The Hedge Druid

Posts Tagged ‘energy’

For a while I have been thinking about a quaint and seemingly incidental finding that I registered with my dowsing rods when visiting a stone circle once. The stone circle was close by to a telecommunications mast and this got me thinking about the effects on the subtle energy field of a human being from such things. This then turned into a thought about what the effects were of the ubiquitous devices that we carry around with us everywhere every day. What is the impact of the mobile phone on the human energy field? This is my first attempt at dowsing some of the aspects of mobile phone usage and its effects upon the subtle energy body. I realise the post leaves a lot of open gaps – so if you feel like you want to know more – go ahead and dowse it!

Before I start I’m adding this notice:

This post is un-scientific. I may repeat that word a few times for emphasis. Unscientific. It’s based on dowsing, not on double-blind experiments that have been monitored and checked by an independent adjudicator. It’s crackpot theory. Junk information. Useless and worthless. OK? It’s unscientific. There are logical flaw, inconsistencies in the testing and the results have been acquired from what is considered to be a wholly unscientific source (dowsing).

Right. Now we know where we are, then we can begin. Any comments on how this information is unscientific will not only be removed they will be sent to Coventry, where they will be forced to live with a slobbering old aunt who has rabies. Still interested in what I found? Good, then let’s continue!

The Pseudo-Science Bit

What effect are phones having on us?

A recent study on Danish people showed that low-level usage of mobile phones could not be linked to cancer rates.  Here’s a new article about the study [link] and a report that criticises the study as being flawed [link] so that you can see both sides. I think it is fair to say that the study that found no link was quite limited, but has since been used to nullify any arguments over siting phone masts in sensitive places (e.g. near to schools and other areas of population).

When I last dowsed mobile phones I found that they had a detrimental affect on the body’s energy system, but I didn’t do this work systematically, so all I knew was this general finding. When I heard about the study, and the fact that it did not include high-usage statistics in the report, then I wanted to do my own dowsing to find out what the effects of a mobile phone are upon my own health and particularly ont he effects on the energy body, as this is one of the factors that I consider to be instrumental in our general physical welfare too.

In the sections that follow I have considered some questions and then dowsed the results as thoroughly as my interest levels would allow!

Beyond Here Be Dragons and Myths

The testing was performed in a non-shielded environment, outdoors, in a place where I had dowsed there to be no wi-fi signals, and which was also dowsed as being clear of earth energies. The equipment used was the Apple iPhone 4S model. I thought that I should do the testing, where relevant, in three modes of phone operation:

1. Mobile on Airplane Mode
2. Mobile not polling
3. Mobile polling for a signal (searching for a carrier, or changing between masts)

It turned out that I had to consider one more very important factor:

4. Mobile downloading data

My first issue was how to tell if the mobile phone was polling or not. As you may have realised, if you are close to a live audio speaker when the phone polls it causes a series of loud “pips” to be audible through the speaker. I considered placing the phone near a speaker, but I reckoned that the magnetism from the speaker might interfere with the test.
Then I considered that ANY magnetic effect might interfere with the test, so I had to consider where to place the phone that would ne “neutral” ground. I decided to dowse for the best place to conduct the test.

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The following series of posts recounts the tales of our adventures on the island of Iona in the Hebrides in the west of Scotland. We went there for the Autumn Equinox. Of course, my tales will be primarily from my perspective as Kal has his own stories to tell, and amazing they are too. Of course, we journeyed together so our stories intertwine to some extent. Where Kal acted as a foil or sidekick I will include his aspects, otherwise you’ll get predominantly mine.

Scotland sticks in my mind for many reasons – I used to live there as a small boy, I love the mountains (they are my Air/Sky image for elemental meditations) and I hate the weather (muggy and midge-ridden in summer, unbearable wind and rain in winter). However, despite my reservations I had two necessary goals that Iona seemed to be the perfect place to satisfy. These were:

1. To discover the quest or task that would keep my busy for the next eighth of the wheel of the year, and
2. To learn more about an unidentified energy form that I had found at Karnak Temple in Egypt, and which I had subsequently map-dowsed as also being present in Iona.

One ferry, two ferries, three ferries, more

The first ferry is from Oban to the island of Mull. Oban is a lovely little town that deserved more time, and as we pulled away on the ferry I saw a rounded hill behind a castle on the shoreline and I made a mental note that I needed to come back this way again. There was something about that hill….The tourism tagline at the moment is “It’s closer than you think“. It’s not. They lie. I thought it was about a five and a half hour drive and I wasn’t far wrong. And we live in the North of England. From anywhere else it’s even farther. The tagline should be “It’s further away than you’d like, and then a wee bit more – but it’s worth it (if it’s not raining, which it usually is)”. Truth in advertising? Not likely. Not catchy enough.

Where the heck is Iona?

The sun shone and we were able to stand on deck watching the waves churn into spume below the boat’s keel and the seabirds wheel and whirl in our wake. The rising mountains of Mull were a formidable but fascinating prospect for the drive across the island to Fionnphort where we would catch our second ferry – this time to the tiny island of Iona. The drive across Mull was idyllic. Rarely have I seen such beauty. Firstly over the mountain passes, then the road by the lakeside became picture postcard perfect. All too soon we were at the tiny ferry terminal and ready to board the ferry to Iona. So I left my staff behind in the tea room on Mull.

Of course I had to go back for it on the ferry. I can now say I’ve been to Iona twice. Settled and with staff, we were ready to begin our island adventure. We started at the first feature to make an appearance – the Nunnery next to St.Ronan’s Church.

The Nunnery and St Ronans Church on Iona

I would say that what happened next was a perfect introduction to the uniqueness of this island, and it set the tone for the whole set of adventures that followed.

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I found myself in Paris on a business trip with one night free to look around. Ok, so where would you go? I was starting from the centre. Would you go to the Eiffel Tower, Pompidou Centre, Latin Quarter, perhaps a stroll along the Seine? I couldn’t decide either, so I did a spot of map dowsing in order to find out where was the best place for me to be, energetically speaking, and with a hint that it might contribute to my spiritiality too.

In my mind I saw the white dome of the Sacre Coeur in late evening sunshine…..No, let the pendulum decide! I had been using a very small map of Paris given to me by the hotel. Why are they always so damned small? Actually, it was good that it was because I could quickly dowse the whole central Paris area to find the best place to be. I used the ‘dowse across until a reaction, then down down‘ method, and soon I had my finger on the spot with the strongest reaction.

The map was so small that I couldn’t read anything on it at all – the street names, the buildings, they all looked like a kind of patterned blur. That’s middle age for you! Luckily I had a magnifying glass with me on my phone so I pointed it at the map. It showed me the Sacre Coeur. No – wait! The lens of the camera is a few inches further up than the centre so I was pointing at the wrong thing! I adjusted the viewfinder until it showed my finger pointing to the small building further south on the map – it was a church of some kind – Notre Dame De Lorette.

The Other Woman

I looked for a nearby Metro station and found one in the vicinity of Notre Dame de Lorette church. Within an hour of stuffy noisy travel underground I was approaching the church with its four tall columnades looming in front of me.

The Four Pillars of Pillardom

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I have been re-visiting some of the essential elements of the magickal work that I do. Sometimes when working I forget various parts of these elements that I have found to be essential components to the success of such work. When I forget to employ all five of the elements in the process of doing energy work or interacting on a magickal level with nature then the likelihood of the success of that work, or rather, the strength of the outcome, is compromised by relative degrees. Often it can cause such work to fail altogether.

Usually one puts failure down to any number of other factors such as tiredness, low energy levels or some other personal or environmental failing. On reflection the work has failed because one of the following five essential elements has been missed out or performed as a gesture.

Five essential elements

Here are the five essential elements that I have found contribute to the proportional success of natural magick.

1. Prepare for the work by becoming humble and sincere in attitude
2. Set your intent clearly at the outset, before performing actions or visualisations
3. Engage with the surrounding or called-in spirit forces and negotiate their co-operation in the work. This is another reason why clear intent is useful.
4. Provide your own energy into the work at a frequency that we associate with the feeling of love.
5. Give thanks to the forces that interacted in the work when you have completed the intention or energy exchange

Every time I work I will try to keep these five elements in mind during my work. How hard can it be?

Gwas.

This is a follow-on post from the Black Altar at Karnak Temple post that I did recently. In this post I recount the last thirty minutes of my free ‘un-guided’ time in which I did a little more dowsing for some of the features of the temple. Little did I know that things were about to get weird.

Meeting with the Spirit of Place

I asked if there was a Spirit of Place in the Karnak Temple and the dowsing rods suggested there was. I asked them to take me to it and they were kind enough to oblige. Sometimes being a stranger in a strange land is a useful disguise and I felt no feelings of cultural weirdness about walking around the temple grounds with a copper rod directing my path, despite the curious stares from just about every single tourist in the place. Sometimes it’s liberating to be a stranger.

I was led back to the end of the Hypostyle Hall – a room of some 134 massive columns one of whose ends marked the third pylon. At a small gap in the main path through the temple the dowsing rods swung off to circle around a small roughly circular pile of insignificant looking small blocks of stone. This, apparently, was the resting place of the Spirit of Place. Time to learn a little more about what this spirit was, so I did my usual preparations – I protected myself, put my rods away, and began to connect in to the energy field of the spirit upon whose place I was standing.

Spirit of Place located outside Hypostyle at Karnak

I felt a connection with something, something powerful. I re-doubled my protection, and then introduced myself to the spirit using my druid name and then asked if this spirit was prepared to give me a name. I waited in silence and a name soon emerged loud and proud – “Tutmosis III“. I am not an Egyptian history scholar. At school my preference was for studying the Greek and Roman mythologies, rather than the Egyptian. Even in my magic research I have largely avoided the subject. I don’t know why. To top it all off, I had been pretty much ignoring the guide as he did his tour today because the heat was baking my noodle, frankly! I had had several days of being crammed with lists of Pharaonic lineages and stories about this and that god. Therefore I recognised the name – he was one of the pharaohs – but I had no context in which to place him.

The Gigantic Pharoah and the Supermassive Druid

My ignorance seemed to be interpreted as a lack of respect. No sooner had I connected than Tutmosis was keen to demonstrate the enormity of his powers. Within me I felt a rush of magical energy and suddenly the life-sized image I had of the pharaoh was now gigantic, towering over me as though I were an ant to a human! I saw him laugh at me, drunk with the feeling of power and might.

I think I was supposed to have been over-awed. I think I was supposed to have been frightened. Certainly it made me jump – like someone slamming a door behind you when you didn’t expect it. He was trying to show me who I was dealing with. Well, two could play at that game! I acknowledged his gigantic size, and then summoned as much magical energy as I could, pushing my aura and size upwards with all my power. Now I was as big to him as he had been to me seconds ago. I looked down on him from way above, my head just below the clouds and I laughed at him like a god in Olympus. I quickly re-sized myself and he did the same. He looked at me and acknowledged that his stunt now seemed foolish. I was on a level playing field, I felt. Perhaps now we could begin to talk?

Tutmosis is an angry spirit. As I was tuned into his feeling he was exuding rage . I asked why he was so angry and my eyes were directed to look at the passing human traffic trampling around the ancient monument. I guess many of us were transgressing on areas that old Tut considered were too holy for our un-pious persons. I understood – I had seen the same thing with other Spirits of Place in my own lands.

Serpent Power

I made the angry pharaoh an offer – I would upload to him my stories of place and experience, and in return I asked if he had any gems of knowledge that I didn’t already know about. What he showed me made me think. He showed me the power of the serpent energy coming out of the forehead of the Pharaohs via a golden crown. The serpent acted like an antennae or focal point for energy coming into and going out of the ‘third-eye’ chakra.

Now I would need to do some reading and some experimentation to determine exactly what this means – whether it is symbolic or actual in effect?

In later reading I found out some important things about Tutmosis III. He was responsible for the building of the Hypostyle column room outside of which I had found his spirit of place. He was also responsible for the sixth and “seventh” pylons in the temple – the bits the included the small temple with the black granite altar! Wow – suddenly things were beginning to make sense, and the sense of dark magic that I had felt from him, and his antics, suddenly seemed quite consistent with the historical records.

This is the end of the events in Egypt. I was there for Beltane and managed to do some work at Dendara Temple, but that’s not blog-worthy. It’s time to move on to my experiences in Ireland.

Gwas.

Pyramids and Pyramyths

The only question I needed to answer when faced with the gigantic step facade of the Great Pyramid was whether I wanted to pay to go inside the structure. Of course I did! I hadn’t come all this way not to take an opportunity like that. We escaped the afternoon sun and the pesky traders who swarmed like sand-flies around the pyramid’s lengthy base. As we stepped inside a frisson of excitement and awe pulsed through us and we exchanged glances – yes, we really were inside the Great Pyramid of antiquity.

We climbed the steep wooden-runged ramp with heads kept low until we reached one of the vaulted inclined chambers. There we caught our breath in the humid and close stale air before continuing another steep climb up to the King’s Chamber. Once inside we were pounced upon by a local man of overwhelming insistence who ‘guided’ us through some basic facts and figures, dragging a different lady to each point in the chamber before performing a very physical demonstration of the chamber’s position inside the pyramid’s structure, making us feel the inside of the remaining sarcophagus, and shining a torch so that we could see the vents and shafts at various points around the room. Then he flattened his hand in a gesture anticipating kind donations, Few were forthcoming, and most people escaped his avid attentions and the stifling closeness of the air as they exited the room. We lingered for a while because M could see that I wanted to check some things out. However, I didn’t do any dowsing – I just ‘felt’ around using my senses and my intuitive responses.

Why didn’t I take the opportunity to dowse in there? Did I feel anything? Were there incredible energies in that chamber? There was nothing. No feeling of any energy at all. Whatever that chamber’s previous or current purpose or activity there was none of it going on when I was there. The chamber was devoid of subtle life, only tourists. I wondered at this point whether the idea that this chamber might seal off energies from outside could be true? I tested the seals between the stones in the walls and found that I couldn’t even put my fingernail between the stones. Why would this degree of perfect fit be necessary for such a room unless it served some function? Nowhere else in my subsequent travels to temples would I find anything like this kind of perfection in the remains of temples. It certainly begs the question!

Sonic experimentation

Trying to avoid the attentions of a pesky “guide” who was angling for money off anyone lingering in the chamber I tried an experiment that came to mind. I began to hum to see what the effect was of sound made within the chamber. I was expecting an intense resonance off the sleek and tight-fitting walls but instead what I got back was a dulling of the sound, almost an absorption. It felt like I was humming slightly in my own head. My sound was not ‘bouncing off the walls’ in a ‘sonic cathedral of sound’, but instead it was being pushed away by the angles of the chamber until it almost cancelled itself out! The effect was quite disturbing, and I stopped any further humming, not knowing what to try next. The ‘guide’ became insistent upon payment for his meagre services in a most leering manner, and I decided to get M out of the small space before something untoward occurred in this special place.

As we re-emerged sweating from the humidity inside I turned my attention to some of the other tales I had heard about the pyramids.

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I have just got back from The Big Smoke (or London to you and me). I am always in two minds about this place. Now that I am accustomed to the natural surroundings of my Cheshire home with its easy access to the countryside (I step out my front or back doors and it’s there) then I find it difficult to immerse myself in the manic frenzy that is London City. However, it is also exciting for a while, and London has all the virtues of being a cultural hotspot, so I always get to see an interesting  museum, gallery, exhibition or performance. On this occasion I was on the South Bank to see Roy Harper at the Royal Festival Hall, ten years after his last gig there. This time he is seventy. A post will be coming soon about this, but in this post I want to talk about an interesting encounter with some alien objects!

M and I took some hours off before the performance to visit the Natural History Museum. As a child I had been around this museum and was stunned and awed by the incredible exhibits – rack and rack f fossils, dinosaur skeletons, trays of rocks, all animal life stuffed and pinned in shelves and display cabinets in room after room until the eye couldn’t take any more. Now, as an adult, I wanted to go back to look at the collection of meteors that the museum held. I was interested to see how I would react now that I had developed my sensitivity to energy.

London's Natural History Museum

Most major London museums are now free, which is a saving grace. However, there have been some changes made to the museum since I was last there. It’s gone all “kiddy”. Gone are the long racks of beautifully laid out exhibits (boooooring!) and now we have “interactive” exhibits (exciiiiting). Far less of the “show” and much more of the “tell”. I hated it. I hated every second of it. I couldn’t wait to find a safe haven from all the knobs, dials and wheels, the illuminated plastic displays, the childish “learn by picture” storyboarding and the sanctimonious tone of the whole series of sordid scenes supplanting the serious collections. Oh yes, it seems to say, you WILL become an eco-friendly, planet-saving, animal-hugging, rainforest-conscious, water-wary citizen of the world. You WILL! You MUST! Or you are evil and you kill fluffy animals.

I ran for the Rocks and Minerals department. Surely they couldn’t have ruined the rocks? Luckily, they hadn’t. The rocks were still in glass display cases, lined up in rows as far as the eye could see. Wonderful! Museums ”old skool”. Not a flashing bulb or laser experience in sight. No questions to answer. No moral to absorb. Now to find the meteors that I had heard were here.

The Rocks and Gems Gallery of the Natural History Museum

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