August 2005

Copyright of the Journal.

Contributors to the Journal are reminded that the copyright of material published in the Journal becomes the joint property of the contributor and the Society.  This means that while the contributor retains their full rights to reproduce, in other publications or in other forms, the material they have submitted to the Journal, they at the same time allow the same right of use of their material to the Society.  This has always been a condition of the Society and the Journal.

Disclaimer

The Society and the Journal editors do not necessarily associate themselves with the views expressed by contributors and correspondents.

This and That

Up coming Stonehenge special access dates are Autumn Equinox Friday 23^rd September and Winter Solstice Thursday 22^nd December.  The reason these dates are not the 21^st of the month is due to the date being the days when the Sun moves into the next sign of the Zodiac.  If you intend attending you will need to be there an hour or so before sunrise.  Thank you to Nora for the information.

Talking of Stonehenge I see the idea to put the A303 into a tunnel has been abandoned and everything is up in the air again.  I expect something might be sorted out before Stonehenge celebrates its 10^th millennium.  Ho hum happy days.

Also from Nora information about the Great Bustard Trust.  They are a registered charity reintroducing the Great Bustard back on to Salisbury Plain.  To book a view of them ring 01722 710779.

Little Green Men.

I’m not talking flying saucers here, but foliate heads etc., of the type often found in old churches and occasionally in other buildings.  While on a trip to Kent recently, Shaun came across some good quality modern copies made by a man who charges very reasonable prices for them.  Shaun was sufficiently impressed by the standard of the castings to acquire some to sell on the WDS stall at meetings and outside events.

We recently had some new book titles on the sales table, which were on sale at slightly less than the publisher’s price.  These have sold so well that fresh supplies have been re-ordered, so if you were disappointed at the last meeting they should soon re-appear, along with some more new titles.

Lives of the Saints

There is a fine moment, as you stagger up the steeps of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, on your way to see the giant in his lozenge high above the meadows.

You come out from under the trees, your amanuensis close behind you with the oxygen, and there is a National Trust sign saying the best view of the giant is to be had from the car park which you left half an hour ago, down in the village, a mile away.

The fact is that the nearer you get the less sense you can make of the giant's surprised face, his enormous club and his wild orchid. He's just a mess on the ground.

The best thing on that hill in Cerne Abbas is when you come to the containing fence and see that the stile has been provided with a cat flap. For small dogs, one imagines. Such consideration.

A wooden hatch slides up and down between two runners. You can get down on your knees and your friends can pretend to guillotine you, if you're having that sort of day.

There is an equally fine moment in mid-life, a moment you never witness in its arrival, you just know it has come, when you stop being a hairy-arsed fellow rushing from pillar to post always flustered and in the wrong, always exciting unfavourable comment; and realise that you have been serenely side-lined.

Then you can stand back and watch, in slight amazement, as other people, younger people, assume your earlier role, questing up the hill when they could just buy a postcard in the village, banging their heads against the Cosmic flail, getting in a state.

You nod, you suppress a smile, as they rail against their back spasms and their overdraft and their limitless, luckless ambition.

Now I find that whatever the present moment, it reminds me of a time in the past. My face is my uncle's face, worldly and unkempt. I seem to be going backwards and forwards all the time, standing still. Forever in two places.

For instance, we were presently at the well in the wood in the middle of the night with young Jeremy, one of our number, who I think was having a doomed adolescence.

It's always nice to stay out late on May evenings; when there isn't work to go to in the foreseeable future, but it was all getting a bit of a frazzle by 3 a.m. In my mind I was back in Cerne Abbas on a summer's day, savouring a range of butterflies and day-flying moths not seen in Wiltshire in any quantity since the mid-nineties. Hello again to the Grizzled Skipper and the Tiger Moth. Greetings, Heath Streak.

The abbey at Cerne Abbas is long gone, smashed up by Henry VIII whom I find even more regrettable than Mozart, but you can still see St Augustine's well, which must have pre-dated the abbey and church by several centuries.

Just as we must be aware of Cow Parsley and Hedge Parsley growing wild in England, so easy to confuse in a hedgerow situation, so there are two St Augustines in the lives of the saints and we may have to mind our Ps and Qs.

St Augustine of Hippo got off to a flying start in terms of sanctity because his mother was a saint, though she may have been just plain Monica when he was born, and only canonised in later years for being his mother.

Anyway, he was a bit of a lad when young, praying on one occasion - "make me chaste, but not yet'"

He pioneered the John Donne model of holiness by falling hard in love with the church in middle age after being a bit of a charlotte church in earlier day.

After begetting a son with his mistress, he eventually took up the life of monastic scholarship and preaching, wrote two definitive Christian texts, and started having visions.

One day on the beach, he met a child digging a hole in the sand.

The child said he was going to empty the sea into the hole. Impossible, said Augustine.

"No more impossible," the child told him, "than for the finite mind to contain the infinite."

And with that cautionary, almost Buddhist observation, the child vanished into thin air.

So; to conclude: St Augustine of Hippo: a good egg and a full life. Commonly known as The Father of the Church (354 to 430). He is the patron saint of theologians, printers and brewers. He even had his portrait painted by El Greco in 1590. Cheers, mate!

When the other Augustine is represented, St Augustine of Canterbury, it is often with wells and water.

He is principally associated with the attempt to convert the heathen British, after being sent to these pagan isles in 596 by Pope Gregory.

At Cerne Abbas, the legend says that he met some thirsty shepherds in the fields below where the giant now stands (was the giant there at the time? Wouldn't it be nice to know?).

To provide them with a drink, he struck the ground with his staff and water gushed up from a spring, which was later made into a well.

Today, of course, he would simply have taken them down the street to the Giant Tea Rooms for a chilled Fanta, but in those days it was important for saints to pull off miracles in a routine way, for the Roman church to symbolically claim the old pagan sites and customs.

And thus we have Augustine of Canterbury drumming up water wherever he went, in a series of early dowsing, drilling and metering operations that should be an inspiration to every modern-day rhabdomancer. I bet he was a fifty gallons a minute man.

In Britain, he had a big early success in Kent, converting the king and establishing Canterbury as the centre of the Roman church, but he struggled with the Celts on the fringe and was a bit of a stodgy old thing. He would not have approved of Charlotte Church's recent move into disco/R& B and the concomitant war of words with Dame Shirley Bassey.

When we were at his well in Cerne Abbas, an earth worm had fallen into the scrape of water and was looking a bit white and bloated, swimming steadily along the bottom among the coins.

Mindful that he might drown, I got my assistant to fish him out on the end of an L-rod. We examined him, and cross-examined him telepathically, not much luck there, as I don't think they have much brain apparatus, so the jury, was out on what he thought he was up to. To be on the safe side, we gave him his liberty in the mud at the side of the well.

Blow me, if he didn't head straight back to the edge and start sliding down into the water again, waving his head around like a heavy metal fan.

Were we witnessing a fork in the road of evolution, or was the worm stupid and about to drown?

For that matter, was young Jeremy?

He sat on the edge of the plunge-pool in the Royal Forest of Mean, and crashed his feet into the cold water, pondering the underwater dowsing attempt.

Just then, a whirring sound was heard among the trees and a light machine descended, looking for all the world like the central chandelier in the Pittville Pump Room at Cheltenham, where I once sabotaged a Mozart recital by coaxing a pig down the aisle.

The light machine spun, angled, and sent down a beam, into which young Jeremy disappeared. Very skinny and pale.

As he went, he called out: "They'll listen to me at the office now?" I did not doubt it.

"Anybody know if his membership subscription is up to date?" I asked.

Grey Wolf

July field trip.

The Dipping Well at Market Lavington was first on the list.  As holy wells go, this must have been quite an important one as the remains cover a larger than usual area.  Nothing much is left of the well buildings other than a low stone surround and a step for the water to run over.  In spite of this, it is an attractive place to visit for a dowsing exercise.  The well is near several houses, but the rain kept the locals indoors so we were able to proceed without any curious observers!

Dowsing suggested that the well was fed by at least two springs, and several of the nearby trees had branches bending at a rather distorted angle, suggesting that they were affected by the underground water flow.

After lunch at a pub at nearby Tilshead, we walked up a narrow track for about half a mile to dowse the “White Barrow”, one of a group of at least seven in this area.  The rain had stopped during the lunch break and the sun was now shining, making this a very pleasant stroll.  The barrow we visited was believed to have had chambers in it at one time, although there is no sign of these now, but it is an impressive structure and beautifully situated with stunning views.

We finished the afternoon with a look at the church at Tilshead.  This now dates mostly from the middle ages, replacing a much older building.  The old wall paintings are no longer visible, but the 12^th century font is worth a visit in its own right, with a massive energy field around it.  So powerful was it, that I could not walk right up to the font without feeling as though I was wading through a quicksand – a most peculiar feeling, although there were no ill effects.  I believe several others noted this very strong energy in that area.

This is the concluding part of Sir Geofroy Tory’s article.  I would like thank him and The British Society of Dowsers again for permission to use it.  I hope you found it interesting and inspirational.

ASPECTS OF DOWSING by Sir Geofroy Tory

Part4

Naval Intelligence

During the "Cold War" I experimented for a year or two with Naval Intelligence. I ought not to go into details, but I can say that I had a considerable measure of success. I found that nuclear submarines were ideal targets for map dowsing: enormous steel cylinders containing easily identifiable uranium, moving at speed through sea water. Compare water flowing through gravel, or gold veins "flowing" through rock. I have to add that I had embarrassing failures, too.

Finding Objects and People

Mermet was very good at this. I am hopeless at finding missing objects, but I have had some positive results with missing people. I recently helped the Irish police to find a missing student, who had unaccountably fallen into the river Lee in Cork and had been swept down river towards the open sea. When I was in Malta I was asked to find a missing skin-driver. My plot proved to be over a deep and narrow cleft in the sea-bed rock. The searching divers could not safely enter this so the search was called off. We shall never know whether the poor man was down there. His family decided to assume that this was his tomb.

The other case was interesting from the dowser's point of view. A drug smuggler ran his yacht on to rocks almost opposite to where I live. The Coast Guards asked me to help them to find him as he was not in the yacht and had presumably been washed over-board. I started with my pendulum gyrating over the last place he was known to have been, namely over the spot on the chart marking the wreck. Normally the pendulum will immediately point, i.e. swing in the direction of the target. I remember getting only a very weak reaction, and ending with an unconvincing plot. I was wrong. The man was eventually found underneath the yacht. For all I know, the pendulum was trying to tell me this.

Conclusion

My cooperation with Naval Intelligence ended as soon as I made a mistake. I felt all along that the Director hated everything to do with dowsing and was relieved to have an excuse to close my file. During the years covered by my dowsing story I met with incredulity at every stage. I felt that I had only been tolerated because I had held a responsible Government job, and that underneath I was seen as a harmless nut. It is good to see that things are changing, and that dowsing is becoming respectable. We still have to be careful not to exaggerate our dowsing abilities. Dowsing is not an exact science; looking back I doubt whether I could ever claim more than 60% success. But then I have always approached dowsing in a mood of semi-disbelief. That is probably why I am not a very good dowser. One must have self-confidence whilst avoiding auto-suggestion. Striking a proper balance between those two is half the battle, I suspect.

July Meeting.

Michael Marsh and Angela Bassett gave a talk and several practical demonstrations at the July meeting.  Michael did the main part of the talk, telling us about how he became very seriously ill after many years of being in a stressful competitive career.

None of the medical professionals seemed to be able to diagnose what was really wrong with him, meanwhile the pain he was suffering became worse and worse.  Eventually his son made him an appointment to see a faith healer the he had heard of, and after a couple of sessions he started to get some relief from the pain.

The faith healer, Angela Basset is a Reiki practitioner, and Reiki was what she used to treat Michael.  She soon realised that there was a potentially serious problem in the region of Michael’s shoulder and suggested he return to the doctor and insist on further investigation and a second opinion.

This proved to be a wise move as cancer was found to be present, necessitating a major operation.  Angela also went to the hospital where Michael was recovering and gave more Reiki treatment.

The medical professionals were astonished at the speed of Michael’s recovery, as he made much more rapid progress than is usual for this type of operation.

Michael was so profoundly impressed by the results of the Reiki treatment that he decided to give up the rat-race career that he had been involved in, and re-trained as a Reiki practitioner, went into a business partnership with Angela, and has never regretted this decision.

After Michael’s inspiring story of how he became a healer, he explained how dowsing is incorporated into their work, then he and Angela asked for volunteers who had not had experience of Reiki treatment before, and roped them in for some demonstrations of the way they work.  Plants may also benefit from Reiki, and it can also be used for “distance” healing at long range.

If any members would like to know more, the clinic that Michael and Angela run is in Cirencester and is called “Tranquility”.

Thanks to Michael and Angela for such an inspiring evening, keep up the good work!

Diagnostic Dowsing.

One of the questions that are most frequently asked is “How can I use dowsing for health?”  There are several ways to go about it, but one of the easiest methods for the beginner is analytical dowsing.  It is essential to be completely open minded about what you may think is the problem, and ask a series of questions which are worded in such a way that they are totally unambiguous.  One method is to make up a list of the major organs of the body and use this as a dowsing check list. For example:- Ears, liver, respiratory system, skeletal system, etc.  Using your pendulum or dowsing tool of choice, ask if there is there any malfunction of this particular gland, limb, etc.  Before starting, always check your yes/no responses, as they can sometimes alter.  When the malfunctioning part of the body has been ascertained, another list can be used to work out exactly what is causing the problem, and another list can be used to suggest a treatment.

When a part of the body is found to be malfunctioning, only you can decide if you can heal it yourself or whether a professional opinion should be sought. If you decide to heal the problem area yourself, more analysis is required.  For example, many health problems in the West are rooted in the deficiencies of the Western diet.  If dowsing suggests that this is the case, make up another list or chart of vitamins, trace elements, protein, carbohydrates etc., and use this to dowse whether there are any deficiencies or over-indulgencies.  Another list can be made of common allergens and food additives.

You could even make up lists of ingredients used in such things as shampoo, detergent, soap, cosmetics, paint and household cleansers.  Tannalised timber for outdoor use, chipboard type building materials often contain formaldehyde, which has a detrimental effect on many allergy-prone people.  All these could go on your lists to dowse, enabling you to gradually build up a profile of your body’s problems and requirements.

Above all, when asking these sorts of questions, be very specific – always ask if a substance is beneficial for you at THIS moment, or harmful at THIS moment.  A foodstuff may be bad for you at present, but beneficial under different circumstances, and vice-versa.

If in doubt, ask another dowser to cross check, or failing that, think of a different way to pose the question.

The main thing to remember is that the questions must be simply worded so that they can only have one meaning, and must be capable of being answered with a “yes/no” response.  Don’t forget the three important checks which should always be done before starting a dowsing exercise ;- “Can I?, May I?, Am I ready?  Tom Graves refers to this as the dowsing equivalent of a pilot’s pre-flight check.  If the answer to any of these is No. it does not mean that you cannot do it, it just means that you need to try again later.

The same method can be used for diagnosing problems in malfunctioning machines or electrical equipment.  I once talked to an electronics engineer who used dowsing frequently to track down “invisible” breakages on circuit boards etc., as it was the quickest and easiest way of doing it.  Three cheers for modern technology!

Below are some examples of the type of list that can be drawn up for use in diagnostic dowsing.  If anyone has tried this and would like to let us know the results for use in the journal, please let Sib know.  [Anonymity guaranteed if requested!]

Don’t forget to check the manufacturer’s guidelines on dosages when using commercially prepared products.

Dowsing at Chedworth.

For several years the society has run brief dowsing “taster” lessons at Chedworth Roman Villa at the invitation of the National Trust.  This year the dates are August 20/21^st.  We will also be constructing a labyrinth for the public to walk around, and will dowse this at intervals throughout the weekend to check if the energies change as the labyrinth is used.

We also hope to be doing some archaeological dowsing over a section of the site, for which we have a copy of the recent geophysical survey, so that the findings may be checked.  The sales stall will be operational so we hope for good takings for the society coffers

Most importantly, the visitor centre sells excellent ice-cream!

Thanks to Mick and Barb for this dubious contribution.