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For those of you who like to put future dates in your diary please note that the October 2007 meeting will be on the 29th of the month. This is the FIFTH Monday of the month. The speaker will be Billy Gawn who many will have seen before. He is well worth the inconvenience of a different night.
Still a couple of places left for the forthcoming Dowsing Workshop – details at the back of the journal.
Incidentally, we are always on the lookout for pieces to put in the journal. If anyone feels like putting pen to paper with some info or observations on dowsing or related topics, please contact Sib, who is always glad of extra input.
We begin the 2007 season’s outdoor sessions with a trip to Lydiard Park at Lydiard Tregoze.- not too far from civilisation should the weather be poor. There is a public car-park and there is a small charge for this.
Lydiard Park is situated to the west of Swindon near J16 M4. Follow the brown signs to Lydiard Park.
The park was the ancestral home of the Viscounts Bolinbroke, and was a great 260 acre estate, reaching its peak in the eighteenth century.
The grounds of the house contain “humps and bumps” which are all that remains of the deserted mediaeval village, moved to a greater distance by the incumbents of the Palladian house so that the view was not contaminated by a sight of the hoi-polloi. Try dowsing for the old main street of the village also the buildings and wells. It will be interesting to see if the recent restoration work has affected any of the energies.
The church, St. Mary’s, contains a rare and valuable triptych so is usually kept locked, but the key is usually available from the house so we should be able to dowse in there as well. It is an interesting church with several powerful energy points, and a number of lavish monuments about which John Aubrey was very complimentary.
Since we last visited this site, a fair amount of work has been done to restore a “missing” lake which had long disappeared, and more archaeological work has been done.
The house itself is worth a visit for those who like old houses, and I understand that more of it is now open to the public [afternoons only, on Sundays.]
In addition to the deserted village and St. Mary’s church, there is plenty of dowsing potential at the old coral-rag quarry, ice-house and Georgian walled garden.
Lunch will be at the Angel in Purton, where we hold the monthly meetings, as it is close to Lydiard, and the Sunday lunched are apparently very good.
More local dowsing after lunch, assuming the weather is reasonable.
Did anyone see the recent Horizon Programme called “Body-farm”? This was about an American research laboratory which is currently the only place in the world where forensic and other scientists can study the effects of the elements on human corpses and the process of decay.
The boffins who work there had been trying to develop a high-tech piece of equipment to locate hidden corpses – a kind of mechanical sniffing machine which works by analysing gases to determine if putrefaction, and therefore a body, is present.
After showing how the very sophisticated [and probably expensive] machine worked, the staff member operating the equipment suddenly said that there was another way to do it, promptly whipped out a pair of L-rods and proceeded to give a demonstration of dowsing for buried bodies.
Quick, cheap and effective.
The closet conspiracy-theorist in me wonders if the real reason that most scientists dismiss dowsing as a load of old nonsense is that it cannot be patented, therefore none of the big multi-national manufacturing companies stands to make mega-bucks out of it.
Thanks to Barbara Withers for the loan of the video.
We found the following article in the Daily Telegraph of Saturday Dec 16th 2006
Clive Fewins digs out the truth about Britain’s sacred water sources.
An "old witch" is said to have stood beside the ancient Skimmington Well at Curry Mallett in Somerset and dispensed cures. She is long gone, and the well's location is likewise lost, but the legend of both lives on. It is one of the hundreds of "holy wells" referred to in folklore as places where miraculous cures have taken place.
Easier to find, however, for those who take the trouble to seek it out, is the Whistlebitch Well near Utkinton in Cheshire. Four hundred years ago, the well's curative powers are said to have attracted 2,000 people daily. Now it lies in undergrowth, its exact location revealed by a broken-down wire fence. The well was rediscovered by Tristan Gray Hulse, one of a small number of enthusiasts whose main spare time activity over many years has been hunting down these ancient water sources and the legends associated with them.
There are an estimated two to three thousand holy well sites in England and Wales. Many of them are, like the Whistlebitch, just a murky pool, accessible only by foot. In the past 12 months dedicated "wellies" (as they are known) like Gray Hulse have made some remarkable finds.
In Totnes, Devon, wellies have found - on the site of a disappeared medieval hospital - an immersion pool fed by a holy well. At Malvern, Worcestershire, it is still possible to drink from several natural wells, two of which are believed to be medieval holy wells. Here local historians Cora Weaver and Bruce Osborne have just unearthed a major find after a 10-year search.
"It is a long-lost holy well dedicated to an obscure local saint, St Werstan, whose legend is recorded in the ancient windows of Malvern Priory," says Osborne. "It's only a hole in the hillside, but we have found some ruins beneath the surface, which tell us we have tracked down the site."
Some holy wells are signposted for all to see. At Dunsfold in Surrey, a wooden sign in the churchyard directs visitors a few hundred paces down a muddy track to a wooden structure that covers the well, from which water is drawn regularly for baptisms.
At places such as Hinderwell in North Yorkshire, and East Dereham in Norfolk, the wells are in a churchyard or adjoining one. At other well-known wells, such as St Anne's (also known as the Virtuous Well) at Trellech, Monmouth, and St Gwenfaen's at Rhoscolyn, Anglesey, the wells are walled, with steps leading down.
But today, drinking from any of the above-listed sources is not recommended. For those who do partake, any "cure" they receive is likely to come later, at the hands of their GP. That's unless you visit St Winefride's Well at Holywell, North Wales. There, an estimated 30,000 visitors a year visit the "Lourdes of Wales" and drink the water free of charge, seven days a week. In addition, more than 5,000 bottles of the water are purchased and taken away annually.
Author Janet Bord has just published Cures and Curses (Heart of Albion, £14.95), an alphabetical introduction to holy wells. She is currently involved in the mammoth task of producing a guide to all those that can still be identified today.
"There is no national record of all the sites and the folklore associated with them," says Bord. "So those of us who are constantly working on holy wells are grateful to local groups, several of which have made some splendid discoveries. More work needs to be done for the holy wells and sacred springs throughout Britain. They must be sought out and protected, before it is too late and many of them are lost."
For more information on holy wells, see www.holywells.com.
For a list of wells operating in different parts of the country, try www.jiscmail.ac.uk or email Janet Bord at janet.bord@forteanpix.demon.co.uk.
As is usual for the December Meeting, this was a social evening with no speaker as such, although Shaun ran a light-hearted dowsing competition and generally hosted the evening. A box of Green and Black’s chocolates was the prize for the winner of the competition. The result was close, with five drawing for the highest number of points; the winner was decided by a draw.
Tarot card readings were given to those who wanted them, by Peter McDade, and a pleasant time was had by all.
Michael Marsh thanked Shaun for his work on behalf of the WDS and this was heartily endorsed by all present.
Thanks to everyone who came along at such a busy and tiring time of year, and a Happy 2007 to all of our members and to the hard-working staff at the Angel.
Dowsing at sacred springs and holy wells is often an interesting experience as there are a number of things to dowse. Firstly the water – is it mineralised, what beneficial qualities are there, is it still pure? The source can be dowsed for depth and rate of flow, and there are sometimes old thorn trees that have strips of cloth attached, denoting that the well was probably sacred in pre-christian times, and today’s pilgrims are carrying on old traditions.
The situation of some of these wells has been ruined by modern buildings or roads, but the more remote examples, or some of those in church yards often have a very tranquil atmosphere and can have a healing effect without actually drinking the water or immersing oneself in it.
In the ancient Manx language the name for Epiphany is translated as The Feast Day of the Water Wells. It is probable that Man was one of the last parts of the British Isles to convert to Christianity.
One Manx well, at South Barrule, had superb health-giving properties, but could only be visited once in a persons lifetime, as it could not be found a second time. One pilgrim left a stick there to mark the site of the well, but when he returned, his stick had also vanished, along with the well!
Plato, in “Republic,” advised settlers in a new country to find the natural sacred places and re-dedicate them to their own deities.
King Egbert, in the 9th century, threatened punishment to anyone offering libations or sacrifices or other offerings at wells or springs,
Pope Gregory had the same views, as Plato,leading to the Christianisation of many ancient sites of all types, but in 1410AD, the Bishop of Hereford suspended the use of a local well and stone, forbidding their use for purposes of worship.
Wells that may be pre-christian can often be identified by the names given them by Christian missionaries – the most popular dedications being St. Chad, St. Anne, St. Winifred, St. Cuthbert St. Helen and Well of our Lady, or simply Lady-Well.
Snowdrops, also known as the “fair maid of February, or the Candlemas bell”, is a symbol of hope and purity. In parts of the country houses were cleansed by bringing in snowdrops in a ceremony known as “white purification.” The ceremony is essential to avoid bad luck, as the snowdrop has a drooping head, which can be unlucky in the house if the proper rituals are not carried out.
If you’re jaded from the January sales but are still looking for an excuse to visit Bath, here is a map of some of the wells (Holy and otherwise) which may be worth a visit. We haven’t checked this out yet, so if someone does do a visit can they let us know how they got on.