Tamar Dowsers Newsletter
August 2023
 

Back in Business

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After a ‘slight break’ due to IT issues at this end, we are back with a Newsletter and a raft of new events and outings to look forward to. We are grateful to all those mem- bers and friends who have offered to give talks, and to guide outings - and of course to all those who work behind the screens to keep the show on the road.

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As you will see from the list at the end of this newsletter, there are presentations, workshops, field trips and zooms on the schedule - augmented by national events for those who fancy foraging further afield.

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In particular, please note that the ever-popular DFest - the south west festival of dowsing - is back on the agenda for June 2024. It will be held once again in South Zeal - and I understand that the committee is working on the arrangements as I write. Hopefully, the TDs will be there in force.

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A Line in the Landscape

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I was interested to read in a recent edition of the Geographical Magazine an article about invisible lines in the social landscape. Of these, one example has a specific correlation with the dowsers worldview. Apparently, according to Orthodox Judaism, on the sabbath group members are not permitted to transport goods from the private to the public domain. This, of course, cases all sorts of practical problems, especially in an urban context. As a philosophical workaround, a wider area - known as an eruv - is often brought into conceptual existence, inside which the private space can be ex- panded to incorporate pieces of ground that would be public on any day other than Saturday. Although the eruv is essentially a concept - an invisible enclosure - it is often physically marked out with thin wire, which is checked regularly to ensure it has not become broken - and immediately repaired if any breaks are discovered.

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One such eruv is marked out around most of the land surface of Manhattan Island. Lord knows (if you’ll pardon the pun) how such a tenuous structure on that scale could be maintained.

This reminded me very much of the lines of red cotton used by some practitioners to define the boundary of a protected space around a bed or living space, when it is impractical to physically remove sources of detriment, such as flowing underground wa- ter. It also has an interesting parallel with the definition of a sacred space - initially probably installed by thought impregnation in the field, but later reinforced by stone walls and banks - as in the consecrated space surrounding sites of Christian and Pagan gathering and worship.


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Resonance at the Summer Solstice

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Any gathering organised by friend of the TDs, Anne Hughes, is always participatory, informative and enjoyable - and this was no exception.

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While the core of the solstice revellers were preparing to sing, process and dance - the prime purpose of arriving at 04.30 on a damp, but curiously mild, midsummer’s morn on Bodmin Moor - a lone dowser was plying his arcane craft in the mist, along- side the mysterious assemblage of standing and recumbent stones now known as The Hurlers.

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With just the blurred outlines of animals and a few bemused visitors for company, in went the BSD standard-issue flags delineating the Michael and the Mary lines.

While almost everyone else decamped northwards to salute and sing up the rising sun at the Bronze Age mound of Rillaton Barrow, the dowser ambled mindfully around the central stone circle checking his flags.

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On the surface, it all seemed a bit routine - just a good excuse for an early morning interaction with the currents we know so well. As ever, the lines had expanded as the main group had arrived, as the dowser had started working and as the occluded rising sun had struggled to make its presence felt in the morning murk. Birds sang gleefully; ponies and cattle stood motionless, perhaps in contemplation; and the low rumble of flying machines formed an occasional background drone - business as usual; a quiet corner of England (well, Kernow) at its most harmonious.

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Except that below the idyllic surface, rather odd things were happening. Firstly, the flagged energy lines weren’t expanding as fast as usual. On other occasions these flows have increased at varying rates, and often to twice the width when first mea- sured. This time they were widening almost in unison and not very much - and cer- tainly to no more than half as much again. When there was some sign of action, it seemed to arrive in pulses or irregular waves, rather than the steadier expansive eas- ing of previous occasions. A control set of flags on the main Benker grid section didn’t really move at all.

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OK, it was a quiet day, the celebrants had moved further away for much of the period of study and the weather was unusually still and humid (yes, still and humid at five of the clock on Bodmin Moor - cue, sound of climate emergency bells ringing).

Just one small enigmatic physical feature indicated that the tranquillity of the observ- able landscape not was not quite what it seemed. Shortly before the end of the solstice celebration, with the dancers and singers winding up their part of the proceedings, the flag that was marking the western edge of the central band of the Michael Line started to wobble. At first, I thought it was just a bit of wind - but none of the other flags were moving very much, and the marker in question had a stiff plastic flag that hadn’t unfurled. I looked at it quizzically - then at the other flags, then at a bemused passer-by, who asked me what I was doing - and we had the usual chat about using flags to measure earth energy stuff. I had to admit to him that I had never seen a dowsing flag stuck in the ground resonate like that in three decades of intermittent activity - not here, not anywhere, never.

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A few minutes passed - and the flag was still vibrating. I wandered off to finish off the dowsing of the rest of the lines. Not much to report, so I returned to the trembling yellow marker. The solstice entourage walked over to get an update on the morning’s dowsing - and the flag just kept on waving. Sometimes a bit faster, sometimes a bit slower, but resonating all the time. It was clearly nothing to do with the occasional breaths of wind. People understandably asked me what I was doing and/or why the flag was wobbling. I had no answer. It seemed a bit feeble just to shrug, given that I was supposed to be the on-site expert, but it was all I could do.

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After a quarter of an hour or so, everyone packed up ready to move off for a very ear- ly breakfast at the Minions Tea Rooms, which had opened, literally at the crack of dawn, especially for us. I unpicked the flags, one by one, until just the resonating yellow marker was left. It would have been tempting to leave it there and to come back another day - but on open moorland, with semi-wild animals . . .

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At the prompting of a bystander, I put in another flag on the same line - but it just stood there motionless next to the persistent resonator. Eventually, I grasped it firmly, grounding both flag and self - and it stopped.

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I can only conclude that the wire flag-post was tapping into some form of manifest, but incredibly subtle, energy. It was on the edge of the Michael Line, and inside the Benker grid line - and, given its location just outside the centre circle of The Hurlers, no doubt there were a host of other physical and meta-physical currents feeding into it, too.

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My subsequent dowsing indicates that it was some form of geo-electrical or geo- gravitational energy - possibly not ‘earth energy’ as we usually think of it, and not specifically connected with the solstice. Perhaps of even more interest, is that it seems to have been in part an everyday physical manifestation, but also directed synchronicity. Whether my attention was attracted to it or directed by it probably de- pends on the philosophical approach of the reader - but it definitely appears to have been my time to experience it.

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It was an astonishing cameo of energy dowsing in action that will live with me for a long time. I still haven’t much of an idea about the phenomenon I was witnessing, but somehow it felt really important to record it. Thankfully, Ros had the presence of mind to make short video of the resonating flag on her phone just before it was re- moved. I attach, on the next page, a cut’n’paste-into-your-browser YouTube link. Maybe it’s so bizarrely obscure it could go viral (only joking, I think).

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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bes2qpMzbJc

Nigel Twinn, Tamar Dowsers, June 2023

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Information in Ice

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I am grateful to TD Member, Helen Fox for passing over these two images made using Veda Aus- tin’s process for displaying ‘memory’ and ‘thoughts’ in water taken from St Piran’s, Well and frozen in accordance with the VA procedure..

It is one thing for a seasoned professional, like our friend from New Zealand, to manifest these pic- tures - but something else again to make it work for yourself. However, as you can see, Helen’s work certainly has a degree of structure you wouldn’t expect to find in a flat dish of frost.

No doubt, sceptics would say that much of it is down to interpretation, but when the ‘mind’ of the person making the frozen image appears to be reflected in some way in the Petri dish then we have to consider all available options.

All incoming information seems to be processed and interpreted by the recipient’s psyche, so why not subtle sensations captured in liminal material?

T