Ley Lines

[AlchoPwn]

Thank you! Indeed '"energy" is an over-used word by in the psychic field of research by those who don't realise that throwing the word around like they know what it means does not lend credibility to what they are trying to say.

Etymologically, the term "energy" has a strange pedigree. When Aristotle used the term (energeia), he used it to convey the idea of being, or the way we now use the term reality. It was the Romans who turned it into meaning "force"(energia), but by way of describing forceful rhetoric, not the force that drives a wheel. The term drifts around in church Latin then moves to French still in the Latin meaning. We owe the term's scientific use, I suspect, to the Royal Society, and probably Sir Isaac Newton's Principia (tho I may well be wrong). As to the adoption of the term by ritual magicians, it occurs as the word gains popularity in science, and is in frequent use in spiritualism and ritualism of the 19th Century.

"Energy" is closely followed by "vibration" and "frequency" - both real terms with real meaning which just reveal scientific illiteracy by most users in this field. The trouble is, English doesn't have a suitable substitute that I can think of. "Power" or "force" are equally unsuitable. Maybe we need to look much further afield and look for words used by other cultures, and not translate them back into English.

Agreed. Borrowing terms from science is a bad idea for mystics. It makes them look like word poachers and reveals their ignorance. While the scientific terms often make useful metaphors, a metaphor normally breaks down. I have always preferred the term "signature" to "vibration" as it suggests unique agency, as well as the notion of a disappearing trail left in one's wake. As for "power" and "force", they had multiple meanings before science ever got hold of them, and while science uses those terms admirably precisely, the words pre-exist science and are still in common use.

 

[Carl Grove]

Etymologically, the term "energy" has a strange pedigree. When Aristotle used the term (energeia), he used it to convey the idea of being, or the way we now use the term reality. It was the Romans who turned it into meaning "force"(energia), but by way of describing forceful rhetoric, not the force that drives a wheel. The term drifts around in church Latin then moves to French still in the Latin meaning. We owe the term's scientific use, I suspect, to the Royal Society, and probably Sir Isaac Newton's Principia (tho I may well be wrong). As to the adoption of the term by ritual magicians, it occurs as the word gains popularity in science, and is in frequent use in spiritualism and ritualism of the 19th Century.



Agreed. Borrowing terms from science is a bad idea for mystics. It makes them look like word poachers and reveals their ignorance. While the scientific terms often make useful metaphors, a metaphor normally breaks down. I have always preferred the term "signature" to "vibration" as it suggests unique agency, as well as the notion of a disappearing trail left in one's wake. As for "power" and "force", they had multiple meanings before science ever got hold of them, and while science uses those terms admirably precisely, the words pre-exist science and are still in common use.

I'm not really talking about anything mystical, except that energy dowsers (who are "mystical" in name only) have mostly fallen into the trap of New Age thinking and you have to make a real effort to ignore all the "mystic", "profound" "holy" adjectives they attach to everything. I'm assuming that Vincent Reddish and the MoD are right in linking the dowsing energy with Russian work on torsion waves. Reddish in fact confirmed several of the Russian results with a totally different experimental paradigm. Before anyone who hasn't heard about this checks this in Wikipedia, the entry there was written by a person with a scarcely veiled agenda against two of the leading researchers in this field (I have complained to Wikipedia about this with predictable results) and has rubbished the whole field. Having said that torsion energy is a highly controversial area, but it does have geographical correlates with strange events such as time slips, and it can be detected in various ways other than dowsing.
Agreed, "energy" is a term that has specific meanings in certain physical contexts, but it is as good as any other in this area even if we can't precisely define it in the same way as we can in more established fields of science.

 

[Sharon Hill]

torsion energy is a highly controversial area, but it does have geographical correlates with strange events such as time slips, and it can be detected in various ways other than dowsing.

I never heard anything about this. What references would you recommend?

Agreed, "energy" is a term that has specific meanings in certain physical contexts, but it is as good as any other in this area even if we can't precisely define it in the same way as we can in more established fields of science.

The problem for me is that I don't think dowsing involves any energy except that attributed to holding a stick and walking. We've never been able to measure ANY energy/force/signal/thing related to dowsing (except expectation). So, I reject the term entirely as applied to dowsing (and other supposed occult forces).

 

[Coal]

The problem for me is that I don't think dowsing involves any energy except that attributed to holding a stick and walking. We've never been able to measure ANY energy/force/signal/thing related to dowsing (except expectation). So, I reject the term entirely as applied to dowsing (and other supposed occult forces).

^this^

 

[Mungoman]

I've been sitting here, reading, and as one does, little thoughts drop into the 'display' so to speak, and one thought came through - and that was that when you are going cross country walking, or otherwise over some distance, that you need to take a bearing with your compass, or star and then search the horizon for a point to latch onto.

A physicality of nature. A tree, a dip in the horizon, or conversely, a peak.

Then you walk along, noting the lay of the land, what trees are in bloom, or how full the creek/beck is. Every half hour or so, heads are lifted to the familiar horizon to note where your land mark is.

A straight line avoids confusion, and is easier to relay to another person when recounting, rather than describing a none Euclidean meander.

The beauty is that if you do need to sidetrack due to the topography - knowing your distant marker makes it easier to re-establish the required path.

The Old People here in Australia have something similar where their Country was built by a Giant Serpent, creating the rivers, creeks, valleys - and the later Heroes who fought, made cooking ovens, or who just went to sleep being represented in the topography of the land.

In the Olden Days, the Old Ones would walk their country and much like a catechism, would 'sing' their country as they went, with everyone knowing the connection between country, and their genesis, and what it represented.

An internal map set to music and verse, and knowing this - they were never lost.

Maybe the Leys were something similar to the old Iron Age traders.

 

[Carl Grove]

OK, it seems that people don't know about the Reddish work and the Russian research. I first came upon this evidence while researching a local time slip mystery, the disappearing houses at Rougham in the UK. It so happens that I have recently updated my report on the results, including an appendix dealing with dowsing. Here is a link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2bci69we0ji3avi/THE ROUGHAM MYSTERY.pdf?dl=0

 

[EnolaGaia]

The extended exchange on dowsing has been moved to the Dowsing thread:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/dowsing.2902/

 

[Mikefule]

I've been sitting here, reading, and as one does, little thoughts drop into the 'display' so to speak, and one thought came through - and that was that when you are going cross country walking, or otherwise over some distance, that you need to take a bearing with your compass, or star and then search the horizon for a point to latch onto.

A physicality of nature. A tree, a dip in the horizon, or conversely, a peak.

Then you walk along, noting the lay of the land, what trees are in bloom, or how full the creek/beck is. Every half hour or so, heads are lifted to the familiar horizon to note where your land mark is.

A straight line avoids confusion, and is easier to relay to another person when recounting, rather than describing a none Euclidean meander.

The beauty is that if you do need to sidetrack due to the topography - knowing your distant marker makes it easier to re-establish the required path.

I quite like this idea in general terms. It would be not unlike a mariner's "leading marks" or "leading lights".

Where the channel into a harbour is narrow and there are underwater obstructions to each side, it is common to have two marks showing the safe line to take. When the back mark (the higher of the two) is exactly over the fore mark, you are on the safe line. If you move off the line to your left (to port) then the back mark will move to the left of the fore mark.

I can see how this basic idea of aligned landmarks might work in open country. "Keep the lightning blasted tree in line with the distant peak until you see the pile of rocks in line with the notch in the skyline to your right..."

However, in England, which was largely forested, the number of opportunities to see two landmarks in alignment would be quite limited. A far easier system would be cairns, blazes on trees, and short local alignments showing a general direction.

Another thought is that if I were on a long journey across forest, marshland and rocky hillsides, I would be at least as interested in finding the safe route across or around the obstacles as I was in maintaining a general sense of direction.

However, I can accept the basic principle that in some cases, there may have been deliberate alignments of conspicuous landmarks which indicated general direction rather than the specific route.

I can also accept that it is possible, but perhaps not susceptible to proof, that some ancient peoples believed that standing stones had some influence on some sort of force that flowed through the Earth. People believe all sorts of things.

However, I am not going to believe in the literal existence of that force, or the effectiveness of the stones in influencing it, without some clear and repeatable observations.

 

[Coal]

However, I can accept the basic principle that in some cases, there may have been deliberate alignments of conspicuous landmarks which indicated general direction rather than the specific route.

If nothing else, the existence of a well worn path would be noticeable from gaps in tree lines and even notches in ridges as the path wears down. There's a nice example near me, where a lane cuts a ridge and it cuts some 15 feet into the ground, but it is covered by trees, so not that noticeable, but trees are relatively temporary.

 

[David Plankton]

However, in England, which was largely forested,

Just like to point out that the spread of agriculture in the Bronze age led to much of the British Isles being cleared of it's forests between 1 - 2,000 BCE.
It's a myth that this was all continuous woodland by the time the Romans arrived, but I get your point and am only being a little pedantic Mike.

 

[Coal]

Just like to point out that the spread of agriculture in the Bronze age led to much of the British Isles being cleared of it's forests between 1 - 2,000 BCE.
It's a myth that this was all continuous woodland by the time the Romans arrived, but I get your point and am only being a little pedantic Mike.

Plus there is evidence of a network of roads that is pre-Roman. It's not a big leap to something like 'songlines' to enable one to get about the place.

 

[Carl Grove]

I quite like this idea in general terms. It would be not unlike a mariner's "leading marks" or "leading lights".

Where the channel into a harbour is narrow and there are underwater obstructions to each side, it is common to have two marks showing the safe line to take. When the back mark (the higher of the two) is exactly over the fore mark, you are on the safe line. If you move off the line to your left (to port) then the back mark will move to the left of the fore mark.

I can see how this basic idea of aligned landmarks might work in open country. "Keep the lightning blasted tree in line with the distant peak until you see the pile of rocks in line with the notch in the skyline to your right..."

However, in England, which was largely forested, the number of opportunities to see two landmarks in alignment would be quite limited. A far easier system would be cairns, blazes on trees, and short local alignments showing a general direction.

Another thought is that if I were on a long journey across forest, marshland and rocky hillsides, I would be at least as interested in finding the safe route across or around the obstacles as I was in maintaining a general sense of direction.

However, I can accept the basic principle that in some cases, there may have been deliberate alignments of conspicuous landmarks which indicated general direction rather than the specific route.

I can also accept that it is possible, but perhaps not susceptible to proof, that some ancient peoples believed that standing stones had some influence on some sort of force that flowed through the Earth. People believe all sorts of things.

However, I am not going to believe in the literal existence of that force, or the effectiveness of the stones in influencing it, without some clear and repeatable observations.

There is actually a lot of anecdotal and dowsing evidence that almost all standing stones and more complex structures were sited on areas of high earth energy (torsion waves created by the rotation of earth and sun) modulated by geological strata, and that odd events such as time slips do occur at such locations. There is also evidence of EM and sonic energies generated by some of the stones. Research is in its infancy at the moment, so you won't get clear and repeatable observations yet. The connection with ley lines is almost certainly an artefact -- when a couple of dowsers tried following the famous Michael line they found not one but two separate energy lines that wind back and forth across the ley. The stone circles, churches, etc. that lie on one or other of these lines do create the effect of a ley, but the apparent precision is illusory.

 

[Coal]

There is actually a lot of anecdotal and dowsing evidence

So not actual evidence in the scientific sense of the word.

that almost all standing stones and more complex structures were sited on areas of high earth energy (torsion waves created by the rotation of earth and sun) modulated by geological strata, and that odd events such as time slips do occur at such locations.

None of those things are demonstrably real.

There is also evidence of EM and sonic energies generated by some of the stones.

In what context?

For example, any stone with quartz in it might vibrate when subjected to a changing voltage field and vice versa, or even at a stretch, when warmed up, but that's not mysterious, it could be measured. Ultrasonic transducers are cheap enough, the sun comes up most days, 'ley' lines not required.

Research is in its infancy at the moment, so you won't get clear and repeatable observations yet. The connection with ley lines is almost certainly an artefact -- when a couple of dowsers tried following the famous Michael line they found not one but two separate energy lines that wind back and forth across the ley. The stone circles, churches, etc. that lie on one or other of these lines do create the effect of a ley, but the apparent precision is illusory.

Just out of interest, the famous 'Michael' line, is that a straight line on a map (as it were) or does it allow for the earth's curvature?
How do places on this 'ley' relate to the line? Must they be within 10 meters? 20? 50?
How does one decide which part of a place is the 'centre'?
So does a 'ley' have to pass through the altar of a church? The transept? Within 10 meters of either? Anywhere inside the consecrated area?
How wide is this 'ley'?

 

[bakelite brain]

Thanks Coal. You just asked the kind of questions I'd have asked!

Not sure torsion waves are a thing are they? If we can't detect them how does anyone know they exist. EM radiation (even to 30dB below the background noise) can be detected. Is the relevant to ley lines? If so surely it would have been well documented by now. I wonder what frequency they are on! (Must get my portable spectrum analyser out and have a look...)

I asked about the supposed width of ley lines back in post 21. I don't think there was a clear answer.

 

[Carl Grove]

I have no particular interest in ley lines and (as in this case) I think most of them are artefacts. As Coal knows, I have quoted several times the research into dowsing conducted by Vincent Reddish, the request by the MoD that he continue his work and test whether earth energy is in fact the torsion waves investigated by Russian researchers, and his confirmation of the hypothesis. I don't know whether any of the small team he put together is still active nor how the MoD developed his findings. Both of Reddish's small self-published books, The D Force and The Field of Rotating Masses can usually be obtained from Abe. Information about incidents at ancient sites such as time and dimensional slips is available on the net. Unfortunately many of the dowsing sources are infected with crazy New Age ideas, but some of the basic findings of them and the well known Dragon Project are given in Maria Wheatley, http://theaveburyexperience.co.uk/articles/
and Don Robbins, Circles of Silence, 1985. Besides earth energy, anomalies have been noted in ultrasonics, radio frequencies, and radioactivity. If you can see past the bizarre New Age imagery and look at the basic findings described, a pattern is certainly apparent. I got interested in this subject through my time slip research and the fact that time slips and other odd events have been described by independent witnesses at stone age sites (e.g. Edith Olivier's 1916 experience at Avebury).
Besides Dowsing, the Russians developed a number of ways of detecting torsion, such as delicate balances and measuring the resistivity of tungsten. Some theorists suggest that torsion propogates at superluminal velocities, which is one reason why various organisations have taken an interest in it.

 

[Sharon Hill]

earth energy (torsion waves created by the rotation of earth and sun) modulated by geological strata

Never learned this in any geology classes...

 

[Mungoman]

Well, i don't know about Iron Age or Lithic Age Europeans, but i have spent a little time with Australian Aborigines, and their reality (the non-city fellas) is very very different to city people.

They know their 'country' by it's character, and have lines of energy which the Old Ones sing to, to preserve the land. They walk this land and greet big old trees as mates (friends) - conversely, they steer away from country that is 'cheeky' (powerful) because only those that are 'knowing' are comfortable (or allowed) there. The Old Ones see water as being mysterious and powerful, and will throw a rock into a pond or waterhole from a distance so as not to startle the water and it's guardian/spirit - They believe that stars sing, and that on a winter's night they sing the loudest. They'll use the knowledge of all of these things to take them where they want to go

Knowing this reality, they still live in the present. our reality, but not completely. My neighbour next door, Lynn, is sitting out in the morning sun. Lynn has solar cells on her roof so she's not being careful with the pennies - even though it's 16c/60f she will sit in the sun - in fact as you go through this little village, you'll see chairs sitting out in the yard for that express purpose - If you ask lynn, why do you sit in the sun when you could be inside with the heater on, or a fire going, she'll say something like 'well, why wouldn't you...', as if it was a silly question. If you ask those that are open, they'll say, because it's good for you, that fella up there is feeding me - but while Lynn is still living her ancesteral reality, she's also skyping with her extended family throughout Australia. Best of both worlds...Eh.

So I reckon that it does us no favours to stand at our place of science and say that because we can't see or hear something, that it won't exist, because to many others it does...or it once did.

 

[Mungoman]

Australian song lines.

Notice the lines out to sea? Their record of the old sea levels maybe?

 

[maximus otter]

Australian song lines.View attachment 16834

Notice the lines out to sea? Their record of the old sea levels maybe?

How are property prices in the “Pubic Section”, or Adelaide as some call it?

maximus otter

 

[Frideswide]

Australian song lines.View attachment 16834

Notice the lines out to sea? Their record of the old sea levels maybe?

Can you say more about this @Mungoman?

 

[Carl Grove]

Never learned this in any geology classes...

Well, you wouldn't, because dowsing has long been regarded as something dubious by officialdom, despite its obvious utility, and because until some very bright spark in the MoD read Reddish's first book and connected it with the little known Russian research into torsion, nobody had seen the link. Many dowsers had recognised the role of geological faulting in modulating the earth energy but since nobody had any idea what earth energy was, their ideas were neglected in the wider community -- and still are. If, as seems to be the case in some areas, the energy can promote or create time slips and other odd phenomena, we have an explanation too for the well known connection between geology and strange happenings (cf Jenny Randles' book on the Pennines).

 

[Carl Grove]

Well, i don't know about Iron Age or Lithic Age Europeans, but i have spent a little time with Australian Aborigines, and their reality (the non-city fellas) is very very different to city people.

They know their 'country' by it's character, and have lines of energy which the Old Ones sing to, to preserve the land. They walk this land and greet big old trees as mates (friends) - conversely, they steer away from country that is 'cheeky' (powerful) because only those that are 'knowing' are comfortable (or allowed) there. The Old Ones see water as being mysterious and powerful, and will throw a rock into a pond or waterhole from a distance so as not to startle the water and it's guardian/spirit - They believe that stars sing, and that on a winter's night they sing the loudest. They'll use the knowledge of all of these things to take them where they want to go

Knowing this reality, they still live in the present. our reality, but not completely. My neighbour next door, Lynn, is sitting out in the morning sun. Lynn has solar cells on her roof so she's not being careful with the pennies - even though it's 16c/60f she will sit in the sun - in fact as you go through this little village, you'll see chairs sitting out in the yard for that express purpose - If you ask lynn, why do you sit in the sun when you could be inside with the heater on, or a fire going, she'll say something like 'well, why wouldn't you...', as if it was a silly question. If you ask those that are open, they'll say, because it's good for you, that fella up there is feeding me - but while Lynn is still living her ancesteral reality, she's also skyping with her extended family throughout Australia. Best of both worlds...Eh.

So I reckon that it does us no favours to stand at our place of science and say that because we can't see or hear something, that it won't exist, because to many others it does...or it once did.

That's a brilliant post, and it's important because this kind of thinking, led by experience of unusual energies and ways of interacting with it, does give a clue to why our ancestors went to such lengths to build complex stone structures at places where the energy was especially strong. It was their technological infrastructure. It may also explain the water filled henges, because it seems that water can act as an absorber and re-emitter of torsion energy. And given the apparent connection with time slips, for example, it seems that they may have been capable of all kinds of uses that we no longer comprehend.

 

[Carl Grove]

So not actual evidence in the scientific sense of the word.



None of those things are demonstrably real.



In what context?

For example, any stone with quartz in it might vibrate when subjected to a changing voltage field and vice versa, or even at a stretch, when warmed up, but that's not mysterious, it could be measured. Ultrasonic transducers are cheap enough, the sun comes up most days, 'ley' lines not required.


Just out of interest, the famous 'Michael' line, is that a straight line on a map (as it were) or does it allow for the earth's curvature?
How do places on this 'ley' relate to the line? Must they be within 10 meters? 20? 50?
How does one decide which part of a place is the 'centre'?
So does a 'ley' have to pass through the altar of a church? The transept? Within 10 meters of either? Anywhere inside the consecrated area?
How wide is this 'ley'?

Regarding your final point: the early ley enthusiasts just used regular Ordnance Survey maps and drew straight lines. I found when checking this point that due to the very clever modified Transverse Mercator projection the OS uses, that straight lines do approximate closely to great circles -- even over a hundred miles the error is less than a metre. Regarding the accuracy of placing buildings, etc., you would really need to use very large scale maps to be sure that the alleged ley does actually pass right through a given target, and I doubt that many ley fans would want to spend the considerable sums required by OS for such charts.

 

[Sharon Hill]

Well, you wouldn't, because dowsing has long been regarded as something dubious by officialdom, despite its obvious utility, and because until some very bright spark in the MoD read Reddish's first book and connected it with the little known Russian research into torsion, nobody had seen the link. Many dowsers had recognised the role of geological faulting in modulating the earth energy but since nobody had any idea what earth energy was, their ideas were neglected in the wider community -- and still are. If, as seems to be the case in some areas, the energy can promote or create time slips and other odd phenomena, we have an explanation too for the well known connection between geology and strange happenings (cf Jenny Randles' book on the Pennines).

Yeah.... no. This whole "earth energy" thing is a bit warped, out of context. We can measure at quantum levels but this stuff can't be detected? Something is off.

I don't understand your comment about dowsers and faulting. I suspect this is exaggerated and oversimplified being that the history of geology and dowsing are not that different in age. Time slips... I'm not even going to go there. No good evidence, just tall tales.

I'm well versed in the idea of geology and paranormality (spookygeology.com). It's worldwide. But most people who say factors are geologically-related are guessing. They haven't even looked at maps. It sounds sciencey and therefore, convincing to laypeople, but they can't distinguish anything particular about the place that makes it geologically special. And, they mess up the facts considerably.

Why would we need to develop advanced remote sensing (not to be confused with "remote viewing") equipment if dowsers were so great at it? Why not just dowse? Because it doesn't actually work when important and accurate distinctions need to be made. After many centuries, one still gets only stories in return for evidence. Lots and lots and LOTS of stories that are all the same.

That said, I do not doubt that many people have a savviness for nature and deeply know the land they know very well. They don't need fancy equipment to get by and, sadly, this is knowledge is fading fast. But it is not some paranormal lost sense. The concept of earth energy was blown out of proportion in the 1970s in an appeal to new magical beliefs about nature and pop mystical ideas about the world that never panned out. The Russian ideas, or any ideas about earth energy for that matter, have to stand up to scrutiny. Since dowsing can clearly make people money, it should have clarified its value by now. But it hasn't. I don't discount interesting ideas but there is a limit to what I can swallow as a proposed "explanation".

Also of note, I am open to the idea of earthquake lights as a form of "earth energy" because there are plausible mechanisms. So, I am not some closed-minded geologist. What I do know is that hydrogeology is too darn complicated to make sense of with just a stick.

 

[Mungoman]

How are property prices in the “Pubic Section”, or Adelaide as some call it?

maximus otter

I reckon that the pubic section is more to do with the ahem...great Australian bight.

It seems appropriate to me MO.

 

[Mungoman]

Can you say more about this @Mungoman?

No worries Frides.

There are a few Ancestry tales of when the land was much dryer - a lot of them were for the little'uns. This is one of 'em.

One of the the causes was a giant frog called Tiddalik who woke up angry and out of sorts one morning, and he thought that if he drank some water it would fix things, so he started drinking, and drinking, and drinking and drank all the fresh water on the Earth.

Pretty soon, things started dying.

All the animals gathered, and spoke together about the lack of water and this old wombat says to 'em...he was grumpy - that's why he drank everything, so you've got to make him laugh to get your water back.

They all tried to make him laugh but he was a miseryguts and he just sat there until a little freshwater eel came up and started to dance in front of him.

This little eel danced so hard that he kept tying himself in knots, which amused Tiddalik - pretty soon he was laughing like a drain, and all their water came pouring out of Tiddaliks mouth.

Footnote. They are all animals, not human beings, because the big flood hasn't happened yet, where Biaime's wife saves all the animals and turns them into human beings.

There is also the oral tradition of the two brothers who watched the flooding of the Spencer Gulf.

Obviously not one generation of brothers but I can surmise that the water rising must have been pretty obvious to those Old Ones because the Spencer gulf is about 75 K's across, maybe three hundred K's long and has a mean depth of only about 13 metres.

During the last Glacial maximum Australia had been inhabited conservatively for 40,000 years and the change in climate was so drastic that inland Aborigines either traveled to the coast, or perished. This was also the time of the outright end of our Megafauna.

Inland water dried up, predictable rain patterns ceased, inland forests died out, Predominant winds and climate changed direction from the west, which came across the continent, to a Southerly, straight of the Antarctic, the the majority of rain forest below the tropic of Capricorn died out along with the inland rainforest surrounding the inland Lake systems. Civilization, as the Aborigine knew it, ceased to exist.

Mean temperature dropped by 10 degrees C and the warmest area on the continent was close to large bodies of water. This wasn't the first time that the sea level had dropped.

The new land dreaming became, or was remembered from last time and was included in more recent folklore, and I reckon that this 'map' is possibly a very distant memory.

There are local myths of near marine topography all up the Eastern coast about islands that were once connected to the mainland and are predominant in the Tjukurpa (Dreaming), with some of them a bit of a hodgepodge due to the reserving of local Aborigines elsewhere.

 

[Carl Grove]

Yeah.... no. This whole "earth energy" thing is a bit warped, out of context. We can measure at quantum levels but this stuff can't be detected? Something is off.

I don't understand your comment about dowsers and faulting. I suspect this is exaggerated and oversimplified being that the history of geology and dowsing are not that different in age. Time slips... I'm not even going to go there. No good evidence, just tall tales.

I'm well versed in the idea of geology and paranormality (spookygeology.com). It's worldwide. But most people who say factors are geologically-related are guessing. They haven't even looked at maps. It sounds sciencey and therefore, convincing to laypeople, but they can't distinguish anything particular about the place that makes it geologically special. And, they mess up the facts considerably.

Why would we need to develop advanced remote sensing (not to be confused with "remote viewing") equipment if dowsers were so great at it? Why not just dowse? Because it doesn't actually work when important and accurate distinctions need to be made. After many centuries, one still gets only stories in return for evidence. Lots and lots and LOTS of stories that are all the same.

That said, I do not doubt that many people have a savviness for nature and deeply know the land they know very well. They don't need fancy equipment to get by and, sadly, this is knowledge is fading fast. But it is not some paranormal lost sense. The concept of earth energy was blown out of proportion in the 1970s in an appeal to new magical beliefs about nature and pop mystical ideas about the world that never panned out. The Russian ideas, or any ideas about earth energy for that matter, have to stand up to scrutiny. Since dowsing can clearly make people money, it should have clarified its value by now. But it hasn't. I don't discount interesting ideas but there is a limit to what I can swallow as a proposed "explanation".

Also of note, I am open to the idea of earthquake lights as a form of "earth energy" because there are plausible mechanisms. So, I am not some closed-minded geologist. What I do know is that hydrogeology is too darn complicated to make sense of with just a stick.

Well, I think the Reddish research is key in understanding what is going on and you are clearly unfamiliar with that. You dismiss time slips without the slightest consideration, you say that people are "just guessing" about the relationship between geology and paranormal events, so you are clearly also not up to date on Paul Devereux's work on earthlights, which goes back to 1982, nor Randles' study of the Pennines events which clearly show geological correlations. Why would we develop remote sensing equipment if dowsers can do it already? Well, one obvious reason is that many people in the sciences automatically dismiss dowsing -- it is a knee jerk reaction. For some jobs, people in many professions have regularly used dowsing because it was for many years superior to any other way of detecting underground structures. Perhaps you are unaware that in Africa, where locating water supplies is a major concern, one very interesting study found that the most efficient way of doing this employs a combination of dowsing and electromagnetic sensing, which is more effective than either method on its own. Perhaps you are also unaware of studies that show that good dowsers are apparently ultra sensitive to very small magnetic fields, and that magnetic fields always produce a torsion component, which shows a connection between the two.

The connection between dowsing and earth energy goes back much farther than the 1970s, and I think it regrettable that New Age magical thinking has associated it with "pop mystical ideas." But that is how it is, and it is like that, ironically, because scientists have made very few efforts to understand the dowsing process., leaving the field open to the pseudo mystics. Exactly the same thing happened in ufology, of course. Until Reddish's work in the 1990s no scientists had done any systematic work on the matter, and it is fortunate that a specialist in stellar interference studies was able to realise that many of the patterns detected by earth energy dowsers in fact represented the effects of interference between waves from linear geological features. In fact, the well known Fortean researcher Ivan Sanderson conducted a very clever experiment in the 60s which showed that pairs of L shaped rods mounted slightly off vertical (as they are held by dowsers) will actually cross when over buried targets, at the same locations where dowsers had previously detected them. Reddish also had photos taken of his hands while dowsing, and found no evidence at all that the movements of the rods were caused by unconscious movements (the most popular "explanation" of dowsing, even amongst dowsers). There are also stories in the dowsing literature of instances where dowsers have encountered such powerful energy that the rods have been literally torn from their hands. (In fact, it was being informed about just such an event that gave me the first clues of a connection between earth energy and time slips.) In short, dowsing begins to look less like a form of ESP and more like a way of detecting a physical effect.

Now, I am all for people in the sciences taking a serious interest in Fortean matters (I trained as a psychologist myself) but it really requires an acceptance of the possibility that modern science doesn't already know everything and that many types of event do point to previously unrecognised kinds of phenomena. It is easy enough in the scientific world to point to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of a new approach and do a destructive demolition job on it. But if science has neglected to study a phenomenon because of prejudice or because it seems to be inconsistent with current theory, and this is very much the case regarding all kinds of phenomena, then this is what will inevitably happen.

Finally, you ask, if dowsing can make people money, it should have clarified its value? In what respect? If you are one of the better dowsers who do make a good living (and a lot of money for big corporations), why would you do anything to help conventional scientists understand how it's done? You would be risking cutting off your source of income.

 

[Sharon Hill]

While I can't have access to and read everything, I have found the much notable information on dowsing from multiple sides but especially in terms of American "water witching". And, as I mentioned, I worked as a hydrogeologist and have seen no professionals use dowsers. I am very familiar with the history of Watkins' ley lines and Spooky Archaeology as well as spooky geology. So I don't think much about paranormal commenters who go on and on about what "science" rejects due to prejudice or whatever assumption, and what I "obviously" haven't read. That's a cheap basis to support a claim and sounds like a cop-out to me. But I do admit I should by now know better than to try to discuss things with people whose proud point is "science doesn't know everything". Extraordinary claims tend to fall apart rather easily when even lightly scrutinized. I'll stick to my informed opinion until some well-established evidence comes along to change that.

 

[Coal]

No worries Frides.

There are a few Ancestry tales of when the land was much dryer - a lot of them were for the little'uns. This is one of 'em.

One of the the causes was a giant frog called Tiddalik who woke up angry and out of sorts one morning, and he thought that if he drank some water it would fix things, so he started drinking, and drinking, and drinking and drank all the fresh water on the Earth.

Pretty soon, things started dying.

All the animals gathered, and spoke together about the lack of water and this old wombat says to 'em...he was grumpy - that's why he drank everything, so you've got to make him laugh to get your water back.

They all tried to make him laugh but he was a miseryguts and he just sat there until a little freshwater eel came up and started to dance in front of him.

This little eel danced so hard that he kept tying himself in knots, which amused Tiddalik - pretty soon he was laughing like a drain, and all their water came pouring out of Tiddaliks mouth.

Footnote. They are all animals, not human beings, because the big flood hasn't happened yet, where Biaime's wife saves all the animals and turns them into human beings.

There is also the oral tradition of the two brothers who watched the flooding of the Spencer Gulf.

Obviously not one generation of brothers but I can surmise that the water rising must have been pretty obvious to those Old Ones because the Spencer gulf is about 75 K's across, maybe three hundred K's long and has a mean depth of only about 13 metres.

During the last Glacial maximum Australia had been inhabited conservatively for 40,000 years and the change in climate was so drastic that inland Aborigines either traveled to the coast, or perished. This was also the time of the outright end of our Megafauna.

Inland water dried up, predictable rain patterns ceased, inland forests died out, Predominant winds and climate changed direction from the west, which came across the continent, to a Southerly, straight of the Antarctic, the the majority of rain forest below the tropic of Capricorn died out along with the inland rainforest surrounding the inland Lake systems. Civilization, as the Aborigine knew it, ceased to exist.

Mean temperature dropped by 10 degrees C and the warmest area on the continent was close to large bodies of water. This wasn't the first time that the sea level had dropped.

The new land dreaming became, or was remembered from last time and was included in more recent folklore, and I reckon that this 'map' is possibly a very distant memory.

There are local myths of near marine topography all up the Eastern coast about islands that were once connected to the mainland and are predominant in the Tjukurpa (Dreaming), with some of them a bit of a hodgepodge due to the reserving of local Aborigines elsewhere.

Wonderful, thanks @Mungoman

 

[Coal]

Well, I think the Reddish research is key in understanding what is going on and you are clearly unfamiliar with that. You dismiss time slips without the slightest consideration, you say that people are "just guessing" about the relationship between geology and paranormal events, so you are clearly also not up to date on Paul Devereux's work on earthlights, which goes back to 1982, nor Randles' study of the Pennines events which clearly show geological correlations. Why would we develop remote sensing equipment if dowsers can do it already? Well, one obvious reason is that many people in the sciences automatically dismiss dowsing -- it is a knee jerk reaction. For some jobs, people in many professions have regularly used dowsing because it was for many years superior to any other way of detecting underground structures. Perhaps you are unaware that in Africa, where locating water supplies is a major concern, one very interesting study found that the most efficient way of doing this employs a combination of dowsing and electromagnetic sensing, which is more effective than either method on its own. Perhaps you are also unaware of studies that show that good dowsers are apparently ultra sensitive to very small magnetic fields, and that magnetic fields always produce a torsion component, which shows a connection between the two.
The connection between dowsing and earth energy goes back much farther than the 1970s, and I think it regrettable that New Age magical thinking has associated it with "pop mystical ideas." But that is how it is, and it is like that, ironically, because scientists have made very few efforts to understand the dowsing process., leaving the field open to the pseudo mystics. Exactly the same thing happened in ufology, of course. Until Reddish's work in the 1990s no scientists had done any systematic work on the matter, and it is fortunate that a specialist in stellar interference studies was able to realise that many of the patterns detected by earth energy dowsers in fact represented the effects of interference between waves from linear geological features. In fact, the well known Fortean researcher Ivan Sanderson conducted a very clever experiment in the 60s which showed that pairs of L shaped rods mounted slightly off vertical (as they are held by dowsers) will actually cross when over buried targets, at the same locations where dowsers had previously detected them. Reddish also had photos taken of his hands while dowsing, and found no evidence at all that the movements of the rods were caused by unconscious movements (the most popular "explanation" of dowsing, even amongst dowsers). There are also stories in the dowsing literature of instances where dowsers have encountered such powerful energy that the rods have been literally torn from their hands. (In fact, it was being informed about just such an event that gave me the first clues of a connection between earth energy and time slips.) In short, dowsing begins to look less like a form of ESP and more like a way of detecting a physical effect.
Now, I am all for people in the sciences taking a serious interest in Fortean matters (I trained as a psychologist myself) but it really requires an acceptance of the possibility that modern science doesn't already know everything and that many types of event do point to previously unrecognised kinds of phenomena. It is easy enough in the scientific world to point to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of a new approach and do a destructive demolition job on it. But if science has neglected to study a phenomenon because of prejudice or because it seems to be inconsistent with current theory, and this is very much the case regarding all kinds of phenomena, then this is what will inevitably happen.

Finally, you ask, if dowsing can make people money, it should have clarified its value? In what respect? If you are one of the better dowsers who do make a good living (and a lot of money for big corporations), why would you do anything to help conventional scientists understand how it's done? You would be risking cutting off your source of income.

What utter bobbins.