Uragh Stone Circle and Ireland’s Mystical Places
Uragh (oo-rah). No one ever forgets the first time they see Uragh stone circle. Reaching it requires a 20-minute descent down winding roads into a vast mountain bowl marked by waterfalls that empty into two side-by-side lakes at the bottom. Uragh, ever invisible, sits on a rise between the lakes. Once the road ends, a ten-minute trek down a stony path leads across a footbridge over rippling water and a gateway to the final incline. And at the crest — there it is. Uragh appears in the mist, standing solitary where the ancestors put it thousands of years ago. Its name means The Place of the Yew Trees – a nod to the sacred tree of the pre-Christian Celts, which likely occupied the site long ago. Uragh’s stones are aligned with the sun and moon at Midsummer. Four small stones and one massive, ten-foot sentinel still stand in silence, holding the memories of a people who once processed as pilgrims to bury their dead, honor their ancestors, and beg the creator for favor. Now, the mountains, lakes, and occasional pilgrim are Uragh’s only company.
Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth. They stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and its shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. ~N. Scott Momaday, poet and scholar, Kiowa Nation
I lead two tours to mystical places in Ireland every year. Yes – only Ireland. Sometimes I throw in a tour of Scotland – usually the Spring tour- and while my heart holds a deep affection for Scotland, England, Wales, and Brittany, no land feels quite as saturated with the sacred and the mysterious as does Ireland. Despite being roughly the size of Indiana or Maine, Ireland possesses a staggering density of ancient and Medieval monuments. Acre for acre, Ireland has more monuments than any other nation on Earth for its size, surpassed only by the island of Malta. (Rhode Island is 8 times bigger than Malta.) There are 150,000 sites that include ring forts, standing stones, monastic ruins, castles, high crosses, stone circles, and ancient tombs, some dating back 7000 years, and most of the sites are associated with some type of spiritual element or ritual. Stand anywhere in Ireland, and you won’t be but a few miles from some ancient remnant of the past. And these thin places ignite creativity in their local populations. For centuries, poets, singers, musicians, and dancers have translated Ireland’s mystery into art. Artists continue the challenging work of manifesting the unique, soul-stirring power held within the Irish landscape.
One must wonder why the Irish never moved these relics. Other countries in Europe moved them about, reused the stones in buildings, tore down ruins to make way for new development, and Ireland has also done that to a certain extent. But there is this deep respect – some would call it superstition – embedded in the Irish people about their land. Some of the old farmers will tell you that all this “fairy stuff” is nonsense. But you won’t see those farmers cutting down a lone hawthorn tree in their field. In a land that oozes a spiritual energy that shapes its population, the Irish and their sacred landscape are inseparable. It is this deep-rooted connection that draws me back year after year. I find myself continually transformed by these “thin places”—those rare, hallowed thresholds where the veil between this present world and that mystical, spiritual, magnetic “other world” is thin. And so, I happily return … year after year.
** Uragh Stone Circle is a common stop on the Thin Places Mystical Tours Spring and Autumn tours.
