July 2005

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This and That

Peter Vaughan makes a welcome return in August to speak to us about his recent trip to Tibet.  He will be bringing slides and has promised some food. I hope it’s not Tibetan tea (alright if you like black tea churned with rancid Yak butter and salt, an acquired taste I expect.)

July Field Trip.

The proposed trip for July is to the Dipping Well, which is in the middle of Market Lavington.  There is enough parking in the streets nearby, with not far to walk.  After lunch we go to dowse the White Barrow near Tilshead which involves a walk of half a mile to reach it.  After the barrow we hope to have enough time to look at the old church at Tilshead.  Fingers crossed for decent weather please, and stout footwear recommended.

June Meeting.

Kate Fenn was the speaker for the June meeting, this time with a practical lesson in how to construct a medicine wheel, as well as a talk on the subject.  For those of you who don’t know Kate, she was made an honorary Medicine Woman some time ago, having spent many years learning about the culture and customs and beliefs of the Native Americans, and now runs workshops, sweat lodges and earth healing sessions.

The talk she gave us was accompanied by slides and photographs, and was in two parts.  Firstly she gave the background and principles of the medicine wheel, and then produced stones and showed how they are made.  A wheel for one or two persons might be as small as 4 feet across, one for a family or small community could be 8 feet while one for a larger group might be 16 feet.  It is important to increase the size by multiples of 4 as this is a sacred number in the North American tradition.

When selecting stones [other than crystals] to make the wheel with, it is essential to use stones obtained locally, as they are considered to be more appropriate and contain more “spirit of place” than imported stones.  However, the crystals need not be local as they are chosen according to the calendar, as in a zodiac.

After the break, Kate answered questions and gave the second part of the talk, which explained some of the work that she is involved in.  She also showed how it is possible to look at a map of the local landscape and tie in some of the historic sites with significant places in the medicine wheel.

A very interesting talk - thanks Kate.  If anybody wants to know more about Kate’s group, we often put details of their events in the WDS Journal.

Singing Round the Town.

This year’s summer celebration at Bradford on Avon, called Singing Round the Town, was on the hottest day of the year so far.  We set up the WDS stall and the labyrinth at the same place as last year.  The owner of the house whose front garden we were using kept us supplied with mugs of tea!  She said that last year she sprinkled lawn fertiliser round the outline of the labyrinth before it faded, and was rewarded with a fast-growing reincarnation of the labyrinth every time the lawn was mown throughout the growing season!

Although we enjoyed the event, the intense heat kept many of the crowds at home so we were not as busy as last year.  Just as well really, as our stall and gazebo strongly resembled a sauna! 

This year, the brief dowsing lessons were done in small groups rather than the giant “teach-in” that we did the year before and was much easier to manage.

The venue for the practical dowsing session was held in a large [2 acre] private garden across the road from where the stall was set up.  This garden had its own spring which had been ducted to several water-features in underground conduits, making it an ideal location for teaching people to dowse.

A pleasant day in spite of the heat, and thanks to the organisers of the event for inviting us again.

Dowsing in Dorset.

The weather for this year’s long weekend had a touch of the parson’s egg about it – good in parts.  To be fair, we did need the rain for the gardens.  The campsite at Portesham Dairy Farm was very good – peaceful, close mown grass, spotless modern facilities and only 100 yards from the pub.  Friday morning dawned damp and drizzly so those of us who arrived on Thursday had a quick trip to Bridport and spent a short time at Upwey Wishing Well as a recce for the proper trip for the next day. 

The Well is fed by a very powerful ancient spring that was reputed to have beneficial properties, and the garden in which it is situated is beautiful and tranquil.

King George 3^rd. apparently drank the spring waters from a Golden cup, which later became the “Gold Cup” for the race of that name at Ascot Races.  The tea-room attached to the well garden is excellent.

Next morning was good weather so we went to dowse Maiden Castle.  This iron-age hillfort is huge, and in fact was begun much earlier, in Neolithic times, when the eastern hillock only was occupied, within a ditched area separating the eastern hillock from the rest of the site.  A rampart was created from the spoil from the ditch construction.  The site is now referred to as a causewayed camp.  The Neolithic people also built a long barrow – its mound is about 500 yards long. 

The castle was occupied by Vespasian’s army during 43AD, leaving a large war cemetery behind them. This was excavated about 60 years ago, when several of the skeletons were shown to have appallingly gruesome injuries.  One skeleton, now in Dorchester Museum has a metal Roman ballista arrow embedded in it’s spine.

After about 300 years a group of heretics to the authorised religion, Christianity, built a small temple near the old east gate several priests’ graves are nearby, and artefacts found during excavations suggest a return to paganism.

Many impressive finds made by archaeologists at the site are in the Dorchester Museum. 

The view is magnificent from the top of the embankments and well worth the steep walk up from the road.

Friday afternoon was when the proper visit to Upwey was planned to take place but the thunderstorms arrived with a vengeance which put a bit of a damper [sorry!] on the trip.  However, those who had not been present on the previous day braved the elements to look at the spring – worth it in spite of the weather was the general consensus.  Incidentally, if you are there in May, this is when the annual well-dressing ceremony takes place.  Monetary offerings thrown into the well go to support the lifeboat fund.

Sunday morning saw us at the Nine Stones stone circle.  Normally, this circle is buzzing with energy, but seemed a little subdued on this occasion, possibly due to the intense thunderstorms.  Still an interesting place to dowse, though.  After lunch we went on to Cerne Abbas to the well-known Giant, the church, Abbey remains and the Holy Well up in the corner of the graveyard.  Once again the dowsable energies seemed subdued, according to those members who had dowsed at the well before.

Once again, an enjoyable weekend, thanks to Shaun for all the hard work put in to organise the event, and thanks to all the members who came along.

Jeremy

This Jeremy of ours, he wasn't very tall and there was something about his shivering, and his madly confident smile, that made him seem absolutely tiny. Impossibly young.

Although I'd never thought about him, I'd always thought of him as stocky, but it was just layers of clothes, in fact, thickly worn.

They were all coming off now as he prepared to make the underwater dowsing attempt. Tank-tops, not many still in captivity. I could never get into them.

On his upper left arm, he had a tattoo that said Still Born. On his right arm it said Still Living.

Off came boots and camouflage trousers and he stood before us in his underpants and a black hat. A bit of a classic moment.

These hats are made, I'm reliably informed, of Teflon. I struggle with the concept, frankly.

And anyway, wasn't it developed for space rockets, for Man's great journey to the moon? And now we pack up these sad little shoe-boxes every November and send out cheap crayons and Teflon hats to the orphans of the world. Sometimes I can't see that there's been much progress.

Jeremy picked up his still-warm parka and handed it to Dave's bird Ermintrude.

“I want you to have this,” he said.

“No thanks,” she said, and put it rather delicately down on the ground like a dead fledgling, with his other clothes.

He noticed a cheap and chunky watch he was wearing. He pulled it off, and shoved it towards me.

“Take it,” he said.

“I'll look after it for you,” I said.

“It's yours.”

“I don't want it. It belongs to you.”

“But I'm going to die.”

“Then it will be part of your estate.”

“It's hard to get rid of things,” said Jeremy. “It's hard to strip things down to the essentials. Even if you die, you can't get rid of all the clutter.”

“Are you all right?” I said.

“The thing is,” said Jeremy, “I need to get out of the office more. That's why I like coming on these trips.”

“Fresh air,” I said vaguely. “Structured leisure.”

“You lot are pathetic, you really are,” he said, twisting round. “You have no focus. You just blunder around, occasionally doing the right thing.”

“Absolute riff-raff,” I said, “time-wasters.”

“You don't mind me saying this, do you?”

“It's important to be in touch with your feelings.”

“Back at the office,” said Jeremy, “at the Project, I work all hours God sends but there's nobody I can talk to, not even about astrology, not even about their daily horoscope. They're shiny and hard and self-sufficient. I envy them so much.”

“You're young. You'll learn,” Dave said.

“They're riding the skateboard of twenty-first-century capitalism, upholding the true religion. They worship money and advancement. You lot...” he said, looking round, “I believe you're in danger of lapsing into paganism.”

“It's probably too late for some,” I said.

“I think you should be burned at the stake,” said Jeremy. “You don't mind me saying so, do you?”

“No, no.”

“I think the most awful things are going to happen to you.”

“What things?”

“I don't know. The withering of the vine. Irredeemable loss. If we had an office party at the Project, I couldn't invite any of you.”

“In life,” I said, “compartmentalisation, that's the ticket.”

“My colleagues would not be able to make sense of you. You do not compute.”

“Do they like you?” said Cyril.

“I don't know. They don't really talk to me.”

“Then you must be doing something right!”

“I must get away,” said Jeremy. “I must. I need freedom to think and to follow my thoughts into the desert places. Why is the summer so lush and cruel? Why does everything happen at once?”

“Double-booking. It can be a bummer,” I said.

“I'm needed at home, in the garden, but parts of my mind are permanently on fire. I feed the birds and, do you know, if I could train them to eat grass, I wouldn't have to mow the lawns. Then I'd have more time to spend at the sacred sites.”

“There is that,” I said.

“I have jackdaw, starling and crow, wood pigeon and magpie, collared dove, robin, wren and blackbird, thrush, pheasant, mistle thrush, garden warbler, bull finch, green finch, nut-hatch, all the different kinds of tits, house sparrow, linnet and dunnock. Even a stray racing pigeon.

“They walk up and down on my lawn and their feet act as tiny rollers, keeping the grass down, so I know they're doing their best to get me away, but unfortunately it isn't enough.”

“Do you get the heron?” I said.

“Sometimes. The man three doors down has a pond with carp in it.”

“I get the heron,” I said. “Looks like a house-trained pterodactyl. It always flies in when I've got a hang-over for some reason.”

“Your garden sounds very special,” said Ermintrude.

“It's just neglect,” I said. “Studious neglect. An art that's all too often undervalued.”

“Not yours, clod. Jeremy's.”

“A garden with loads of birds in it must have good energy,” said Cyril. “It's notorious that birds won't come into a garden where there's bad chi.”

“Maybe your garden is sacred space,” said Dave.

“Then why aren't I there now?” cried Jeremy. “Why am I always in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Oh dear.

Grey Wolf

ASPECTS OF DOWSING by Sir Geofroy Tory

Part 3

Healing

There is a branch of alternative medicine called Radionics or Radiesthesia. This uses the dowsing faculty for diagnosis and treatment of disease. The practitioner holds that the physical body is enveloped and interpenetrated by a field of energy called the etheric body. According to ancient oriental teachings, on which radiesthesia is largely based, energy from this etheric body enters the physical body at seven principal points, the "chakras" of Indian medicine. These are, in descending order, the Crown, or pineal gland; the Ajma (brow), or pituitary lower brain; the Throat, or thyroid and bronchial apparatus; the Heart, or circulatory system; the Solar Plexus, or pancreas, stomach, liver, gall bladder and nervous system; the Sacral, or gonads, i.e. reproductive system; and the Base, or adrenals, spinal column and kidneys. The practitioner tries to find where there is imbalance, where there is too much or too little activity, and how to restore harmony.

Diagnosis will be made by dowsing over a sample of the patient, in the knowledge that this will always vibrate at the same rate as the parent body, however far they are apart. Having established where the disharmony is, the practitioner will find out what colour is needed for its treatment, and he will probably use an instrument, known originally as the "black box", which incorporates facilities for beaming the colour, perhaps across an appropriate homoepathic remedy, at the patient's sample.

There seems to be a clear relationship between this science and that of acupuncture, where the practitioner tries to block or unblock channels through which energy passes into the physical from the etheric body. I have written in Part 1 about the power grid covering the Earth. Those who have researched this say that places like Stonehenge and the Pyramids correspond to the chakras of oriental medicine: that they were used by Stone Age man to correct imbalances in the Earth's vital energy.

Some qualified physicians, indeed consultants, who have the dowsing faculty, use their dowsing as a complement to the conventional medicine which they administer, on the principle that a body brought up to the optimum vibration rate is at the least in a more favourable condition to benefit from regular medical treatment. The faculty could be, and very probably is, used by homeopaths, the pendulum indicating which of a selection of possible remedies is the best. There might, say, be three to choose from. These would be arranged in a semi-circle, with a sample of the patient, a blood spot on a piece of tissue, a lock of hair, fingernail cuttings or anything from the patient's body, at the centre of the circle. The pendulum, having been given an initial swing, would point at the best choice.

I have tried my hand at the simplest form of healing, with some success, I think. The process, which is described in Dr Thomlinson's books, must be a bit like Christian Science. I first swing my pendulum over the patient's sample and run my finger round Mager's Rosette until there is a positive reaction, in my case a clockwise gyration. If the sample harmonises with violet I judge the patient to be well. If the colour match is lower down the spectrum I deem the patient to be unwell: the lower the colour, the more serious the condition. Blue might be influenza, red would be very serious indeed. I then take a deep breath and imagine a powerful beam of light coming down on to my head, through my arms and finally through my fingers, which focus on the sample like bunsen burner flames, while I slowly exhale. This invariably causes the sample to harmonise with violet. But after an interval, depending on the seriousness of the illness, the pendulum's perfect circular gyration will become an ellipse, then it will swing back and forth, and finally swing anti-clockwise. I ask the pendulum at what intervals the treatment must be repeated in order to maintain harmony with violet. In mild cases once every 24 hours might be enough. In one instance (a child with a form of meningitis) I had to do the treatment every eight hours for over a week.

This healing technique is based on the knowledge that a sample of the human body will always vibrate at the same rate as the parent body, however far they are apart. This explains why primitive people will not let anyone have their hair or nail clippings, or even photographs of them. All these could presumably serve as samples for so-called black magic as well as for healing.

Dowsing can also be used to find people's allergies. All that is needed is a sample of the person under examination and a list of all the foods that one can imagine him eating. The dowser runs his finger down the list whilst swinging his pendulum back and forth over a sample, and marks any item on the list which causes a negative reaction, or a positive reaction to a negative question. In two recent instances, I identified allergies which the person in question already knew about, in particular to white flour, dairy products, red meat, red wine and oranges in one case, and to animal fat in another. A dowser can also tell from the movements of his pendulum whether any suspect food has "gone off" or not. He puts his open left hand over the food and swings his pendulum over it. If he wants to be doubly sure, he turns his left hand palm down, knowing that the back of the hand is negative and that the pendulum will normally start gyrating anti¬clockwise over it. Then, if the pendulum changes to a clockwise gyration, in spite of its normal inclination to gyrate the other way, he can be confident that the food is edible. All the pendulum does is register harmony or disharmony.

Dowsing in the Past

There have probably been dowsers since the dawn of civilisation. Some people say that when Moses struck a rock with his stick and caused water to flow he was dowsing. There are pictures of Egyptians at the time of the Pharaohs using forked sticks as dowsers do now. Guy Underwood in his "Pattern of the Past" goes into great detail about lines of energy associated with underground water, which he calls "geodetic" lines, claiming that ancient monuments whether religious or military or civil used to be sited over significant underground water features. Many dowsers have confirmed this. I myself have found it to be true of the megalithic temples in Malta, and of old churches which I have visited.

Underwood says that Pope Gregory the Great charged early Christian missionaries to build their churches in places regarded as sacred by the pagans, presumably in order to make the transition to Christianity easier for worshippers of the old religion. From roughly 600 AD to the end of the sixteenth century great churches and cathedrals were built by guilds of free¬masons who entered into contracts with the ecclesiastical authorities and lived on the sites in temporary houses known as "lodges". They were under the control of Masters and Wardens, and while building in a country other than their own, were exempt from taxes and even local laws. This is why they were called "free" masons. Underwood suggests that these builders were dowsers and that their "secret" was their knowledge of the geodetic conventions which dictated the siting of ancient monuments by earlier man, who was concerned not to interfere with the earth's energy pattern.

It emerges from a dowser's study of early cathedrals that the basic requirement was to align the nave on a geodetic line, detectable by a dowser, running along the central aisle and ending in a blind spring, at the chancel steps, enclosed in one or more "spirals". The position for the altar was usually a double spiral, of seven turns, one clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. If possible a site would be found where the central geodetic line branched off left and right so as to make a rough cross. On these side branches the transepts would be built. If there were a strong line leading away from the main pattern, and ending in an important feature like a multiple blind spring, the Chapter House or some other cathedral appendage would be built there. All the most famous cathedrals display these characteristics, Westminster, Winchester, Salisbury, Chichester, Southwark and Lincoln, for example.

Having found the right place, the masons had to devise a structure which not only accorded with the basic geodetic requirements but also conformed with the rectangular conventions of a cathedral. This often demanded great ingenuity, involving eccentricities which any builder worthy of the name would have avoided. A modern church would, Underwood says, not be designed with a bend in the nave, as at Southwark Cathedral, or with the chancel or Lady chapel askew, as in many old churches, or with the nave, chancel and Lady chapel out of alignment with each other, as in some others. At Chichester Cathedral hardly a line is straight, any two lines parallel or any angle a right-angle. Canterbury has its nave, choir and retro-choir  [some words are missing here I’m afraid]  importance of conformity with the geodetic design in the curious unsuitable siting of cathedrals and churches. Winchester was built on a swamp, though surrounded by suitable higher ground. The sites of Westminster and Salisbury were almost equally unsatisfactory. Places of worship were also built at very inconvenient distances from the communities they were meant to serve, and often far bigger than was necessary. The first priority was to conform with the geodetic design.

I imagine that in past ages the priests were dowsers. This dowsing faculty might have been the reason why they were priests, and why the priesthood had so much authority. The druids of Celtic Europe were able to enforce their religious law even on the military leaders of the time. They, like the free-masons, had secrets which they guarded. In his De Bello Gallico Caesar said that it took them twenty years to learn them, and that the druids of Britain were their teachers.

Stonehenge has at least sixteen streams crossing under the centre of it. Many writers have commented on the fact that numbers of neolithic and Christian monuments are located on lines radiating from it. One writer has suggested that on midsummer morning the rising sun, as it appears over the "heel stone", sends beneficent energy radiating outwards along these alignments, and that in past ages people have kept vigil, with their families and their flocks, on hill tops on one of the "spokes" to receive their annual spiritual and physical boost, as a special annual supplement to the other solar benefits. Other experts claim that Stonehenge was dedicated to the moon rather than the sun. Others say that Stonehenge, like the Pyramids, the Cathedral of Chartres and Ireland's own Newgrange, are significant as key markers, power points as it were, in the grid of energy covering the Earth's surface. These are all notable for the fact that "sensitive" people feel spiritually uplifted in them. It cannot be a coincidence that Chartres was the site of the chief training college of the Gallic druids, ages before the cathedral was built.

Initiation of Priests

The central chamber of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, which was sited like Stonehenge over a dramatic underground water feature, contains a sarcophagus which has never had a dead body in it. One year a courageous archaeologist spent the night from midsummer eve until the dawn of midsummer day lying in this stone coffin. He emerged saying that he was not sure exactly what had happened, but it had been very odd indeed. It has been suggested that novice priests used to keep vigil in this way as part of their initiation, going through the death and re-birth cycle, as it were, in places where the earth energy was collected and magnified. It is well-known that a model pyramid, made in the proportions of the Cheops one, has remarkable qualities. It causes the pendulum to gyrate with extraordinary violence, and it desiccates and preserves meat placed at its geometric centre. We have read how Czech soldiers in World War II used to re-sharpen their razor blades, no longer available in shops, by placing them facing north and south in the centre of a cardboard model of the pyramid, which was itself placed with two opposite sides north and south. The proportions of the pyramid are height 5, sides 8, and 7.5 from top to bottom  [some words are missing here I’m afraid]

There was an empty sarcophagus in the famous Irish chambered cairn at Newgrange, under a domed roof which was originally lined with layers of different substances as if to insulate the chamber and to concentrate there the influences brought to bear on it. Unlike Stonehenge, Newgrange was built to receive the sun's blessing at the Winter Solstice. There remains an incomplete parabolic mirror of polished stone, placed so as to catch the rays of the rising sun on what would now be December the 21st, and to flood the chamber with them at the important moment of dawn. Perhaps this chamber and sarcophagus were used in the initiation of novitiate druids at this other significant stage of the sun's apparent life. Perhaps, like the archaeologist in the pyramid, they emerged very confused, or with all secrets revealed to them. Domes and pyramids both seem to magnify dowsing force. It is interesting that pyramid-shaped turrets and domes are found over places in churches under which a number of streams intersect.

Serial Numbers

I learned, I think from Mermet, that all elements have serial numbers and fundamental rays. They all cause the pendulum to gyrate a number of times peculiar to them, followed by the same number of oscillations. This double process is repeated the same number of times as the number of oscillations. Then the pendulum goes off to a certain compass bearing and stays there. This is its fundamental ray, and this identifies the element. Mermet gives a list of serial numbers and bearings, saying that not everyone has exactly the same. He also tells us that every element has its own characteristic colour, with which its radiations harmonise. My own findings are as follows, for a number of elements commonly found.

The cavity number is used a great deal by dowsers working on archaeological sites. Underground passages and chambers are located by dowsing with this number in mind.

When I was in Australia I was shown round a uranium mine; afterwards the manager gave me some lumps of uranium ore as a souvenir. I discovered that the series number of uranium was 17.  So I added this to my [some words are missing here I’m afraid]