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Below are the account for the year ended 31 March 2004. Although they show a loss of nearly £200 this is not a disaster as there are several unusual expenses.
1. The payment for the 2004 Stonehenge trip has been included.
2. The 10th Anniversary buffet.
3. A grant of £100 to the Chairman to attend a trainers training course with the British Society of Dowsers. (The full cost of the course was over £200). Shaun is now a recognised dowsing teacher.
All in all I think the accounts show that we are in a sound financial position.
Membership stands at 63. To arrive at this number I count Family membership as 2.
You may have noticed that the newsletter has improved in print quality (still the same old typos though). We changed the printers during the year and are seeing a small reduction in the cost.
The speaker program was an interesting mix of old favourites, new faces and members. It looks as though 2004 will continue in the same vein. The field trips were again a program of visits to old favourites and new sites, and I don’t remember getting wet.
If you’re going down to Padstow to celebrate May Day, call in at East Down church, near Barnstaple. It is reputed to have over 100 green men in it and it’s surrounded by bluebell woods. Sounds like a place to visit. Thanks to Chris Hinton for the information.
A misprint hit last month’s advert for our trip to Stonehenge. The time to meet is 19:15 for entry to the stones at 19:45, but I got the date right! It’s the 14th May. Be in good time as last year we got in early. Don’t forget - pre-booking only.
The April field trip is to Winchester, the highlight of the visit will be to the very old [and large] labyrinth at St. Catherine’s Hill. The shape of the labyrinth is known as a Mizmaze, it is constructed of turf banks and the path to be walked is between the banks. It is square in shape , approximately 70 feet along each side, and is reckoned to be pre-1710 in age.
Just to make things even more interesting, the labyrinth is near the ruins of the medieval chapel of St. Catherine, which is on the site of an iron-age hill fort.
The “holy hill” of St. Catherine is on a holy-hill alignment, according to Paul Devereux, which starts at Tidbury Ring, through the church of St. Bartholomew and the cathedral in Winchester, across the labyrinth, then on to a bowl barrow tumulus further south.
Venue details are in the back of the journal – apparently there is plenty of parking nearby the cathedral. Remember it is April so be prepared for a shower or two! We hope to dowse one or two other interesting local spots as well. See you there.
Winchester Mizmaze
Find your date of birth and read about your attributes. No guarantees of accuracy.
April 01 to April 10 - Rowan Tree (the Sensitivity) - full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.
April 11 to April 20 - Maple Tree (Independence of Mind) - no ordinary person, full of imagination and originality, shy and reserved, ambitious, proud, self-confident, hungers for new experiences, sometimes nervous, has many complexities, good memory, learns easily, complicated love life, wants to impress.
April 21 to April 30 - Walnut Tree (the Passion) -- unrelenting, strange and full of contrasts, often egotistic, aggressive, noble, broad horizon, unexpected reactions, spontaneous, unlimited ambition, no flexibility, difficult and uncommon partner, not always liked but often admired, ingenious strategist, very jealous and passionate, no compromise.
I don't see how anyone can say dolphins, or bees, or whales, or orang-utans, or humans, or computers, are the most intelligent species on Earth, when there are dogs.
I've got a ghost dog at home. An otter hound keeps appearing on the landing. I never say anything to him. Perhaps I should. He has webbed feet, for the water, and double fur. He is large and amiable. Not a day goes by that I don't wonder what he's doing there.
Of course, we don't hunt for otters any more, so perhaps he's a ghostly expression of a general feeling of being at a bit of a loose end. Perhaps he was the last of his line. Perhaps we all are.
In company with Tintin and Poirot, Maurice Maeterlinck is a famous Belgian. He wrote a compelling study of the bee in 1901 and might be worth looking out for, as I see that he also wrote the following books:
Ancient Egypt... The Magic of the Stars... Pigeons and Spiders... The Buried Temple... The Life of the White Ant. It might be worth checking to see if he's still in print and do you know, I would, if only I didn't have so many other matters to attend to, within the time available.
Maeterlinck said an interesting thing about dogs. He said:
"We are alone, absolutely alone on this planet, and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us."
A chilling thought, but he's right. Amoeba don't care for us. Nor do woodlice. Horses are only putting up with us and dolphins couldn't care less.
Dogs are so faithful, so un-snobbish, and so lively, yet they can be trained to see for the blind, and find a man with a broken leg on a mountainside when the clouds have rolled in and closed everything down.
It's not a sixth sense. It's their nose. It's one of the five senses developed to a high degree. Nothing fancy. Work with what you've got.
That must be how we dowse. Not a sixth sense, but a synaesthesia of the five senses we've got, all mixed together and enhanced by practice, so that what's below the ground, or removed by distance, becomes apparent.
I reckon the energies around Avebury were very apparent once, possibly even visible, and so big that the ancients dug the bank and ditch to hold them, while they could be worked on.
They wrapped the energies round the sacred site, like a rope around a capstan, and refreshed the lines, renewing their elasticity, before sending them off on their journey round the world again.
The energy would come back home to the Avebury temple in a never-ending cycle, all worn and tattered and tired, so the ancients would heal the lines again by singing and dancing and doing ceremony, and by sacred geometry, then send the pulse back into the world, to maintain the sweetness and balance of life on Earth.
There are people who still do that work, subtle people, but we don't do it collectively now. Collectively, we drive cars and collect machines. That's where our efforts are concentrated.
It's hard to get close to Nature. I never seem to be out there by myself, always with this rabble of degenerates. I go in pubs. I let myself get distracted. I want to know who won the 3.20 at Kempton Park.
Well then, for what it's worth, I think that dowsing is when the invisible becomes apparent because the diviner has surrendered himself and become divine, part of everything, and the void.
Of course, I wasn't going to say that to Ms Henmania Hill, self-appointed guardian of the sacred well, and her bratty daughter Morgan.
"Ah yes, dowsing," I said casually, "a very minor art among the dark arts. I have someone to do that for me. He carries the kit, he's good at getting a table in the pub, and he can play the piano when called upon."
"Lucky you," said Henmania.
"Not really," I said. "I'm always being humiliated by his superior skill and sensitivity. But I took him on. I gave him his first break."
"Who is he?"
"Plumb Bob," I said, "amenuensis and bee-keeper extraordinaire. He always makes a telling contribution. Unfortunately, he can't be with us tonight as he's back in town, taking care of a demented female."
I said it with a certain emphasis, but Henmania and her daughter were unmoved; they did not seem to get my drift.
At this stage in the cold dark evening the daughter was only speaking to us via her hand, a rather stern individual.
"So, someone else does all your work for you," said Mr. Hand.
"You could say that," I admitted.
"And all your thinking."
"As a person of independent means," I explained, "I am on a life-long sabbatical from significant thought. My function is to sing tunelessly in the bath and organise quiz nights. And let me tell you, the work is never done!"
"Don't you think that's a little bit pathetic?"
"No, it's right and proper," I said. "The Government don't want us thinking."
"What's all this education, education, education shit then?"
"Morgan!" said her mother. "Language!"
"It was Mr. Hand," said Morgan. "He's notoriously foul-mouthed."
"I was sitting in a crop circle once," said Dave, "thinking. And the Government didn't like it. They sent a helicopter over the horizon and it hovered for yonks. Buzzed me. Followed me home."
"I expect you were thinking the wrong thoughts," said Cyril.
"Ruined my day," said Dave.
"He was thinking the wrong thoughts about Lady Diana," said Ermintrude.
"Conspiracy theories," said Dave.
"That wasn't the Government in that helicopter," I said, "that was me. You'd left your L-rods in the pub. What a dozy twonk you are."
"I am-" said Dave.
"Yes, this is very droll," said Morgan. "Mr. Hand says a sense of humour is all very well. All very well for people who are hysterical and don't know their place in the world."
"Unlike all the sensible, secure people who think their hand is a person," I remarked.
"That was a very sarcastical thing to say," said Henmania. "She's only little."
On cue the child began to blub again. "Mama, wasn't that just the sort of horrible, uncool thing Daddy used to say."
"Her father was sick with logic," said Henmania. "His logic, of course. No doubt you have heard of him. Dr Rowley Miles."
"I think I've got one of his books," said Cyril. "Lethhridge and Underwood. Towards a Definition of Anomaly Aesthetics. Didn't I lend it to you?" he said, turning to me.
"Are you sure?"
"I would have remembered."
"When my mummy was married, she was married to the most famous New Age academic of the last twenty years," said Morgan. "That's the sort of person my mummy is."
"We fell out over Atlantis," said Henmania, "and we divorced over Doug and Dave."
Grey Wolf
A smaller number than usual turned up for the March out-door session, which was based in and near Purton, probably due to a combination of the weather forecast and the fact that it was Mothers Day. However several members came along to dowse firstly at an old field behind Purton Church, then after lunch we went to Ringsbury Camp, an Iron-age hillfort, also at Purton.
My attempt at dowsing underground water in the field behind the church got off to a bad start. Being only half awake, I broke one of the rules that I always try to instil in new dowsers when I am teaching them to accurately locate a target. I asked the wrong question. I asked for underground water, without being specific about what kind of underground water I was looking for. I immediately got a strong reaction from my rod and trotted off in the direction it led me. Over the hedge at the border of the field was a cattle trough – I had got the dowsing reaction over the supply pipe to the trough, not the underground stream that I should have specified!
Back to the beginning and start again. The field proved to be an interesting place to dowse, with several underground streams, energy spirals and a particular place where several members thought it would be a good spot to construct a stone circle.
We went off to the Angel for an early lunch as the rain came on again, and afterwards went on to Ringsbury Camp. This was a very attractive and peaceful place, largely ignored by the locals, in spite of being so close to the village, and there were a number of dowsable features. The wind picked up, though, which made dowsing rather difficult, but it is such a lovely and interesting place that another visit will probably be arranged at a later date. S.C
For some reason I seem to have been reading a lot about stars lately. Not the ones up in the sky, but the geometrical figures. This got me thinking about them - the star pattern in one form or another crops up in just about every culture, belief system, traditional and modern art and folklore that I can think of. Why? What is it about this arrangement of straight lines that appeals to everyone from a small child learning to draw, to the alchemists of medieval times, isolated tribal peoples, mystics and modern cartoon artists?
One possibility is that the act of constructing this design has a power all of its own; it “does something” to the person who draws it. After all, it is frequently used in amulets, mandalas, charms etc. Lines drawn between the angles of a pentagram, another powerful figure, form a star pattern. Another possibility is that the earth is covered a natural star patterned grid, along which the earth’s energies flow, and this was known and used by our ancestors, and that the people of today have retained, maybe without realising it, an affinity with and respect for this iconic design.
A number of dowsers have worked on the theory that “undamaged” star patterns lead to a smooth flow of the earth’s energy, resulting in the “feel-good” factor, while disturbed star patterns may lead to feelings of discomfort in the places where the flow of energy has been disturbed. This is why it is so important to take great care when re-routing bad energy lines – you don’t want to inadvertently make things even worse.
I have just been reading about a theory that Rollright Stones has had its natural energies seriously disturbed when it was restored many years ago, which is why it has the reputation of being an uncomfortable site for many people.
Another suggestion by the same author was that modern sky scrapers and tower blocks have the same effect of blocking the natural flow. Perhaps that is one of the causes of inner-city tension, high rates of street crime and general stress. It may be that high-rise blocks in themselves are not necessarily bad, but that is their actual positioning in relation to other buildings which cause problems.
A great deal of work on “earth stars” was done some years ago by Clive Beadon, a former member of the B.S.D. Council, and another source of information is the book “Pi In The Sky” by Micheal Poynder. [pub. Rider.] S.C.
A good crowd turned up for the welcome return visit by well-known earth-energy dowser Billy Gawn, from Northern Ireland. Billy recently retired as chairman of the Earth Energy Group – a sub-section of the British Society of Dowsers, although he continues to be heavily involved in this area of dowsing. He discussed some of the findings he has made in the study of earth energies, and demonstrated some ways to detect some of the subtle energy fields generated by everything from a small garden pebble to powerful fields emanating from stars in space. These fields appear to be the cause of many of the grid systems which dowsers have long been aware of, and which can be strong enough to be traceable for very long distances.
Billy also showed his own preferred dowsing technique, where he does not use a tool, but sticks out his forefinger and “feels” his target with it, looking for all the world as though he is doing invisible writing on an invisible wall!
The meeting was held at the end of the month instead of the usual third Monday, as this was when Billy was in England to attend another event, but hopefully nobody turned up on the wrong night! S.C.
I've just read two books - one was fascinating and a challenge and the other I gallopped through. The 'challenge' was John Gribbin's Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity and the Emergence of Life (ISBN 0 713 99610 2) to which I was attracted by the beautiful colour picture of a Julia Set (fern tendril shape) illustrating the review of the book recently. John Gribbi, who clarified the quantum physics in In Search of Schrodinger's Cat, takes seemingly complex ideas and happenings, and demonstrates tothe reader that they begin or arise from a simple formula. For instance the analysis of interstellar clouds shows that they contain the building blocks of all living things - amino acids. Also, that little events happen very frequently but larger events must happen, they need not be triggered by any single factor. The organisation of simple elements interacting to make a complex whole he relates to traffic flow, the economy, the weather.
Having battled through the mathematics and got lost, I was soon put back on track by the every day examples.John Gribbin has the rare gift of fluency in numbers and words. His use of the equation is impressive but his ability to paint pictures of the numbers in words is even more impressive.
Another person with a gift is Mia Dolan whose book The Gift (ISBN 0 00715451 8) was a fast gripping read. After a surprising start both for the reader and Mia, we are told of Mia's coming to terms with the fact that she has a gift of clairvoyance and clairaudience, she has a guide who she renames Eric as she cant accept his given name of Merlin! The book recounts her life from a disturbed childhood through a turbulent youth and adulthood during which she comes to terms with her psychic abilities and develops her skills.
The reading of these two books in quick succession reminds me how vast our world is, and although there may be seemingly incomprehensible occurrences - like dowsing! - there will be a simple explanation or solution to be found by those with the ability or inclination to search.
BAC