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Kate Fenn is running some events that may interest members. On 21st May she has a Medicine Wheel workshop (cost £15), and in July she is hosting two Rod Bearcloud Berry events. The first is an evening event at Alton Barnes on 25th July (cost £8) and the other is an all-day event in Devizes on 30th July (cost £25 including lunch). Contact Kate on 01249814129 for details.
Knowlton Henge and Cranbourne Church. Meet 10.30a.m. at Knowlton Henge, map ref. SU205984.
Knowlton can be found by taking the A354 Blandford road out of Salisbury, after 13 miles turn left on to B3081 to Verwood and Ringwood. After 4 miles turn right onto the B3078 to Knowlton and Wimborne, the henge is now about 3 miles away on the right, down a lane, so look out for the signs.
Knowlton Henge has to be one of the most enigmatic of ancient sites, within its 7 foot high, 300 foot diameter enclosure, stands the remains of a Norman church. If you think that might make for interesting dowsing, you can add a 4500 year old Yew tree, a 22 foot high mini Silbury, plus 2 more henges and dozens of round barrows. Enough to keep you going for the morning?
Our after-lunch stroll takes us to Cranbourne Church which has a number of good medieval wall paintings and some very interesting energetics.
See you there,
Shaun.
This year’s weekend trip is to be centred around the area of Dorset which surrounds Cerne Abbas and Bridport. All around this part of Dorset are ancient sites of interest to dowsers including stone circles and standing stones, hill-forts including the massive Maiden Castle, holy wells, barrows and interesting ancient churches.
Several of us will be arriving on Thursday 23rd.but more turn up on Friday, while some like to come just for a day.
Shaun is working out an itinerary so that anyone who only wants to come for one day will have an idea what is planned for each day.
We have found a suitable camp-site and several B&B. establishments at the small village of Portesham, which is near Bridport. The pub does food and is less than 100 yards from the campsite, which is at a working dairy farm in the village. There is a small shop at the campsite and a post office in the village. Shaun can supply a list of the accommodation phone numbers so that you can make your own bookings according to requirements, but would those who wish to camp please let Shaun know as soon as possible as he needs to confirm numbers for a block booking. The site is not normally too busy at the time we are going, but is not a huge place, so any one deciding to come nearer the date can have the number to check that there is a pitch available. The friendly farmer invited us to inspect the campsite and its facilities and they were immaculate.
Portesham itself is only a small village, but is the birth place of Thomas Hardy - not the writer, but the other one, who was in command of H.M.S. Victory when Lord Nelson was killed. Although Nelson is usually quoted as having said “Kiss me, Hardy,” as he lay dying, it is probable that he actually said “Kismet, Hardy”. The village is only a few miles inland from the sea but seems to be quite sheltered, and is surrounded by sites of interest.
Hopefully the weather will be decent, but a few wet-weather options are being worked out, so it should be an interesting weekend.
The piece below was in the ‘Sunday Telegraph’ magazine 27th March.
David Dixon, 64, is a vice president of the British Society of Dowsers
As a young chartered engineer, specialising in hydrology, I used to see dowsers on farms. The farmer would show them where they wanted a well and the dowser would walk across the land holding his dowsing rod until it twitched, indicating that water lay below.
I discovered I had a talent for this and, after much practice, volunteered for a charity mission to find water in a remote village in the Andes. Dowsing is intuitive. I hold a pendulum rather than a rod and silently ask questions such as, “In which direction should I look?” You follow the direction of the swing of the pendulum and when it starts whipping around vigorously, you've found water.
In the Andes I dowsed over cracks in hard granite. When the pendulum began to swing wildly, it seemed I was in the right place. We drilled for 13 hours a day and after six days, we'd still not found anything. I started to worry. But on the seventh day, at 14.7 metres down, we hit water. It was a fantastic moment.
Most scientists pooh-pooh dowsing, but actually, it has a 90 per cent success rate. We dowsers tend to just get on with it.
Nicholas Culpeper was a contemporary of John Aubrey.
In September 1653, from his house in Spitalfields next door to The Red Lion, he sent forth into the world his Complete Herbal.
You'll have seen this. A right old door-stop. Available in the courtyards of Glastonbury, and on the shelves of every hedge-witch and minor poisoner from here to John O' Groats.
This cornucopia of cures and concoctions, this hand-book of herbaceous heal-alls, is presented with Biblical authority, the words conveying complete assurance. If you followed any of its remedies, you would be dead inside the week, almost certainly.
"Our ordinary garden Sage needs no description. Government and virtues: Jupiter claims this, and bids me tell you it is good for the liver, and to breed blood.
"A decoction of the leaves and branches provokes urine, and brings down women's courses, helps to expel the dead child, and causes the hair to become black.
"It stays the bleeding of wounds and cleanses foul ulcers."
In the wisdom collected by Culpeper, sage is also good for consumption, head-rheum, rheumatism, the falling-sickness, lethargy, palsy, chest¬-diseases, ear-boils (when bruised with nettle), coughs, the bloody-flux, snake-bites, the stitch, worms in the ear, and sores. It aids the memory and is good in times of plague.
"Gargles are made with sage, rosemary, honey-suckles and plantain, boiled in wine or water with some honey or allum, to wash sore mouths and throats, cankers, or the secret parts of man or woman, as need requires."
In the light of this, how dare anyone say that John Aubrey was gullible? Aubrey was never so scatter-gun, or so sure of himself. The thing is with Culpeper, that everything cures everything. After three or four pages; you realise he might just be guessing.
Wood-sage is good for gangrene, samphire is good for kidney-stones, leeks will stop a nose-bleed if they are mixed with a little vinegar and stuffed up the nose.
In a lofty way, Culpeper professes himself to be sceptical of some of the potions prescribed by the ancients in Greek and Roman times.
His scepticism is not based on anything that we would call science, it is based upon his own misguided theories of the contrasting influence of Venus and Mars upon the herb-garden, which he rants about for pages and pages, making less sense with every passing paragraph.
I like him more and more. The man is a heavy metal god.
Aubrey, however, quirky throw-away Aubrey, is unmistakably modern. A little cool, easily influenced, but always exercising good judgement. Kind, funny, come-day go-day.
Aubrey was a friend of Dr William Harvey, who discovered and proved the circulation of the blood.
What interests Aubrey about this great scientific discovery is that, when the good doctor published his findings, he lost half his patients overnight, because everyone thought he was cracked. Adherents of Culpeper, I shouldn't wonder.
So Aubrey's take on this epic moment of the cardio-vascular, this cornerstone of medical understanding, is seen to possess the irony and wisdom of an early Roxy Music lyric.
People told him stuff. Lots of stuff. And he wrote it down, as a good antiquarian should. He was a little unmethodical, and to his dying day never had his papers in order. I think we can all relate to that.
Some good things were said to him in his cups - things of historical importance, possibly, for he knew the finest wits and bravos of his age – and he bitterly regretted not being able to remember them the following day, "sot that I was".
He never saw a ghost in a university quadrangle, or heard elves singing on the far side of a hedge near Bristol. He never healed a woman possessed by demons.
But he knew someone who had.
There's that distance, that reportorial stance; but also a kind of ESP, because the simplest of his remarks tells you everything you need to know, before you've realised you need to know it.
Aubrey tells us that before the Civil War in England, all the common people believed in fairies. I don't think that means he believed in fairies. As an antiquarian, he knew that everything fixed and absolute becomes contingent, in time.
This is not the naive and suggestible man that many have professed to see. The centuries have not necessarily been kind to Aubrey, but more fool they. Ask Anthony Powell. He knew.
All sorts of science was known to Aubrey. All sorts of enchantment. It sat very easily with him.
He had been a mild child, growing up rather lonely and isolated on his father's estate in Wiltshire, listening to his teachers, but also to the grooms in the yard and the servants with their remedies and their folk-lore.
In his thirties he was an elegant cavalier party animal in a shoulder-length wig, having his portrait painted, mixing with the quality.
He was at Royal Weddings and public executions. He'd met the leading philosophers and the principal whores of his time.
He lost his entire fortune in middle age, and said he was never happier.
"In 1669 and 1670 I sold all my estates in Wilts. Absconded as a banished man. I was in as much affliction as a mortal could be, and never quiet till all was gone, and I wholly cast myself on God's providence. Never quiet, nor anything of happiness, till divested of all, at what time Providence raised me unexpectedly good friends."
The man is a master of paradox.
If he'd been with us that night, that cold May night at the Ne'er do Well and Spring, I think he would have sided with my old friend and flu-like symptom, Cyril Longcake.
He would have relished the prospect of a faery dance, somewhere within the hill. He would have wanted to experience another dimension, if only to get in out of the cold.
And, like us, he would have seen the moment shattered, and the dissolution of the scene. As the year turns, we move forward into what can only be imagined by remembering.
The child Morgan had woken up, and taken her place beside her mother, who was stood there like the figure-head on a ship, looking very grand in her poncho.
Without a word, but at some unseen signal, mother and daughter frigged off into the hill. A plausible career move, I should have thought.
Not something they would have done under coercion from the elf, of course, but now that they had chosen to go, they were full-on and upforit, though the venture be fraught and unpredictable. This just about sums up the modern female.
The elf picked up his broken catching-net. "There goes my no-claims bonus," he said, and wandered off among the trees, his miniature diving apparatus clanking on his green back.
The music faded. Night fell again. We had the place to ourselves.
Grey Wolf
An entertaining and instructive evening with Andy Thomas. This was the second time that Andy has given the society a talk – this time his subject was the power of collective thought, and how our everyday lives may be affected by this. He gave a number of examples of the way that collective thought has apparently influenced events, sometimes unintentionally. For example, he described a scenario where a television audience might be willing an athlete or sportsman to win a match, - for example, Tim Henman at Wimbledon. Andy suggested that instead of just willing him to win, audiences fall into the trap of thinking “Oh, No, I hope he doesn’t lose”. Apparently this introduces a negative effect that ensures just the opposite effect to that which the audience was hoping for.
On an occasion when Andy and some of his fellow crop-circle researchers decided to try to influence the shape of forthcoming formations they had a marked success. Those involved in the experiment secretly decided upon a shape that they wanted to appear in the crops nearby, in an area where they frequently appear. Several of the group went to near the site, their exact position decided by dowsing and channelling. They then meditated and concentrated on willing the chosen shape to appear in a forthcoming crop formation. Their efforts were supported by sounds – not from musical instruments but specific frequencies produced electronically. These frequencies were also chosen by dowsing and channelling. Very few people were involved in the experiment, so that strict secrecy could be observed with regard to the design of the formation. Lo and behold a few days later, a crop formation appeared in the targeted field that strongly resembled that formulated by the experimenters.
As Andy said, whether you “believe” in crop-circles or not, the fact is that the chosen design did occur, and he is convinced that none of those involved in the experiment cheated by releasing details of the design to anyone else. He said that even if the circles are man-made, why did the makers pick the very same design as the experimenters had thought up, unless they were influenced by the collective thought experiment?
After the break, Andy took questions from the audience and gave further details of some of the points discussed. [I particularly liked some of his views on politics and politicians – very amusing!] S.C.
We were blessed by wonderful weather for the trip to Inglesham church [St. John the Baptist] and several other places nearby. The church proved very popular with the large crowd of members who came along. It has lots to look at, from a Saxon carving of a Madonna and child to wonderful old oak box pews and carved woodwork partitioning off several different areas, to the numerous remaining fragments of medieval wall painting which pop up all over the church.
Lunch was taken at Kelmscott, where William Morris lived for many years, so while there we took the opportunity to have a look round the church there, and a number went to see the grave of William Morris, which is tucked away behind a bush in a quiet corner of the churchyard.
We finished the day at Eaton Hastings, a short distance from Kelmscott. First stop was the church, then round the corner to dowse at the site of the deserted medieval village, which must have been fairly large in its heyday, judging by the huge area of lumps and bumps in the field. Thanks to the landowner, who had not only given permission for the society to dowse his field, but who kindly allowed us to use his farm track as a car-park.
These tiny country churches offer good opportunities for dowsing practise, as long as you avoid the times they are in use, as they usually have plenty of dowsable features and are frequently deserted. Please don’t forget to sign the visitor books if available, as they sometimes get more funding if they attract plenty of visitors. S.C.
If ever a tree truly expressed the spirit of Easter, it must surely be the sallow.
A member of the willow family, sallow is a type of pussy willow and unmistakably recognized by its huge, yellow, powdery flowers. It grows by the roadside and by water; its yellow, fluffy bushes are a delight to behold being one of the first trees to flower.
My family would bring bunches of sallow, known by them as palm, indoors for Easter. It is this palm that was thrown in front of Jesus on Palm Sunday and it is because of this that in the language of flowers the palm means ‘Victory’. It was so special in ancient days that the Greeks held it sacred and the Hebrews kept a special ‘Day of Willows’ in their Feast of Tabernacles.
All willow trees are held sacred to the Moon Goddess and are worshiped by pagans as the tree of enchantment.
By the time you read this, the trees will be going over and it will be a perfect time to take cuttings or plant a sapling from the garden centre, there are several varieties. Last year I planted a weeping sallow and look forward to eventually seeing it in its full glory.
Wish-hound