August 2007
the free web magazine of dowsing & geomancy,
in Australasia and beyond. Edited by Alanna Moore.
Welcome to the August edition of Geomantica,
packed with cutting-edge geomantic research and interesting news items...
It's coming out early because I'll soon be away for 10 weeks, until early October. But you can always email me and send me letters-to-the-editor and articles etc (best to send later rather than sooner).
These are bad times if you are an Indigenous Australian. Prime Minister Howard seems intent on wrecking everything he can before being booted out of office, hopefully in November. Aboriginal civil rights and communal land tenure is being eroded. We should be listening to Aboriginal people, not telling them what to do.
The rights that Aboriginal people gained 40 years ago this year were a double-edged sword. The Federal Government gained the power to legislate on behalf of all Aboriginal people, when before it was different rules in different states. But this racist provision was never specified as being necessarily used for the good of the people. Hence it was invoked to allow sacred site desecration for the building of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge and it now allows for the bulldozing of Aboriginal rights across the Northern Territory, allowing land (some close to Alice Springs) to potentially be used for nuclear waste dumps, for example.
Under the guise of concern about violence on Aboriginal communites Howard is making a big land grab. Sending in the army, without prior consultation, seems to be just another genocidal action. It's over the top. Howard wants to open up communal, ancestral land to developers, to uranium miners, to whoever has the big bucks. The community violence is fuelled by alcohol abuse. Take away the alcohol and people, black and white, don't maim and kill each other so much.
Several Top End NT communites banned alcohol, but realised that people still wanted to have recreational drugs and that a black market could fill the gap. So community leaders got pro-active and went on a fact finding mission to the Pacific Islands. Here they saw cultures that involved rites where kava was ingested and the people were happy and not dysfunctional. So they introduced kava back home on their communites and created a liscencing system, whereby a certain amount could be purchased weekly. It was a great success. Kava makes people mellow and relaxed. Too much and the chores wouldn't get done, but rationing ensured that people didn't have too much. Much of the community's infrastructure has been funded by sales of the kava, just as state governments elsewhere in Australia reap vast amounts of tax money from the sale of tobacco and alcohol plus gambling. Now our Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has decided to use his power to ban kava, again, without consultation, and opening the way for black market drug and alcohol runners to fill the slack (-they sell kava for 10 times the legal price). So it's just another case of paternalism, an intervention where the community was not even dysfunctional, quite the opposite in fact.
On another note, the scenario of climate change seems to have become a new religion which Howard as well as the opposition Labor Party now subscribe to. They can thus now promote nuclear power as clean and green, merely because it doesn't produce greenhouse gases. Australia has a heap of uranium and Howard can't wait to sell it all to the world. (I think that tackling the problem of pollution generally - including chemical contamination of soil, air, water, food etc - is more important than narrowly targetting greenhouse gas emissions.)
In my new book The Wisdom of Water you can find out why we don't really need nuclear power, nor de-salination plants to resolve the 'water crisis'. We could be leading the world in small-scale, low-tech, eco-friendly power generation and water harvesting. We have sun, we have waves, geothermal resources... No need to follow the path of destruction.
Sorry to be dwelling on gloom, but there are aspects of reality we need to challenge. In many ways it's a mean, ugly, scary world out there. But we can all do our bit to enhance the harmony of our communites. Peace begins at home, in our backyards, in all our relationships... We need to keep informed, but not sucked in by prospects of doom. That can lead to apathy, to psychic numbing, to the high levels of suicide amongst our youth and farmers...
We must never forget that the power of people being positive is awesome and can move mountains! Even just one positive person on their own can make a huge difference.
Until next quarter,
Alanna Moore
Re: Conceptual Geomancy
Hi Alanna
I read your article on Conceptual Geomancy with interest, as it reflects a strand in my own current thinking.
I am a member of the professional register of both the UK Feng Shui Society and the British Society of Dowsers. Though I learned to dowse from my father ~ an agricultural engineer ~ my first adult exposure was to Feng Shui. There is no doubt that Feng Shui has many schools, and can be very complicated, but that is not an argument against it.
A stronger potential case against Feng Shui relates to the argument that the art ~ to a certain extent encapsulated in formulas ~ could remove the practitioner from the 'direct experience' or intuitive understanding of a situation. I am not sure that this is true, i.e, I really don't know if it is true.
The world is complex, and it seems to me that the ideal practitioner will have both intuitive and technical knowledge and skill, and that the two strands re-inforce each other. Some people are more drawn to one approach, some to the other. Some are more Yin, some Yang.
I have long been convinced of the benefits of applied geomancy regarding health, and in some ways I am moving towards the application of energetic techniques directly to the person, as well as to their environment. One of the advantages of a Feng Shui approach is that the same theoretical model applies to both the person, and the environment.
Do Feng Shui theories get in the way ? Well, we all have theories, even if they are not articulated, and all our models interfere with the real world to some extent.
Its an extremely interesting discussion.
I enclose an article I wrote on 'Dowsing and Health' for Dowsing Today, which also tries to grapple with the 'model' issue.
Best wishes,
Ced Jackson
www.FengShuiFutures.com
Wi-Fi madness
Hi all
Here is a pretty good overview of the issues
around wi-fi (wireless internet), particularly in relation to
kids in schools, and the current state in the UK, which is pretty
similar to here in Australia. It's a half-hour Panorama documentary,
very mainstream, worth watching.
One obvious result is that wi-fi signals can be quite a lot higher than the signals from mobile phone masts. A good suggestion for your health is to use an internet cable connection at home and in the office rather than wi-fi. Check out:
http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/3750193/
All the best
Tim Strachan
Note: This information is very timely with
John Howard recently announcing that broadband internet services
in Australia's rural communities will be provided with this technology.
Hey! - I live in the countryside to avoid that sort of thing!
I'm happier to stick with slow-band (- so please don't send big
attachments without asking first folks!) Ed.
Fresh water tends to vanish when human impacts are high. But we can reverse the trend and re-connect with the wisdom and healing powers of water. In this book author Alanna Moore delves into water's mysterious origins and manifestations; its energetic and spiritual aspects; global traditions; as well as water in Australian landscapes. The book is unique in giving holistic understandings about water from a geomancer's perspective, including water divining, historical, esoteric and Indigenous perspectives.
It looks at current issues around the 'water crisis' and shows that energy guzzling de-salination plants are not necessary. It suggests greater diversification in water harvesting, such as seeking sources of 'new water' deep in the Earth, telling how people already find it. It looks at traditional modes of weather prediction, whereby changes in plant and animal behaviour can herald rain with more accuracy than meteorologists. And it outlines how farm planning and landscape design can be used to store water in the soil, where it belongs, in order to reverse the processes of desertification that are so evident in countries like Australia.
Water pollution and lack of rain may be remedied with subtle means, including prayer. Rituals can connect us to water's powerful elemental forces and help us find deep cleansing on emotional and spiritual levels. It is no wonder that it has always been the most highly revered of the elements. This book hope to re-kindle that reverence and provide inspiration for greater kindness and care for all the Earth's waters.
In addition to this book, the companion film - 'The Sacred World of Water' - has been upgraded with new footage of sacred and healing wells and springs in Ireland, Wales and South Australia; as well as an additional interview with Tasmanian Aboriginal artist Carol Horton. (The film 'Grassroots Solutions to Soil Salinity' also provides a companion to the book, with several experts in their field, from water diviners to water scientists, featured in both that film and the book..)
Publication date: 16/7/07
This book is a 250 page paperback, wholly produced in Australia.,
ISBN - 978-0-9757782-1-0
Price: RRP $33 plus GST.
Special price direct from Python Press/Geomantica
- $33 post paid in Australia.
Send $33 cheque or money order to
PO Box 929 Castlemaine 3450 Vic
The companion films sell for $22
each post paid in Australia..
Tasmania has been the only state in Australia where native forests are cut down and turned into plantations. But on June 1st 2007 the much criticised practice was ended. Forestry Tasmania and the timber giant Gunns Limited announced they will no longer replace native forests with plantations on public and private land. (However, that doesn't mean the company will stop logging in native old growth forests.)
Forestry Tasmania says its decision to end
the broad-scale clearing of native forests to establish plantations
is a direct response to community concerns. Under the Tasmanian
Community Forest Agreement, broad-scale conversion was due to
be phased out by 2010. But the force of public opinion made them
decide to bring forward the decision.
While Green groups welcomed the initiative, the fight between environmentalists and the timber industry is about to intensify over Gunns' plan to build a pulp mill in Tasmania's north. The Wilderness Society was recently in the Federal Court, arguing that the Federal assessment is biased towards approving the $1.5 billion pulp mill. Affidavits tended to the court show that Gunns has signed contracts and is ready to start building the pulp mill on the first of September, and any hold-up is going to cost the company $1 million a day.
Source: ABC News Friday, June 1, 2007
The chairman of the World Society for Protection of Animals, Hugh Wirth, was recently quoted as saying that all countries would have to ensure their animal welfare laws reflected the principle that animals have feelings and can suffer pain, if the UN's General Assembly agreed that animals were sentient beings. The WSPA has been working on this proposal for five years. Dr Wirth, who is also Victoria's RSPCA president, said that the cattle industry's response to animal welfare issues had been 'excellent', but others, such as the sheep industry, were not so positive. And the dairy industry involved cruelty such as tail docking, which, if known about, Wirth suggested, could damage overseas markets.
Source: The Weekly Times, May 30th, 2007.
I'm not usually a fan of much 'channelled' information, but when a reader suggested checking out this website and a call for positive intentions on July 17th, I found it to be touching and fascinating story and a worthwhile exercise, for whatever reason! The author Shelley Yates and her son was miraculously saved after a car accident drowning in 2002 and brought back to life (in north America, I think). While struggling to get free she received communications from benelovent spirits who guided her course of action and allowed her to relax, be rescued and revived back to life.
Yates's new spirit teachers suggested that it would be good if lots of people could all send out waves of powerful hado (vibrations) of loving intentions to the Earth via the Earth energy network at one synchronised time: 11.11 GMT July 17th. The idea is to meditate for one hour (although I could not see much guidance on how people are meant to connect with Earth grids). I suppose it is by the visualisation of projecting loving energy to local sacred sites and power centres. Or better still - to go there and do it directly!
Yates has been spreading the word extensively ever since to gear as many people up for the event. Check it out for yourself and make a date for Tuesday 17th, at 9.11 - 10.11pm EST.
Any excuse for wonderful waves of synchronised hado, I say!
The website is at:
Fountain work
The targeting of the Earth's grid for remote energy work is the meditation method espoused by Fountain International in the UK and in parts of Australia for the last 25 years or so. It is a method of promoting world peace and harmony in your local community. A special site is nominated as a focal point to send one's positive energy too. Subsequent energetic improvements that have been documented are: lowered crime rates, better social harmony etc. The movement was big in the 1980s, but not so much of it occurs now.
I recommend the free film that the FI website offers. It features interviews with dowser Colin Bloy, David Icke, Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst talking about Earth energies, sacred sites, healing and consciousness. Check out the website at:
The importance of Tara as a religious centre
dates back to at least 4000BC, and it has always been a potent
symbol of Ireland's nationhood. But a new freeway threatens to
slice through it's side. And the government seems only interested
in development at any cost, despite much public opposition, including
the Anam Cara for Tara campaign in Australia..
In May 2007 Dick Roche, the then Environment Minister, cut the first sod on the project and the bulldozers moved in. To the Government's embarrassment, ancient relics were found 24 hours later, including the site of a large wooden henge, a prehistoric ceremonial site at Lismullen in the Skryne Valley.
On the 22nd of May 2007 the contractors were
forcing the double toll road through Tara Valley with a vengeance.
After three days of blockade by the protestors at the gates of
the machinery compounds that had stopped the destruction work
- things suddenly changed. A massive amount of machines and personnel
began to push this unwanted road. The Campaign to Save Tara group
stood in front of the diggers, blocked the gates and tried to
stop this destruction of culture by putting their bodies in the
way of the machines. The protestors were attacked and beaten
by the workers while the Gardaí looked on and this event
lasted 12 hours.
On 6 June 2007 the World Monuments Fund declared the Hill
of Tara to be one of the 100 most endangered heritage sites.
Now there's a new government and the Green's staunch opposition
to the freeway encroachment of Tara has been eroded as the parties
play politics.
The new Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government is Green Party TD John Gormley. We are asking everyone to write, email and phone the one man who actually has the power to Save Tara Valley - John Gormley. As the newly elected and responsible Minister he now has the power under the National Monuments Acts, Section 14A (4) (d), introduced in 2004, where according to Section 22 of the Interpretation Act, 2005, a Minister has the power to revoke or amend previous directions.
Please contact John Gormley - email subject lines should get straight to the point eg 'Save Tara Valley' and advise him that he has this power and then ask politely that that he uses this power (as given above) to stop all development work in Tara Valley, to re-route the M3 and make it into a World Heritage Park. UNESCO will be delighted. Generations will thank him and you.
Email - johngormley@eircom.net
A new petition, directed to Minister Gormley, was launched on 8 July.
Please take a moment to sign it as soon as possible - http://www.petitiononline.com/taram3/petition.html
Also write letters to media such as: lettersed@irish-times.ie
Let us remain resolved to save Tara by raising our voices to raise awareness!
Maireid Sullivan
for the Anam Cara for Tara arts action campaign
http://www.AnamCaraFestival.org
and the GlobalArtsCollective.org
http://www.GlobalArtsCollective.org
The energy created when a group of people get together to plan a major project, can lead to such innovative ideas that are so brilliant in their concept that one wonders why the plan was not thought of before.
Local amateur astronomers have shown appreciation of the astronomical significance of the project and in particular the fact that the site chosen to erect the Wollemi Standing Stones has close proximity to the 150 degrees of Longitude line.
This line of longitude represents 10 hours ahead of Greenwich Mean time, it is the line that the time zone for the entire eastern portion of Australia is referenced to. This close proximity makes the site an excellent one for the establishment of a sundial, as the calculations for the dial are simplified and the correlation with the international time standard is precise (within 5 seconds at this site).
Sundials are an ancient instrument but are still found fascinating by modern people and are built in many places as a tourist attraction. Reference can be made to two such dials that may be viewed at www.singletontourism.com.au, under Singleton attractions, and www.claphamsclocks.com, for a dial in Whangarei, New Zealand.
As a result of representation by local amateur astronomers, and in keeping with the historical, astronomical and educational values of the project, members of the Steering Committee have committed to investigating whether such an instrument could be incorporated within the area set aside for the Standing Stones.
Otherwise, interest in the project continues to grow, and the committee has recently met with neighbours in an effort to address any concern for the proposed megalithic construction.
The individual stones have been secured and the seeking of sponsorship of each stone is now being undertaken.
Annual membership of the Wollemi Standing Stones Inc has been set at $33 and the committee would be delighted to welcome new members to the group.
More info, email: mariesitter@hotmail.com
or phone 02 9589 0261.
So you think it's safe to eat convenionally grown food? Well, it may not be, not for you or the environment, if chemicals such as atrazine are still being used as a common ingredient in herbicides for food and other crops, as is done in Australia. A visiting American scientist Prof Tyrone Hayes recently reported that atrazine 'may cause genetic defects in frogs and humans', in evidence presented to a long-running government inquiry into atrazine.
Atrazine is banned in Europe. Hayes research in the late 1990s showed that frogs exposed to as little as one part of atrazine in a billion had hormonal imbalances, with males developing female ovaries and producing eggs. Environments and water supplies in the US often have traces of atrazine at much higher levels than one in a billion. Frogs have the same hormones as humans, he said. Other studies show that atrazine causes cancer in people.
All of this is hotly disputed by the manufacturers, of course! And the USA's EPA does not believe it is a carcinogen. The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority will be looking at the weight of evidence around atrazine for another year or so before they finalise their position on the matter. So far the APVMA have found that data so far has provided 'support for the absence of a carcinogenic potential for atrazine.'
But surely the potenial for endrocrine dispruption in humans and other animals is enough to ban this menace??
Source: 'Crop herbicide draws fire', The Weekly Times, June 20, 2007.
A ten year study which compared organic and conventionally produced tomatoes has found that that the organic ones are healthier. Up to nearly double the level of antioxidant flavonoids have been found in the organic tomatoes, the University of California study discovered.
Source: The Weekly Times, July 11, 2007.
by Tim Strachan, 2007.
I've been hearing about this shrine to the Virgin Mary for some time, from friends who follow notions like sacred sites, songlines, Earth energies and the like (as I do). I knew it was vaguely around the north head of the beach. A friend asked me to take a walk round Coogee today and I remembered the shrine, so it was off to Coogee. First a nice flat white espresso in a cafe looking over Coogee Beach and it's rocky island, and a stroll along the promenade, pretty nicely upgraded since I'd lived round here as a strudent in the late 1960s. Coogee means 'rotting seaweed' in Koori, so I'm told, though that no longer seems to be a problem.
We got up to the north head, and would have continued along the coast walk, when I happened to look around to the right and there was a little enclosure, beautifully tended. There were fresh flowers and bowls of water and someone has planted some pretty flowers and small shurbs in a surround against a part of the white wooden fence looking over the water. There are photos of Mary and Jesus and it's obvious quite a lot of devotion is being lavished on this place.
We tuned in meditatively - my friend is a healer/naturopath and I've done a lot of work dowsing along the sacred sites of Europe and England (the Apollo-Athena Line and the Michael-Mary line, which I could write about if anyone is interested), so we'd both done a fair bit of energy work. It was clear that there was a strong high vertical energy which in my case activated the crown chakra, and was definitely connected to light frequencies. Once we tuned in, we realised that this was a lot stronger than normal so it seemed that it was possible that 'unusual things' could happen here. Certain energies come together and are magnified at certain sites, as I'd found while dowsing the lines in Europe and elsewhere.
And apparently so it is - as we were there a couple of young lifeguards came up with a plastic-coated information page which had blown away from the site, or perhaps (as they thought) been thrown over the cliff. They were very respectful and replaced the poster, which described the various apparitions of some kind of female energy over the last 4 years since the site became known in 2003. Some people saw a woman and other felt drops of water fall on them from nowhere in particular. There was a long history of these experiences, and it seems that there are some local nuns and others who tend the shrine these days.
Just about as soon as we read about the water drops falling we started to feel the odd drop of water falling on us... I looked up and although it was overcast there were patches of blue sky above us. Hmmm... After a while we went further up to north head about 70 metres along and down to the fallen rocks and the 'baths' at the base of the cliff. Those drops continued for the next hour, no weaker and no stronger, just occasional drops, very cooling and pretty unusual. We sat on a rock overlooking the beautiful pool that few people seemed to know about and the energy started to strengthen. Then I remembered that about 1969 I had smoked a joint and come to this exact place, lain down on a rock and then for two hours had watched very detailed, clear and colourful 'movies' on a nearby rock. It has always puzzled me how detailed and continuous these visions were, covering my own life and other incidents, almost rushing out of my imagination (or 'energy body' as I would now say). The smoking of a joint (my last one being about 25 years ago) could not account for them and never again did I have such an intense visionary experience - there have been other intense experiences of course, but more based on feeling.
So it became clear to both uf us that we were in a particularly powerful energy site, which has existed for a very long time. It is the presence of this energy that has made visions possible for people, and these visions will present themselves in a form that each person finds palatable and able to fit in with their beliefs, such as the Virgin Mary. My friend also found that she was processing a lot of very strong emotional energy, past problems were rapidly clarifying for her as she sat there, and it all had to do with the power of the place iitself. It is not just the area near the shrine, but seems to extend right around the whole of the north head of the beach.
In the next week or two we will be going back there to find out more. I'll be dowsing it with a rod and using a kind of 'body dowsing' that I do, and my friend will use her pendulum and other methods. It should be interesting. What is nice to know is that there are some such sites around Sydney. If you know of any more let me know - I'm sure that there are others, well known to the original inhabitants, now largely forgotten or neglected.
Part 2:
We arrived back in autumn with the cooler
weather, armed with our trusty dowsing rods. The way I tune in
to a suspected 'dragon line' (songline, fairy line, geomagnetic
line, etc.) is to criss-cross the area with the feeling/image
of my memory of the feeling in my body. Having dowsed a lot of
these before, particularly in England and across Europe, my 'energy
body' is quite familiar with the 'frequency'. So I soon established
that there is a line of about 40m wide, which enters the park
on the north head diagonally, going south-east. This pointed
it towards the shrine and the rocks described in the first part
of the article, and there was a sharper pull within the stream
towards the shrine itself.
This was very similar in size and feeling to the Michael-Mary line across England, and to the Apollo-Athena line across Europe which I followed last year Walking over to the shrine, we found again a mother and child scene and other mothers and children soon turned up. It does seem to attract them. The boy in the photo was gardening the votive garden bed which has never apparently been vandalised.
Find a quiet time if you visit Sydney or live there and visit this place and tune in for a while. It will repay your interest. And check my dowsing while you're there!
May the spirit be with you!
©Tim Strachan
About the Author:
Tim Strachan has been an energy
worker since he studied acupuncture in the early 1970s, the beginning
of 35 years of on-going research into the world of energies.
At present he lives in Sydney, where he works with the 'Freedom
Now' technique of energy psychology (www.energy-body-work.com)
and runs 'The Energy Store'. He also checks sites for blocked
energies, which he calls the 'new geomancy', using scientific
and energetic methods to do so.
He has developed some unique energy devices: the Aquacharge water
energizer (www.energizewater.com) and the Stress Eliminator
(www.geopathic-stress.info) for eliminating geopathic
and electro-stress from homes and offices.
Contact him on 02 93889994 or email: ts@energystore.biz and
tell him you read this article on Geomantica.
by Ced Jackson
At a certain point in their development, healers
~ like all true professionals ~ may go beyond the techniques,
the tool and the rules and simply heal. For us
lesser mortals, who as yet cannot simply enter a room, point
at a sick person and go bzzz1 ~ producing a miraculous
cure ~ I have set out below some thoughts on dowsing and healing,
and the models we bring to the party. The extent to which
actual 'dowsing' plays a part in what we refer to as dowsing-and-healing
can vary enormously.
What is it ~ exactly ~ that we think we are doing ?
Mode 1:
Dowsing to Diagnose
There are many forms of dowsing diagnosis
based on pre-established dowsing charts, check lists and witnesses,
and such tools can play a valuable role in identifying what is
adrift. They are all variants on Parsifal's "What ails thee
?"
Mode 2 :
Dowsing to Intervene/Heal
Some healers heal by dowsing. There
may, or may not, be diagnosis, but that is not the point. The
point is that the dowser heals by dowsing. 'Dowsing with Wands'2
shows how the wand/bobber can be used for healing.
Mode 3 :
Dowsing to identify healing pathways
Perhaps the simplest example of this
is dowsing to identify the best flower essence ~ or nutritional
supplement3 ~ to use in a particular situation. The dowsing doesn't
do the healing, the flower essences or the supplements do that,
but dowsing is used to identify the healing pathway.
Mode 4 :
Dowsing to confirm that healing is taking place
Dowsing can be used to gain feedback
that the condition has been healed, or that enough has been done
for today. Joey Korn's prayer/request/pendulum model incorporates
such feedback.
Mode 5 :
Dowsing to identify what is inducing
illness
such as environmental factors (dampness, EMFs), geomantic
(detrimental energies) or biological (what is causing the disease).
It differs from Mode 1 which identifies the current condition,
Mode 5 identifies what brought that about. Tough on illness,
tough on the causes of illness.
Mode 6 :
Dowsing to intervene/heal factors
which induce illness
Mode 7 :
The Radiation Model and the Information Model.
Some dowser-healers use dowsing to
locate the part of the body with a problem (or the source of
the problem). This is essentially a 'radiation' model, rather
like underground water 'radiating' something (at the location
of the water) which the dowser picks up. Sometimes dowsers use
an 'information' model, e.g. dowsing to ask (perhaps against
a check-list) what the problem is or which remedy would be best.
Both models are fine, but it is important to be clear which one
you are using at any one time, or confusion can result.
Don't mix those Modes
such as mixing the diagnostic stage
(if you employ one) and the intervention stage. If the only tool
you have is a hammer, all you will see is nails.
The Battery Model and The Chanelling Model
As healers, we can either draw on
our own energies (The Battery Model), or use the Channelling
Model (we draw on upstairs for our strength). The literature
is full of warnings against the Battery Model (we might exhaust
ourselves), yet even if we go for the Full Brazilian Channelling
Model, there is always a bit of us in there. We cannot escape
our thoughts, and even if we have chosen to channel, rather than
rely on our limited personal resources, it is still us
who have chosen to channel. It was our choice to do this, and
we can't entirely shuffle off the kudos/blame elsewhere.
The Technical model and the Energetic model
At one end of the healing continuum
lies the application of methods, techniques, procedures and processes
(such as the use of pre-printed dowsing charts) and at the other
end there is communion with guides, angels, fairies, nature spirits
and one-day travel cards for shamanic journeys. Which one are
you into ? Are you mixing the two and scrambling potential success
?
Healing the Environment or Healing the
Person
Sometimes the problem originated in
the environment, sometimes in the person. Healing someone with
tuberculosis but letting them continue to live in a damp house
won't do the trick. Give a wastrel a mansion and they'll mess
it up. Sometimes both the environment and the person are fine,
they just aren't suited to each other. What are you healing ?
The person ? The environment ? Or both ?
Bad (evil) dowser, good (successful) healer
?
Is healing-through-dowsing accomplished
as a technical process (which a bad person could accomplish if
they used the right techniques), or does the dowser have to be
good, 'clear' (or the extent to which they are clear),
right-thinking etc ? There are analogies with the question in
the Catholic Church as to whether a 'bad' priest can absolve
you of your sins (because the absolution comes from elsewhere),
or is it inevitable that the person will get in the way and influence
things one way or the other.
Engagement or Arms Length
Some people prefer to use tools or
techniques as that distances them somewhat from the illness/stuff.
This is the classic position. Others ~ such as Jean Haner and
Eric Dowsett4 ~ work more on having an open heart/compassionate
presence, take the 'stuff' within, and then process it/let it
go. Which Mode you employ has implications for what form of protection
you use, if any. (Warning : Dowsing can cause Serious Releases)
Time
Do you ask/dowse/request/pray for
a time-frame for the healing to take effect ? If not, why not
?
Specifying the result, or, leaving it to upstairs
There are considerable advantages in precision (e.g. water
dowsers might ask to be shown 'a flow of up to 200 gallons an
hour of drinkable water less than fifty feet below the surface
with no intervening granite') , but there are also advantages
to leaving it to God to sort out. What probably isn't such a
good idea is to mix the modes. 'Please heal little Susan's back,
in the best way you can think of, by Tuesday morning so she can
win the gymkhana'.
And to the tune of Oklahoma
Oh,the Surgeon-and-the-Homeopath-should-be-friends
Is your dowsing/healing aiming
to gently remove, one by one, the layers of the illness, making
for a smooth transition back to health, or are you going
in (to the sound of chaps whistling the Dam Busters march)
aiming for the jugular and planning to get to the bottom of all
this ridiculous business once and for all. Choose your Mode and
stick to it.
We're all going to die !
This helpful insight, screamed by
many a hysterical Hollywood starlet as the bus/plane/train hurtles
towards the abyss, has value in that it re-frames the whole question
of what healing means. Nobody lives for ever. Yet I am equally
opposed to the notion of healing as something which just makes
our decline more comfortable. If I am ill, I want to be healed,
though as Keynes said, in the long run we're all dead.
Ced Jackson
CedJackson@FengShuiFutures.com
Notes
1. "bzzz" Ancient Sumerian
healing chant sung at the Helical Rising of Venus (not really)
2. Dowsing with Wands. See Book Review in this
edition
3. See John Bradley's key articles on Dowsing,
Health and Nutrition in DT 287 and 289
4. Jean and Eric are now two
separate entities at www.ClearHomeClearHeart.com and www.EricDowsett.com
respectively
5. See also Heather Bray's
article in the last edition
This copyright of this article is held by Ced Jackson. The article recently appeared in 'Dowsing Today', the journal of the British Society of Dowsers.
Ced Jackson is a dowser and Feng Shui practitioner. His website is at www.FengShuiFutures.com and he is available for consultations.
Email : Ced@FengShuiFutures.com
by Billy Arnold, June 2007.
Billy Arnold wrote 'Maps of the Dreamtime' for Geomantica no. 16, June 2002. It was about how he had been discovering and connecting with the Indigenous spirituality of central Australia. Being clairvoyant and a practioner of laya yoga allowed him to become immersed in the spirit of the places he visited; while Aboriginal aquaintances have guided his perceptions by informing him about traditional lore.
Here is a follow-up article. It recounts a recent trip Billy took with a friend, Duncan Rae, to Papunya, where he quickly earned the nickname 'Spirit Man', for his ability to perceive the local spirits of the land. Duncan is a teacher of numeracy, literacy, music and football in several communities west of Alice Springs.
Papunya is a small Indigenous Australian community of about 350 people roughly 240 km northwest of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. It is home to displaced Aboriginal people mainly from the Pintubi and Luritja tribes who moved (or were forcibly moved) into communities at Papunya and Haasts Bluff in the 1940s-1980s. The last of the Pintupis left their traditional lifestyle in the desert only in 1984.
Papunya is most famous for its Aboriginal art. It was here during the 1970s that a striking and unique blend of traditional and modern art styles emerged and by the 1980s this Western Desert Art Movement had begun to attract national and international acclaim.
Arriving at Papunya
The first site Duncan pointed out
as we drove into Papunya Community was a small hill north of
the road. This little hill is the principal site of Honey Ant
Dreaming. Papunya is named after the honey ant creation story,
or Dreaming, which belongs to the people there.
On the first evening we watched the crescent moon setting in conjunction with Venus and Saturn and I became aware of big spirits on the quartz sandstone range, a beautiful outcrop of the Arunta block, a few kilometres south of Papunya. The range was packed with big spirits and when they became aware of me watching them they put on a show. They were changing shapes and colours like I've never seen before. The biggest were Earth spirits from deep down, accompanied by many smaller spirits of totemic beings which were constantly changing their forms. They seemed as excited as I was.
Now and then over half of the spirit gathering changed into a spherical form, which to me means they have been humans in the past and will be again in the future. Most of the smaller spirits were changing from their normal form to human form. The darkest of these was a spirit woman who had a small entourage with her.
Later on the women confirmed the identity of this spirit woman. This came via an old Aboriginal man I spoke to about what spirits I had seen. He checked it out with the old women and they confirmed my sightings. The spirit woman I had seen is lnown as Laparinya and she is the one who looks after the spirits of babies who die young.
Next morning at Papunya I 'met' Bicani Wanumpi, the giant rainbow serpent painted on the shop wall. (I was asked not talk about what I saw there.) Bicani is either C. P. Mountford's serpent, whose songline stretches from Winbaraku to up past Yuendumu, north of Papunya; and/or the snake spirit associated with Jarapiri.
The rainbow serpent is seen as the inhabitant
of permanent waterholes and is in control of life's most precious
resource - water. It is the sometimes unpredictable rainbow serpent
who replenishes the stores of water and who originally formed
gullies and deep channels in the ground as it slithered across
the landscape.
Dreamtime and the Dreamings
Aboriginals believe in two forms of
time, or two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective
world. The other is the infinite spiritual cycle called the 'Dreamtime',
that is more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the
Dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal
society. People with spiritual powers may have regular contact
with the Dreamtime.
The Dreamtime is not just on a songline, it is everywhere, and everywhere is sacred. The Dreamtime is not something of the past. It is alive and well and happening all over the world right now.
An insight into levels of knowledge of the sacred and sometimes secret world of the Dreamtime is revealed in the story of the new football field at Papunya. There are big earth moving machines at the community used for keeping the roads open after flooding and the men and boys love using them. So when they decided they needed a new athletics and football field they got to work and wondered why the women were looking so worried.
When the job was done the old women announced
that the young men could not play football there because right
in the middle of the field is where the lovely spirit of the
honey ant comes up from the Earth and males must keep away from
the area. The women had not previously mentioned the site to
the blokes because it is not men's business.
Aboriginal Art
Art is one of the key rituals of Aboriginal culture and is used to mark territory, record history, and tell stories about the Dreamtime. Art was and remains an important component of the system of restricted knowledge and is the major means of recreating ancestral events, ensuring continuity with the ancestral past - the Dreaming - and is a means of communicating with the spirit world.
For example, a rock painting of a rainbow serpent is not just a picture. It is a manifestation of the rainbow serpent, who resides in the painting and will come out and devour you if you behave inappropriately towards the painting.
The famous dot painting style that began at Papunya was largely a result of the encouragement of Geoffrey Robert Bardon (a white man born in Sydney 1940, died Taree 2003). Bardon was the school teacher there who, during his 18 month stint there in the early 1970s, was instrumental in bringing Aboriginal art to the attention of the world. The artistic movement unleashed at Papunya spread over Central Australia and has since achieved international acclaim. The Western Desert Painting Movement has put deep spiritual meaning back into modern art.
Bardon encouraged the children to record traditional sand patterns in paint. He also encouraged the senior men to paint their Honey Ant Dreaming on the school doors and to preserve other traditional Dreamings, or 'Tjukurpa', and stories in acrylic paint.
Up until that time very little value had ever been put on Aboriginal culture, nor promotion made of it. The authorities didn't know how to respond to what Bardon was doing. He suffered the indifference, neglect and criticism of government departments towards his work. The Honey Ant Dreaming mural painted by the elders was even painted over with white paint by the authorities! Eventually, Bardon suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to Sydney to undergo controversial Deep Sleep Therapy with the notorious Dr Harry Bailey, which left him weakened.
Eventually his work was acknowledgd and Bardon was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1988, for service to the preservation and development of traditional Aboriginal art forms. He is survived by his wife Dorn and two sons, James and Michael.
Papunya Tula or Papunya Tula Artists Pty Ltd, is the local artists' cooperative, formed in 1972. Papunya Tula - a name suggested to Bardon by artist Charlie Tararu - is Pintupi for 'honey ant meeting place', The name refers to a small hill near Papunya and the Honey Ant Dreaming ancestor of the local people. Today the company operates out of Alice Springs and is widely regarded as the premier purveyor of Aboriginal art in Central Australia.
Warumpi is Honey Ant
Several different groups of ants have independently evolved a honey-pot lifestyle. The best known in Australia are the Camponotus inflatus, or Honey Ant. Colonies of these amazing insects develop specialized workers, called repletes or honeypots, with tremendously swollen abdomens for nectar storage. Some repletes also hoard water, fats and body fluid from insect prey. Repletes gorge on food collected outside the nest and brought to them by normally-proportioned worker ants. They live deep down in underground chambers, hanging quietly in clusters, imprisoned by their big abdomens - the size of small grapes!
The Honey Ants are sought for by Aboriginal people at certain times as an important source of food. Colonies are generally found in arid country and often under Mulga trees. After rain, women and children go hunting to look for them and once they have found a nest they start to dig. They often have to dig for hours and hours until they find the highly prized Honey Ants.
In eating them the people seize each ant with the fingers by the front of the it's body and, after blowing off the dust, place the distended abdomen into the mouth and bite it off, letting the slightly acid honey flow deliciously over the tongue. The abdomen is swallowed while the remainder of the body is discarded.
Photo; Honey Ant mural on the wall of the original studio of the Warumpi Band at Papunya.
Papunya and the Warumpi Band
During my week at Papunya I was hanging out with Sammy, the head man there. Sammy is a truly wonderful old man and a brilliant guitarist who was invited to play with some of the world's greatest guitarists. He was co-founder of the Warumpi Band which originated in Papunya in the early eighties. The band's name derives from the Honey Ant Dreaming site near Papunya.
Sammy is also 'uncle' of the brilliant Warumpi Band's lead man, who died recently (and must not be named until mourning is completed). ****** was married to Sammy's sister and was living on an island off Arnhem Land After three weeks of traditional ceremony his funeral was put on hold till Sammy got up there. (****** was a saltwater man. Sammy is a desert man.) Sammy flew out of Darwin on Peter Garret's flight to George's island, along with local politicians, for the funeral.
The Warumpi Band toured the Northern Territory and Kimberley region playing to communities, outback stations and isolated townships, developing their unique sound and writing much of their material on the road. The Band wrote, recorded and released the first ever rock song in an Aboriginal language 'Jailanguru Pakarnu' ('Out From Jail') in 1983. In 1984, their debut album 'Big Name No Blankets' had much radio airplay. The band toured further afield with great success and went on to tour the world and produce many hit songs.
This would have to be the best book about Australian Aboriginal culture that I have read, certainly the best of recent publications. It has a modern, balanced, holistic approach that is so refreshing and informative.
It often takes a stranger to open your eyes to what is before you and this is very much the case. Professor Sveiby is a Finnish academic, a professor of Knowledge Management who teamed up with Nhunggal artist and cultural custodian Tex Skuthorpe, from north-west New South Wales, to produce a fascinating and revealing tome. To quote the back cover:
'Treading Lightly takes us on a unique journey into traditional Aboriginal life and culture, and offers a powerful and original model for building sustainable organisations, communities and ecologies... [The authors] show how traditional Aboriginal stories and paintings were used to convey knowledge from one generation to the next, about the environment, law and relationships. They reveal the hidden art of four-level story-telling, and discuss how the stories, and the way they were used, formed the basis for a sustainable society. They also explain ecological farming methods, and how the Aboriginal style of leadership created resilient societies.' You also get to see colour pictures of Skuthorpe's richly expressive paintings that depict totemic beings and stories of the Dreaming etc.
The authors discuss the '...vital question: what can we learn from the traditional Aboriginal lifestyle to create a sustainable society in modern Australia?' Aboriginal communities developed in peace and with long-term sustainability, in some of the most fragile environments in the world. They did not have power hierachies in their societies, there were no 'chiefs'. The knowledge of the elders was always deferred to and the spiritual powers of men and women were equal in their own right. Responsibilities to 'country', to maintain spiritual connections to the land, meant that nobody ever had wars over, or took away other peoples' lands. The interconnectedness of people and land, as well as social relationships between different allied groups ensured that general harmony ruled (apart from the odd fighting between groups over women).
Sveiby is bold enough to state that he uses a dowsing pendulum to help his research with Skuthorpe. One day they journeyed to the top of the highly sacred Wubi-Wubi Mountain (taking a phone-company-made road to the mobile phone base station antennas). Only wiringins (shamen) were traditionally allowed to visit the top, for this was the great spirit Baayami's last stopping point before rising into the heavens in the Dreaming, and it is a place for special contact with the great spirit. Skuthorpe had never been there before. The old Nhunggal stories told of unusual rock pools on the summit and small stone circles were once used by the wiringins. The authors went searching for these features. Eagles, messengers of Baayami, greeted them on arival. They discovered that the land-owner had unfortunately partly bulldozed some of the stone circles when making a picnic shelter at the spot. Sveiby continues the story:
'...The stone circles should be nearby. I test a few spots with my pendulum, the instrument I have been using to detect possible geomagnetic fields. The rockpools test positive, possibly indicating the presence of water courses beneath them, but the other areas of the rocks test positive, like the rest of the mountain. The area around the picnic spot is a sandy flat with a few scattered rocks. It is the best place for camping, with a view, and it would have been the perfect location for a stone circle. Tex spots a few large boulders further away, which appear to have not been moved. With a bit of imagination they could form a circle. I test the imagined centre with the pendulum. It turns vigorously positive. I walk to the periphery of the imagined circle and test outside it. The pendulum swing turns negative. I move the pendulum from outside the circle to the inside. The pendulum immediately shifts from negative to positive. By walking around the periphery with the pendulum I am able to determine the exact extension of the whole circle. Have we found the spot from which the wiringins contacted and then travelled to the spirit world?'
Sveiby finds new, more appropriate words to describe Aboriginal concepts, such as 'learning tracks' instead of 'songlines'. And he cautions against using the old terms such as 'tribe', when 'language group' or 'community' would be more appropriate. His website is amazing too!
Recommended reading.
(It's even printed in Australia, unusually!)
Published by Allen and Unwin
ISBN: 1-74114-874-X
This 160 page ringbound book is a great little guide for people to find and learn about Aboriginal sites and history around Melbourne and further afield. Melway refrences are given, so you won't get lost.
Some sites are archeological, some sacred, some historical. There are also modern places such as Aboriginal plant trails at CERES in Brunswick and cultural places of today. My own favourite sites that the book has guided me to are the several 'Earth rings' near Sunbury. People from far and wide once gathered there for ceremonies and initiation. One pair of rings are said to have been used for women's initiations. It is very rare for such a pair to have survived. Usually only the larger ring in the pair still exists. (Up north they are called 'bora grounds' or 'kiparra rings'. ed)