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Unfortunately Michael Glickman has had to withdraw from speaking in October, but he has promised to do a talk next year.
Talking of next year Shaun is putting together next year’s program. If you have any suggestions for speakers, field trips or the long weekend please let him know.
And talking of Shaun; he will be filling the gap left by Michael Glickman’s withdrawal as October’s speaker.
Mere and Whitesheet Hill.
Map Ref ST 814324 – to the south/south west of Warminster, almost the furthest south west point of Wiltshire.
Meeting in Mere at 10:45 at the Salisbury Street car park (free parking!) which is opposite “The Old Ship Hotel”. It has public conveniences by the entrance in case of need. Stout footwear and dry/warm clothing is recommended as Whitesheet Hill is very exposed.
Before lunch we shall be following the Mere Fault through the town. After lunch, in a local hostelry, a walk to Mere castle followed by a drive and wander on Whitesheet Hill. This has Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age Earthworks plus Spectacular views of Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset.
Sunday October 30th
Once again Barbara and Adrian Crocker have been kind enough to offer the use of their farm for a Samhain fire and celebrations.
Do not go to the house go straight to the farm buildings. We aim to start around 16:30.
The format will be similar to previous years, starting with some dowsing around the farm buildings, then a bonfire with some light refreshments. Bring a contribution to the refreshments if you wish, along with some sparklers – and don’t forget your dowsing rods. More work has been done on the site, so there should be some different dowsing responses to last year, and the 4.30 start should allow enough daylight to do some dowsing.
At one of the recent events at which the Wyvern Dowsing Society ran a stall and lessons in dowsing, one of the visitors to the stall came with the intention of buying a pendulum. She tried several of the hand-made wooden pendulums that we sell, found one that “felt just right” and decided that this was the one to buy. As her purchase was being wrapped, she asked what wood it was made of. On being told that it was Yew, she became very agitated as “yew brought bad luck”. We offered to exchange the pendulum for one made of a different wood, but she was very concerned that she had chosen something to buy that might bring her bad luck. After some conversation and reassurances, she decided to stick to her original choice.
All this prompted me to look up the Yew to see exactly what may have led to the “bad-luck” theory.
As far as I can ascertain, the only reasons that anyone might link the Yew with bad luck are its associations with churchyards, longbows and poisonous berries and foliage which is deadly to horses and cattle. However, the Druids preached that the Yew was an emblem of the soul’s immortality, and a symbol of eternal life. The reason for so many of the trees being in churchyards may be that the churches were sited on places previously sacred to the Druids, and used in their ceremonies. The associations with immortality and eternal life may be why mourners in more recent times tossed Yew twigs into graves at funerals.
In parts of Spain and also the Hebrides Sprigs of Yew were believed to protect buildings from lightening. The Hebrideans hung the sprigs on their thatched roofs, and the Spaniards hung them from the balconies.
Yew made the finest longbows and was also excellent for making magic wands. It was one of Ireland’s five magical trees, the others being Oak, Hawthorn, Elder and Rowan.
Hanging a Yew sprig that has been gathered at Easter over the kneading bowl prevents heavy bread, while in the north of England Yew was considered to be a finder of lost things – a sprig held by the seeker “jumped” when the missing article was near. This should make it the ideal material for a dowser’s pendulum!
While we are on the subject of one of the Druids sacred trees, I might as well say a bit about the other four major ones.
The Oak is another tree that has connections with thunder and lightning – it was believed to give protection to those seeking its shelter in thunderstorms. When an Oak in the Needwood forest was struck by lightening, people travelled great distances to gather the scorched chips of wood to use as lightning charms. The sky gods loved the Oak and showed this by descending during the lightning flashes and leaving mistletoe in its branches as a gift. These Oaks with mistletoe were especially revered.
Shipbuilders liked to build ships from Oak as it was believed to protect the ship from lightning strikes at sea, whilst at home, many cottagers hung Oak knobs on the window blinds as a protection against lightning. These knobs were traditionally shaped like the acorn, still a popular shape for this purpose today, even when other woods are used.
In Germany, even within living memory, mountain folk used Oak logs large enough to burn through the autumn and winter on the cottage fires. These were placed on the fire at midsummer. The ashes from this fire were mixed with the grain to be planted the following season. Oak was also used for ceremonial fires by Aryans in Europe for midsummer and other festivals, and the Perpetual Fire at Vesta in Rome was also Oak fed.
Herne the Hunter was an Elizabethan forest keeper who dabbled in witchcraft and was so remorseful that he hung himself from an Oak tree – Herne’s Oak, which stood in Windsor Little Park until 1796. Wearing a headdress of antlers, he still haunts the spot where the tree once stood.
The Hawthorn was also believed to give a house protection from lightning. Apparently it had to be laid in the rafters of the roof by someone who was not related to the family. A sprig of Hawthorn in a hatband gave the wearer protection from lightning strikes. Another use was in hedging – a Hawthorn mingled with the other hedging plants kept bad fairies away.
In England Hawthorn was often a marker for places were “moots” or manorial courts were held, but in Ireland they were believed to mark fairies trysting places. Farmers treated the bushes with the greatest respect and avoided damage to them when cultivating fields. Even as recently as 1968 a major road in Donegal was re-routed, at great expense, to avoid damage to a fairy tree which stood in the original route.
The Elder has many associations with bad luck: whipping a child with elder was said to stunt its growth, while burning Elder wood on the fire was believed to raise the devil. Even before touching it, it is necessary to ask permission from the Elder Mother, or Lady Elder, who could be very malevolent if offended. As late as 1964 a sheep farmer near Buckingham refused to use Elder in the sheep hurdles as it was “witch-wood”. Witches could conjure up bad weather by stirring a container of water with an Elder twig.
In spite of all this, the Elder was also used as a countercharm. A tree by the doorway could protect the household from lightning, witchcraft and also promoted fertility, while an Elder twig in a rider’s pocket would protect him from saddle-soreness, and leaves picked on the last day of April aided the healing of wounds. Elders near the dairy would deter flies. You could even keep plants safe from blight if you whipped them with Elder leaves, whilst a flea-infested room could be cleared of these pests by strewing Elder leaves on the floor.
According to Celtic tradition, orange/red berries are an essential requirement for a tree of power. This places the Rowan high up in the pecking order and it is the tree of choice in many areas for giving protection against the evil-eye, malevolent witches, fairies and disease.
The sea-faring Danes used Rowan in their boats to protect them from storms raised by Ran, the ocean-god’s wife, it was also thought that a ship containing Rowan would not be upset, or lose a man by drowning.
The berries of the Rowan could be fed to pregnant Cows and horses to ensure that they went full-term, while lambs and pigs were often fitted with Rowan-twig collars for protection. In some parts of Canada this practise was thought to make the animals fatten up more quickly. For human use, rheumatism could be prevented by carrying a piece of Rowan in the pocket. In Cumberland it was the custom for anyone who wished to use Rowan for magical purposes to carry the branches around the Beltane fire in order to prepare them for use.
Information for the above was obtained from ”The Folklore of Plants” by Margaret Baker. [Shire Publications]
Those members who read the “Times” will probably have seen the article about water shortages at Chedworth Roman Villa. The article was accompanied by a very good photograph of our chairman, Shaun Ogbourne, forked twig in hand, busily engaged in locating possible fresh supplies for them. Similar articles appeared on the T.V. programme “Points West”, and in the “Gloucester Echo”.
Rumour has it that Shaun is looking to buy a new (larger) hat!
Gloucester Echo 20 August 2005
Water supplies at Chedworth Roman Villa are running dry for the first time, including a 1,800-year-old water shrine.
The National Trust has been forced to call in dowsers to try and find alternative sources after existing supplies at the historic site dried to a trickle. Mark George, acting property manager at the villa, said: "It appears that the water goddess has temporarily deserted Chedworth Roman Villa and we are looking for alternative solutions."
The Roman remains are at the end of a combe in the countryside which is inaccessible to water mains. Instead the villa relies on a borehole to draw water from a parched water table.
But this summer the water levels have lowered and the Trust is now looking to sink a new borehole deeper into the ground.
The second century Nymphaeum or shrine of the water goddess is also drying up.
It once supplied the villa with water and an octagonal central pool at the front is still capable of holding 1,050 gallons.
Mr George said: "There is a serious message in all this, which is the impact of climate change on water supplies.
"The lowering of the water table has a particular impact on places not accessible to mains water and it also demonstrates how careful we need to be in saving water."
But he said it was business as usual at Chedworth and that the holiday programme would continue.
He added: "We hope the water goddess will be smiling on us again before too long."
Dan Taylor, spokesman for the Environment Agency, said: "We have had nine consecutive months of below-average rainfall.
"It has been the driest summer since 1976. We have had some sudden downpours but it has not been a consistent amount to refill water reserves."
The Wyvern Dowsing Society and surveyors were helping to find the most suitable place for a new borehole this week.
Once again the society was invited to set up shop at the annual Crop Circle Conference. As in the past few years we also marked out a labyrinth and gave brief dowsing lessons. The venue for this year’s event was the grounds of Marlborough College. We set up on a small grassy area with a nice view of Merlin’s Mound, [sadly out of bounds, but adding to the atmosphere none-the-less.] Saturday began well, but by lunchtime the rain was hammering down, resulting in a much quieter than usual day for us, as only a few hardy souls braved the short walk to our encampment.
However, the following day was lovely and we ended up having an enjoyable weekend, met lots of interesting people and made a few pounds for the society.
The following weekend saw the stall and a similar labyrinth at Chedworth. Here the weather was perfect, and we were fairly busy most of the time as all the publicity in the media created extra interest. Once again, a great weekend in a beautiful setting, with a few more pounds for the society coffers. Several members turned up at various times over the weekend, and it was good to see you all.
Last year at Chedworth we made the labyrinth a square one, in the Roman style, thinking it would be more appropriate for that particular site, but reverted to the usual round one this year. The reason for this was that people walking the labyrinth last year did not find it such an uplifting experience, as there seemed to be an accumulation of what was described to us as “dead” energy in the corners of the labyrinth. So this year it was back to basics.
Earlier this year, Geoff Stray gave the society a fascinating, if slightly unnerving, talk on the prophesies engendered by the Mayan Calendar, suggesting that civilisation as we know it will come to an end in the year 2012. Since then several members have asked whether his book is available. For information on the price and availability, contact Geoff at 22, Western Road, Littlehampton, West Sussex, BN17 5PG. Geoff’s Website is www.diagnosis2012.co.uk
When I was at school, the Man from Porlock was the milkman coming out from the village.
He troubled Coleridge at the critical moment with some quibble about his bill, or perhaps wanted to know whether the poet needed any possets at the weekend.
By the milkman's cheery hand was the poet's brooding introspection demolished, constraining the epic vision of "Khubla Khan" to the fifty-four lines we know and love today.
I grew up with the scene: the restless Coleridge on his travels, holed up in a cottage in the wilds near Culbone where all the twisted trees are. He is suffering from dysentery and has downed two grains of opium to relieve the symptoms...
He begins to write a great romantic poem... perhaps it's been on his mind for years... something he has fantasised and spoken of in his spell-binding bouts of pub oratory, but never written down. Soon he is going great guns.
A knock comes on the low wooden door. Sorry to trouble you, sir, only I've been sent out by the dairy. You owe us for six weeks' milk.
Only five, surely?
No. no. sir, six I think you'll find, and there was all that cheese last weekend.
Coleridge begins to grapple with the arithmetic. A catastrophic intervention by the everyday!
He returns to his writing desk. All is lost. The Muse has left him.
The scene had affected my father before me. Though peripheral to a literary appreciation of the poem, and unlikely, if mentioned, to gain marks in an exam, it was nonetheless a key moment of my youth.
But there are worlds that vanish before our eyes, and I noticed recently that the Man from Porlock is now almost universally referred to as the Person from Porlock.
Possibly nothing to do with the local dairy; may have been a woman; may have been Coleridge's literary agent trudging down from London to see him.
I mean. Is nothing sacred?
When I was young, if a bee stung you, it died, whereas a wasp could sting you and carry on.
This was an established truth, giving rise to Christopher Martin-Jenkins' immortal remark, when trying to discern in a Test match whether a cricketer had been stung by a bee or a wasp, that we should have our answer if the question were put:
Is there a dead bee at mid-on?
Consider my recent amazement, therefore, when, perusing a book by a local author on wild bee identification, I discovered that the bee-stings-and-dies view of the world is now widely considered to be a myth.
What would the evolutionary advantage be, to the bee, in losing her life in an act of self-defence?
Logical, of course, fiendishly logical, but this sort of thing tinkers with the fabric of my childhood. I'm not sure I can carry on.
They'll be saying next that swallows don't migrate from Africa every summer, but only bomb up from the Isle of Wight. Or that they spend the winter hibernating in the mud of English ponds.
They'll be saying we never landed on the moon.
Of course, there are lots of things I never believed for a moment.
The slang in schools fiction, for example.
Crikes! Yaroo! O Lor' ! Did anyone ever speak like that without dying of embarrassment? Or is it deliberately archaic?
George Orwell made a study of these things and states that Frank Richards (who was sometimes himself and sometimes someone else and sometimes an editorial committee, on the occasions when Frank Richards couldn't be bothered to shift his arse from the South of France) used slang throughout the Billy Bunter series (1910 to 1965) that was invented by Kipling in "Stalky & Co" and would have been considered out of date by real schoolboys in the late Victorian era.
The slang in Jennings (1953 onwards) is similarly excruciating, only in a space-age way ("You'll have a smash-on lot to get used to, and it's spivish ozard”) and is nicely parodied in the Molesworth quartet.
The slang belongs to the boys in these stories. The grown-ups have to make do with standard English. To enter the magical world of the young, we have to accept things that are deliberately obscure and baffling.
But where do you draw the line? What are the things that are simply baffling, have no charm, and can only lead us into worlds of unspeakable horror?
Boy bands, of course. Lager. Sir Edward Heath and all that followed. Dolphin cults. The removal of Test Match cricket from terrestrial television. The systematic improvement of modern-day exam results.
They all contribute to a sense of the world as unsafe and unknowable. I'm afraid the situation will not improve until I am allowed complete dominion.
Meanwhile, we are left with Robbie Williams as an entertainment colossus and the recent assistant Rose Tyler as the undeniable star of Dr Who. The absence of standards is so widespread that anything becomes possible, including alien chandeliers arriving in the night sky over the Royal Forest of Mean. Frankly, I'm ready to give up.
Most dowsers take a much more optimistic view of life. They go out on a Sunday night binge-dowsing on church-font energy to get them through the week.
They are ready to accept Shakin' Stevens and other things of wonder. To them it's all part of God's bounty. Whatever the time of day or night, if something weird happens, they just go up another gear.
After young Jeremy's graduation into the light machine, most of my companions were rather chuffed, as though they'd been taken to an Andrew Lloyd-Webber show on their fortieth birthday (another thing I don't understand).
They began to discuss the event relative to other occult phenomena of their experience, like the earlier disappearance of Hemnania Hill and her daughter into the realm of faery.
I struck out for home and solitude down the path.
Some way along, I heard excited voices round the corner and saw a haze of light.
In a makeshift gazebo beside the path my batman and spiritual mentor Plumb Bob was conducting a field hospital, tending to young Jeremy along with Henmania and her daughter. Giving them cups of sweet tea and letting them pour out their hearts, no doubt.
"Ah, Bob," I said, "everything under control?"
"We're getting there," he said.
"Good good. Is Juniper Starburst Rainbow safe and sound?"
"She was when I left her, sir."
"Carry on," I said.
Grey Wolf
This was the third time that Peter has given a talk to the WDS. The first two were so good that we have grown to expect great things of him, and sure enough, he lived up to expectations.
Peter began the evening by giving a brief outline of how he came to have an interest in Tibet and its religious beliefs. He went on a silent retreat run by a Rinpoche [reincarnated lama], earlier this year, which sharpened the interest he already had. Soon after this, an opportunity arose to make a trek through part of Tibet to raise money for charity, so Peter jumped at the chance, worked hard on fundraising Sunday lunches at his Devizes Bistro, and was soon on his way.
The immense size of the country came as a surprise. Parts of the trek were through places that Peter had not heard of, and he spent some time dowsing over an enormous map of Tibet trying to work out the route. As a chef, he is pretty fit with plenty of stamina, but still suffered from altitude sickness, which is decidedly unpleasant. In spite of this, the trip was wonderful and Peter highly recommends it if you get the chance.
At the start of the talk, Tsampa bread [made from barley] was served to the audience, along with Yak-butter tea, made with goat butter which has a very similar taste, yak butter being in short supply in Devizes. The tsampa bread was liked by most, although the tsampa tea was more of a culture shock!
Slides were shown of many of the monasteries and sacred places, accompanied by a few samples of the indigenous music and Peter’s comments and anecdotes. At one point a monk came to talk to the group and demonstrated some of the powerful chants performed by the monks for various specific purposes. Peter and a friend stood at a high point and shouted one of these chants, [intended to control weather], very loudly to see what would happen. Within a few moments the previously bright sky darkened and torrential rain hammered down. The monk was not amused!
As well as the refreshments, Peter had brought along Tibetan artefacts such as pictures, maps, various incenses, a yak wool blanket and a Tibetan singing bowl which he demonstrated.
Thanks Peter, for another great evening.
Peter’s restaurant in Devizes serves excellent food and is not to be missed. It is in the town centre, opposite The Healthy Life whole-food shop [also Peter’s], and is called The Bistro. Tel. 01380 725558