This and That
Last month I mentioned that we had put some Tibetan prayer flags next to our water butts, with the intention of avoiding a drought this year. I’m sure you will be pleased to know that they have now been moved!
Forthcoming Field Trips.
We don’t have a trip as such in August as so many members are away on holiday, also the committee are very busy with two outdoor events at the Crop Circle Conference in Marlborough and at Chedworth Roman Villa. We will be having the sales stall, giving very brief dowsing lessons and will make a labyrinth that is big enough to walk round. These events are usually great fun to do as well as bringing the WDS to the notice of the public, and hopefully making a few pounds for the society’s funds.
These events should have taken place by the time you read this, weather permitting, so hopefully there should be a report on them in the September journal.
In September we had planned to visit Deerhurst and also Odda’s Chapel which is close by. On the road down to Odda’s chapel are a couple of big flood gates, which were probably put in after the last major flooding in the area in 1947. Since the latest floods proved that the gates and defensive bank are about 2 feet too low, and the site has been very seriously flooded, we have decided that this trip will be better next year when (hopefully) things will be back to normal and hose pipe bans will be in place.
Plan ‘B’ is a trip Seven Barrows on Lambourne Down, about two miles north of Lambourne village. Although the site is called Seven Barrows, in fact there are almost twenty, including disc as well as round barrows, with a chambered barrow nearby. A small Iron-age camp close by has been named Alfred’s Castle. Grave goods excavated at the barrows indicate a spread right through the Bronze Age.
According to time available we may manage to squeeze in some more local sites.
July Field Trip.
This trip was earlier in the month than usual and in spite of the fact that some of the regulars got the dates mixed up, a good crowd gathered for the visit to the White Horse at Hackpen and after lunch to Knap Hill.
The Hackpen White Horse is a comparatively recent construction, believed to have been cut to commemorate the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, but it has strongly dowseable underground streams, energy flows and power spots, similar to those found at older horses such as the one at Uffington. At one time the horse was unavailable to the public as it was on private land, but there is now access to it and the surrounding area. It is situated on the face of Hackpen Hill on the right of the road from Wootton Basset to Marlborough.
We had hoped to include a crop circle in the agenda, but although there have been a lot more appearing than last year at this time, the more conveniently located ones had been already obliterated by the farmers.
Knap Hill is roughly in the centre of the Vale of Pewsey which divides the county in half, and is a great place for views as well as an interesting place to dowse. It is part of the northern escarpment which defines the northern side of the valley and from the top you can see some of the finest views in the county, including old hill-forts, tumuli and the sites of several major Saxon battlefields.
Knap Hill itself is a Neolithic Causewayed camp, which was probably not used for defence purposes but is more likely to have been a place of assembly and possibly feasting. This is believed to be the case as the camp has a number of causeways crossing its surrounding ditches, thus making it far too easy to gain access for the camp to be defensive.
At the northern end of the camp is a triangular earthwork which is Romano-British but which has yielded pagan Saxon finds.
Only a couple of light showers to deal with - a most pleasant day out.
July Talk.
July’s speaker was Bart O’Farrell, who gave a fascinating and instructive talk on dowsing at some of the ancient sites of Cornwall. Bart has lived in Cornwall for some years although he actually originates from Wales, with an Irish father. I reckon this makes him well qualified to talk about all things Celtic!
The talk was accompanied by a selection of interesting slides, illustrating the huge choice of ancient sites available to dowse in this part of the country. One such was Men-an-Tol, a formation of three stones was at one time accompanied by a stone circle. The stone assemblage has been re-constructed incorrectly so that the middle stone, with it’s central hole now is aligned to the wrong axis. This can be checked by dowsing. The Merry Maidens stone circle was also shown, along with fougous, holy wells, St. Michael’s Mount and many others.
The large standing stones adjacent to the Goonhilly Earth Station were shown, and Bart mentioned how uncomfortable some people felt at such close proximity to the earth station. Several members visited this site a few years ago, with Bart, and found very strong energy fields that leave you feeling depleted of strength and some of those present got headaches. Bart said that the station is due to be closed – a good thing since employees had a high record of illness and unusually early deaths.
The underlying granite on the Goonhilly Downs is some of the thickest, which is why the earth station was located here – a very strong sub-strate is essential to support the enormous structures. I wonder if it is radon gas given off by the high levels of granite that contributed to the poor health of the workers above it?
Several major energy lines cross Cornwall, as anyone who has read Hamish Miller’s books will know, and there is on-going research into them. There are a number of sites where they cross [nodes], including St. Michael’s Mount. Interestingly, the National Trust, who are the island’s custodians, do not like people visiting the part of the island where the node occurs.
When in Cornwall we visited two of the dolmens that Bart Showed slides of. At that time we did not know much about them, but disliked the feeling at one, Lanyon Quoit, while enjoying the other. Bart explained that this dolmen had been destroyed when one of the four support stones was broken. When attempts were made to re-assemble it, the capstone would not stay in place, so the support stones were shortened and levelled so that the overall height of the monument is now much lower, and straight instead of sloping as in the original form. This disturbing of the stones may give rise to the unpleasant feelings experienced there.
In our part of the country we are used to barrows being covered in soil, but Bart said that in Cornwall, there is a strong possibility that the capstones were left uncovered and were used for “sky-burials”, similar to funeral practices in other parts of the world.
Cornwall is rich in sacred springs and holy wells, and Bart showed slides of a selection of these and explained his method of dowsing at them.
Thanks Bart for such an interesting and entertaining talk – it has certainly inspired me with thoughts of another trip to Cornwall. S.C.
Water Coincidence
A few days ago, Pete was taking a short cut through the magazine department of W.H. Smiths, when something made him suddenly stop to bend down and pick up a magazine.
On opening the magazine [Country Smallholding], and flicking through it, he was astonished to find it included an article on water dowsing by Hamish Miller. Was it just co-incidence that made him stop at a magazine we never usually buy, or was it an involuntary dowsing reaction?
Hamish starts with his own definition of dowsing “…learning to use a degree of concentration that we are not normally called upon to use in our everyday lives,” and “…..using apparently paranormal powers to make discoveries.”
He mentions the first known historical reference to dowsing, by Heroditus the Greek in the 5th century BC. Also the Smithsonian Institute in Washington has a coin from 935AD showing a mineral dowser in Germany.
Hamish suggests that dowsing fell out of favour with the religious hierarchy because they tended to get dowsing [making discoveries] confused with divining [foretelling the future].
Hamish visited Russia with a group of dowsers some years ago. Their hosts included medics, physicists, engineers, etc., who frequently used dowsing as a research tool. These people were all amazed that their counterparts over here didn’t consider dowsing scientific enough to be useful.
Earth energy and the connection between all living things are what Hamish specialises in and he described an interesting experiment that demonstrates that this connection and allows us to communicate with plants and trees.
Indoors, or on a windless day, hold your hand about half an inch above one of the leaves of a broad-leafed plant, without actually touching it. Tell the plant how beautiful it is, and provided you are sincere about this, the leaf will try to bend up to touch your hand.
You can also communicate with trees by dowsing a tree’s aura, marking the edge of the aura with a stick. Then give the tree a good hug and re-dowse the aura. Provided that the hug was sincere, you will find that the aura has increased.
The article by Hamish Miller that inspired this piece is well worth a read and it is in the August edition of “Country Smallholding” magazine. Hamish’s Dowsing Book is now available from the “Wooden Book” series and we usually have some on sale at our meetings and on the stall at outdoor events,
Titania where’s your brolly?
By the sound of it one Will Shakespeare was not amused by a spell of bad weather current sometime during the 1590s. At least they had something to blame it on other than Global Warming. Below is one of Titania’s speeches from ‘A Midsummer night’s Dream’ sent in by Pat Cannings.
These are the forgeries of jealousy;
And never since the middle summer's spring
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By pavėd fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beachėd margent of the sea
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Therefore the winds, piping to, us in vain,
As in revenge have sucked up from the sea
Contagious fogs which, falling in the land,
Hath every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.
The ox hath therefore stretched his yoke in vain,
The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
Hath rotted ere his youth attained a beard.
The fold stands empty in the drownėd field,
And crows are fatted with the murrion flock,
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud,
And the quaint mazes in the wanton green
For lack of tread are undistinguishable.
The human mortals want their winter cheer.
No night is now with hymn or carol blessed.
Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound;
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter hoary-headed: frosts,
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is as in mockery set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazėd world
By their increase now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils
Comes from our debate from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.
The Blight of my life
Or my tomatoes, at any rate.
Like so many others this year, our tomatoes have been badly affected by blight. I realised that this was likely as the wet weather this season is ideal for the proliferation of blight and other fungal plant diseases. We could have taken the chemical route as so many conventional gardeners feel forced to do, all the “experts” swearing that there is no other effective solution, but did not wish to do this.
Most of the organic books say that it is OK to use Bordeaux Mixture as a preventative, but in fact this is soon to be phased out of the list of treatments allowed for organic gardeners. In any case, it is no use once blight has already struck. So what to do?
We already put cloves of leftover garlic under each tomato plant when it is planted out, which is reckoned to make them less prone to disease in general, and this usually seems to slow down the blight so that a reasonable crop is possible.
However, this year it was not enough. Looking ahead to next year, I decided to do some research into alternative methods.
One book swears by a brew of horsetail leaves used as a foliar spray. No exact details given other that boiling the horsetail for 30 minutes then cooling and diluting before application.
I have in the back of my mind that a dilution of natural live yoghourt can be used in similar fashion, but can’t remember where I read this, as it was a few years ago. This might work by raising the acidity of the tomato leaves’ surface, while creating a partial barrier, while the horsetail might work by adding silicon to strengthen the cell structure of the plant.
I then thought about using a homoeopathic remedy produced from blighted tomatoes, but have not yet plucked up the courage to phone my pharmacy for advice on the idea.
Once I’ve collected a few more ideas I will dowse for the ones most likely to succeed in our particular situation and will report later.
Any other suggestions would be most welcome. S.C.
Please to remember the Fourth of November.
For the last few years Barbara and Adrian Crocker have kindly let us hold our Samhain Fire festival on their land. Unfortunately the recent torrential rain has meant that the drainage work scheduled for earlier this summer, along with the construction of Adrian’s stone circle, is unlikely to be completed in time, and the field won’t be fit to use this year.
We may manage to find an alternative site for a fire and some food, otherwise there will be a normal day-time field-trip on that date, more details on this later.
