Twinn
EEG - Crediton - 2011
Accrediting Crediton
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The Earth Energies Group on tour in the peninsula
Mid Devon is one of the last parts of the south west not to become overly touristified. Crediton, on the outer fringe of the Exeter commuter belt is still a relatively self-contained market town. Accommodation may be scarce, but for the dowsing visitor it has two trump cards - a magnificent micro-cathedral (complete with a nodal point on the Michael and Mary lines) and an ideal cameo of an arts centre, hidden away behind a portent of things to come - even in Crediton - a bistro.
With four very varied and quite arresting speakers, we were in for a real treat. First up was local ALG front man, Paul Gerry. Paul is a clinical neuro-physiologist, who uses cutting edge brain scanning equipment in his work. His talk was an excellent précis of the well-known (and not so well-known) studies of the reactions of the human brain to dowsing-related activity. He pointed out that some of the experimental work that has formed our current understanding of ‘how dowsing works’ can be seen in hindsight to be flawed, or at least to be incomplete. Other research has been overtaken by our growing awareness, and by discoveries made outside of the dowsing community. This was, even to me, a rather stark revelation. In a nutshell, we need to start again.
The BSD/EEG has therefore purchased some modest hardware and software to enable us to do just that. Paul talked us through how the body-sensing equipment could be used, and he indicated some of the questions we might seek to consider. Over the coming months and years, it is hoped that Paul and his team can assemble an appropriate cross-section of the public, from experienced dowsers and healers through to complete novices and outright sceptics, to examine and challenge the received wisdom. In due course, he hopes to get out on the road, demonstrating and working with our equipment. If you thought it was already an exciting era to be a dowser, it’s just about to get even more compelling. Watch this space.
While we were still trying to absorb all that, our second speaker, Michael Oon added yet another particularly well-crafted arrow to our quiver. Michael is a long-standing feng shui practitioner (as well as being a former Metropolitan Police forensics officer). He continued the scientific approach by explaining that the ancient art of the east essentially uses and examines the etheric energies above ground, in a similar way to those that western earth energy dowsers study and manipulate below the surface. The two disciplines may have originated on either side of the globe, but they seem to complement each other perfectly.
Much of modern feng shui deals with yang (male) energy, which resides predominantly with a zone up to about six feet above the earth’s surface - and it is derived from and driven by the spin of the earth. This energy flows from high points, such as mountains, down to the sea. The skill of the craft concerns what you do with it as it passes.
Much of his presentation documented case studies, including many of his own. These were of prominent buildings in London that had employed, or had been affected by changes to the urban form, which had been enhanced or devalued by alterations to the energy flow. For many of us, it opened yet another whole new vista of research opportunities - and we had only just reached lunchtime!
The afternoon started with something completely different again. John Harding is a bee-keeper on a mission - driven by the evidence of his own experience. Following a family crisis, John’s extensive empire of hives was temporarily abandoned. As one would expect, most of the colonies either died off, or swarmed away to somewhere more congenial. However, a minority did not - and despite receiving next to no attention, and against all the odds, they thrived. Even to an experienced apiarist, this was, to put it mildly, a bit of a surprise.
To cut a long and intriguing story short, John discovered, via dowsing, that the successful colonies were all positioned over geopathically-stressed energy lines. In fact, the most vigorous colonies were those that had, by chance, been sited over the crossing points of these currents. His bees seemed to like the very places that would have stung most humans into moving house. It was a startling discovery, and one that is still far too radical for most of the existing bee-keeping fraternity to take seriously. However, his books are gradually gaining a world-wide distribution and, as with the rest of the dowser’s toolkit, others are starting to take an interest.
John feels that the substance behind his discovery is that the ground above a geopathically stressed line ‘hums’ at a certain wavelength. It is just this vibrational disturbance that bees like so much - and that we don’t. He openly acknowledges that positioning hives is not the whole solution. Locational disturbance, the misuse of certain broadcast frequencies, loss of habitat and chemical contamination all play a part. However, by physically siting the hives in specific places, much of this higher-level detriment could be overcome by healthier bees in healthier colonies. Dowsing - pure, practical and positive.
Last, but by no means least, we had Cornwall-based clinical hypnotherapist, David Ward, who is a long-standing member of the BSD. His presentation showed clearly that dowsing and hypnotherapy are very much fellow travellers.
Dave was initially inspired by the father of modern hypnotism, Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815). Mesmer is famous for using volunteers to carry out large numbers of experiments, which seemed to imply that humans, and possibly other creatures, possess a level of non-physical communication that could not be explained by the science of the day (nor, for that matter, by the science of today).
In a way, Mesmer occupies much the same position in his field that Guy Underwood holds in earth energy dowsing; a man at the forefront of his science, who made a connection too far, and suffered ridicule in hindsight. But just as Billy Gawn has recently re-evaluated the groundbreaking work of Underwood, so Dave is all for a re-appraisal of the significance of Franz Mesmer.
Another former leading researcher of the mind was, of course, Sigmund Freud. Although Freud’s star continues to wane, he did at least come up with the revolutionary hypothesis that what we can access with our conscious mind is just the tip of the mental iceberg. In certain circumstances, we can drag out information from our subconscious, but most of our experience is submerged in the unconscious, where it remains unavailable to the conscious self. Hypnosis is a tool that enables a person, with the aid of a therapist, to drill down in a structured way into those unconscious depths. It could be argued that this is also exactly what we are doing when we use dowsing tools.
The word ‘hypnotism’ itself (coined by the Scottish surgeon, James Braid, 1795-1860, and derived from the Greek root hypnos, meaning sleep) is a complete misnomer. The whole point about hypnosis - in parallel with both dowsing and meditation - is that the client is deeply relaxed, but completely awake. If you have gone to sleep, you’ve taken a wrong turning!
Many of Dave’s routine cases have issues that relate to episodes that have happened earlier in their lives - episodes that may have been blanked out by the affected person for any number of quite understandable reasons. The work of the hypnotist is to guide the client back through their life to discover, and then to address, the problem under investigation. This process mirrors the work of the dowser, as it is simply the search for vital information, unavailable to five gross senses. Only once this information has been retrieved, can true healing begin.
The leap into the unknown occurs when the client under hypnosis regresses deeper and deeper into their earliest memories, until they transcend the veil into a previous cycle. By way of an encore, Dave offered the whole group the opportunity to experience a past life regression for themselves, which many accepted. Experiences were shared and observations considered.
As if that was not enough, on Sunday we had a second bite of the cherry. With the weather forecast sadly deterring us from our field trip on to Dartmoor, David Lockwood opened the morning’s proceedings by asking the apparently innocent question to the assembled multitude ‘What do you feel happens to you when you die?’. Two hours of animated, and at times intense, discussion later, we felt it was time for some lunch! This was clearly a topic that would have provided a weekend’s active engagement on its own.
With the sky lifting a little, we ventured across the road in the afternoon to examine the massive parish church of the Holy Cross (remember this is where Michael and Mary intersect), the national shrine of local lad, St Boniface, who is also the patron saint of Germany.
We spent quite a while mulling over the various energy patterns and configurations we found there - each seemingly finding some different aspect, of personal interest to themselves. The Michael/Mary crossing point, and a second node amongst the choir stalls, were of particular significance. Again, a whole weekend could have been happily spent in this impressive and hugely energetic dowser’s laboratory.
We finshed off with a guided tour of a couple of local Holy Wells. One was hidden, secret, walled and peaceful. The other was open and reconstructed, and sited on the edge of a playing field. The consensus was that the latter wasn’t technically a ‘Holy’ Well at all, but it was an excellent study site for all that.
I started by saying that Crediton is not exactly a tourist town. Our last port of call was to find somewhere for a quiet cream tea, or the like, on a Sunday afternoon. We ended up in the only place open for refreshments - Wetherspoons!
Another fascinating and thought provoking weekend, with the EEG in full flow. Well done, in particular, to AIW, Bill Holding and Paul Gerry for their input and their dedication to the cause.
Nigel Twinn
October 2013