravia Princedom is estimated at around 60 hectares. Only approximately a quarter of the total extent of the stronghold has been excavated and examined to date. A reconstruction of what it may have looked like is shown below.
We immediately found the remains of the church marked out in the grass and the buildings behind it. The church was a very simple structure like those elsewhere in the Morava valley. This one though was sited on an earlier Slavic pagan site and is oriented not the usual christian E-W but rather NW-SE, something the archeologist put down to the early christians assimilating the pagan site. What was intriguing to me was that I dowsed an energy line running, as usual, straight down the aisle of the church with an area of a vortex where you might expect the alter to have been located. I picked up the same energy line 200m NW and SE of the church and, given time, probably could have followed it further.
At the burial ground around the church (9th-10th century) 757 skeletons (208 males, 159 females, 354 sub-adults and 36 undetermined individuals), have been excavated along with many artifacts. With the site being quite long lived, that is perhaps not surprising. However, what was interesting was the pagan site and that had been reconstructed.
The Castle structure was built by the Lichenstein family as a hunting lodge and it now serves as a museum.
My friend was struck by the ‘peacefulness’ he found in the church area and beyond and I have to agree, the whole area including the forest has an atmosphere that is tangible. But the consistency of finding Slavic church ruins sited on energy lines is really interesting. The Slavs apparently were aware of the earth energies based on the evidence so far.
In the afternoon, a visit to MiculÄice, where a huge and remarkable Slavic settlement was sited, held further surprises and revelations regarding earth energies and the Slavs……
I will post on that shortly as it literally blew my mind what we found there and what it may mean…..