Geopuncture “To the Roots of Gaia Culture” – inspired by the Lednice-Valtice Cultural Landscape in Moravia Carried out in 2026 by the LifeLoveNet art group in Adršpach, Czech Republic
I first visited Adršpach/Znonov in September 2015, when Marko Pogačnik invited me to take part in my first geopuncture project – one dedicated to animals. The fact that he immediately entrusted me with the cosmogram for the dragons was both a surprise and a challenge. I am still astonished by the inspiration for this, my very first carved cosmogram, which was undoubtedly brought to me by this unique landscape.
I had always thought that such landscapes existed only in America or in the hidden wadis of the Sahara … but no, in the heart of Europe, on the Czech-Polish border, the “rock towns” of Adršpach (Adersbach) and Teplice stretch across many square kilometres, with closely clustered rock towers up to 100 metres high, between which one can walk as if through a natural Manhattan.
By now, we have worked at this special location several times already – and have done so again this year on a challenging theme. The landscape park near the Austrian-Moravian border, in Lednice/Valtice (Eisgrub/Feldberg), shaped over the centuries by the Princes of Liechtenstein, was visited by us in the run-up to the event and, in geomantic perception, we recognized it as a spiritual and cultural creation that prepares the ground for our endeavours to develop Gaia culture.
When compared to Adršpach/Teplice, this is a very different kind of water-rich area, and it is also one of the Czech Republic’s major scenic attractions. It transpired that the Liechtenstein family, who commissioned the various temples, monuments and water features, together with their advisers and architects, evidently possessed profound geomantic insights as well as specific intentions. It was very interesting and impressive, for us as a group of artists-geomancers, to get to know this total work of art within its specific landscape and to explore its significance – both then and now. This took place this year around Walpurgis Night or Beltane. Marko had already visited the landscape several years earlier.
As is always the case for a geopuncture project, a concept was developed, and in this instance it was composed of the individual locations within the Liechtensteins’ landscape park; from these, each of us selected two or three that had particularly moved and inspired us. This concept can be found at the end of this article.
In August, at the time of the solar eclipse and the Perseid meteor shower, we found ourselves back in Zdonov (Merkelsdorf) close to Adršpach, on the land of our host Bernard Lainka, who runs several Demeter farms in the Czech Republic and had asked us for this further work. (The conversion of his large tracts of land to this form of farming was largely inspired by our group – a welcome “side effect” of our work!)
The large, flat slabs of sandstone – offcuts from the local quarrying of stone blocks – had already been carefully placed in a horizontal position and at the correct height for carving. Once again we came together, having travelled from various countries: Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany and even the USA. This annual reunion is a cause for joy, as is the collaborative creative work, to which Marko and his wife Marika had introduced us in terms of content, artistry and craftsmanship. How wonderful it was to see all our cosmogram designs and to bring them to life together over the following days. The hours-long, polyphonic sound of our hammers and chisels on the stone – often uninterrupted by anything else for long stretches – leads us deep into our own inner selves and fosters an intimate connection with the stone and the content we are carving.
After two or three days, the first heavy machinery arrives to collect the finished stones. At their installation site, the holes are excavated to exact measurements, so that together they form the floor plan of the overall composition – which, incidentally, is redesigned for each installation, depending on the site’s conditions, its orientation towards the sun and the conceptual content. Positioning the large, heavy stones requires a great deal of skill and finesse on the part of the excavator operator, the coordinator and the assistants, so that the position is precisely aligned in all directions until everything fits perfectly. The stones are placed on a bed of sharp-edged gravel and, due to their irregular shapes, are often underpinned with stones from the field.
Once the final cosmograms have been carved, the whole group helps to clean the erected stones and the surrounding area. Finally, the moment arrives to ground the geopuncture through a shared ritual and for each stone or cosmogram to be presented by its creator.
However, it is not solely this creative work of ours that we carry out during our time together at the site in question. Guided by the dreams of individual participants or other occurrences – and often clarified through Marko’s (mostly nocturnal) meditations – a space emerges for further rituals that seem necessary for the realisation and protection of our work at this site. Here in Adršpach and Zdonov, for instance, acts of violence associated with the expulsion of the largely German-speaking population at the end of the Second World War resurface; their ghostly imprints remain present in the energetic and emotional field to this day. Towards the end of our working stay, one of the dreams revealed the very special geomantic quality of the site on which we have now erected the fourth installation. Located between the ridge of the rock city and a hill that is also composed of rock towers, it revealed itself as one of those precious places where the ‘Grandmother Universe, perfect in love’ (as Marko calls it) communicates with the cosmos in the „back“ of our Earth. The geopunctures, with their stones, thus become instruments which – set into vibration by this connection – release their music. Such places, which can be found also in Venice, near Bern and at the great Danube meander near Schlögen (A), are organs of the transformed Earth.
Barbara Buttinger-Förster, September 2026
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Original text in German: Bericht Geopunktur
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