Saturday May 4th 2013 was World Labyrinth Day, followed by International Dowsing Day on May 5, so I had decided to combine two of my favourite activities into a ‘Dowsing and Labyrinths’ day, which was held at Comrie in Perthshire. Although the weather wasn’t as sunny as anticipated, we had 16 people attending, a much better turnout than I had anticipated. I bravely decided to expose my legs for the first time this year in a pair of shorts.

After an indoor session learning the basics of dowsing using pendulums, we adjourned outside to practise with L-rods and soon located a nice little power centre – a blind spring with a crossing energy line – to site the goal of the labyrinth on. The pattern for this workshop was a 7-circuit Classical design – I find this design resonates well with most people and it is the most versatile design to use. I was planning to quickly lay this out with five stakes, line marking paint and rope using Robert Ferre’s method. I like this technique not only because it is relatively quick to do, it is also surprising and almost magical the way the rope swings round the stakes to reveal the curves of the labyrinth – when it is done properly, that is. Sadly, this was not one of those occasions! At two points we went somewhat awry and ended up with a path that was ‘closed’ with no connection to neighbouring paths. Not for the first time I found myself wishing that I had brought some green paint to correct mistakes! However, it is something of a maxim with labyrinth construction that something will go amiss at some point during the process, so I have long since ceased to worry about these mishaps.

The labyrinth completed, we adjourned for lunch, then for the rest of the afternoon we worked with the labyrinth, using conceptual models involving the chakras and the planets mapped onto the different paths to gain various personal insights. These are left-brain methods of working with the labyrinth, but they are what makes the labyrinth such a powerful transformational tool.

We concluded the afternoon by guiding each other, eyes closed, into the goal using Gardner’s Double Appleton, a wonderful labyrinth movement I ‘discovered’ a couple of years ago. This caused much confusion and hilarity, but it was a fitting end to the afternoon.

Dowsing the energy line before, during and after the afternoon’s walks revealed that it had gradually expanded until it was wider than the labyrinth diameter on its ‘downstream’ side – a common effect when labyrinths are properly created on power centres and walked frequently. This would fade naturally over the course of a few days if the labyrinth is not used. On the ‘upstream’ side of the energy line was a wonderful green man site guardian (left), who we paid our respects to before energetically closing down the labyrinth.

All in all, a very successful day; my thanks to everyone who came along, and particular thanks to Camilla for her generous hospitality and the use of her garden, not to mention her wonderful soup and cakes.

I shall be repeating this workshop at the American Society of Dowsers’ convention in Lyndonville, Vermont on Thursday June 6 2013, so this Comrie labyrinth was a good rehearsal for that. Hopefully I will be able to construct the labyrinth without errors next time round!