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In recent times, I have often followed the lead of one of my mentors, Billy Gawn.  When I visit a sacred site, especially one that I have visited numerous times before, I tend to ask ‘What is the most important aspect of this place that I should dowse today?’

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 So it was that, on the occasion of Ros’s special birthday, we found ourselves in surprisingly mild and dry conditions for January at The Merry Maidens, a CASPN well-kept and much visited megalithic structure, a few miles to the west of Penzance, in Penwith, Cornwall. 

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With the wan winter sun defying the forecasters’ prediction of heavy cloud, and a murmuration of starlings swooshing in and out of the distant murk, it felt like a suitably magical place to carry out some quietly serious dowsing research.

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 I have always assumed, perhaps because of the name, the shape or the nature of its earth energy lines, that The Merry Maidens is essentially a ‘female’ location – and maybe, from some perspectives, that’s how it seems.  However, when I asked for what I should dowse for on this occasion, I found myself working with one of ‘Billy’s planetary grids’ – in this case, a section of the solar grid. 

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 The first Sun line I dowsed ran straight through the middle of the stone circle, virtually east to west.  At ten paces wide, the strand was already much wider than I would have anticipated, based on previous interactions with that type of grid.  However, in what seemed like no time at all, it had doubled in size, taking in much of the stone circle.  By the time I had sought the corresponding cross-member of the grid, and found that it too was running straight through the centre of the MMs, it was also around 20 paces wide.  So, the site was being bathed in a double dose of the influence of the sun (perhaps enhanced by the fact that it was rapidly coming up to midday). 

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 A further piece of intuitive research demonstrated that other solar grid lines, which effectively form an ethereal external box around and beyond the circle of stones, had also expanded in width – and these now all-but abutted those crossing inside the enclosure.  The outcome of this line-spread appeared to be that the whole site was carpeted in solar energy (or earth/solar energy, if you prefer to think of it that way).  In fact, the phenomenon dowsed as being active in this manner for about 100 metres around the site – and/or around me.

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 I am not saying that this was entirely the direct result of my attention (although that could be one explanation), but the fact that I could sense and measure it certainly seemed to be something to do with the interaction of my consciousness, with that of the energies of the celestial bodies and, of course, with the life-force of the petrified ladies.

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 To literally square the circle, Ros suggested that I dowsed for any pieces of the lunar grid that might also be present.  To my surprise, not only does the moon’s interaction with the terrestrial energy also occur within the circle, but it crosses in four places – forming an internal square of the lunar grid.    Before we get too carried away with this remarkable finding, while the solar grid crossing is almost dead centre to the geometry of the MMs, the lunar grid square is slightly off centre to the south east.   However, given all the other alignments, patterns, geological and supra-natural features that these 19 stones mark and/or sustain, the fact that both lunar and solar features occur here with such accuracy is remarkable in itself.

Almost alongside us, but thankfully over a couple of Cornish Hedges, gangs of early season cauliflower pickers were being bussed in, en masse, to make the most of the unexpectedly dry day.   Their calls and frenetic activity were a prosaic counterpoint to the acrobatic flock effortlessly patterning the mottled sky, and to the sophisticated stones silently marking the passing of human time.

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 My dowsing indicated that many of the representatives of mankind who had lived here and moved on, upwards of five millennia ago, had known about the invisible currents and the subtle grids – and, long before their descendants, who erected the more modern megaliths still standing here, unintentionally bequeathed their hidden knowledge to those who might pass that way in times to come. 

 It is tempting to see those distant ancestors as people who made the choice to consciously pass on their insights – possibly with foreknowledge.  Today, we too stand at a tipping point – a similar fork in the road of human development – environmentally, socially, even spiritually.   Will we leave future generations information in the ether, or on the ground, to help or forewarn them – and if so, what form might it take?

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Twenty minutes dowsing drifted into an hour and a half.  Places like The Merry Maidens can seem timeless and limitless.  The starlings disappeared to ground as if they had dropped through a portal, while the brassica collectors chopped continuously through a non-existent lunch break – and the dowsers retired for coffee, cake and conversation.   Parallel images of identical worlds.

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 Nigel Twinn, Tamar Dowsers, January 2019