News and events, past and future.
The Consciousness of Trees
A talk given to Waverley Dowsers (9th February 2024)
​
The likes of Peter Wohlleben (author of The Hidden Life of Trees), and botanist Dr Suzanne Simard have argued that trees are capable of profound experiences of the world around them, and that they can communicate these experiences to other trees (through root systems, and the mycelia of fungi). Dowsers have long recognised that trees have auras, and indeed that these auras will expands as the dowser makes contact with the tree – an expression of the tree’s awareness that they are in contact with the dowser.
In this talk I will explore, through my personal experience of dowsing with trees and in communion with spirit of place, how dowsing and science can give us an insight into the world of trees, and how we might come to understand and communicate with those trees. I will explain how we can trace the networks of communication that link tree, how we can find the protective mother tree within a group, and how patterns within the aura of a tree hint at the messages that the tree might have for us.
Dowsing and the Spirit of Place
The Long Man of Wilmington
A talk given to the British Society of Dowsers (17th August 2023)
Recording of the talk: https://youtu.be/8YtRkNWuOFE
​
Should I? May I?’ When we ask that third question I believe that we are initiating a conversation with that spirit of place.
So, how important is our relationship to the spirit of place when dowsing? I want to answer this question by suggesting that in dowsing a site, especially if we are looking for leys, or other forms of subtle energy, we are offering ourselves to be the vehicles through which the spirit can tell their story. My dowsing typically begins by asking, ‘What do you, spirit of the place, want to show me?’ The spirit will lead me across the site, gradually unfolding a subtle, sometimes challenging, story of the site and the people who have dwelt there.
I will illustrate my approach through the dowsing conversation that I am currently conducting with the spirit of the chalk figure of the Long Man of Wilmington.
​
​
Underwood and Lethbridge Revisited
A talk given to the Earth Energies group (10th august 2023)
Link to recording forthcoming
​
The 1960s and 1970s saw the publication of a number of pioneering books on dowsing and earth energies, not least John Michell’s View over Atlantis (1973). A series of books by T. C. Lethbridge (1901-1971) and articles and the posthumously published The Pattern of the Past (1968) by Guy Underwood (1883-1964) were amongst the studies paving the way for modern earth energies dowsing. But, should we still be reading them? Or, perhaps more importantly, do they still have anything to teach us?
In this presentation I will compare the work of Underwood and Lethbridge. Both were controversial from the first, and their dowsing methods and arguments can at times seem eccentric by modern standards. Yet Underwood and Lethbridge were alike motivated in their dowsing by a desire to understand ancient cultures, and thus the beliefs and rituals that accompanied the building of monuments such as Stonehenge, or the carving of chalk figures on hillsides. They sought not simply to map and measure energies, but rather to use their results as a guild to be deeper understanding of what it is to be human.
I will argue that both authors offer us a model of earth energy dowsing that is rooted in archaeology and cultural anthropology, and that this is a crucial challenge to the modern approaches to earth energy dowsing that are rooted in the natural sciences.