Spring Equinox September 2002
the E-magazine of dowsing & geomancy,
in Australia and beyond. Edited by Alanna Moore.
Geomantica. That makes the mag four years old!
From the cutting edge of sustainable thought in
agriculture within the CSIRO, to ancient geomantic
wisdom encoded at Stonehenge in England, to the
latest developments in the understanding of the
capacity for memory (and perhaps sentience/
consciousness) in water. It's a mind boggling bag!
What do you think? What do you like about Geomantica,
what could be improved on or what subjects would you
like to see covered? Please drop us a line if you feel
moved to comment. Feed back is important for our
evolution and can be a forum for sharing knowledge,
while it also (usually) makes us feel good. (Sorry for
those who found previous edition pages too wide to
read easily hopefully this is now rectified.)
copy of 'Stone Age Farming'. So crank up those computers.
Alanna Moore
Hello Alanna
Just a quick note to see if you can help or know of any information. Very soon I'm travelling to the Carnarvon Ranges in WA, south of Lake Disappointment and off the Canning Stock Route. There are a number of sites of very ancient cryptic rock carvings in this area, especially at a place known as Serpents Glen. They are quite awesome and obviously of great antiquity.
Have you heard of these carvings and whether their designs are significant, especially from a geomantic or earth energy point of view? They obviously were to the people/beings who first created them. How they were carved in solid rock defies imagination of us mere mortals. Any information, books, people, websites you may have heard or of other sites in Australia would be interesting to our little group of fascinated travellers.
Hope you can help
Rosie Fleay
(Perhaps readers might know something??)
Hi Alanna
There have been a few changes for me here in Hobart. I'm starting full time PhD study at Wollongong University and so will be ceasing much of my work on EMF issues. I have been selling the CellSensor meters and now offering to clear my remaining stock of meters for $65 each. (+postage).
If you are interested in any please let me know.
Regards
Don Maisch
EMFacts Consultancy
PO Box 96,
North Hobart, 7002
Tasmania, Australia
Phone: (03) 62430195
Fax: (03) 62430340
Email: dmaisch@emfacts.com
Web: http://www.emfacts.com
Emoto Visits Australia
The ability of water to have memory is given visual expression in the work of Masaru Emoto, a Japanese water researcher who toured northern parts of Australia in August last. Mr Emoto briefly visited northern NSW and north Queensland on his way home from New Zealand. He gave a total of 5 talks, two in Byron Bay and three in the Cairns and Atherton Tablelands region.
Emoto's two books on 'The Memory of Water', first published in June 1999 and the result of 15 years research, have caused great interest all around the world. They are packed with amazing photos of the effects on water from pollution (both environmental and mental!), as well as showing how pure, natural and energised waters ought to look.
Emoto's method is to take a photo of a frozen water droplet at a critical point when it is melting. At minus 5 degrees C water takes on a crystalline or snowflake type pattern, which Emoto has been able to capture with a 200 magnification microscope and camera set-up.
Pure water exhibits beautiful mandala patterns based on the six pointed star shape, which Emoto calls the 'blueprint of life'. This crystalline pattern is a 'manifestation of energy' he says. However pollution can totally degrade this normal patterning. Water that has been exposed to the word 'Hitler', for example, takes on a murky and sinister look.
An experiment was done with sunflower seeds that were germinated and watered with two lots of water. One water had been impressed in the same manner with the words "You fool", the other with "Thankyou". The resulting sunflower plant roots were photographed for the book. The "You fool" watered plants had roots that were stunted and had unhealthy lumps on them. The "Thank you" sunflowers had long, lush, healthy roots.
We were told about a successful experiment concerning Lake Biwa- Japan's biggest lake. Biwa had been fouled by algae each summer for the last 20 years, making its waters undrinkable. Emoto gathered 360 people for a grand blessing of its waters. A respected 100 year old man lead the proceedings, as they uttered the grand declaration: "The eternal power of the universe has gathered itself to create a world with true and grand harmony." That summer (of 1999) saw no return of the algae and the water became drinkable again. The next year only a small infestation of algae appeared and Emoto thinks that with more people involved a permanent clearing could be achieved.
(Emoto mentioned a new Japanese innovation for clearing water pollutants. Professor Maeda of Osaka University, has discovered a method to decompose waterborne chemicals like PCB and dioxin by ultrasonic waves.)
Emoto has recently been working with water as a medium to imprint healing frequencies specially formulated for sick people, using a Magnetic Resonance Analyser (akin to radionics). The MRA uses a photo or typed name for diagnosis. He reminded us that our bodies are 70% water, and casually remarked that 50,000 people had been healed with this technique.
At Byron Bay about 150 people squeezed into the venue for Emoto's presentation and probably twice that many people attended in north Queensland. Emoto showed us slides of his large audiences in Europe last year, also in Costa Rica and Uruguay.
He often has Dr Benveniste as his co-speaker- the first water scientist to prove that water has a memory (in relation to homoeopathic medicines). When Benveniste had his research findings published, in Nature no 333 in 1986, he was largely ridiculed. Now Emoto's work has vindicated his seminal work.
We also saw a slide of Emoto with another brilliant scientist Rupert Sheldrake, taken at a 'Religion, Science and the Environment Symposium'. Emoto believes Sheldrake should get the Nobel Prize.
Emoto is largely critical of the conferences he attends, saying they are usually "all talk, no action, and very expensive to attend". He doesn't have such a big following in his homeland as he does in Europe and the USA, although it has been said that the term HADO (from his Hado institute) is fast becoming part of popular language in Japan nowadays (e.g. "someone's/place's hado is very good").
Giving Thanks to the Waters
Emoto wants people to give thanks to the waters of their region
and is planning many celebrations.
"Let us just say, "I love you" and "Thank you" to all the water on the Planet Earth and fill the water with the highest vibration (HADO) of love and thanks. To make this event a global one, we have determined July 25, 2003, as "World Day of Love and Thanks for Water".
"We have a vision that, on this day, our Earth will be filled with beautiful golden/silver light of love and appreciation that is flowing from the hearts of us, all the human beings. This golden/silver light will cleanse all the water on Earth; part of it will be the water of the oceans, other will be the water that constitutes our own body."
This movement started as a peace initiative, with people urged by Emoto to pray to the Jordan River for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinian people.
Then Emoto felt that "we should pray not only to the water of Jordan River but also to all the water on the Earth for the sake of world peace. Water can heal us all. But only if we show our gratitude, from the heart, to everything and everybody that it lies within. With such a consciousness we will be able to reverse the negative trends of our destructive behaviour on this planet. Please join this project to change the world!!"
Emoto, who urges people to give thanks to their local waterbodies every 25th of each month (a date of significance in the Mayan calendar), plans to inaugurate an international non-profit organization to foster this project. More information about this project can be found at www.thank-water.net and email address: love@thank-water.net. His other website is www.hado.net.
I think that Emoto's work is very important for helping to make people realise the power of our thoughts, and he has proved that we are indeed what we think. It makes us realise the good sense in blessing and loving what we eat and drink and it also helps to explain the effects of vibrational remedies, such as homoeopathy and flower essences. It shows us how holy wells can emanate healing energies and gives clues as to why many ancient sacred sites are associated with water. There are so many complex spin offs, yet in essence Emoto's work is profoundly simple and basic.
© Alanna Moore
Frank Moody is a legend! Hailing from Cairns, the north Queensland grand old man of geomancy still travels the world doing dowsing, lecturing and healing work.
Recently returned from New Zealand, I was fortunate to catch up with Frank at his home in Cairns, north Queensland. He had been doing dowsing research with some biological scientists there, which had exhausted him.
Frank told me that he has been dowsing since he was 12 years old. Eighty seven years later he's still going strong and was pleased to report his recent success in clearing possums radionically. The feral nuisance possums were removed from an orchard near Kataia, in the north island of New Zealand, using his method of adding Anchor brand coloured cottons to the broadcasting tube of a copper agricultural coil (as featured in my book 'Stone Age Farming').
"To be fair" he told me "you
need to nominate where the possums can go".
Anchor cottons are getting hard to come by and so Frank is working
on a radionic number for possum control.
"It's all in the mind" is how he explains his work.
His own researches have convinced him that he has divined the causes of diabetes, MS, TB and other chronic illnesses. "If polio is around I can tell who'll be getting it and how they will be affected, from divining their personal frequency, their level of susceptibility" he explained.
As for the health of the Earth Frank urged that "The Earth urgently needs carbon, broadcast radionically".
He told me about a few recent health cases he has been working on. "I treated a couple of hyperactive kids. They had such a fast vibration! But they were fine the next day"
In another case a woman complained that she had not felt herself since having had twins and requiring eight pints of blood. Frank spent four hours working out how to make an appropriate adjustmentand the next day she said that finally felt herself again.
It was a privilege to talk to Frank briefly about his amazing work and I wish him all the best. Frank is an inspiration to all dowsers and it was a pity that he declined a video interview- such a humble man. It would be lovely if he could share himself around more via film, and one day I'll ask him again!
Because of Frank's great abilities he is in big demand for healing work and needs to protect his privacy and energy, for his own sustainability. If readers wish to contact him, I suggest sending Geomantica a letter which will be forwarded on.
Scientists have discovered that microbes living up to 300m under the surface in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans actually eat volcanic rock, leaving worm-like tracks. They are able to do this by altering the chemistry of the rock, allowing it to exchange chemicals and minerals with seawater.
This process influences global chemical reactions, such as the Carbon Cycle crucial to Earth's climate. Knowing this, some scientists think that most life on Earth, in terms of quantity, may be in the form of microbes in rock in the Earth's crust, and that early in Earth's history such microbes could have altered global conditions making the development of higher life forms possible.
(From BBC News Online, via Acres USA March '02)
A team of researchers at James Cook University, Townsville, have been studying the benefits of using Min-Plus, a local crushed basalt rock (blue metal). Most of the research was done in the highly weathered soils characterised by intense leaching of minerals, that are common in the humid tropics. Such soils are typically low in fertility, with high acidity (and they don't respond well to liming), plus low levels of nutrient cations and available nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and potassium - all growth limiting factors.
The Min-Plus rock dust, crushed to 0.25mm particle size or less, "provides abundant amounts of a number of macro and micro-nutrients essential for plant growth notably calcium, magnesium, sulphur; and trace elements iron, manganese, zinc and copper; but no nitrogen and relatively low amounts of phosphorus and potassium," reported the RIRDC-funded project.
The Min-Plus was found to "rejuvenate soils' minerals and chemical properties, improving the cation exchange capacity and enhancing retention of nutrient cations in the soil and their supply to plants. It can also reduce soil acidity through a mechanism similar to that of lime, but the effect is less impacted by leaching in high rainfall." In fact an enhanced cation exchange capacity was sustained in the soils studied, despite the leaching potential of a simulated wet season, and 94% of exchangeable magnesium and 53% of exchangeable potassium were found to be retained in the soils.
The substitution of basaltic rock dust for lime also has global benefits, in relation to the greenhouse effect. "Lime releases 400kg of carbon dioxide for every tonne applied to the soil, which, with some two million tonnes of agricultural lime used annually in Australia means liming has the potential to release up to 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year."
From Acres Australia, Aug/Sept 2002.
The author wrote this note with the article:
"This essay "Complex Systems Science in Food Production"
was included in the CSIRO Sustainability Network Update No.15.
Written in the Complex Systems Science context as that will be
a nationally nominated research priority across disciplines.
It is now available on Black Mountain Library's website
http://www.bml.csiro.au/NetwkL15.p
sandwiched nicely between good Healthy Country articles by Michael Krockenberger, Australian Conservation Foundation, "How many people doing what?" on p.6-10 and "Organics and mainstream agriculture - meeting in the middle at last" on p.14-15 by the editor Elizabeth Heij.
In the essay I don't go into details of special earth and cosmic energies and its detection with dowsing and radionics but I believe in their power. That power is expressed in the richness of the soil biota which capture that energy and multiply if not impeded by chemicals/fertilizers. Soil biota then feeds plants and keeps them healthy, improving health of grazing animals and humans eating healthy food."
The following essay on the future of agricultural research is provided by CSIRO's Dr Maarten Stapper. Maarten's training in Holland gave him an early understanding of the need for a more inclusive type of agricultural science to underpin food production a holistic science based on linking the physics, chemistry and biology of natural systems from the complex food web of the soil, through crops and livestock, to human and environmental health.
There are significant problems facing humankind
associated with the production, processing and consumption of
food. Traditionally, these activities have been conceptualised
as a linear production pathway, or value chain, in which the
steps can be individually optimised to optimise the chain as
a whole. Unfortunately, research based on this linear, reductionist
approach, which simplifies the complex interconnectedness of
the system, tends to
exacerbate rather than solve problems.
For example, the long recommended use of fertilisers,
pesticides and other chemicals to address production problems
is leading to poor soil health and resistance in insects,diseases
and weeds. The petrochemical solution is not working we
are on a treadmill, needing more and more chemicals and fertilizers
to keep yields up. This solution is not sustainable. The problems
arising from this approach were first exemplified in Rachel Carson's
'Silent
Spring' (1963), which exposed the effects of indiscriminate use
of pesticides, and eventually resulted in the banning of DDT.
Nevertheless, in spite of this warning, industrial manufacturing and widespread agricultural use of chemicals continue to affect our environment. Consumers, however, concerned about the effects of chemicals on food quality, will increasingly demand food free of chemical residues. A similar path is potentially being followed with the introduction of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). The promised vigour and robustness shown by genetically modified crops in limited experimental trials is not always realised under actual field conditions.
For example, Roundup Ready soybeans gave significantly lower yields than top conventional lines, used more herbicides (since Roundup doesn't kill all weeds), and decreased gross income in a study of 8,200 soybean trials in the USA.(3) GMO varieties of tomato, potato, corn and soybean have been taken off the market as a result of unforseen problems, and, in September 2000, a number of corn products were removed from sale in the USA when it was found that protein in the GMO variety StarLink is a potential human allergen. (4)
(3) Benbrook, 1999, Tech. Paper No.1, www.biotech-info.net
(4) www.epa.gov/scipoly/sap/
If agricultural research is to deliver anything approaching sustainability, we need to change the science paradigm. Traditionally, such research has been essentially "reductionist", that is, reducing and outlining systematically the area of interest and the disciplines to be studied.
Boundary conditions are set by the choice of one or a small number of factors that are varied deliberately while all other factors in the environment are "controlled" i.e., held constant. The chosen research boundary conditions limit the true quantification of that part of the system as setting different boundaries in place, time and scale influences the outcome. For example, the results of a crop trial with fertilizers or chemicals on one soil type, on one site, under climatic conditions of a few years apply, in reality, only to that particular set of boundary conditions.
While this approach has delivered a lot of knowledge about the workings of particular crops, pastures, livestock, insect pests, chemicals, etc, focussing down too intensely on closed systems with narrow boundaries on single, isolated components of the bigger "real-world" system means we are blind to the larger cycles and patterns within which the component parts exist.
Within this reductionist, closed-system approach,
new discoveries such as a new herbicide or fungicide chemical
are only evaluated for expected characteristics, and only
over short periods under a limited range of soil, weather and
management conditions. In the open systems of the real world,
however, it is the duration, local conditions, and intensity
of actual
use that slowly reveal problems at the whole-system level. For
example, unexpected synergies that alter toxicities may emerge
between chemicals applied for unrelated purposes; and management
systems for particular crops or varieties may change the spectrum
of beneficial soil organisms in unexpected ways thereby increasing
the risk of plant diseases.
When major problems do arise, a new technical "fix" is often the treatment of a symptom through the reductionist research approach, rather than being able to seek and discover the underlying systemic cause of the original problem. This in turn can create new problems, recursively driving the larger system away from ideal function. So long as studies apply only to isolated individual components, even the use of experimental designs that expand the range of conditions under which a particular factor is tested will still be insufficient for full understanding of a complex biological system with its many active and silent interactions. A systems approach is needed.
While we may have preferred for the sake of simplicity to imagine crop production as a linear process, biological systems are non-linear and massively interconnected. Plant biology alone cannot provide the answers as plants interact strongly with a complex soil biology (benevolent and predatory insects, fungi and bacteria, etc) as influenced by soil water and nutrients, climate, and paddock management (eg. tillage).
Modern farming has reduced the essential layer of humus in the topsoil. A thick layer of humus functions as a sponge for water retention, while the associated soil microorganisms power the recycling of nutrients acting together to prevent leaching and loss of resources for plant growth. In a balanced system, plant roots are colonized by benevolent soil microorganisms that feed on plant root exudates, and in return deliver soil nutrients in plant-available form.
Interactions between organisms are among the
most powerful evolutionary forces. For example, symbiosis
the balanced, mutual interdependence of different species
is a protective mechanism in nature, which develops in response
to compatible needs. Increased complexity and diversity of the
organisms, species and interactions within the soil food-web
allows the establishment of just such a balance, and results
in higher plant productivity.
Anderson, in his book 'Science in Agriculture' (ACRES USA, 2000),
has presented an integrated, systems approach based on linkage
of the sciences of chemistry, physics and biology. He describes
a sophisticated, professional farming system designed to enhance
biological activity in the soil, minimize weeds, provide energy
to the crop, and build internal resistance to pests and diseases,
thus resulting in lower use of chemicals and fertilizers.
Organic agriculture often is a proven good producer of food, with yields comparable to those of conventional agriculture in both poor (5) and rich (6) countries. "Biological" or "ecological" agriculture uses principles from both Organic and Biodynamic farming, but is more adaptive to different climates, soils, and local needs, as it is not bound by their stringent rules (originating from central Europe), thereby improving production reliability.
Biological agriculture promotes an active management system to identify and overcome factors limiting production by spraying liquid cultures extracted from compost (ie compost tea) on soil and plants. These cultures can be modified with fungi and bacteria to actual plant needs, and are a source of vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes, amino acids, carbohydrates and growth promoters. (7)
The aim is to provide a food source for the soil biota and, by increasing their activity, to improve calcium and phosphorus uptake by plants, soil nitrogen fixation, decomposition of crop residues, and the health of plants and grazing animals without reliance on chemicals or drugs. If chemicals are needed, only fertilizers and herbicides with the least impact on soil biota are used, in conjunction with added molasses and/or humic acid to boost surviving bacteria and fungi, respectively. The activity of live soil biota can be measured directly in soil samples without having to separate and culture the individual organisms, thus providing a much more accurate description of the total complement and function of the soil food web. (8)
The success of such approaches to working with and optimising a whole complex system without attempting to manipulate components individually, shows us that there is much to be gained by moving beyond the reductionist approach for agricultural research. The biological agriculture concept is successfully being developed world-wide on horticultural and broadacre farms (7), even though ecologists have often claimed that monocultures were the cause of problems in agriculture.
Complex Systems Science (CSS) is the new science
paradigm that seeks to work with the emergent properties of complex
systems the properties that are not tied to any single
component of the system but arise from the sum total of their
interactions. This is the type of science that is needed to identify
and solve problems in our food production systems. As momentum
builds in Complex Systems Science, agriculture is increasingly
able to access its
new tools and techniques for analysing a multitude of interactions
in space and time.
In our mission to restore and maintain healthy biological systems across Australian agro-ecological regions, it is such tools that will help to improve our knowledge of: (i) important factors influencing soil biota (e.g. chemicals, level and pattern of plant root exudates), (ii) the impact of crop and variety choice on expression of soil biological activity, (iii) animal husbandry in relation to soil biological activity, (iv) availability of critical soil minerals in relation to food production and quality, (v) the impact of adverse soil conditions on plant, animal, and human health, (vi) energy flow as a communication and linkage mechanism in nature, and (vii) selection of appropriate land uses (cropping, pasture, woodland) to achieve a sustainable agricultural system with a high biodiversity.
(5) "The Real Green Revolution, Organic
and Agroecological Farming in the South" by Parrott &
Marsden, 2002, Cardiff University, UK.
(6) "Soil Fertility and Biodiversity in Organic Farming"
- Mäder et al., Science May 2002
(7) See, for example, www.bioag.com.au
(8) Soil Foodweb Incorporated, Lismore, NSW. www.soilfoodweb.com/phpweb/topicindex.php?tid=58
While restoring the biological balance of soils is important, restoring a complete, balanced complement of minerals will also be necessary. Re-mineralising agricultural soils that have been depleted of many critical mineral nutrients will be vital, both to production levels and to food quality with its linkage to human health. In an extended view of complex agricultural science, therefore, it will be important to include food research to follow quality and nutrition from paddock to plate.
In moving beyond reductionist science to Complex Systems Science, agricultural research has, in effect, to go back to the principles outlined by those great minds active during the early part of the 20 th century in the transition phase from organic to petrochemical agriculture the biology/physics of Dr Steiner (9) , the soil chemistry of Dr Albrecht (10) , and the biology/chemistry/physics of Schauberger (11). Descriptions by these researchers of processes in terms of natural balance rather than linear causality were not well accepted by their peers (and are still essentially marginalised).
Their principles, however, were mostly derived from close observation of the prevailing village agriculture of the time, with its customs rooted in traditional knowledge of successful organic production systems. In quantum physics non-linearity is now well accepted; so surely it should not now be so hard to accept non-linearity in biological and natural systems.
World renowned quantum physicist, Dr John Hagelin, wrote in the USA Environmental Protection Agency StarLink report "It is astounding that so many biologists are attempting to impose a paradigm of precise, linear, billiard-ball predictability onto the behavior of DNA, when physics has long since dislodged such a paradigm from the microscopic realm and molecular biological research increasingly confirms its inapplicability to the dynamics of genomes."
Taking a linear, reductionist approach, we might well be able to produce tables of chemical and mineral content for food items or soil samples that could be used as evidence that there are no significant differences among, for example, organic, conventional, or GMO crops. However, this lack of compositional differences says nothing about potential differences in biological function and ultimate nutrient availability, which could be substantial. In a sense, we have not yet learned to measure ("sense") the important differences to which even the simplest component organisms in a complex system respond. Even our domestic cats and dogs know when to walk away from non-nutritious food without even tasting it.
If we have learned anything from the Green Revolution, it is that the next successful modernization in agriculture will be through eco-technology, where farming works with, not against, nature. Nature confronts us with complex systems, with intricate food webs, and with a myriad of dynamic visible and invisible interdependencies confirming the need for "can you hear the whispers in the shouting?" and "......do you want to hear them?"
(9) "Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture" by Rudolf Steiner, a course of lectures in 1924, transl. 1993, ed. Gardner, BDFGA, USA. 10 "The Albrecht Papers" Volumes I-IV, 1975, ed. Walters, ACRES, USA. 11 "Living Water, Viktor Schauberger and the Secrets of Natural Energy" by Alexandersson, 1976, Gateway books, UK.
If you would like to discuss material in this
essay with Maarten, you can contact him at
M.Stapper@csiro.au
From the Editor of The Sustainability Network:
Organics and mainstream agriculture meeting in the middle at last When I first read Maarten's essay, I found a "point of convergence" in his reference to a type of agriculture that borrows from organic farming. It brought back memories. In the mid 1990s, I floated the idea of a seminar on organic farming and permaculture in a mainstream agricultural research environment. My own experience of agricultural research suggested we had much to learn from these other areas. Sadly enough, at that time the idea "floated like a brick" both with mainstream agricultural scientists who viewed organic and permaculture farmers as the "lunatic fringe", and also with the organic and permaculture practicioners who viewed agricultural scientists as arrogant, ignorant of the real world, and unlikely to listen!
Perhaps, as in most things, the truth lay somewhere in the middle. Well, things are changing. Although both sides are still firing acrimonious shots at each other, rising consumer demand for organic foods has captured the attention of the establishment. Now we see mainstream agricultural producers not only "looking over the fence" at what their organic neighbours are doing, but quietly borrowing from them, in soil management and integrated pest management, for example. Researchers too are starting to find it more scientifically and politically acceptable to tackle complex production systems such as those of organic farming and permaculture. Even mainstream science journals are noticing the changing tone of the discussion and featuring the potential benefits of "meeting in the middle."
Take, for example, a recent feature in New Scientist (#2343, 18 May 2002, pp 32-47) entitled "Beyond Organics" with the by-line "Forget the battle now raging between organic and intensive farming. There is another way." The topic is introduced as follows: "Feeding everyone has never seemed so fraught with difficulty, especially as the world's population is set to increase to 9 billion by 2050. The big question is how to feed all these extra mouths without further destroying the environment.
Globalisation is a factor here, not least because of the huge environmental cost as rich countries import more fresh food rather than producing it locally. Even eating organic produce can make things worse if it is imported. Then there's technology transfer or the lack of it. Advocates of genetic engineering insist that its greatest benefit will be in helping to feed people in developing countries. Yet so far the technology has stayed mostly in the hands of a few wealthy governments and multinationals.
Basic approaches to feeding a larger world population tend to be polarised. On one side are the intensifiers who would pour more artificial fertilisers onto monoculture crops genetically modified to squeeze ever more from every hectare of land. On the other is the organic lobby, which want animals and crops to receive only natural inputs." However, there is "a middle way that takes the best from both sides and works towards the twin goals of growing more while preserving the quality of our soils and the wild environments around them."
The main article of the feature examines the problems inherent in both extremes intensive ''techno-production" and purist organic farming and concludes that the smartest systems will use organic principles to preserve soil and system health while using chemicals and advanced technologies strategically (cf., prophylactically) in ways that are precisely targeted to local needs and conditions right down to sub-paddock scales. Interventions will be "just in time" and "just enough" rather than" just in case."
A second brief article examines issues of
water availability and water use efficiency, a critical issue
for Australian agricultural systems that are essentially "farming
water". Other short articles in the feature deal with the
environmental benefits and costs of buying local grown rather
than imported foods, of feeding cattle on grass versus grain,
of farming native versus exotic animals, of urban farming, of
high-tech high-rise livestock farms, and of genetically modified
(GM) crops (so far no disasters but no big benefits either).
Check New Scientist 18 May 2002, #2343 pp 32-47 www.newscientist.com
Sustainable use of our soils is being held
back worldwide by the lack of a
simple test that can tell farmers, miners, foresters, park authorities
and
other managers whether the land in their care is improving or
getting worse.
A team of scientists from CSIRO believes they
have come up with an answer
which can improve landscape management across Australia and internationally
and can indicate how to unlock the biological potential of the
soil.
Further information is available from
Dr Steve Rogers, steve.rogers@csiro.au or (08) 8303 8407.
"The folk of Western Europe's "First
Nations" have
inherited some special cultural beliefs and practices that
are their exclusive intellectual property. This work is part
of that cultural tradition and is not to be considered as
"available for appropriation" by other ethnic groups
or any
organization."
At the "Giant's Dance", the National Temple of Britain (now called Stonehenge),
the Neolithic Druids maintained the
National First Standards of measure for that era. Here the
Druids passed on their knowledge of Astronomy, Medicine,
Engineering and the Arts as oral teachings. They used a set
of symbols to aid their memory, the Tarot.
The oldest known Tarot Cards were painted in the 14th
Century for the use of King Charles VI of France. Tarot
evolved in Neolithic Britain and spread to the Celtic and
Germanic homelands of Western Europe. Today tarot readers are
found be found throughout European culture
and it's
expatriate communities worldwide.
Tarot has a very specific structure; a total of 78 cards
divided into 22 trump cards and 56 pip cards. The pip cards
are divided into 4 equal suits; wands, swords, cups and
coins; or variants on this theme. Each suit consists of the
numbers ace or 1 through to 10 thence the royalty; Page,
Knight, Queen and King.
CELTIC CREATION
The Celtic Wellspring of Creation, the one omnipotent point,
is the source of all things. A detailed account of the Celtic
Wellspring is given in Branch VI of the "The High History
of
the Holy Grail"...
`And he goeth toward the land of King Gurgalain. And he entereth
into a noisome forest at the lower part and findeth at the right hour of
noon a fountain that was enclosed of marble, and it was overshadowed
of the forest like as it were with leaves down below, and it had rich pillars
of marble all round about with fillets of
gold and set with precious stones.
Against the master-pillar hung a vessel of gold by a
silver chain, and in the midst of the fountain was an image
so deftly wrought as if it had been alive. When Messire
appeared at the fountain, the image set itself in the water
and was hidden there with. Messire Gawain goeth down, and would
fain have
taken hold on the vessel of gold when a voice crieth out to him; "You are not the
Good Knight unto whom is served thereof and who thereby is made whole."
Messire Gawain drawth him back and seeth a clerk come to the fountain that was
young of age and clad in white garments, and he had a stole on his arm and held a
little square vessel of gold, and cometh to the little vessel that was hanging on the
marble pillar and looketh therein, and then rinseth out the other little golden vessel
that he held, and then setteth the one that he held in the place of the other.
Therewithal, behold, three damsels that come of right great beauty, and they had white
garments and their heads were covered with white cloths, and they carried, one,
bread in a little golden vessel, and the other wine in a little ivory vessel, and the third
flesh in one of silver. And they come to the vessel of gold that hung against the pillar
and set therein that which they have brought, and afterward they make the sign of the
cross over the pillar and come back again.
But on their going back, it seemed to Messire Gawain that only
one was there.
Messire Gawain much marvelled him of this miracle."
Light or elemental Fire is the DISTANCE between
2 points.
In Metrology this is the concept of Length, in Tarot this is
the Wand or standard of length. Fire is the faculty of
intuition, the moment of inspiration.
Light condenses to become Wind or elemental Air and covers
the SURFACE between 3 points. In Metrology it is the concept
of Area, in Tarot this is the Sword for the defence of
territory. Air is the faculty of thought and the design stage
of a project.
Wind congeals to become a River or elemental Water and is
the CAPACITY enclosed by 4 points. In Metrology this is the
concept of Volume, in Tarot this is the Cup or standard of
Volume. Water is the faculty of emotion, how you feel about a
project.
Water freezes to become crystals or Ice, elemental Earth
is the SUBSTANCE or Mass enclosed within a volume. This is
the concept of Weight, in Tarot this is the Coin or standard
of Weight.
Earth is the Physical manifestation, the construction phase of a project.
Earth melts to become Water which boils to become Air and incandesces
to become Fire or light. Nature nurtures balance between the elements.
NEOLITHIC METROLOGY
(A study of Weights and Measures in Neolithic Britain)
Neolithic Metrology was Geodetic, it is derived
from the
dimensions of the earth and the Geocentric cycles of the Sun,
Moon and Stars. Measures are like the strings of an musical
instrument, for a given tension the pitch of a string is
determined by its length.
A set of strings can be in harmony or discord. It was
important to Neolithic cultures to maintain the harmony of
Nature thus their Metrology was based upon the mathematical harmonics
of Geodetic measures.
When a reference point in time is identified, such as a
Lunar Eclipse, the angle between the Earth and the leading
edge of the Moon can be measured from a series of sites on
Earth a known distance apart and the circumference of the
Earth calculated. By dividing into equal parts a circle
described by the Stars and centered on the point of true
North projected into the Heavens, a measure of Longitude can
be given for any point on the round surface of the Earth.
For the last 6,000 Years a circle of Longitude has been
divided into 360 degrees of latitude, each degree containing
60 minutes or 3,600 seconds. One Second of longitude is one
Nautical Mile and today we use a mean Second because the Earth
bulges in the middle and flattens at the poles,
every
Second of Longitude is a different length. The first recognizable
structure rose at the Giant's Dance about 3,300BC, it is believed
to have been a Charnal House, a venue to wake the dead and c
ommune with Ancestors. At 3,200BC the "henge" was constructed
around the Charnal House, a ringditch 360
English feet in diameter.
The English foot represents one part in 360,000 of a
degree of equatorial longitude according to the ancient
reckoning of 365.25 degrees in the circle of the equator as
described by astronomer Theon of Smyrna, representing the
365.25 days in a year (John Michell, Ancient Metrology).
Flinders Petrie's survey of 1897 found the diameter of the
inner edge of ring ditch to be 360 English feet. This is a
1,000th part of the above degree of equatorial longitude.
The English foot survives in the United States Customary
Weights and Measures as the International Foot of 12 inches (in).
The inner diameter of the henge bank as given
in Petrie's
survey is 3,595 British Imperial (BI or English) inches (300
ft), the area enclosed by this embankment is within 12 squ.
yds. of the ancient Irish acre, most scholars believe that to
have been the intention of the Neolithic architect.
If the ancient Irish acre is drawn as a square then the
ancient Scottish acre can be drawn within it as a circle with
its sides as tangents and if the ancient Scottish acre is
drawn as a square then the English acre can be drawn within
as a circle with the sides as tangents. The English acre is
identical to the Geodetic acre defined as one-myriad-millionth
of the square on the radius of the spherical Earth (myriad = 10,000)
and the side of a square Geodetic acre is 2,506.373 BI inches whereas
the side of an English acre is 2,504.5 BI
inches, an accuracy of 1 part in
1200; (Berriman, Historical Metrology).
The squared circle geometry used to define the ratio of the ancient
Irish and English acres is defined by the mathematical formula "
(Pi/4) squared" (Berriman, Historical
Metrology). The neolithic Druids knew and used the constant
Pi 1600 years before the birth of Pythagoras. The English
acre survives as the US Acre of 43,560 square international
feet.
One English cubic foot contains 60 troy pints, 8 of which
make a wine gallon of 231 cubic inches which is measured
as a cylinder 7 in. in diameter and 6 in.
deep. This is the US
Gallon of 32 gills and the US apothecaries' gallon of 128
fluid ounces in use today!
One troy gallon contains 8 pounds (lb.) troy of wheat, this
is "Queen Anne's measure" and is still in use in the
USA
today (6 Anne, c.27{1706}), the US troy pound = 5760/7000 US
avoirdupois pound. US troy lb. weight of 240 pennyweights (as
in the suit of coins) is the same as the US apothecaries' lb.
weight of 96 drams.
THE CELTIC CALENDAR
Giant's Dance was the National First Standard
of Time for
the Celtic people throughout the Bronze Age. The sarsen ring
had 30 uprights originally with sarsen stone 11 thinner and
smaller than the other sarsens so as to imply a half day and
thus a day count of 29.5 which is very close to the actual
day count of a month.
In its simplest form the Celtic calendar had 29 and 30 day
months alternately with an intercalendary month of 30 days
added every 30 months. The calendar repeated a 5 year cycle
of 62 months.
A Romano-Celtic calendar has survived from the 1st Century
AD but in fragmentary form, the Coligny calendar, it was
found near the city of Lyons in France. There is some debate
as to the order of the months with one school of thought
associating the month of Samonios with the Gaelic festival of
Samhain and the other school with the Gaelic festival of
Beltain.
"Samh" is the old Irish word for Summer and "Samhain"
is
the Irish equivalent of Summer's end. Surely it's irrational
to give the first month of Winter a name whose root is their
own word for Summer! Yes, I am of the later school of
thought.
COLIGNY CALENDAR
Month Year................1 2 3 4 5
Quimonios 30 days.... Intercalendary month S
Samonios 30 30 30 30 30 fixed month U
Dumannios 29 29 29 29 29 fixed month M
Rioros 30 30 30 30 30 fixed month M
Anagantios 29 29 29 29 29 fixed month E
Ogronnios 30 30 30 30 30 fixed month R
Qutios 30 30 30 30 30 fixed month .....
Rantaranos.................................. 30 days Intercal
month W
Giamonios 29 29 29 29 29 fixed month I
Simivisonns 30 30 30 30 30 fixed month N
Equos 30 28 30 29 30 variable month T
Elembivios 29 29 29 29 29 fixed month E
Aedrinios 30 30 30 30 30 fixed month R
Cantlos 29 29 29 29 29 fixed month
The Celtic calendar had to drop an intercalendary
month
every 28 years to maintain the synchronous between Solar and
Lunar time. Also the dropping of two intercalendary months
every 56 years leaves the calendar in excess by 7 days, this
period is being tallied annually by the month Equos . All
operations needed to maintain the Celtic calendar can be
carried out using the orrery at the Giant's dance or that of
the Tarot, (see Geomantica 14, "the Giant's Dance".)
It has been claimed by experts that `Stonehenge' was
abandoned long before the Druids arrived in Britain. If that
were true then who kept the above standards of weight and
measure in use for over 5,000 years? A real feat of civil
authority given Britain's history!
It is the Troys system of weights and measures that originates
from the Giant's Dance, that of the metalsmiths
and the apothecaries. Is "Troy" a corruption of "Droi",
a
term used by Caesar when referring to the Druids?
Now might be the time for those few surviving Druidic
traditions to acquire appropriate sets of certified US
customary weights and measures, by donation, for reference
in the coming centuries.
The following paragraph is intended to replace the claim of cultural intellectual property rights made in The Giant's Dance Pt 1 published in Geomantica 14. - The Giant's Dance series is not public domain but providing that no fee is charged it can be supplied as resource material for any course of study for which a fee is charged.
ENERGY DOWSING - Muddling with the Meta-Pattern
(previously published in Geomantica no. 9 i.e. pre-website)
On a visit to Britain in late 1990, I was
asked by Paul Devereux, editor of the respected 'earth-mysteries'
research magazine 'The Ley Hunter', to provide a critique of
a number of problems related to dowsing in general, and 'energy-dowsing'
in particular, that he had seen developing in the research field.
This was the result.
Energy dowsing, as far as the Earth Mysteries scene is concerned, is a mess. I'll have to admit that some of this is my fault: I may have been one of the first to publish detailed descriptions, well over a decade ago now, but I failed to include enough warnings about mistakes that can so easily be made. So the main aim of this article is to point out some common misconceptions, in the hope that we can recover something useful from the shambles that's masquerading as energy dowsing now.
I have no doubt at all that most people who say they're dowsing for energies are indeed doing just that: dowsing for energies, and seeing patterns in the results. The key question is a very simple one: 'which energies? There are many, many different energies that we can perceive in dowsing - physical and not-so-physical. Yet it's a question which far too many people sidestep with glib answers, or avoid entirely. We cannot hide in a metaphysical mist of unaccountability: if we make claims, they must be on far more solid grounds than we see now. Simply saying "It's so because I and my friends say it's so" is not enough.
The question of 'which energy?' is important, because we are seeing a rapid proliferation of patterns that dowsers claim to perceive, many of which are mutually incompatible but all of which are claimed to be true, always in an absolute sense. The resultant chaos is bringing not just dowsing but the entire field of Earth Mysteries research into ridicule and disrepute. So we need urgently to review not just what we seem to perceive in dowsing, but the process by which we interpret what we perceive.
At the first level, I have to wonder whether many of the dowsers I've seen in action have anything like enough of the experience needed to distinguish with any real degree of accuracy what energies they perceive. Dowsing is a real skill, with all that implies: its not some thing that can be picked up over a weekend workshop or two, or a mystical gift granted by some self-appointed 'New Age master'. It takes a long time, and a great deal of experience, to become a competent dowser - I've been studying the field for almost twenty years, but even so I would in no way consider myself an expert. And I'm convinced that without a great deal of practice on concrete, tangible targets like water or piping or cables, it is very easy to let our dowsing become quite literally 'ungrounded'. Without the feedback from work on tangible targets - a stage missed out in almost all 'energy dowsing training' by organised groups - it is simply not possible to develop reliable skill that relates in any way to the tangible world. The tendency instead is to drift off into an imaginary space - it remains equally 'real', but only in an imaginary ('image-inary') sense.
Most of the energies we deal with in dowsing are perfectly ordinary, routine, day-to-day physical energies: magnetic variations, electrostatic fields, scents and many others. But many people seem to have an obsessional need to make things more unusual than they are. I've seen people get very excited about dowsing patterns related to crop-circles, for example: but if some of the more mundane physical theories (such as Meaden's) are even partially correct, we'd expect to see magnetic and other physical anomalies there, for purely physical reasons. And since those anomalies may be persistent, they may well be dowsable - again, for purely physical (or physiological) reasons - long after the circle itself has gone.
The same is equally true of some dowsing patterns at archaeological sites: they're exactly the kind of anomalies we'd expect as a physical analogy of the landscape-use pattern. Far too often, an old, old acronym from the film industry applies: 'KISS' - Keep It Simple, Stupid!
To me one of the key problems is the ubiquity of a very poor grasp of the complex nature of reality, with its tortuous paradoxes and layer within layer of meta-levels. To be fair, this poor understanding is hardly a surprise, since our culture and almost our entire education is based on a single very crude model of reality whose primary concept is a linear one of cause and effect. On this model, everything within reality is assumed to follow strict, simple, consistent and linear 'laws' of cause and effect. This makes things very simple: but it happens to be wrong. Reality just is not that simple.
The tendency amongst energy dowsers, for example, is to say that the patterns they perceive in the landscape are real, and thus the cause of the patterns they perceive - a reprise of Underwood's argument in "Pattern of the Past"The patterns are indeed real, but only in a very specific sense, as perceived information: any other interpretation we derive from them, especially of cause and effect, is an assumption and not a fact. The apparent 'universality' of Hartmann grids, Curry grids, caduceus symbols and the rest in fact stems as much from an assumption of the reality of their existence as anything else. German dowsers find grids, wherever they go; but 'Fountain Groupies' find Maltese crosses, whilst members of the ASD (American Society of Dowsers) find 'energy leys'.
But these are all, bluntly, assumptions: ones that make it very difficult for any dowser to perceive energies that really are there to be seen. It's only once we accept that these are indeed assumptions, and not the absolute realities claimed by their proponents, that we can begin to work our way out of the mess that energy dowsing is now in.
To do this, we need to recognise the differences between what the linear causal model says happens in perception, and what actually happens in all forms of perception, dowsing included. We can understand this best by a computing analogy. In the linear model, only a single mechanism or sensor is involved: this gives us the familiar 'this, therefore that', or 'IF...THEN', of conventional computing. Perceptual systems in the brain, however, do not work this way at all: instead, each synapse produces a 'weighted sum' of its inputs, leading to an immensely (possibly infinitely) complex 'cascading' in which the overall results from many different sensors end up pointing to a single end-result.
Neither the pathway nor the end-result can be predicted in its entirety; and massive 'multiple redundancy' in the brain - duplication on a grand scale - allows for an almost infinite number of pathways and mechanisms by which a given end-result can be achieved. This type of information processing can be emulated by computer, but it's right at the limits of present-day computing research: the new neural-network systems are the nearest to true self-teaching 'artificial intelligence' devices that have yet been constructed - though so far they barely match the intelligence level of the simplest slug!
The key point here is that no single mechanism or sensor can ever be said, with any true degree of certainty, to be the 'cause' of a perceptual response: the response is, in effect, an intuitive (as opposed to analytic) result of all of them. All scientific studies of dowsing that I know (Eeman, Tromp, Maby and Franklin, Taylor and others) show either explicitly or implicitly that dowsing works this way - no single mechanism is involved. There can be little doubt that dowsing, like all other forms of perception, works in this 'multiple-redundant' manner: a good dowser is bringing the combination of many different 'energies' - physical and, probably, otherwise - to a single response.
The result can be biased, though, by a process of 'weighting', in which specific mechanisms or sources of information are considered more significant than others. The result is that a 'preferred pathway' for processing information develops - analogous to Sheldrake's 'morphic resonance' - which, if extended far enough, gives rise to the apparent, though erroneous, concept of cause and effect.
Ultimately, there is no cause and effect: all we have isinformation - literally, 'coincidences' - and its interpretation. Any concept of 'cause' is solely an interpretation of a more or less common pattern of events, with improbabilities and uncertainties occurring everywhere: the only 'law' turns out to be that there are no laws...
To understand the problem we have with energy dowsing, consider the fact that, within the neural-network of the brain, there is only information: input and output. At this level we have almost no way of linking information with the original source of that information. Ideas and images and metaphors -metalevels of information - are, at this level, indistinguishable from sensory information: they are all equally 'real'.
The only way to distinguish between them is to have sufficient self-knowledge to identify them before they enter the net: otherwise a symbol, an image, a metaphor - any kind of pattern- can easily become a 'preferred pathway', a pseudo-cause of the dowsing effect. (I suspect, very strongly, that this is usually. rather than occasionally, the case with most so-called 'energy dowsing' that happens today.)
Now add in the known situation that 'thought-forms' can not only be dowsed (the Dragon Project crew did an experiment on this at Rollright) but are all but indistinguishable from more tangible energy patterns; add in the knowledge that (in a manner again like Sheldrake's morphic resonance) the expectation of a pattern - even someone else's expectation - can become a 'preferred pathway' for a dowsing response; and we have the perfect recipe for an absolute babel.
It would be farcical if it wasn't for the
fact that real research gets drowned out in the cacophony. At
times it seems that every dowser is screaming at the top of their
voice the Bellman's supreme expression of wishful thinking (from
Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark): "What I tell
you three times is true". Saying "it is so" does
not make it so - except, it seems, in dowsing. But oh, how many
dowsers have I heard say
"No, no, you have to do it this way!"...
The sad thing is that most often these arguments
about 'dowsable patterns' break down, under the slightest real
scrutiny, to nothing more than a circular 'proof': "the
pattern is real, and causes what I perceive; what I perceive
is the effect of the pattern, therefore the pattern is real".
This is ridiculous! But there are plenty of otherwise skilled
dowsers - including some well-known names - who promote rubbish
of this sort, even though
they damn' well ought to know better.
As always, in this intellectually dishonest
New Age, the ease with which a pattern or two can expand an already
over-inflated ego perhaps plays a significant part... you never
know, you might make yourself out to be the Leader of the New
World Order...
And far too many of the dowsers I've dealt with don't have a clue what energies they're looking for: and energy dowsing is probably the most difficult of all forms of dowsing we know. Everyone wants to leap in at the deep end, however: the Cornish water dowser Donovan Wilkins has commented to Paul Devereux, for example, that he suspects at least some would-be energy dowsers claim to find 'energy patterns' that are probably related to underground water - but because they are not expert at water dowsing (instead dowsing only for undefined 'energies'), they don't know the difference!
They don't know the difference: they couldn't know the difference, in fact don't want to know the difference, because as New Age 'healers of the planet' they weren't going to dirty their lilywhite hands on anything as mundane as water! This isn't Earth Mysteries research: it's 'newage' (it rhymes with 'sewage'), in a pure, undiluted form. Can we cut out this crap, once and for all?
Again, many dilettante dowsers have no idea of the need for precision or sheer hard work. (One of the advantages of a pre-packaged pattern like Hartmann grids or the Fountain symbols is that it's supposed to be already there for you to find 'Look, Ma, no work!') I'll admit that I too have been guilty of jumping to conclusions too early in my time. After a two-week-long study at Rollright, for example, I thought I'd identified a pattern of seven concentric rings within the circle.
But even in my two weeks I had not covered the ground in enough detail to extrapolate from my data correctly: according to the physical-energy surveys done by Charles Brooker (New Scientist, January 13th, 1983), it seems that the actual pattern is more likely to be a seven-fold spiral. Real research is not easy, is not trivial.
There is always more detail to be found, always more work to be done. Research is not 'real' or significant until it's done properly. So I simply do not believe the claims that Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst, to (unfairly) select one example, make in "The Sun and the Serpent". In my view, they've published their findings far too early, long before they have done anything resembling real work: and the fact that their work is published will cause us problems for years, if not decades, to come - long after they themselves may have disowned them, as most researchers eventually do.
Hamish is unquestionably a good dowser: but the work in this book is not science; in fact it cannot truly be called real dowsing. Their route was pre-selected (the claimed 'St Michael line'); they have not checked elsewhere for alternate patterns that might cross or counter the ones they show; they have not covered a single site in real detail - they physically cannot have covered the ground of the entire two 400-mile 'Mary current' and 'Michael current' patterns they claim in the book in the time they took to research it; and so on, and so on. Their diagram of the Avebury district implies many weeks of work, but the book makes it clear that it was all done in a day. And alltoo obviously, much of what they see is what they expected to see.
It adds up at best to a small but interesting collection of data, an awful lot of conjecture and assumption, strung together in a pleasant little tale of country hostelries, and all rather reminiscent of the happily amateur days of the Old Straight Track Club. But bluntly, it's 'an empty thunder, signifying nothing': it may be an interesting form of landscape art, but in no way is it 'scientific truth' - which is what is claimed for it.
Yet "The Sun and the Serpent"is merely the least bad of the new genre of so-called 'energy dowsing research'. Some of the new stuff I've seen, particularly in the States, is unbelievably bad: garbage about 'Dodmasters' and 'crystal energy nodes' and the rest, with the worst excesses of the New Age - its mindlessness, its elitism, its intellectual (and other!) laziness, its crass 'instant enlightenment' - displayed for all to see.
And yet this rubbish is in print, and will stay in print for years to come, to be misquoted again and again as 'fact', like the fallacious fable of Alfred Watkins 'Bredwardine vision'. [A poetic invention which claimed Watkins had his ley revelation in the form of a vision of a web of lines in the landscape, spread out below him as he sat on horseback on the Bredwardine Hills. This invented story is wrong in virtually every particular. Paul Deveraux.] Is this really what we want from this field?
And think of poor Glastonbury, and so many other sites, still reeling years later from the effects of the Harmonic Invasion...er, Convergence. Crystals everywhere, put down by arrogant if well-meaning 'earth healers' - I even saw some on Wearyall Hill, glued onto the Holy Thorn with epoxy resin. It will take years to get them all out... Glastonbury is enough of a mess already without that to add to the confusion.
There are a few dowsers around who understand the practical complexities of manipulating earth energies by dowsing and such-like means (and no, I don't include myself among them!). But they're terrifyingly rare: most of the self-styled 'earth healers' - including, or perhaps especially, their teachers - have not a clue what they are doing. Usually, it seems to be nothing more than an exercise in overblown egotism, though it often has highly disturbing side-effects: the 'cure', so called, is often far worse than the 'problem'!
For example, I heard recently one horror story of a very smug couple visiting (with a tour) a beautiful Russian monastery, who proudly proclaimed that they'd placed a pair of crystals under the main crucifix "to cure the place of atheistic Communist influence" - and were quite incapable of sensing the appalling effect on the 'feel' of the place, 'that sound which is no-sound, of which everyone else present was acutely aware... Or again, the man who accosted me at an ASD conference in Vermont, saying: "You know those neat things we can do with little tiddy crystals to the energies at sacred sites? Well, what d'ya think we can do with this great sucker!?" - holding up a ten-pound blob of quartz...
If the energies weren't real, it perhaps wouldn't matter - itwould all be no more than a childish game. But these energies are real, including those at an emotional or imaginary level - though their reality is quite different, and far more paradoxical, than is indicated in the rose-tinted nonsense put around by some groups. (Imaginary energies are not all 'sweetness and light': "Do what you will - but be very sure that you will it!") Other than the strictly physical energies - such as magnetism and natural radiation - to which dowsers do demonstrably respond, we don't know what most of these energies are, and we probably never will.
Everything is energy: so what are energy dowsers picking up? The answer is simple: Perceived patterns of perceived energy - interpretations of what we perceive and identify as coincidences in a network of energies, none of which are truly understood. And that is all. Anything else is a fiction of fools: another entry in the muddled mystical menagerie of the meta-levels...
So a pattern is not 'true': it simply is. It's our creation: it is what we make it (or, if we're lazy, what we've let other people make it, for us to accept unthinkingly). A pattern is not a thing, but a tool, a construct at the meta-level of reality. More specifically, it's a conceptual tool: and the whole point of tools is to put them to use. Arguing about whether one pattern or another is 'true', is 'really there', is exactly as stupid as arguing whether a drill or a screwdriver is 'true'.
It's in fact exactly the same as the argument as to whether light is waves or particles. The strict answer is 'apparently both - therefore neither'. But both models are useful: we can usefully understand - and make work phenomena such as refraction with one, and photo-electricity with the other. We choose the model according to what we want to do; for the purposes of the work we believe that the model is true, but we do not forget that it is a choice of belief, and not an absolute 'fact'.
Patterns found by dowsing can be useful: we can use them, when - and only when - we know what we're doing, to heal both our understanding and our relationship with the land. But it is not simple, and it is not something to play with. For those interested, try reading 'Dowsing for Health' by Arthur Bailey (former president of the British Society of Dowsers), especially his chapter on "Ley Lines, Black Streams and Geopathic Stress" - it's a breath of fresh air in this much-fouled field. Hartmann grids, Curry nets, energy leys, caducei, Underwood's aquastats and track lines, my own work on 'overgrounds' - there's an infinity of patterns to be found, and all and none of them are true.
What they mean is simply what we make them mean. For each of us, 'it's my own invention' a way of making sense of what we see. As dowsers we need to understand that now, before we make this world of ours into an even worse mess than it is already.
Postscript - September 2000
This article drew an unusual amount of correspondence in the magazine. The first clutch of letters, in TLH 114 (early 1991), were definitely in favour. The generally positive comments continued in the next issue, TLH115 (late 1991); and at the request of Paul Devereux I sent in another letter of my own, in response to a valid challenge in a column by Nigel Pennick in the same TLH113 issue.
However, Sig Lonegren, author of "The Pendulum Kit" and "Spiritual Dowsing", was far from happy. He was, and still is, one of the main proponents of exactly those kinds of energy-dowsing and supposed 'spiritual dowsing' which I had criticised in the article, and he put in a strong if perhaps all-too-predictable complaint.
When asked to be more accountable about his "six-to-eight-foot wide bands of yang energy" and other dowsed patterns, Sig counters by asking that we apply the canons of art or religion to them.
Sadly, The Ley Hunter is no more: the person who took over from Paul Devereux as Editor killed off the magazine without warning a few months later. And although Sig Lonegren may have moved on his many followers still refuse to face any of the serious issues that Paul and I had identified in the article: so 'energy dowsing' is for the most part still a dangerous mess.
A small amount of real and genuine work is being done in the field - particularly by the successors to the 'Dragon Project' research-effort at Rollright and elsewhere. But its credibility continues to be eroded by the grandiose claims and self-aggrandising fantasies of inexperienced, ill-disciplined self-styled 'experts' - "a triumph of marketing over technical expertise", as in so many other fields.
Tom Graves.
© Anthony Riddell, Melbourne
Water is a necessary component of life on earth (if not beyond). It is much more than the formula H2O. It is properly seen as the blood of that venerable organism that we live on. And how do we treat it? We force it into unnatural positions. We poison it in the name of hygiene, we squander it. We certainly do not treat it with the sanctity that it deserves.
Victor Schauberger (1885-1958) was a forest warden in Austria when Austria actually had forests. By observation he came to the above conclusions. A story told about him is that once he came across a stream with a little structure of rocks over its mouth. On enquiring why, he was told that without its shade the flow would stop. This proved to be the case (the flow recommenced when the structure was replaced). This story is to illustrate the possible consequence of massive loss of shade (ie deforestation).
In South Australia (the driest state in the driest continent), the major cities obtain their water from the River Murray via pipelines. The water is legendarily horrible and prone to artificial problems like blue-green algae. In 1980-81 a boy leapt into a backyard swimming pool in Port Pirie. He contracted a fatal case of amoebic meningitis, which prompted the media campaign 'don't get water up your nose'.
In 1996 I was first exposed to the idea of living water through hearing about V. Schauberger. In early 1997 I tasted truly LIVING water. It was from a creek at Goolengook (eastern Victoria). A few months later I sampled some water that had been processed through a unit utilising the principles of another Austrian, Johann Grander. Grander and Schauberger both found that harmful additives leave a subtle vibratory signature in the water. No amount of filtration can eradicate this. Not until this is successfully treated can the water be regarded as healthy (homoeopathy utilises this principle). I must advise readers against the Penergiser it could be a case of the Emperor's new clothes.
Of course one must not forget flow forms sculptures similar to figures of eight lying lengthwise on a slope. These oxygenate all water that flows through them. They require electrical pumping, but a solar or wind powered flow form would be something.
Resources:
Olaf Anderson, Living water, gateway Books, UK 1994.
Callum Coates, Living Energies, Gateway Books, UK, 1996.
Borderlands magazine, 4th quarter, 1996.
Literature from Inner Glow Health Services, Tewantin, Qld.
Australian Fluoridation News, Melbourne, Vic.
© Alanna Moore June 2002
Deregulation of the dairy industry in the state of Queensland spelt the deathnell for many in the business who were unable to maintain a competitive edge. But for others, like the Watson family in the far north Atherton Tablelands, it was a boon. Before deregulation there was no special market for their biodynamic milk as it was having to be pooled together with milk from conventional farms.
Now, since 1999, they have been going from strength to strength, creating a niche marketing enterprise with their wholesome farmhouse produce from north Queenslands only biodynamic dairy farm. Tropical biodynamics has brought quite a challenge and local practitioners have had to adapt and evolve the methods originating from Rudolph Steiner in Austria.
I visited Mungallli Creek farm soon after the opening of the new teahouse. Here people can come for refreshments and free tastings of a fabulous range of cheese, yoghurts and dips, many having fascinating tropical flavours.
With views to Mt Bartle Frere, the states highest mountain, the hilltop teahouse provides an idyllic point for visitors to savour the fruits of the enterprise. The rainforest cloaked mountain is obviously a magnet for rainclouds, as it is said to be the wettest place in the whole of Australia. They get a lot of 'mizzle' mist and drizzle combined. 3 or 4m of rain annually is normal up here and in 2000 they had a whopping 7m! Even the 4WD bike can get bogged and concrete paths are essential, linking the paddocks with the dairy.
A vast belt of tropical rainforest some 30km wide separates the Watsons farm from the chemical ridden sugar cane fields below on the coastal belt south of Cairns. It is spectacular country, much of it classified as of World Heritage status. With an elevation of some 700m above sea level summers are less hot and humid than the coast, and winters can sometimes turn frosty.
Reinventing the family farm
Pat and Bert Watson had been dairying
conventionally since 1964 on the 250ha holding, which currently
runs 180 milking cows (giving about 2000lt daily) on about 100ha
of improved pasture. Son Robert took over the family farm in
1987 and soon convinced his wife Sally and brother Danny to convert
to a pioneering organic farming system. Several BD dairy farms
in Victoria were checked out, but applying the principles to
a tropical system proved pretty challenging.
Chemical use ceased and a grass-legume system was successfully established. Supplementary feeding was done with grain grown biodynamically on the Darling Downs, far to the south. The farm has since been certified biodynamic by national organisation BDRI and sports the internationally recognised Demeter label. The Watsons are also members of a local organisation for other tropical BD exponents the Tablelands Biodynamic Farmers and Gardeners Association.
Reading Acres USA gave them much useful information at the beginning of their learning curve. Checking out the farm soil they found the inevitable leached out status of the ex-rainforest basalt soil country. A SWEP laboratory analysis (using the Albrecht method) found the soil needed lime / dolomite and a few minor elements. Five tonnes of dolomite lime per hectare was spread over paddocks over a five year period. Although they started out with high manganese, iron and aluminium levels those too have now come down into a better balance, and the other soil requirements have became available automatically.
It's now 5 or 6 years since lime or dolomite was spread on pastures. A recent SWEP test showed a good balance in the soil, so nothing much will be added unless problems start to occur.
The application of biodynamic sprays has greatly improved pastures at Mungalli. The '501' spray, useful for bringing the forces of light and silica to the damp paddocks, has been beneficial to counteract the wet. Biodynamic guru Alex Podolinsky supplies the Watsons with their main fertiliser '500', to which has been added a range of compost preparations. So it's effect is like fostering in-situ composting. After more than a decade of using '500' they have achieved 12% organic matter. Soil colour has changed too, from red orange to purple brown in the best paddocks.
The effects of the biodynamic sprays wasn't as good as Robert had hoped for originally. The leached red soils had been overdosed on urea previously and were slow to respond to the new regime. Fish emulsion was used as an extra booster initially.
Having learned the Asian art of Reiki energy transference through the hands, Robert decided to have a go at charging the 500 up with his focussed intentions the Reiki way. The pastures have really taken off since then.
As subtle energy exponents know intention is everything! Robert reminisced how once a conventional vet asked him "Do you love your cows?" and told him that this is very important for maximising milk production.
Problem solving biodynamically
Mungalli has a stocking rate about
the same as conventional farms, with milk production a bit above
the district average. This is achieved without the expense of
fertilisers. Some baled silage is being produced to boost the
annual drop in production during the winter months, between June
and August.
Milk quality is an important focus. They are always aiming for high levels of milk solids. A few Jerseys are kept to top up the butterfat levels. The smaller Jersey bull is put over the heifers for their first calf.
The preferred legume in Mungalli pastures is Pintos peanut, a lush tropical species that's highly palatable and can withstand a reasonable level of grazing pressure. The Watsons pioneered its use when it was first introduced some 12 years ago, and it took about 3 or 4 years to get established. Now much more milk is produced than when it was previously just grass. One problem with Pintos is that rats love the large seeds and discing the paddocks is often needed to reduce the rat population. The other main legume grown at Mungalli is the highly resilient Shaws creeping vigna.
"Since going down the BD track our Holstein Freisian cows produce the same amount of milk, but they are noticeably much quieter to handle." Robert told me. "There are also less likely to have calving problems. Occasionally if a caesarian is called for they have to use antibiotics and the milk cannot be used for 6 months afterwards. That's okay because it is then fed to the calves."
But usually it's natural therapies only at Mungalli Creek. Once when a cow, stuck out on a far ridge, would not get up after calving a vet acupuncturist had to be called in. The vet gave the needles with electrical stimulation and the cow was up on its feet within half an hour.
Deadly paralysis ticks can be a real problem for livestock owners in these parts and many poisons are used in the region. The Watsons use a homoeopathic remedy made out of the ticks themselves, called Ixodes (the ticks genus name) as a preventative measure or to treat cows already suffering from tick bite. Ixodes has brought many stock and pets back from certain death, in my own experience as well.
Mouth watering produce
Yoghurt with mango, marinated fetta,
kaffir lime and pepper quark The list of produce available from
the Watsons dairys factory is quite mouth watering. With a lot
of research hard work and expense behind them, plus some funding
from the Federal Governments Dairy Regional Assistance programme
- Mungalli is north Queenslands only boutique farmhouse cheesery
and tea house.
The processing factory has a work area with a cold room, maturing room, storage room and laboratory where Robert does his required daily testing of produce. Milk is pasteurised in 1000lt batches. What with the commercial kitchen, it was a costly enterprise to set up, with stringent health regulations to follow, lots of stainless steel required, foot baths etc.
The project was begun, without any financial backing from the banks, on a shoestring budget. The Watsons sought out second hand equipment to keep costs down. The factory keeps the family very busy and sometimes the farm has to come off second best to it.
Robert was a laboratory technician with the local Malanda Milk company in the past and applies his skills to the cheese making side of the business, producing skimmed milk Ricotta, Blue Vein, Fetta, quark (a German cheese) and Harvati (Danish style) cheeses. The family also produce butter, cream, yoghurt, and dips, as well as low fat and full cream pasteurised, non-homogenised milks. All the cheese are made with non-animal, microbial rennet. One cheese verges on the super decadent a dessert cheese with fruit marinaded in Grand Marnier plus chocolate chips and the lot rolled in chocolate.
Danny is the yoghurt maker of the family. Much of the yoghurt is set naturally in situ in high shouldered glass jars (glass being preferred by eco-friendly customers) and there's plenty of eye appeal. With the flavoured yoghurts the fruit is placed in the bottom of the jar and the liquid yoghurt poured over it. The cream rises to the top and, while this is obviously visually appealing it also means that fat conscious people can simply remove the cream before eating. Flavourings have a tropical or local bush tucker plant flavour theme.
Initially the Watsons took their produce to sell at local town markets each weekend, but marketing has greatly expanded since then. Produce is now sold in supermarkets, on tourist resort islands, at the Hilton Hotel, and as far south as Byron Bay.
Future planning
Now they are gearing up for increased
tourism with the coming launch of a local government regional
economic development initiative. Mungalli is to be featured in
a Tablelands Food Trail promotion which will generate publicity
and provide maps for people to find farms where they can taste-test
produce. They expect the tea house to ideally cater for mini
bus loads of visitors - being close to the tourist capitol of
Cairns is a great asset.
Other future dreams for Robert Watson include getting into keeping some water buffalo and using the milk to make classic Mozzarella cheese. So I'm sure that many more culinary delights will be in store before long.
You can find out more about Mungalli Creek Dairy, (at Brooks Rd Millaa Millaa, Atherton Tablelands) by visiting their website at www.mungallicreekfarmhouse.com.au
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