A Visit to Glanum – near St Remy de Provence:
Located about 800 metres to the south of St Remy de Provence is the ancient site of Glanum at the gap into the Alpilles mountains. The site dates from the 7th century BC, beginning around a spring in this narrow gap in the mountains. From the original town of the pre-Roman (and pre-Celtic) Glanics, this has been a spiritual-religious site up to the Roman town with its temples.
The site sits in a narrow valley sloping up from the north to the higher southern end. A quarry is located before the entrance. Inside, the site includes a Residential Area and a Monument Area, and at the back (south) a Sanctuary area was well-protected by a defensive wall stretching between two steep rocky hills.
My particular interest however, was the sacred spring around which the settlement was originally founded . In Hellenic times it was covered and there are steps leading down to the water.
Artifacts have been discovered here at Glanum dating the original site back to the 7th and 6th centuries BC. The Glanics, early inhabitants, venerated the “sacred” spring here, and built a shrine to their local god Glan in the 4th century BC. The Glanics a warlike people with a religion similar to the Celtic-Ligurians who occupied this region at the same time, and there is evidence that the Glanics worshiped the Celtic god Glanis.
So on my visit to this this scared well I dedicated a small flower that I had held in my energy and connected this sacred spring/well to all the other springs and wells I have visited and meditated at around the globe.
