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the free web magazine of dowsing & geomancy, in Australasia and beyond. Edited by Alanna Moore. Welcome to the 43rd edition of Geomantica, November 2009. It's jam packed with fascinating articles from our wonderful contributing authors. Thanks go out to them all! None from me, as I've been busy producing a brand new book, 'Sensitive Permaculture', of which you can read more about this issue. Plus I've also been busy building, traveling, teaching and farming.... Another website at www.permaculture ireland.ie and one in the pipeline for Python Press Books (pythonpress.com) also call for my attention. Then there's marketing!... Having to do usually everything oneself, it has been a great relief since my husband Peter Cowman has been helping out! (Publishing material for a small market, including printing, in Australia, does not make one wealthy, let alone generate enough money to afford to pay for any staff. I have also lost a lot this year due to the bankruptcy of Counter Culture, who were distributing my books in the UK...) When you buy direct from Geomantica it really helps! With a bit of luck I will find time this summer to produce a couple of new 'State of Pilgrimage' films too. So watch out for more good news in the following January edition of Geomantica, which covers Australian events up until May, when we head back to Ireland for the southern winter, via Far North Queensland and Asia I hope! (First - to organise some workshops there! Anyone interested to host such are encouraged to make contact now.) Until then - Peace and bright blessings from the editor - Alanna Moore
Hi Alanna, I have some clients here who are being affected by windmill farms that were set up too close to their homes. The entire family is sick. Any ideas on how to neutralize these energies? Regards, Allan Hassoun (Canada) Hi Allan Some people use Earth acupuncture, with copper pipes hammered into the ground, to reduce the electro-stress around wind farms, but I havent tried it myself. Check out this website I've just heard about - www.windturbinesyndrome.com
Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Stone Age Farming workshop at Wooroloo in WA (October 09). It was absolutely fascinating and very, very interesting. Have tried the techniques with a few plants which are doing well as a result.... L.B.
![]() The cover picture depicts the author's gardens in Ireland: a herb spiral with Power Tower and Frog Pond beside a boggy meadow covered in wildflowers such as the Meadowsweet at the top. Permaculture is the ethical design of sustainable culture and it's mostly associated with eco-smart food gardening. For the past 22 years author Alanna Moore has been a keen permaculture practitioner and promoter, while for 26 years she has also worked as a geomancer, assessing and balancing the subtle energies of places. Through combining her two fields of expertise she has discovered that implementing a geomantic permaculture design for sustainable food production and living helps to alleviate environmental problems on many levels, as well as the negativity and unsustainability of today's society. In this book she describes how to undertake a sensitive analysis of land capability in order to co-creatively develop a harmonious permaculture plan. Alanna has been dividing her time between Australia and Ireland, both places where knowledge of geomancy the Earth's subtle, energetic dimensions - has survived relatively well, in understated undercurrents at the least. The Australian Aborigines and native Irish are highly intuitive peoples. Like other animist societies, the Irish believed that fairy beings help to care for their crops and livestock and that the 'Good People' must always be thanked, and their homes and pathways respected. Nature spirits continue to be a dynamic force in the landscape, Alanna has discovered in her life of professional dowsing experience, travel and international teaching. By pendulum dowsing and meditative attunement she finds exactly where these beings are stationed and can thus avoid disturbing them. In this book she explains how eliciting nature's help in the garden and co-operating with the resident fairies can foster harmonious feng shui and the growth of giant juicy vegetables, as well as nourish our own inner, spiritual gardens. "Sensitive Permaculture focuses on an energetic, loving approach to sustainable land planning, " says Alanna, who has three permaculture diplomas, "and when we connect to the sacred dimensions of life our activities become positively life-affirming and joyful." The following themes are explored, as in the table of contents: The sacred landscape Diminuation of 'resources' Living traditions Animism Final frontiers Permaculture design Eco-spiritual approach Slow cooking Slow down Living slow Still mind Slow get around Sustaining our dreams Sustaining Earth's Dreaming Colonisation Unwelcoming lands Learning to listen Path of Least Effort Ethics of site selection Recovering landscapes Patterns of influence State of the soil Soil dowsing Soil aeration and initial planting 'Hungry grass' Geomancy & Earth dragons Planning with the fairies Feng shui Confirming the best home site Connecting to the Dreaming Microclimates Survey the wildlife Trackways Vegetation mapping Balance of the elements Sacred relationships with nature Hauntings and emotional debris Earth acupuncture Altering energy patterns Honouring spirit beings Troubles at boundaries Loving the land Deva gardeners Dowsing in the garden Problems with metals Curvy gardens Keeping dragons happy Zone Five fairyland DIY sacred sites Getting plants Trading energy The waste resource Free stuff Preparation for earthworks Dam building The aftermath Liquid waste Urine in the garden Humanure Devas and compost Slow weeding Below the radar Less pests in polycultures Biodynamic approach Discovering the land's magic Fairy warning Preparation for earthworks Magic flower crop Crone deva We want natural woodlands! Sacred trees Plant sacred groves Imagine House spirit Building biology Living Architecture Save our seeds Cultivate good energy Celebration and thanks
You may have read Maarten Stapper's articles in Geomantica. Now you can see him on TV, via the internet. The ABC Australian Story "Back to Earth" was screened on Monday 1 June 2009 and you can see it on-line and also read the transcript, at www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/stapper/default.htm "Dr Maarten Stapper is a man with some
fascinating ideas on how to manage our land better. He is unconventional,
stubborn and difficult. Not even a near-fatal car accident could
slow him down in his mission to feed the world using less chemicals.
As an advocate for biological farming, Dr Stapper has paid a
high price for promoting a greener, cleaner way to grow food.
Originally a CSIRO scientist, he left when it became clear his
views on biological farming were incompatible with his employer.
Today, he travels the country to educate farmers on how to use
less chemicals in their soil and on their crops."
A poster boy for '90s micro-farming in America, Bob Cannard produces prized veggies for Chez Panisse and Odwalla, uses dowsing techniques to test the virility of the soil and swears by rock dust for producing high quality vegetables http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/04.11.96/taste-9614.html by Junitta Vallak, Victoria I was recently having a look at Tom Graves web site and found a tribute to one of my most important teachers - John Michell - who had Passed on in April this year. Back in the 1970's, Melbourne was an esoteric desert and I used to haunt bookshops that stocked unusual books. The first book of John's I managed to get was 'View Over Atlantis' and leapt on the next ones released over the year's. I eventually met him in 1997 at a Fountain Group Conference that was held in King Arthurs Hotel at Tintagel, Cornwell. I sat yarning with him and Colin Bloy over a few clarets and what a joy this was for I was sitting with two wonderful teachers, both of whom I would imagine are now kicking their heels up together but I feel their loss to us in this dimension. I learnt so much from John and Colin and I feel truly blessed to have been able to meet, connect and learn from so many teachers of ancient knowledge and timeless wisdom. I value highly John's personally signed book to me in his beautiful handwriting that I bought at the 1997 Conference. This book is called 'NEW LIGHT on the ANCIENT MYSTERY of GLASTONBURY'. You can look him up on the web of you would like to know more about him and his amazing life.
After a few weeks of injecting the Fountain
with love - which it soaked up like a sponge - Colin found that
there was an energy build-up happening. Eventually, the Fountain
started to radiate the energy out and at that point the group
decided to let the Police know about what they were doing so
the vandalism levels could be properly monitored. To everyone's
amazement, the rate of vandalism dropped but the group decided
to keep going and by Bank Holiday the energy field was halfway
to London. A group of bikies decided to ride to Brighton on the
Bank Holiday without wearing their helmets. They were soon being
followed by the Police and they all pulled into a Pub and parked
opposite each other. The Pub was in the Fountain energy field
and when it looked like a brawl was going to happen, the police
sweet talked the bikies into putting their helmets on and they
rode off towards Brighton without violence happening. The next day's headlines were 'Bikie Gang
has Peaceful Confrontation with the Law'. Now a few people started
to wonder why, learnt about the Fountain Group and the word spread
all over the world. Last century, I was very involved with the
Australian and English Fountain Groups, both published N'letters
and I was also fortunate to visit the Old Stein Fountain where
it all began. Now, this century, we have a simliar situation
happening with much violence erupting in our cities and communities.
I am writing this to urge you to consider starting your own Fountain
Groups in your own areas, all you need is a few people to quietly
get on with it, choose your Hara, decide on a mutual time and
have a few meetings to exchange information. Having a dowser
in the group is not necessary but helpful so the energy generated
can be monitored but you should know what effect it is having
by the lessening of trouble. So many young people seem to be
lost to alcohol and drugs and this is just another way of helping
them on a more subtle level. My very best wishes to you all and
I would love to know if you start a group and how it is affecting
your neighbourhood. Junitta Vallak
1. Introduction My dowsing adventure started many years ago among woods and lakes of Stockholm, Sweden, where I live. From the very start, I was much surprised with the immense variety of lines, which I could detect with my L-rods around Neolithic and Iron-Age sacred places. As objects of exercise I have here huge boulders (some with cup-marks) - rolled maybe already by first hunters-gatherers into some dominating places, and nets of smaller stones around, leading people through the woods down to the central stone. Then; I`ve got a ceremonial place of Life-and-Death Goddess Helle and a dancing place of a prehistoric Virgin (Jungfrudansen) - both with cairns around. Then, here are mounds - serving as places of gathering (tingsplats) or/and grave memorials of some prehistoric mighty men, within my reach. Well; my penetrating raised first more problems than gave answers. I was really frustrated with not being able to answer even the simplest of possible questions - "Why those structures were located just there and not somewhere else!?" You wonder of what avail are such questions!? Whatever.
2. From dowsing to geomancy I`ve been always fascinated with cosmogonies,
myths and descriptions of sacred places from all over the World.
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With my L-rods, I began to follow important lines in my environment, trying to locate a regional "Mt. Olympus". But here a surprise was waiting for me. I found out soon that they can all of a sudden vanish, here and there. In some cases, I managed to find their continuation, a distance away. But what was that - out there, capable of cancelling the mighty "Olympian" radiation!? I arrived at a hypothese that my futile male lines were diving here and there into broad female paths or areas, which were as if cancelling them. At that stage, a concept of a line, which can lead a dowser to a sacred centre, turned out to be insufficient to characterize satisfactorily a field of life-energies around it. I`d realized that I needed methods for characterizing paths (two lines and a core) and areas (boundary and a core) and started febrile searching for a new dowsing approach, in all possible directions. - Refining my senses; but how!? To go on with perfecting my sight seemed to be most promising. Already before, I took notice of my ability to discern some lines and nets of lines against grass or gravel surfaces, especially on evenings. So I began studying large-grain black-and-white photos of special places and detected similar lines there, too. In such a way, my map dowsing started. Even today; I first transform Google-Earth photomaps into low-contrast BW large-grain copies, before I start dowsing in them. I`m not using a pendulum but simply a pencil, which speeds up the procedure greatly. At the same time, I managed to lower down the overspasticity of my muscles and what was left turned out to be a reaction to some enigmatic signals from the environment. Should I use muscle reactions as a kind of an internal dowsing- tool, instead of my L-rods!? But what a meaning should I ascribe to those signals!?
When looking through ancient Greek mythography, I found the giant Phanes Protogonos - a hermaphroditic First Being, whose analogues are known also from many other cultures around the world - Norse Ymir; Chinese P`an Ku or Hinduistic Purusha. He somehow seemed to fit my needs. Well; a human-like form means in several traditions that we could identify ourselves with a divinity or - at the least, that we might enrich our human lives with the ideas such a being stands for. Phanes represented primaeval Wholeness, composed of a hierarchy of male and female entities and their progeny, as well as levels of life-energies, they were supposed to control. For the first, I tried to dowse with a pendulum, using a silhouette of Phanes as a dowsing "witness". After some time, to get life-energy readings, I began to use only its projection upon my "internal screen". Under ages, different "parts" of Phanes dominated in sacral use. Until around 400 BCE, temples devised for initiations in mysteries, fertility stimulation and oracle activities, were quite naturally located within areas, which abound in energies ranging from that of primordial Chaos (Okeanos) through to that of Aphrodite and Hera, as well as their male progeny. Herakles ("The Fame of Hera") was a model youth-hero (kouros), raised by Hera Kourotropos ("Raising-Youth"). Originally he belonged not to the heavenly sphere but to the chthonian one. Higher up in the "body" of Phanes, - Dionysos was located in the middle between the latter and the heavenly sphere. He represented the result of a "sacred marriage" (hieros gamos) in a most perfect way. Priests of Zeus and Apollo, supported by mighty men, later on led building of monumental temples of those gods at some old chthonian centres, like that of Delphi, Olympia or Livadia. Those temples were embodying the idea of a Spirit, which can be liberated by those gods from Matter, already under course of a human life. Later on; at the healing centres of Asklepios (son of Apollo), a holistic medicine was evolved. It was based on a prolonged healing of the human soul, after which the cure for the body was coming. Differing patterns, depending upon quality of life-energies in an environment, have survived around small Greek sanctuaries,- hidden in the countryside from eyes of the uninitiated. Here come two examples.
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At the left, we have a chapel of Profitis Ilias (prophet Elijah from the Old Testament), who supplanted Zeus at most mountain peaks, all around Greece. But what that whitewashed pattern is aimed to tell us there!? Well; it`s called the Python`s skin. Python or Typhon - just as Vrtra in Vedic texts, was a monster restraining fertility (underground "waters") from coming up to the human world. Thunder-wielding entities (prophet Elijah is one of them) used to kill the monster to liberate Water of Life, in the spring. In paintings on ancient ceramics extant, the skin of killed Python was used by Apollo to wrap the Delphian oracle tripod into it. And here, it survived at a far-off hidden chapel. Of course, I checked that those scales of the pattern were drawn according to precise actual readings of life-energies arising there. In such clusters (imagine a 3D version), Dionysian "orbs" are coming to the World, just to flow away into channels of the basic matrix of life-energy - c.f. my article "Back to the Goddess" (Issue 42). The dancing meadow, shown on the right, is devoted to a local Goddess, christianized in a close-by chapel as Palaia Panaghia - The Old All-Holy One. Around the chapel, there are many whitewashed small-stone circles, around each of many areas, where female energy comes up to the surface from the underground. Among them, there are yellow-coloured rings (mature orbs), marking areas of life-energy, belonging to Dionysos. In a next step, initiated women (maenads) used to promote their division into smaller orbs, meant to supply fresh life-energy to all the entities of the environment.
3. Conclusion With the help of geomantic skills acquired as above, I`ve begun my scrutiny of Greek sacred places, starting from the temple of Hera on the Samos island, three years ago. After that, I travelled around Attica, Argolid, Corinthia, Thebaid and the former Minyan realm, with capital in Orchomenos, - to do further reconaissance. Here is much work still left to do, before the ancient Greek geomancy system can be reconstructed in any detail. But already now it has become clear for me that conclusions drawn from investigating the oldest sacred places of Greece could be also applied to other places - for instance, to analyze sacred spaces of the megalithic cultures in Ireland, Brittany and elsewhere. It`s a pity that many dowsers keep looking into the sky for explanation of the enigma of life-energy flows, - as if astronomy could help them much in that endeavour. If we directed for once our sight back down to Earth, instead, much of the ancient knowledge of our ancestors could be regained, I suppose.
Literature
Bogdan Nowakowski All rights reserved
CATIONS AND ANIONS Laurie Adamson, WA. January 2009 My interest is in defining this type of static electricity associated with 'Ions' that is common to most peoples' health before or after Cancer Problems Electro Magnetic Radiation responses to or from the 'Rare Earth Magnetic detection System'. The personal reaction to the invisible Static
Electro Magnetic Radiation that 'most' people have, in their
bodies is associated with the type of 'Ions' that can be detected,
when using the Rare Earth Pendulum on or for any particular person. Mistletoe The researcher quoted, 'one lady patient ,
who had been having the usual cancer treatment : in consultation
with her doctor, she agreed to a trial treatment with his special
Mistletoe Mixture!') When testing a persons' palm of their hand, and the pendulum circles for positive, it indicates that the person is in good Health : but when the pendulum swings 'back and forth', it indicates that the persons health could be out of balance, (check several times to make sure, incase some minor incident has given an adverse indication) and they should then seek Professional advice. Check? Pre testing a person suspected of having a cancer problem can be conducted by using the rare earth Dowsing Pendulum (not scientific, but worth trying?) [The local mistletoe, which is a native tree, only grows on Wandoo trees, but there are many types of parasite growth trees around such as Sandalwood , and Nuytsia floribunda.] Ps. As there are no volunteers, so I am the
guinea pig! If you see a grey slab of cement over there ,please
place a twig of Mistletoe on it with card saying S.O.B (SILLY
OLD BUGGER) Mobile Phone Hazard "EUREKA" Extracts from an old 2004
report by Ray Martin regarding the invisible Electro Magnetic
Radiation ( E.M.R.) health problems, such as Brain Tumors: in
the young and old. "So cautious is Dr. Teo; that the subject of his 12 year old daughter having a mobile phone in their family, he confesses, is a sore point" "The argument for her having a mobile phone, was, there are some benefits of it, and that is, in emergency situations, but she has promised me she will use a loud speaker facility all the time." "Dr. Teo had every right to be nervous in 2004, as it is his belief that there may be an association between Electro Magnetic Radiation and the development of brain cancer, and he wanted people to be more aware, especially with children". Dr. Teo offers more specific evidence of patients, whose tumors corresponds with their use of mobile phones! Such as "When patients come in to see
me with a brain cancer, I often say to them 'your cancer was
on the right side of the brain; it is in the area just above
your ear!. Quoting Senator Allision "That the brain tumor resulting from Electro Magnetic Radiation is now a life threatening disease for children and other users: In 2004 there has been a 20% increase in the number of patients with brain tumors since the mobile phone was introduced 20 years ago!"
Reducing electro-magnetic radiation As previously mentioned in other 'Eureka Notes' about E.M/R. and E.M.F. To help control the Electro Magnetic Radiation coming out of your telephone ear piece, glue a small circle of PET silver card [polyethylene terephthalate, an industrial polymer resin spray used in the manufacture of the PET card ] with the silver side of the card and central hearing hole facing the ear piece source of the audible and invisible radiation Adjust the shape to suit your phone The PET Radiation control card is now so good that it controls most types of Radiation Problems. associated with electrical modern day living conditions. It will even control the nuclear radiation emanating from a smoke alarm. Take note of a few other common radiation sources that could be affecting your health, such as Computers, TVs, Microwave ovens, Florescent tubes, some light globes ,but not the new type of incandescent globes, electric bedroom clocks, and EMF. Radiating from the ground and from subsurface streams: all of which can be controlled by using the PET card. Use the square white card as a place mat and
notice the difference in taste of your food and drinks The manufacturer of this 'PET card' is unaware
of this simple but effective inbuilt radiation feature!
L.G.A.
by Sergei Skryabin the perception of the Western Wall like a Pantheon of the almighty Gods, where every God was represented by its own solid block overfilled with something like a strong magnetic field. the field on the different sides.Just few seconds I prayed to this Pantheon in ecstasy and arrived again to the present reality psychically exhausted but filled with the unbelievable joy.After this event, I didn't get eventhe desire to make any enquiry about what this religion is,so fully I was satisfied.Standing before the Western Wall I turned my face to the East to the Mecca,and the hope gently touched my heart that,maybe,some future development will make it possible to see the holy Kaaba. was the Quantum Brain of the Orion civilization.
By Miroslav Provod It has been empirically proven that megaliths were built for the purpose of electricity accumulation during the course of their research. Hundreds of thousands of various megaliths placed around the Earth make us think of questions for which we don't know the answer. The unknown properties of static electricity that are the basic principles of megaliths create a great obstacle not only for their appreciation but also for the progress in other fields. Static electricity is a natural force that is part of all matter. The fact that it's possible to empirically find some of its yet unknown properties hints us that something has escaped our attention in this area. We shouldn't assess history in view of our knowledge, because it may lead us to wrong conclusions due to lack of information. An example would be language barriers. If dolmens, Logan stones, clay mounds, pyramids and other structures were built across the globe, it has to be explained, how the information needed to built them was transferred across the oceans, but also how the language barriers were solved when it was spread to hundreds of thousands of places across all continents. This can't be answered. The correct answer is hidden in the yet unknown properties of static electricity. But we may learn from this and direct our thoughts in a way that we can also learn something from the people that were living then. It's easier to understand megalithic structures in connections. On the island Sardinia, many circular structures were built from boulders without mortar. These were of many sizes and were called Nuraghas. These were built in the Bronze Age and 7000 have been preserved until present day. Nobody has answered their purpose yet. Another unexplained mystery is 40 000 circular structures in Ireland. All of those have similar architecture, but they differ in their degree of segmentation and therefore by their mass in the same way as Nuraghas on Sardinia. Similar structures are also located on Aran Islands. The greatest of them has an area of a few football pitches. It's composed of four mounds that are 1.7 meters high and their width is five meters. All the circular structures have a similar sign: they have no windows or battlement and they also don't have any water sources. There are thousands of spiky stone blocks with sharp edges (suction by a point) between the third and fourth mound, which are about as high as the rampart. In our current view there is no obvious purpose for their construction. Erich von Daniken puts these in connection with the remnants of The Great Zimbabwe and reminds us that we currently know about hundred and fifty similar places. I agree with Mr. Daniken that these structures need to be put in connection. They were built for the purpose of interconnection of the etheric raster, which is conducting and may be used to transfer information. Every similar piece of information inspires us towards further new pieces of knowledge. It can be deducted from the Tibetan prayer mills, which produce energy by rotation of metal cylinders by friction of two different substances air with metal, that there aren't similar energetic sources in high altitudes to the ones in low altitudes. In another case the Czech scientists have proved that the region under high voltage wires definitely influences the behavior of animals. Prof. Hynek Burda from Essen says: "If an animal behaves in a different way to its normal behavior under high voltage wires, there must undoubtedly be changes on its brain, cellular and molecular level." Scientists have come with a surprising discovery last year. They found that herds of cattle, deers or roe-deers sleep and eat in such a posture that their bodies are aligned in a north-south orientation. They have now found that the animals loose this ability under high voltage wires. They behave very chaotically and stand in a way that their body is randomly aligned, unlike under normal conditions. As soon as they go away from the high voltage wires they eat and sleep in a north-south orientation again. "The disturbing effect by the behavior of these animals can be observed up to fifty meters away from the high voltage."The scientists admit that they are opening a door into space, where they only suspect what may be hidden behind. I can add to this new piece of knowledge that similar negative influence of the high voltage may be seen not only by animals but also by drivers. I have been observing an increased occurrence of traffic accidents on a road near my residence. There is a high voltage line, which copies the road on a section that is tens of kilometers long. I'm describing this in other former articles. I have noted this critical distance of fifty meters from the high voltage as an important piece of knowledge and I will be checking this up further. According to my research this distance reaches into zones and it probably follows that the zones that are further from the source disperse their energetic value. The 3D raster creates charges of static electricity. This can be proved by many experiments, which are described on my web pages. However, this is only a small hint for further research. In order to get on the right track it would be necessary to map and measure zones of the greatest charges on the Earth at first. These are sea currents, great rivers and also further zones of great constant charges. It would also be beneficial to find out, which changes in the etheric raster are caused by 1800 thunderstorms that are constantly occurring and by the fact that one hundred lightning strikes discharge every second. Practically, the energy that is released is equal to the energy that would be released in a small nuclear war. There are about three billions of lightning strikes that strike the Earth every year and the number of thunderstorms that occur on the Earth is 16 million per year. I think that if we don't fill in the gaps of information missing in this part of physics, we won't be able not only to solve questions of ancient history but also many other present day cases. Miroslav Provod http://www.miroslavprovod.com
At last a well researched expose of the pseudo-historic lies promulgated by the medieval church in Ireland! St Patrick never even visited most of the churches he was supposed to have founded in southern Ireland, it was just made up to feed the ambitions of the church of Armagh in its climb to supremacy. Stories of the overthrow of 'serpents' (Earth energies) / 'demons' (goddesses)/ pagan lords (Donn or Crom Dubh, the god of agriculture) are endlessly repeated for many locations. But they're all propanganda! The main theme of this weighty tome, which I discovered on the internet and ordered thru the magical means of print-on-demand, is that the capital of ancient Connaught of the Iron Age was centred around Turoe (Teamhair in Gaelic) and nearby Rath Cruacha and Knocknadala, sacred hills in Galway near modern Athenry NOT the Rathcroghan/Cruachan in Roscommon, nor the Tara (Teamhair in Gaelic) of Meath. An ancient city with massive lines of defensive earthworks lies hidden under the landscape and the author has mapped it out physically and through a study of place-names. I have also been told that roadworks on the N6 in the vicinity in recent times revealed traces of the city, but as heritage laws are virtually non-existent, these were hastily paved over and I could find no mention on internet searches. The author asserts that Tara in Meath, so celebrated as the centre for high-kingship, was also hyped up in the spin, and the idea of a central king came very late in the day. Tara was part of Ulster, the kingdom of the Ulaid, the indigenous peoples who were there before large migrations of Fir Bolg came over from southern England, fearful of Roman invasions, and set up their royal centres in Galway during the Iron Age. "Turoe's oppidum hosts Europe's most unique Celtic La Tene-decorated stone surrounded by a vast Belgic defensive system of linear dykes uniquely linked to the Celtic invasion of Ireland. Recorded by Ptolemy of Alexandria (as 'Nagnatal') it was suppressed by Irish pseudo historians." The author has a website at www.handofhistory.com The Turoe stone is definitely impressive, but not quite unique, as there are four others in Ireland and I recently visited the second most impressive specimen, the Castlestrange Stone, pictured below, near Athleague in Roscommon. These highly sacred stones with their Iron Age La Tene decorations are thought to be associated with the ceremonies of inauguration of chiefs, conveying sacred kingship over the land. They provided an axis mundi for territory and the would-be king was symbolically united with the goddess of the land in gaining the legitimacy of rule. Not surprisingly, I discovered a female deva stationed on the Castlestrange Stone and she boasted a fish tale and a comb for her long hair. This would suggest Aine, the goddess of land, sunshine and water the sovereignty goddess.
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2. Reviewed by Anne Guest "Water is a subject that I find endlessly fascinating and it is very clear that Alanna does too. Her joyful travelogue of water spirits around the world has been a journey inspired by love. Alanna begins by posing four questions: Who are the water spirits? What is their true spiritual nature? What functions do they hold as landscape beings? And how is it possible for them to be perceived today? Her answers to these questions are served up in a wonderful hot pot of information, personal experience and practical advice on how to connect with water spirits. Alanna has cast her net very wide indeed, hauling in Indian, British, Australian, Irish, South American and Middle Eastern water deities both from the past and the present. It is an impressive catch "This new book provides a comprehensive collection of information and a rich insight into the world of water spirits and their manifestations and descriptions in the folklore, myths and legends of cultures around the world. Serpents, dragons, water goddesses and wells, sun gods and hot springs and water beasties aropund the world are all included as well as pilgrimages and the place of water in religion... "If we learn to reconnect with water spirits we may be able to help enhance this valuable resource. The magical beings that operate in different dimensions were understood and honoured in other eras and leaning more about their history in different cultures is a good way for us to learn to reconnect and work with these beings. Included in the book are some wonderful insights into dowsing with those spirits to learn from them. This well researched and informative book is a great resource to help us to better understand and work with the devic world."
This slim volume is a real treasure trove and it gives many valuable insights into Aboriginal cosmology and astronomy, including the interpretation of certain Sydney (Kuringai) rock art in the light of this. The significance of the Milky Way, Southern Cross and Emu Dreaming etc are noted; colour pics are great. I love the cover photo of the emu in the sky above an emu carving of the same shape in Sydney (and images of this award winning photo are available from www.emuinthesky.com). Recommended reading.
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