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Don’t forget our Feng Shui workshop being run 6th & 7th November. Details at the end of the Newsletter.
In April 2005 we will be running a workshop entitled “Discovering Right Relationship with the Spirit of Place - an exploration of subtle energy and consciousness in the landscape" run by Dr. Patrick Macmanaway. Patrick is a third generation psychic and healer. He consults and practices internationally as a geomancer, with offices in both Scotland and Vermont. A graduate of Edinburgh University Medical School, he is President of the British Society of Dowsers and the author of "Dowsing for Health". He lectures and teaches extensively on the nature of our relationship with the Spirit of Place.
His workshops are always popular and early booking is advised to avoid disappointment. See details at the end of the Newsletter.
On the Monday following the workshop Patrick will be our guest speaker.
Find your date of birth and read about your attributes. No guarantees of accuracy.
October 04 to October 13 - 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.
October 14 to October 23 - 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.
October 24 to November 11 - 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.
As in previous years, the October trip consists of a seasonal celebration which we rather grandiosely refer to as “the fire festival”. This year it will actually be on the 31st. October, [Samhain], so we thought it would be appropriate to hold a small ceremony in addition to the usual bonfire, snacks and socialising. Weather permitting, we might even squeeze in some dowsing as well! With this in mind, you could bring something to the ceremony such as a shaman’s drum, or other suitable item for the occasion. [Ring Shaun for further info.] In the past, several members have brought along a few nibbles to share and sparklers too! Warm clothes and stout footwear recommended, mud will probably be a feature of the event!
Once again, we thank Barbara and Adrian Crocker for their kindness in allowing the society to use their farm for the event – details of the time, and directions are below.
See map for details. Do not go to the house go straight to the farm buildings. We aim to start around 16:30.
A seasonal recipe sent in by Chris Hinton
10 oz SR Flour 8 oz butter
8 oz sugar 3 eggs
Sultanas Chopped cooking apples
Mix butter and sugar, add eggs and flour and beat. Add 1 heaped teaspoon mace, cinnamon or nutmeg. Add apples and sultanas.
Sprinkle with sugar
180° for ¾ hour or until cooked.
A Wishhound recipe.
In spite of the rotten weather forecast, a good number of members turned out for the September trip to Chutes Farm and the Redenham Shrine. After a couple of wrong turns we all arrived at the farm, where the farmers wife welcomed us and kindly handed out a number of maps she had photocopied of the fields and trackways on the farm. Due to the time available and the sheer quantity of interesting dowsing sites at the farm, we were only able to check out a few. Dowsing sites on offer at this fascinating site included barrows [long and round], a probable Roman villa, a civil war battle site, ploughed fields rich in finds from fossils to bronze-age pot sherds and the site of a round-house.
We also dowsed for possible water borehole sites for the farm to use. The farmer’s wife came with us as she has an interest in dowsing and wanted to learn more about it. It was useful to have her with us as she is also very interested in the archaeological content and history of the farm and its location and was able to give us a lot of information on the fossils etc. that we picked up.
After an excellent lunch at the pub at Upper Chute the next stop was a visit to Nora’s house for the Redenham Shrine, which is in her garden.
This is the Shrine's labyrinth.
By popular request the speaker for September was the well-known Devizes based chef Peter Vaughn. Peter did more than just a talk – he simultaneously gave a cookery demonstration, too. The dowsing connection came after the interval, when Peter supplied each member of the audience with a sample of each of the two pans of food that he had prepared during the first part of the talk and suggested that we dowse for their different qualities.
Although the dishes were ostensibly the same, in fact there were major differences. One pan used was an old aluminium pan that had seen better days. Into this pan went ingredients that had been cut carelessly with a blunt knife, with no particular interest from the chef. The ingredients for this pan were standard commercial fare, with imported vegetables that had probably been grown for a long shelf life. Standard Thames tap water was the cooking liquid. The other pan was made of high quality titanium and its contents were prepared with lots of focus, loving care and attention to detail. The ingredients for this pot were either organic, local, or the best quality available. High quality water from Bromham was used for this dish.
The dish chosen for the demonstration was a Salade Tiede made of cous-cous and assorted vegetables – a good choice as the finished salads had a very similar appearance, making it more difficult to cheat when dowsing!
Peter’s talk was fascinating – lots of amusing anecdotes as well as cooking tips, and the dowsing was fun, especially as we were able to enjoy eating the samples!
S.C.
Peter also kindly donated a copy of his book “Naturally Balanced Food” for the raffle prize, and his new book is due for publication very soon. More details as soon as we have them.
His restaurant is in The Brittox, Devizes, Wilts. It is called The Bistro and is open in the evening from Tuesday to Saturday. He also has a dining room available for private parties. The phone number is 01380 720043 – pre-booking is advisable particularly at weekends.
Eight years to go now. It will pass in a moment.
And yet, until recently, 2012 meant nothing to me or, if anything, twelve minutes past the end of happy hour in the Dog and Duck, that home away from home of the herbaceous perennial Cyril Longcake, and the brick out¬house known as Dave the Dowser.
Happy hour runs from four in the afternoon; in the tipsy cigarette gloom behind the seedy curtains. The world goes home from work and has something to eat and changes its clothes. It's a long, stale period of time in the pub. Nothing nicer. One touches the infinite.
At 2000 hours, maudlin hour begins. Then the hour of wishing we had been kinder; then the hour of remembering the dead; and lastly the hour of just one more and I must be going.
During maudlin hour, we're apt to be rather down on the Mayans. Who do they think they were? Some little vanished civilisation stretching esoteric tentacles across the millennia until their astrological almanac gets its symbol system on this year's crop circle calendar, where none of my friends can make the slightest sense of it.
A voguey bunch of dead poseurs, we reckon.
All we want to know is whether we're going to have a good week, how the yang will hang, and whether certain friends can be trusted, not a load of runic blobs and squiggles. For me, it will never replace demi-naked members of the WI up to their elbows in flour.
So they said the world is going to end at the end of the present cycle. Do we need it? Frankly, the Mayans are getting on my not inconsiderable tits.
Then, between the hours of 10 and 11 at the Dog and Duck, somebody, usually Plumb Bob, reminds us how important the Mayans were, and we grow respectful of the power of their prophecies, and a little afraid.
We work out how old we are going to be in 2012 and C. Longcake, free radical and junk male, wonders what he might do, to expand the envelope before the fatal day. No-one's yet been able to come up with any suggestions, since he won't wash.
But we don't cancel the insurance or stop contributing towards the pension plan and we are not down-hearted. For the word apocalypse can often be given a positive interpretation.
This end of the world will be a subtle shift in Gala's rate of vibration, leaving some folks mired in their aggressive capitalist life-styles with attendant bad record collections, whilst gentle angelic souls are elevated to their true reward clutching their Robert Wyatt LPs.
That's what my therapist tells me (Red Albatross: Bringing the Spirit of the Dolphin to the Landlocked) (real name Reg Albatross, of Keynsham) though I may need more counselling almost immediately.
It's an investment. And what's money, anyway? So much gone on Tarot readings already, and Angel cards, and singing bowls, and courses on Time Travel for Beginners. There are only beginners.
With each moment, a new moment arrives with me, invading my heart, dissolving all my earlier purpose, killing off the centre of my soul and driving me to the outer branches of my being, where I dwell in a tree-house, one for each day of the year.
I hear the voices of the past in the branches. I dream strange dreams, the dreams of other people, their mishaps and confusion. I dream of turning a corner and meeting dogs who may not be friendly or may be.
I dream I am riding a finish in the Grand National and dancing at Covent Garden with Darcey Bussell. The horse I am riding is a bay called Guy Underwood. He is eight.
I am not of the earth. My father spent his latter years riding the Wall of Death in great arcs of infinity, folly and transcendence hand in hand. My Aunt Judy has been off-planet for many a year.
The Stoutes are becoming rare and impossibly refined.
It's only a matter of time before regular employment becomes entirely out of the question. How could I face the every day?
By the way, have you travelled the M6 lately?
Earlier this year I had occasion to sally forth to the Lake District, researching the 95 Inuit words for snow. Some very large number anyway.
When I got there, I discovered that there are no Esquimeaux living in the abandoned graphite mines above Lake Buttermere. Someone had been trying to get me out of the way. I could not remember who.
I toured for a few days regardless, becoming equally riveted by Castlerigg stone circle and the Pencil Museum at Keswick, then set off for the South again.
Stopping for nourishment at the Lancaster services I found myself at the pumps with a Geordie. He had a Rascal van loaded to the tin roof with chef's knives which he needed to dispose of quickly, for tax purposes.
He asked if I knew any hotels in the area?
Any conference centres? Any circuses with a knife-throwing act?
Look, I said, I'm not really here. I'm only driving this Rover until my time machine comes through.
Any psychopaths?
How about a set for the wife?
I walked away. I could hardly hear him anyway, in the traffic. He found someone else to pester. New punters arriving every moment.
Strange job to have. I suppose things fall off the backs of lorries all the time in the North, or go missing at the Docks, or fishes that should be thrown back aren't and it's someone's occupation to hawk them from the back of a van to bargain-hunters heading South.
For a hundred miles I tried to get over it but I couldn't, so I pulled in at Knutsford services for forty winks and a refresher at the bar.
There was a bearded man cruising round the car parks in a Beetle, said he'd got fragments of the true Grail in the glove compartment I'm afraid I didn't believe him. It was the context, really. I was vaguely upset that he'd picked me out so readily.
Near the entranceway to the shops was a large poster warning us about him, and an Italian selling suits said to be surplus from a fashion show in Turin, and a woman selling Rolex watches, and a Geordie selling electrical whetstones.
It wasn't illegal, evidently, but we were advised to give no more than £20 for a suit, or a watch, or a whetstone. The Grail fragments had been independently valued at 25 pence each.
Very soon afterwards, early one morning, I shoved 2,400 remaindered copies of "The Little Known Pyramids of the Pewsey Vale - A Mayan Connection" into the boot of the car and set off down the M4 for Leigh Delamere.
Although the book had been revised in line with the latest thinking, the day was hard. In fact the only sale I made was to the police officer who arrested me in the middle of the afternoon for obstruction.
We got to talking in the cells. It transpired that her grand-parents had run the Phoenix Hotel in Pewsey and she had fond memories of coming down to stay at Carnival time.
It's a block of flats now, I said, which she knew. At least she'll be able to visit the pyramids, if she ever comes again. Grey Wolf
Many of the modern customs associated with Halloween are in fact a race memory, for example the sacred pumpkin used by Druids to keep the spirits away, the burning of the clavie in Scotland, balefires on the Carn nam Marbh, and the November bonfires, which pre-date Guy Fawkes customs by thousands of years. In the Isle of Man many people still celebrate Hogmanay at this time. Because the veils between this world and the spirit world are at their thinnest at Samhain, this is considered to be an ideal time for ancestor contact, so spirits are actively sought, rather than avoided, their presence bringing guidance and wisdom.
One way of connecting with the ancestors might be to walk a labyrinth at this time. Since they have often been discovered in tombs and on rocks in sacred places, it may be that the inward path leads down to the underworld, to the centre which is the symbolic death of the individual, and the place of regeneration, while the outward path is the path of re-birth and discovery.
It is also believed that Yew was important in Samhain rituals and ceremonies, not surprising, given the amount of beliefs and superstitions surrounding these ancient sacred trees.
After all this, it is quite likely that there would have been a celebration involving special foods, possibly using elder, hops, rowan, juniper and apples, not forgetting the pumpkin, of course.
The apple cake recipe from Chris Hinton [given above] looks a good one for the purpose, especially since it includes spices which were an expensive commodity and would have only been used by the “lower classes” for very special occasions.
Cider would be an appropriate drink, or perhaps Elderberry Tea – made by boiling a dozen elderberries and a six-inch piece of bark in a cupful of water. The sap from the bark is the sweetening agent for the drink, which can also be fermented. Rosehip syrup can be made by boiling crushed dried rosehips and sweetening the drink with honey.
I noted earlier that spices were an expensive luxury for many people, another valuable ingredient was salt. Those who could not afford salt often used ground dried coltsfoot leaves that had been charred in a fire as a salt substitute. S.C.
In June 2004, challenged by his local football club in North Queensland, Australian Frank Moody entered the Guinness Book of Records. Not for being the oldest dowser, but the oldest skydiver, at 101 years young beating the previous record set by a Norwegian man, a mere stripling of 94. After the 3000m tandem jump, his tandem master, Karl Eitech, said it was remarkable to be jumping with a man who "was walking on the planet before aeroplanes were flying".
This story characterises a man with a lifetime of unusual achievements, including the famous Moody coil. In his own words, "My interest in dowsing started at age 14. A dowser picked out a site for a well for my father. When he left, I picked up the forked stick and told my father the correct spot was a few feet away. We dug the well and I was right. School studies prevented more dowsing but by the age of 26, my interest was rekindled. By the 1960s I was investigating why areas of land were fertile and others barren. I dowsed that it was the case of a beneficial cosmic energy being accepted or rejected. I got the idea of changing the vertically polarised energy to horizontal, and barren areas became fertile. This was done by a one-turn coil wound anti-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Northern [Figure 1].
This Moody coil is not an extension of the Lakhovsky coil which is not polarised. Right from the start my coil was performing miracles. Dying fruit trees recovered and bore fruit. One impressive result was on a large sheep farm where hundreds of river gum trees were dying. Three days after the coil was installed, all trees threw out new leaves and recovered. Later, in an English village, I demonstrated a Moody coil, with one turn 5ft. above ground. An elderly lady stooped and stood inside the coil. She remarked how warm it was. This brings me to lightning strikes: which never strike a single negative always to a double or more. One farmer removed the coil because he wanted the nitrogen the lightning gave him. At another place, the area was highly mineralised and the telephone cables were buried. Yet, every storm season, they were struck - their outer casing being 24 volts negative. Depending on the storm's centre, another negative, even a blade of grass upright was enough to cause a strike because, as in this example, it and the cable made two negatives. Later in the 1960s, I investigated electromagnetic radiation, and the answer was to cancel magnetism."
In 1979, Frank travelled extensively in the UK and gave a talk in Southsea which was reported in the June 1980 edition of Dowsing Today He discussed things that could upset health including electric blankets, maintaining that harmful electromagnetic radiation could be remedied by cancelling the magnetic component. During his talk, Frank explained his method. "In New Zealand, a sawmill owner got "butterflies" whenever he pushed in the switch to activate the whole of the sawmill wiring 415 V, three phase. I got a piece of wire, bent the two ends about the input power wiring, twisting the bared ends together [See Figure 2] After that, when the owner switched on, he felt nothing. Also in New Zealand, there was a hairdressers’ where the ladies complained they felt uncomfortable. We opened up the switchboard behind the meters, did the same thing around the incoming wires and no more trouble!"
In addition to his work with the elements, and agriculture, Frank outlined his healing work, and the influence of two metals, silver and iron, on people: "'Iron' persons receive daily charges from iron radiations. If they become saturated, one sign is sluggishness, which copper usually corrects. “Silver” people do not receive such external help. They are harmed by iron, particularly if living over ironstone deposits. I have helped hundreds by shifting the position of the beds. Now I install a one turn earthed coil and leave the bed in position."
Using dowsing, Frank researched the effects of metal influences (especially on arthritis) and corrections that could be applied via radiesthesia, Bach flower remedies and homeopathy. Another feature of his work was identification of people's individual wavelengths so that their problems could be better understood. Today he writes "I do a lot of healing by pointing my hands to afflicted areas. At the end of every treatment I get the patient to visualise his or her bed, and very rarely do I get a positive dowse, perhaps 2%. I then give the patient a motif designed by BSD member, Tom Ravenette, to gum on the Western wall of the bedroom. In the Northern hemisphere, the Eastern wall instead.
After 75 years of dowsing, (36 years a BSD member,) researching, experimenting and helping people, Frank's passion for life remains undimmed - in his own words: "At present, I am studying the beneficial effects of the worldwide West/East energy." An entry in the Guinness Book of Records is only the latest milestone in this extraordinary man's life - he remains an inspiration to all of us who think we're getting on a bit!
Many news interviewers asked Frank his secret to longevity. Disavowing any special diet or fad, he told them that he "takes a walk every day and bends his elbow at the club". But his real secret was to "Never worry." And in a true application of this phrase, I will end this tribute with Frank's own words on the dive: "5000ft of free fall at two miles per minute - landed like a butterfly."
BSD Journal Editor, Pauline Roberts would like to thank Frank for taking the time to write once again for the Society and Philip Garcin for his alert to the original story - heard on the BBC!
The above is a précis of an article in the September 2004 BSD Journal “Dowsing Today”