When the Dragon Eats the Sun God

The 2008 total solar eclipse in the Gobi Desert

 

Eclipses have been observed and recorded in China for over 3000 years.  At one time, it was believed that a mighty dragon progressively ate chunks out of the solar disc until it disappeared.  The terrified populous therefore sought to drive the dragon away by making a tumultuous noise.  Each time they were successful, in that the sun duly reappeared.  Such is the stuff of legend.  

 

With just a few days to go to the start of the 2008 Olympic Games, almost all eyes were on Beijing.  Only a small section of northern China seemed even dimly aware of the celestial manifestation about to unfold in their midst.

 

The mighty bastion at Jiuquin is the last on the Ming version of the Great Wall.  Beyond it, the most dramatic and eccentric engineering wonder of the world peters out into the nothingness of the Gobi Desert.  Even the Mongol hordes were not expected to be foolhardy enough to attack the empire by trying to cross the wasteland beyond this point.  However, it was close to here that 303 miscellaneous amateur and professional astronomers, replete with a wondrous array of state-of-the-art astronomical and photographic equipment - and two dowsers with a kitchen colander and four pieces of bent wire - were disgorged by a dozen coaches onto the baking sand and bare rock.        

 

We had dowsed at eclipses before, concentrating on the impact of the planetary alignment on earth energy lines.  We had discovered that those lines seemed to shut down during totality and possibly to reappear somewhere else.  

 

This time we took our investigations a bit further.  Leaving the coach, my wife Ros marched purposefully out into the desert until she found a spot that seemed appropriate.  This turned out to be the crossing point of two modest earth energy lines. An energy spiral was already more than we had ever previously sought to study in the precious and brief period of a solar eclipse.  However, within a few yards, I also found a water line and a (ley) line of consciousness.  Could we cope with monitoring all the potential changes to these phenomena, whilst staying in the moment and being overwhelmed by the awesome aerial display?  Having come this far, we had to try.  I marked up the edges of the various lines ‘at rest’ and we waited – watching the shrinking sun making crescent patterns through the holes of the colander. 

 

As in previous eclipses, the initial contact of the moon’s shadow with the solar disc produced no tangible reaction. But as totality approached everything picked up speed.  The earth energy lines collapsed from about 9 paces across towards singularity, while the water line started to spread – only by about 18 inches each side on a line 12-15 ft wide, but a definite and measurable widening for all that. 

 

In the melee of activity surrounding the 1 minute and 50 seconds of totality, accuracy has to take second place to the establishment of concepts, but amidst the excitement, we did manage to answer a few other questions about the dowsable effects of an eclipse. 

 

The earth energy lines that shrank away to lines with no apparent width during totality, but nonetheless left the energy spiral at their crossing point in place throughout – indicating that my previous hypothesis that these lines disappear at one wavelength only to reappear at another, might indeed be the case.  I had no time to measure any reduction in the size or strength of the spiral, or any transformation in wavelength of either of the lines.  The sequence of totality may be a gradual process, but it seems to pass in an instant.

 

It was confirmed once again, however, that an eclipse is a magical moment, when the subtle energies around us, that are so hard to measure, but quite easy to sense when you are tuned in, change rapidly and dramatically.  To the pre-scientific world that was more aware of its intuition and had less hard science to work on, the sensations and the emotions associated with such events would have been very profound indeed.     

 

Ros studied the polarity of one of the earth energy lines, which had an initial count of 12 for maleness and 4 for femaleness.  Both counts increased considerably for about 20 minutes as the moon started its journey across the face of the sun.  Then there was a sudden drop in both counts as we drew nearer to totality.  The counts for maleness and femaleness were identical throughout, dropping away to zero during totality and rising again over the next 25 minutes or so - gradually returning to their ‘at rest’ levels.

 

The expansion of the water line was new to me, but maybe this is not too surprising given the impact of the moon on underground water.  Our subterranean stream was about 22 feet under the sand (and was marked on the surface by a dried up storm rivulet).  Despite the measurable growth in width at ground level, there was no apparent impact on its dowsable depth during the eclipse.       

 

The ley line, which linked a notch on the southern horizon with a hilltop on the northern horizon, remained constant throughout – silently watching, much as it must have done throughout the 4000 years since it was first laid down.  As this was a line containing no apparent earth energy, again perhaps it is not too surprising that even a major planetary alignment would have no measurable impact upon it.    

 

A cloud obscured the sun almost right up to first contact, to the immense concern of all those present - and in particular those recording the spectacle optically.  But it moved away obligingly at just the right moment and stayed stage left until the very end of the performance. The dragon was clearly feeling benevolent towards us.

 

Many thanks to Brian McGee and Explorers Travel for getting us there – and to John Mason and the British Astronomical Association for hosting the dowsing duo.       

            

 

 

Nigel Twinn

Tamar Dowsers

August 2008