I’m Grahame Gardner, and you’ve found your way to my personal geomantic corner of the interweb. In here, you will find details about my dowsing and geomancy work, together with a mixed bag of articles, thoughts, ruminations and other belly rumblings connected with these esoteric subjects.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive resource on geomancy – for that I suggest you head over to our parent website The Geomancy Group, where I am also the webmaster and contribute a fair bit of the content; or check out some of the other geomantic and dowsing links displayed on the left.
Have a rummage around the site and, if you see something you like or want to get in touch to ask about a consultation, or for any other reason, please leave a comment or send an email.
If you’re looking for my lighting design site, you want Dogstar Design.
I’ve just returned from a weekend teaching course in Avebury, where I was tutoring 16 students through the BSD’s Earth Energies Level 4 course ‘Understanding Earth Energy Power Centres and Features of Special Geomantic Significance’ . It’s probably the most academic and ‘left-brain’ of all the Earth Energy courses as it covers topics including sacred geometry and celestial mechanics – not the easiest material to teach even when you are interested in the subject. However, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and we had a good time exploring the Avebury complex of sites, visiting West Kennet long barrow, Swallowhead Spring and the Sanctuary, as well as the main Avebury circles of course.
The idea of the course is to give the students an understanding of why sacred sites almost always incorporate astronomical alignments to significant celestial happenings – be it a summer solstice sunrise as at Stonehenge, or the sunrise on a saint’s feast day as in some churches and cathedrals – and to show how designing the space using sacred geometry can actually enhance the use of the space by creating a subliminal resonance to the structure.
As modern city-dwellers we are astonishingly ignorant of what goes on in the night sky. It’s rare to find someone who knows what phase the moon is in, let alone find someone who knows how to find north on a starry night. Yet our Neolithic ancestors had an intimate and detailed knowledge about this, and constructed their stone circles as sophisticated megalithic calendars in order to track the turning of the seasons, the long-term cycles of the moon, and even when the next solar eclipse was due. All from just a few stones in the ground! There may still be some old-school archaeologists who dispute the validity of archaeoastronomy, but as I (hopefully) demonstrated on the course, anyone who has been to Callanish and seen the major southern standstill of the Moon can hardly fail to be convinced that the site was constructed purely to observe that specific event, even if you do have to wait nearly 19 years between standstills.
As to the geometry – well, we were presented with a wonderful example of this overnight with the appearance of a crop formation near the Alton Barnes White Horse (aerial picture from Crop Circle Connector)
Now, I’m by no means an expert on crop circles and haven’t visited many, but from reading reports by other dowsers and researchers, I was expecting to be able to feel some energy or at least dowse some earth energies in the formation. Yet four experienced earth energy dowsers could find hardly anything of dowseable energy in the formation. There were some small vortices in the centres of the circles, and I did dowse a water line running across the third one down on the central axis, but otherwise – none of us felt a thing. Not a tickle. The lay of the crop wasn’t very neatly done either, and the central axis was a little off a straight line. In short, it seemed to us like a hastily-constructed fake.
Rather poorly-laid crop at the head of the formation
However some people seemed to be getting something out of it. The prone lady at the centre of the ‘head’ circle was either completely attuned to the formation or perhaps simply overwhelmed by the heat?
Tuning in or just snoozing?
Whatever you make of them, and whether they are ‘real’ (whatever that is) or just carefully-constructed fakes, crop circles are still a wonderful expression of creativity in the landscape. It’s always interesting to see what interpretations people come up with – check out this ‘channelled’ explanation of the Alton Barnes one: http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2010/whitehorse/articles.html
Me? I prefer to keep an open mind on such things, although as Terry Pratchett says, “the trouble with having an open mind of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
I managed to attend Duncan’s talk about the Sighthill stones on the summer solstice, followed up by a walk up to the circle to see the sunset. I’ve certainly never seen so many folk at the circle before, and we were blessed with clear skies for the event. I was keen to see how the real thing compared with my Stellarium landscape, and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was pretty accurate. Here’s a picture of things in Stellarium:
…and here’s the real thing, taken looking over the centre stone, which of course you don’t see in the Stellarium landscape (because the camera was sitting on it). There are too many people about to see the marker stone, but trust me it was bang on the money:
Duncan seemed pleased with all the attention, and was also glad of the clear skies as it is quite rare to get a clear sunset in June in Glasgow. Here he is with the setting sun casting the shadow of its aligned stone onto the central stone, just as he designed it to do.
I have just updated the site to WordPress 3.0 and also updated the theme. Things seem to be working, but inevitably there are bound to be a few minor glitches, so bear with me until I get it all ironed out. If you’re having major problems with anything please send me an email to let me know.
It was created in the late 1970s to mirror the rise and fall of the moon and sun across Glasgow on a site of ancient astronomical interest.
Now efforts are being made to rejuvenate the Sighthill Stone Circle, created by amateur astronomer and science writer Duncan Lunan, who brought Britain’s first authentically alligned stone circle in more than 3000 years to Glasgow’s inner city.
More than 30 years later, Lunan hopes to revive interest in the stone circle, which was built by the Glasgow Parks Astronomy Department using funds from the former Jobs Creation Scheme.
When money for the project was abruptly scrapped by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, four pieces of stone never made it to the circle and are now stashed under a nearby bush in Sighthill Park. It is hoped the circle can now be completed as Lunan intended.
At the stones yesterday, Lunan said: “There is still nothing up here to say who built the circle, who it was built for or how it works. I have been told that nowadays children are afraid of it, that they think it is linked to black magic, that sort of thing. That is something I want to change.”
I was pleased to see this article in the Herald as I know Duncan well and am very fond of his stone circle, although it is of little interest from an earth energies point of view as Duncan’s focus was purely on the astronomical alignments. In fact it is sited over the old Buchanan Street station tunnel. But it’s a lovely little circle despite the graffiti on the stones and the perpetual litter, and on my last visit there a month or so ago I found some floral offerings and a memorial wreath, sure signs that some local pagans have adopted it as their local sacred spot.
The circle has alignments to the solsticial sunrises and sets, the major and minor lunar standstills, and the rising of the star Rigel both for 1979 AD and 1800BC. The four stones that remain half-buried in the nearby bushes would be used to mark the cardinal points.
Here’s an interesting story from the European Committee for Homeopathy…
In a recent study Professor Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who co-discovered HIV and who won the Nobel Prize in 2008, and his team report the results of a series of rigorous experiments investigating the electromagnetic properties of highly-diluted biological samples.
The study demonstrates that some bacterial DNA sequences are able to induce electromagnetic waves at high aqueous dilutions. It appears to be a resonance phenomenon triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency waves. The researchers used aqueous solutions that were agitated and serially diluted (the researchers note that the solutions were ‘strongly agitated’ and that this step was ‘critical for the generation of signals’). In other words homeopathic potencies, although the word ‘homeopathy’ is not mentioned in the article.
I heard of this story a few years ago, when ‘druids’ placed quartz pillars on either side of a road in Austria to reduce accidents at a notorious black spot. Now it seems to have surfaced a bit more publicly if this story in the Metro is anything to go by (it also appeared in other papers).
Needless to say, this is the sort of earth healing that many dowsers and geomancers do all the time – you don’t have to be a Druid! Although maybe the robes help…?
I first came across this film on Alex Tsakaris’ Skeptiko podcast, where he interviewed the film maker Renée Scheltema. It’s also mentioned on Dean Radin’s blog – perhaps not surprising, as Dean features quite heavily in the film!
Following three very personal psychic experiences, Renée set out to investigate and interview the top researchers in the field of parapsychology and documents her journey of discovery along the way. It covers the ‘Big 5′ of psi – Clairvoyance, Precognition, Telepathy, Psychokinesis and Healing, and features interviews with the likes of Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, Hal Puthoff, Gary Schwartz, and former astronaut Ed Mitchell amongst others.
I had to order this from the States, but fortunately it does come as a PAL format DVD for the UK market. I haven’t yet seen it advertised in UK cinemas, but I hope Renée manages to find a distributor for it, or at least manages to sell it to a TV company, as it is an important documentary and well worth watching.
It’s not as proselytising as ‘What The Bleep?’ and it doesn’t try to force the science into a contrived storyline – all in all it’s a pretty low-key presentation that lets the facts speak for themselves. Like a good documentary should be, in fact.
Although there’s nothing that will be surprising to those of us well-versed in this sort of stuff, it’s one of those must-have DVDs to show to your sceptical friends. At the very least it will provoke an interesting discussion.
(Actually, it’s more than Word of the Week; it’s one of my all-time favourite words.)
Liminality (from the Latin limen, meaning ‘a threshold’ – Wikipedia) denotes a state that is betwixt or between, a transition, border or threshold between different states of being, places or times. It is the middle ground between one thing and another, a place of limbo having qualities of both but being identified with neither. A liminal place has more likelihood of hosting a supernatural event, or it can provide the optimum conditions for an act of magic to propagate successfully, especially if the act is performed at a liminal time. Examples of liminal places include caves, bogs, springs, rivers, coastlines, fords, marshes, passes, mountaintops and, importantly, boundaries. Liminality is a boundary condition.
mountaintops - between the earth and the sky.
If you have ever stood on a peat bog gazing into the inky blackness of a watery pool, you will understand the concept of liminality. The pull is strong, and the urge to throw oneself into the apparently bottomless pool can be hard to resist. You can instinctively understand why the Celts regarded these black mirrors as portals to the Underworld, and why they felt compelled to make sacrificial offerings of weapons or treasure to them. Liminal boundaries seem to exude this sort of attraction; the subconscious urge to throw oneself off a cliff or other high place, to dive into the sea from a moving ship, to climb a high mountain, the fascination with staring into a fire – these are all examples of liminal effects. We are connecting with the Spiritus Mundi – the collective unconscious at these moments. Consciously we are barely aware of it of course – that’s why we use the term subliminal for these kinds of stimuli, influences that are below our normal threshold of awareness.
The cave - entrance to the Underworld
Caves are another good example of liminal places; they are a transitional zone extending into the Underworld itself, the very womb of the Goddess. It is no surprise that the Neolithic shamans painted their ochre figures on cave walls to communicate with the Ancestors and the spirits of the animals they hunted. It is easy to picture the paintings coming to life and the spirits emerging from the rock face in the flickering torchlight.
In human experience, liminal life events would include the period between first menstruation and first sexual experience, between graduation and first job, engagement and marriage, conception and birth and of course the ultimate liminal event, death. We feel a need to mark these transitions with ritual observations and community ceremonies, each of which further imprints the moment in time upon our collective memories.
A railway line, a motorway, a national border or even a wall dividing two communities in a town or city can all be seen as liminal places. Their strength or power will depend on how long the artefact has been there and the effect it has had on the people either side of it. For instance, the Berlin Wall had a huge liminal presence and the collective psycho-spiritual and emotional release when it came down was enormous. No-man’s land, airports and hotels (for travellers, not those working there), disputed territories, and of course, crossroads are all liminal areas. The tale of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who allegedly sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads, is a classic example of liminality. If you are a fan of the Narnia books, even a wardrobe can become a liminal place for you.
Liminal times are typically twilight and dawn, the zones between darkness and sunlight; and also midnight, as well as seasonal dates such as Hogmanay, the solstices and equinoxes, and the cross-quarter days of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. Acts of magic performed at these times are thought to be more effective as the energies of the time, being in a state of flux between one time and the next, are more amenable to manipulation and control. In the classical parlance, ‘the Veil is thin’ at these times.
Between earth and sky at Lewes fire festival.
Beltane,the start of summer in the Celtic year when the land is at its most fertile, was traditionally the time when the herds were moved up into the hills and the fires of the community were extinguished and ‘rebooted’ by lighting them from a central flame, the Bel- or need-fire, which would have been kindled by hand using a fire drill or perhaps a burning glass. It’s one of the major turning points of the year, the other being Samhain when the Wheel turns towards the dark once again. At these between-times, often the normal mores and customs of society were set aside to allow change to manifest (in the case of Beltane, this often involved fertility rituals and indiscriminate coupling in the woods – in fact in some places, such as the Edinburgh Beltane Fire Festival, I’m sure this still goes on!).
But the essential concept here is the need to induce change, either in ourselves or in our community, and harnessing the most favourable energies of time and space in order to do just that. Typically the magician or shaman will align their magic with the qualities of the time and/or place concerned; for example spells of creation or fecundity are traditionally performed at the Full Moon, whereas spells of decrease or banishment are performed during the dark of the Moon. We make our New Year resolutions and carry out our ‘first foot’ rituals each Hogmanay to close the door on the old year and set a new paradigm for ourselves in the year ahead. In essence, we are grasping the essential qualities of both sides of the liminal boundary and, by our act of Will, weaving them together.
Perhaps this explains why we still have so much strife in the world over disputed territories and borders. In our modern societies, we no longer have shamans in positions of power that can perceive and implement the unifying template that will knit both sides of the liminal divide together and make them whole. Until that equanimous meta-pattern is found, both sides must continue their struggle towards unity and harmony.
What changes do you want to implement in your life this Beltane?
According to the February issue of Electrosensitivity UK, two provinces in France are planning on replacing their entire wireless technology infrastructure with fibre-optics by July 2010:
To remove the health dangers of WiFi, Wimax, digital TV and digital Radio, the départments of the Drôme and the Ardèche in France are aiming by July 2010 to replace wireless with fibre-optic cables, at a cost of 123 M€ (184 M$). This will cover 100% of the population of 0.95 million, connecting 372,000 homes via the ordinary phone line through 213 switchboards.
It will provide ultra high speed broadband connection (100 Mbps) without any loss of signal due to distance, for a “triple play” service of Internet, telephone and TV. WiFi and WiMax will stop altogether because of their health dangers.
When is the UK going to get up to speed on this? I know BT are rolling out their fibre-optic broadband across the country, but in the home they still supply the most powerful WiFi router of any service provider. You might as well install a mobile phone mast in your garden – in fact, that would actually expose you to lower levels of microwaves! Until WiFi is banned from homes and schools, as France is doing, the UK’s NHS costs are going to keep escalating as more and more people get ill. But realistically, the competition between the various ISP’s in the UK means that it will probably require an Act of Parliament before any action is taken. I mean it’s not exactly in BT’s interest to lower the output of their Home Hub, is it?
Maybe it is time to think about moving to that cottage in France that you always thought about buying?
I’ve just finished reading one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever had the pleasure of holding in my hands – John Michell’s final work (with Allan Brown), How the World is Made – The Story of Creation According to Sacred Geometry. Everything about it screams quality; the proportions, the paper, the typeface, the layout, the content, and of course the 300+ beautiful watercolours of John’s sacred geometry illustrations, brought to rich, vibrant life on the page. To open the book is to step into a world of wonder and enlightenment, where every turn of the page reveals another gem to treasure or another profound Truth to enrich the soul. It reminds me somewhat of a cherished children’s story book with pictures – though the content is anything but childish. It’s a book you should definitely buy in hardback as you’re going to want to keep this one on the bookshelf and take it out frequently just to look at or to show it to friends, rather like a favourite ornament or piece of jewellery that you want to show off. It’s a wonderful legacy for John to have left us.
It will help if you have some familiarity with the fundamentals of sacred geometry, or have read some of John’s previous works on the subject as the book almost skims over the basic tenets and ratios, so impatient is it to get into the meaty areas like squaring the circle and the dimensions of the Heavenly City. It feels like the opening chapters were the last to be written and could have done with just a little more explanation to prevent them alienating newcomers to the subject. That may be the case – as John was still working on this book when he passed, perhaps those chapters had yet to receive a final draft revision. But don’t be put off – very soon you are literally drawn in to the magical world of sacred geometry as the vision unfolds.
Or perhaps Part 1 is deliberately dense to scare off the unworthy, because in Part 2, where the creation story develops through the numbers one to twelve, you do feel like an initiate in Plato’s academy as John takes us through topics like the construction of Atlantis, showing through geometry how their devotion to all things metric led to inherent flaws in the structure of their society and its ultimate collapse. This was actually an exercise that Plato set for his students, and it is so fiendishly hard to expand the required pentagonal and decagonal geometry by hand that John asked his co-writer Allan Brown to complete the exercise using computers; so although John wrote about this topic before in The Dimensions of Paradise, this is the first time that the full exposition has been seen in print.
Ever the traditionalist, John was always against the metric system, not least because the French geometers got it wrong when they came up with the metre – which is too short to be the perfect subdivision of the Earth’s meridian that it is supposed to be (unlike the ancient and traditional measures like the foot). The only ‘proper’ and stable societies have been based around the number 12, as John previously explored in a previous book Twelve Tribe Nations and the Science of Enchanting the Landscape. This is the number at the heart of the New Jerusalem diagram as pictured by John that adorns the cover of the book and is fully explained within.
We are also initiated into the numerical and geometric allegories behind some Bible stories, including the parable of the loaves and fishes and St. John’s Revelations, wherein the true Number of the Beast is revealed. Suddenly many previously obscure Biblical passages make perfect sense for the first time, and you feel that you almost have a glimpse of the fourth and highest stage of classical self-development, that of nous or divine understanding (the first three stages being ignorance, opinion, and knowledge).
Although this is a scholarly tome, John’s love of the subject, his talent as an illustrator, and his sense of humour make it a pleasure to read and a very enjoyable learning experience. On discussing the merits of A4 paper, we learn that it is a rectangle in the proportion of 1:√2, whose unique property is such that when divided in half, each half retains this proportion – hence the whole series of A paper sizes. In rational numbers, the proportion is 99 x 70, and A4 is 297 x 210mm or 3 times 99 x 70. As the book says, “these dimensions, about 11.7 x 8.3 inches, are too big for this book, as well as objectionably metric, but the root-2 proportion is attractive, so we have chosen the simple 9.9 x 7 inches.”
And very attractive it is too. Even if you don’t understand all of the sacred geometry, buy it anyway, because the inner child in you will be enthralled by the wonderful illustrations for years to come, and just maybe the rational adult in you will begin to comprehend the universal Truths that make this world – for those with ‘nous‘ to see – the real Heavenly City that is all around us.
I’m Grahame Gardner, and you’ve found your way to my personal geomantic corner of the interweb. In here, you will find details about my dowsing and geomancy work, together with a mixed bag of articles, thoughts, ruminations and other belly rumblings connected with these esoteric subjects.
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