Showing posts with label Geomancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geomancy. Show all posts

Monday, May 14, 2018

GEOSOPHY: An Overview of Earth Mysteries (1988) Part 2 and Continued



"Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach you"    .....Job 12:8

"Like all holy wells, Chalice Well is a feminine place, a place of receptivity to the Earth's spirit.  Here at Chalice Well you can strongly feel the feminine Mother force of the Earth." ....John Michell
Landscape Geomancy, which we are considering in this particular presentation, has to do with placing your structures,  your temples,  homes,  seats of government and healing centers on places on the surface of the earth where what the Chinese called Chi or or vital energy is up welling from the Earth through Geo-magnetic factors such as  water factors.  Animals recognize these places, they will sleep on them or give birth on them.  Ancient people built their sacred structures, like Stonehenge or Avebury, on these sites so as to enhance or amplify whatever rituals, healing concerns, or astronomical measurements were being made there.  Geomany is a way of reading the Earth's body language.  What is Gaia doing at this place?  Is this an energy sink, or an energy source?" .......John Steele

Part 2 and continued (I was not able to upload one of 4 parts of this film, my apologies. I will keep trying.) From GEOSOPHY - An Overview of Earth Mysteries, a 1988 Documentary by Vakasha Brenman. This hard to find video features Paul Devereux, John Steele, Martin Brennan, John Mitchell, Harry Oldfield, and other important researchers of Earth Mysteries and present day Geomancy. "This video takes us to ancient sites around Britain to explore sacred geometry. "Geosophy" literally means "Earth Wisdom" - derived from the name Gaia, Goddess of the Earth, and Sophia, the Greek word for wisdom."



https://youtu.be/jJ8w4mSohEg




https://youtu.be/iFictRS4LDc



Saturday, May 12, 2018

GEOSOPHY: An Overview of Earth Mysteries (1988) Part 1.

 

"The Dragon Project was named after the symbol of the energy of the Dragon in traditional cultures like China or Wales.  The Dragon was always symbolic of the energy of the Earth, always symbolic of veins of "Chi" or vital life force which ran through the Earth and composed the underlying nature of a sacred landscape.  In China they actually called them "Dragon currents" or "Dragon lines".  (In the 70's) A bunch of us got together - scientists, chemists, physicists, psychologists, archaeologists, instrument makers, and people involved in ley hunting divining.  Ley hunting is based on the concept of Ley Lines, the straight alignment that you can draw between ancient (sacred or energized)  sites.  These are  dead straight alignments that you can accurately plot and see on a detailed survey map."
........John Steele

"Speak to the Earth, and it shall teach you"    .....Job 12:8

 A quote from the Bible tells us to speak to the Earth - but how do we do that?  How in the age of computers and industrialism, the age of global climate change and global society...do we reclaim this "conversation" our ancestors had?

  the first post of the video from 1987 GEOSOPHY:  AN OVERVIEW OF EARTH MYSTERIES.    It's a rare documentary that I was only able to locate in VHS, with some of the premier researchers of Earth Mysteries and Geomancy speaking about their discoveries and research, including magnetic fields associated with sacred places, animal and plant phenomena, and most fascinating to me, the way Sacred Places affect consciousness.  I feel this is so very important, this research,  investigation, and reclaiming of what has been mostly lost to contemporary human society.  



https://youtu.be/jHagk2zMxdo





Sunday, April 22, 2018

Sacred Places and "Talking with the Gods"


"Australian dream time seems strange to us because we distinguish stories from places.  For the aborigines places are stories:  song-lines.  To "settle" a wild place means to create not only houses and farms, but also the stories that make them a home.  For native Australians, their deserts are home because they are verdant with stories."

David Loy, The World is Made of Stories

I have acquired a rare video called GEOSOPHY - An Overview of Earth Mysteries, produced and directed by Vakasha Brenman (Mystic Fire Video) in 1988  which features interviews with John Steele and Paul Devereux, authors of EARTHMIND and co-creators of the Dragon Project, a decade long investigation into the phenomena associated with Neolithic sacred sites in Great Britain.  Earth Mysteries has always been my passion, and the sense of Gaia, the living Earth, always speaking to us beneath our feet and in our cells..........is the fundamental truth I am always seeking to speak of in my art.  Gaia.  Mother Earth.  So very much we have lost and forgotten.  I feel the work of these people is very important, and should not be lost.  So I intend to put excerpts from this documentary on this Blog (and hope I don't get in trouble for it), and to pursue the subject of "Talking with the Earth" in future posts.  In this time of political and ecological despair, this matters to me.  This is worth sharing!   


There are so many stories I could tell as I look back on how this subject informed my art, worldview, spirituality, and sense of purpose.   I often credit a  synchronistic encounter  with geomancer and spiritual dowser  Sig Lonegren, in 1982, that planted the seed of a whole new way of seeing life for me, as well as teaching me to dowse.  I had a studio in Putney, Vermont in 1982, and it was my habit to meander down to the Putney Inn for coffee on a Saturday morning.  But that particular morning in June there were people everywhere - tables with brochures set up, discussions going on, buses and vans out front.  Coffee in hand, I saw an interesting group of people sitting on the grass in a circle in front of the building, and for some reason I sat down and joined them.  Sig, who was leading this group to one of Putney's mysterious stone chambers on Putney mountain, ushered us all into a van, and invited me to come along as well.  So that's how I found myself before a stone cairn in the woods, roofed with a massive stone, and with an entrance that faced perfectly the rising of the sun on the Summer Solstice.  Sig put a pair of divining rods in my hands, and I was  amazed to learn, with the others, that two "leys", each about 6 feet wide, ran through and crossed at this chamber.  When I held one of the rods at the center of the "roof" it "helicoptered"......turned rapidly as if it was a windmill for earth energies! 


It was many years later that I had the privilege of visiting  Sig and his wife Karen at their home in Glastonbury, England.  Sig was one of the trustees of the Chalice Well, and had spent many years exploring the sacred sites of the British Isles. I celebrated Lammas with them at the Chalice Well, an event I shall always treasure.   Sig is  currently on the faculty of the Fellowship of the Spirit near Lilydale, N.Y., he has a fascinating website:  http://www.geomancy.org/       and now lives with his wife in the Netherlands.   One of Sig's books, Spiritual Dowsing, goes into the phenomena of dowsing for Earth energies. 


As a dowser myself, I've experienced shifts in energy - which means also shifts in  consciousness and perception -many times when visiting areas that are geomantically potent, be it the henge of Avebury,  or the labyrinth at Unity Church in Tucson. Sites are able to change consciousness (raise energy) because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and  they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, what the Greeks called "genus loci".  John Steele coined the term "Geomantic reciprocity" - as human beings bring intentionality, reverence and focus to a particular place, building sacred architecture, or engaging in ritual.  The conversation becomes more active as place accrues myth and story in the memory of the people, and the memory of the land.   Sacred places have both an innate and a developed capacity to transform consciousness.  And the power of myth is important if we wish to engage the numinous presence, to  "talk to the Goddess and petition the Gods".
"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

R.F. Foster

Why would the ancient people who built Stonehenge spend generations hauling monstrous (and apparently specific) stones hundreds of miles to pose them in  circles, laid  in various alignments with the skies, seasons, and land?   


According to Sig, who references psychologistcontroversial book from the 80's  The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, possibly because, as human culture and language became increasingly complex,  we began to lose mediumistic consciousness,  a daily, conversational Gnosis with "Spirit".  We became more individuated.  With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning he suggests the ancients developed a concern with how to continue contact with the gods, the ancestors, the numina of the land.  Stonehenge was a temple on a sacred landscape - according to Sig, it may also represent a "last ditch effort" to keep in touch with the spirit world, to enhance communal experience.   As the rift between personal gnosis and spiritual contact deepened, and especially with the later development of patriarchal institutions, gradually the tribal and individual Gnosis was replaced by complex religious institutions that removed individuals from the earlier tribal mind, and rendered spiritual authority to priests who were often viewed as  the sole representatives of  the  Gods or God.


Perhaps this capacity is returning to us, a new evolutionary balance. As crisis engulfs us, we need, once again, to re-member how to  "speak to the Earth". 


"I have been arguing for decades that these (sacred) spaces were special places that enhance the possibility of connection to the other side - to the One.  Please judge what follows in that context. You may well find that it challenges some of your paradigms you hold about the past.  It combines two separate lines of investigation that support the perception that these spaces really “did what’s on the box.”  The gods came to earth.  And us humans in great numbers communicated directly with them.  (I end with a counter argument just to keep things in balance.

Since the mid-seventies when I began work on my Masters’ degree on Sacred Space, one of the major themes I have chewed on has been the shift from the dominance of that more intuitive right brain in prehistory to the analytical left brain brought to us by (IMHO) the increase of influence of the Patriarchy.  The book that really turned me on initially was The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes, first published in 1976 (see "Works Cited" at the bottom for all book references).  

 I must say that this has been one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking books I've ever read, and is a must in the development of consciousness studies.  I don’t agree with some of what he has to say, for example, his choice of a particular word to describe how our prehistoric ancestors received their right brain information - "hallucinations."  I don't think that's what they were, and later on, I'll go in to why I think so.  But on the whole, I found his thesis most useful in forming my perception of this shift in consciousness.

It began with the Neolithic Revolution - the increasing use of agriculture rather than hunter gathering.  It facilitated a shift in consciousness.  My understanding was that the driving factor in the construction of purpose-built sacred spaces in prehistoric times was the loss of the ability of more and more of humanity to connect on a conscious level with the world of spirit.  I felt, and still do, that the archaeoastronomy, sacred geometry and Earth Energies all enhanced the ability of this connection as we became more and more left-brain/rational.  I wrote about this at great length in my first book, Spiritual Dowsing, initially published in 1986."

Sig Lonegren
www.geomancy.org
www.sunnybankglastonbury.co.uk


--------------------------------------------------

Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Lonegren, Sig. 2007. Spiritual Dowsing. Glastonbury, England: Gothic Image. History of the earth energies, healing and other uses of dowsing today. A book for the spiritual pilgrim. Initially published 1986. 

Saturday, February 10, 2018

"Numina", and the Intelligences of the Living Earth


NUMINA:  Spirit of Place, Myth and Pilgrimage
By Lauren Raine MFA

"To the native Irish, the literal representation of the country was less important than its poetic dimension.  In traditional Bardic culture, the terrain was studied, discussed, and referenced:  every place had its legend and its own identity....what endured was the mythic landscape."

    R.F. Foster 1

The Romans believed that special places were inhabited by intelligences they called Numina, the "genius loci" of a particular place.   I personally believe many mythologies may be rooted in the actual experience of “spirit of place", the numinous, mysterious, felt presence within a sacred landscape. 

To early and indigenous peoples, nature includes a “mythic conversation”, a conversation within which human beings may participate in various ways.  Myth is, and always has been, a way for human beings to become intimate and conversant with what is vast, deep, and ultimately mysterious. “Mything place” provides a language wherein the “conversation” can be symbolically spoken and interpreted, as well as personified.    Our experience, and our relationship with Place changes when Place becomes "you" or "Thou" instead of "it". 

  In the past, "Nature" was not just a "backdrop" or a "resource"; the natural world was a vast relationship within which human cultures were profoundly embedded and interactive.   The gods and goddesses arose from the powers of place, from the powers of wind, earth, fire and water, as well as the human mysteries of birth and death. 

In India, virtually all rivers bear the name of a Goddess.  In southwestern U.S., the “mountain gods” dwell at the tops of mountains like, near Tucson, Arizona where I live, Baboquivari, sacred mountain to the Tohono O’odam, who still make pilgrimages there.  This has been a universal human quest, whether we speak of the Celtic peoples with their legends of the Fey, ubiquitous mythologies of the Americas, or the agrarian roots of Rome:  the landscape was once populated with intelligences that became personified through the evolution of local mythologies.   

"The Desert Spring", mask from 2013 performance with Ann Waters
 The Romans called these forces “Numina”.  Every valley, orchard, healing spring or womb-like cave had its unique quality and force - its Numen.   Cooperation and respect for the Numina, the animating intelligences of place, was essential for well-being.  And some places were regarded as imbued with special power, they were special places of pilgrimage.

With the evolution of patriarchal monotheism and religions that increasingly removed divinity from Nature and from the body, and, in the past century, the rapid rise of industrialization, we have increasingly looked at the world from a "users" point of view instead of a participatory one.  This overview tends to view the natural world as an object to be used or exploited, forgetting indeed that virtually all pre-industrial human cultures have rich traditions that teach that  the world is alive and responsive.   From Katchinas to the Orisha, naiads to dryads, the Australian Dream Time to Alchemy's Anima Mundi, every local myth reflects what the Romans knew as the resident “spirit of place”, the Genius Loci.

In those reverent traditions, sacred places may be locations where the potential for revelation, healing, or transpersonal experience is especially potent, and many contemporary places of pilgrimage carry on this mythos. It’s well known that early Christians built churches on existing pagan sacred sites.   An example would be the numerous sacred wells that are dedicated to a Black Madonna in Europe, or a Saint in England, in much the same way the Oracle of Delphi was dedicated to Gaia, the primal Earth Mother of Greek mythology, and later to the God Apollo.

"Gaia", 2013 performance with Ann Waters
Contemporary Gaia Theory 2 proposes that the Earth is a living, self-regulating organism, utterly interdependent and always evolving.  A system of relationships.  If one is sympathetic to Gaia Theory, it follows that everything has the potential to be “conversant” in some way, whether visible or invisible.    Ancient Greeks built their Oracle at Delphi because it was felt that it was especially auspicious for communion with the Goddess Gaia, and undoubtedly it was a site that was sacred to prehistoric peoples prior to the evolution of Greece.  

There is a geo-magnetic energy felt at special places on our planet that change consciousness, and can catalyze insight, healing, or visionary experience, perhaps even, as the Oracle of Delphi believed, prophecy.  Before they became contained and mythologized by religions or designated by prehistoric monuments, these sites were intrinsically places of numinous power and presence in their own right.  

They touch all who visit, and ultimately, no particular belief system is needed for them to have a transformative effect, although human architecture and the accumulation of human psychic energy and visitation may amplify this effect.  

Roman philosopher Plinius Caecilius commented that:

"If you have come upon a grove that is thick with ancient trees which rise far above their usual height and block the view of the sky with their cover of intertwining branches, then the loftiness of the forest and the seclusion of the place and the wonder of the unbroken shade in the midst of open space will create in you a feeling of a divine presence, a Numina."3

Many years ago I lived in Vermont, and one fall morning I stumbled down to the local Inn for a cup of coffee to discover a group of people about to visit one of Vermont's mysterious stone cairns on Putney Mountain.  Among them was Sig Lonegren 4, a well-known dowser and researcher of earth mysteries who now lives in Glastonbury, England.  Through his generosity, I found myself on a bus that took us to a chamber constructed of huge stones, hidden among brilliant foliage, with an entrance way perfectly framing the Summer Solstice.  


No one knows who built these structures, which occur by the hundreds up and down the Connecticut River, but approaching the site I felt such a rush of vitality it took my breath away.  I was stunned when Sig placed divining rods in my hands, and I watched them open as if I had antennas, quivering as we traced the “ley lines” that ran into this site.    Standing on the top of the somewhat submerged chamber, my divining rod "helicoptered", letting me know that this was the “crossing of leys”; a potent place geomantically.  

Months later friends gathered in the dark to sit in that chamber and watch the Solstice sun rise through its entrance way.  We all felt the power of the deep, vibrant energy there,  and awe as the sun rose illuminating the chamber.   None of us knew what to do, so we held hands and chanted.  We were all as “high as a kite” when we left.  

Earth mysteries researcher John Steele 5 wrote in  the 1989 book EARTHMIND  (in collaboration with Paul Deveraux and David Kubin) that we suffer from "geomantic amnesia".  We have forgotten how to “listen to the Earth”, to engage in what he called "geomantic reciprocity"; instinctively, mythically, and practically, to our great loss.   We disregard for short term economic gain places of power, and conversely, build homes, even hospitals, on places that are geomagnetically toxic instead of intrinsically auspicious.   Remembering, re-inventing, and re-claiming  what inspired early peoples  may be important not only to contemporary  pilgrims, but to creating future human societies that can be sustainable.

The act of making a pilgrimage to a sacred place is among the oldest of human endeavors. The Eleusinian Mysteries combined spirit of place and mythic enactment to transform pilgrims for over two millennia.  One of the most famous contemporary pilgrimages is the "Camino" throughout Spain, which concludes at the Cathedral of Santiago at Compostella.  Compostella comes from the same root word as "compost",  the fertile soil created from rotting organic matter -  the "dark matter"  to which everything living returns, and is continually resurrected by the processes of nature into new life, new form.  As researcher and mythologist Jay Weidner has pointed out, pilgrims finally arriving in Compostella after their long journey are being 'composted' in a sense.  Emerging from the dark cathedral, and the mythos of their journey, they were ready to return home with their spirits reborn.

In 2011 I visited the ancient sacred springs of Glastonbury, the Chalice Well and the White Spring as well as participating in the international Goddess Conference there.   Making this intentional Pilgrimage left me with a profound, personal sense of the "Spirit of Place", what some call the "Lady of Avalon".  Pilgrimage opens one to blessing and vision, and can take us out of the ruts of our daily lives into transpersonal communion.

Sacred Sites are able to raise energy because they are intrinsically geomantically potent, and they also become potent because of human interaction with the innate intelligence of place, the Numina.  “Mythic mind” further facilitates the communion.   Sig Lonegren, who is a dowser, has spent many years exploring sacred places, and has commented that possibly, as human culture and language became increasingly complex, verbal, and abstract, we began to lose mediumistic consciousness, a daily Gnosis with the "subtle realms" that was further facilitated by symbolism, mythology, and ritual. 

With the gradual ascendancy of left-brained reasoning, and with the development of patriarchal religions, he suggests that tribal and individual Gnosis was gradually replaced by complex institutions that rendered spiritual authority to priests who were viewed as the sole representatives of God.  The “conversation” stopped, and the language to continue became obscure or lost. 

Perhaps this empathic, symbolic, mediumistic capacity is returning to us now as a new evolutionary balance, facilitated by re-inventing and re-discovering the mythic pathways to the Numina.


References:

1 Foster, R.F., The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press 2001)

2 The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. The hypothesis, which is named after the Greek goddess Gaia, was formulated by the scientist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s.


3 C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus minor, Epistula 41.3, from Nova Roma, www.novaroma.org/nr/Numen

4 Lonegren, Sig, Mid Atlantic Geomancy, website and blog (http://www.geomancy.org/)

5 Steele, John, Earthmind: Communicating with the Living World of Gaia, with Paul Devereaux and David Kubrin (Harper and Row, 1989)

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Re-visiting the Bosnian Pyramid Mystery


In 2011 when I went to the Glastonbury Symposium, I was blown away by learning about the work of  Sam Semir Osmanagic, the visionary amateur archeologist who is attempting to excavate what he believes is a pyramid complex in Bosnia with the help of volunteers and not much help from the established archeological community.   I very greatly admire Dr. Osmanagic's dedication and vision, and have been rather disgusted by the way, as so often happens, he has been pooh-poohed and called a fraud by many.   I love Wikipedia, but their dismissal of his work is very disappointing and I think reflects a prejudice, if not, as in the case of crop circles and UFO's, a systematic dis-information agenda.  

Why?  Why not take  serious look at some of the extraordinary things he has found, the ideas he proposes?   The fact is, if he's right,  this is the highest pyramid in the world, and the complex is 10,000 + years old.  Such a discovery would re-write what we think we know about the ancient world, and what we think we  know about ancient Europe.  It would also suggest that, just as has been so often proposed by researchers exploring the pyramids of Egypt,  that the ancients knew a lot about how to work with the inherant energies of our planet than we do.  It might even demonstrate that we know virtually nothing about how to work with the energies of our planet any longer, a knowledge that, if re-discovered, just might  change our entire understanding of life on Earth and how to live on our beautiful Mother Earth.

One of the developments I found fascinating was the discovery of a  concrete/cement building  material that was used to construct the (as yet unproven) pyramids.  This could mean that not only were the ancients creating intentional geomantic environments that were sacred landscapes***, but they had building technologies some 10,000  years ago or longer that included making cement, and apparently, very good cement.


From  The Invisible but Vital Life Energies of the Bosnian Pyramid Valley:

 "Results released by the Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy of chemical and diffractometry laboratory analysis done on sandstone and conglomerate blocks taken from the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun show that the samples are an inert material with a binding, similar to that found in ancient Roman concrete. These results were confirmed by analysis on the samples done at the University of Zenica,Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In a separate independent test, Professor Joseph Davidovits,  member of the International Association of Egyptologists and author confirms this claim. “I performed electron microscopic analysis of the sample and I propose the geopolymer chemistry that was used to make this is ancient concrete,”  http://www.davidovits.info/34/the-pyramids-in-bosnia-europe-perhaps-in-roman-concrete
He further adds that the sample is composed of “a calcium/potassium-based geopolymer cement and that although he cannot date the sample, he can discern that it is not modern concrete, but more like the technique used by the Egyptians 3500 years ago.” In his book "The Pyramids: an Enigma Solved" ,Davidovits proposes that Egyptian pyramids were constructed using agglomerated stone (limestone cast like concrete)."

Outside walls of the Bosnian "Pyramid of the Sun" made of the concrete conglomerate blocks, Northern side, July 2008
Christopher Dunn, author of The Giza Power Plant (1996) writes that the pyramids were "ancient energy machines" or power sources that channelled geo-magnetic energy, which is currently a popular theory among researchers. The pyramids of Bosnia have the same elements that define the structure of an ancient "power generator system."

What do we really know?  What knowledge might we have lost?  Fascinating to speculate.  Atlantis rising.......... 

http://youtu.be/f1BOT928Jn4



***A great Blog that follows the Bosnian Pyramids excavation, as well as discussion on related themes is Old Europe   (http://bpblognews.blogspot.com/).  Here I've copied from an article:


"In ancient times architecture was considered not only a creation of form to limit or define space, but also inherently a sacred form that concentrated beneficial earth and cosmic energies and dispersed harmful earth and cosmic energies. The subtle energies of earth and cosmos were taken very seriously in the spiritually advanced societies of the past. The ancients were conscious that certain architectural features transformed invisible energetic fields that exercise subtle but predictable influences on the human body and on the environment.

In spite of our scientific progress in the modern day, we still know very little, in comparison to the ancients, about the relation of forms both natural and artificial to subtle and invisible but potent energies from earth and sky. Since 2006, researchers from many different disciplines have visited the Bosnian Pyramid Valley. These researchers have made pioneering discoveries that have allowed us to dramatically expand our modern understanding of the nature and purpose of the Bosnian pyramids and pyramid structures across the planet. A two-year study performed by biologist Dr. Sulejman Redžić from the Faculty for Natural Sciences at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, has shown that the soil temperature on the Bosnian pyramids and nearby areas is 5 degrees Celsius warmer than elsewhere in Bosnia.
Astonishingly, Dr. Redžić was able to identify several plant species on the pyramids that are typical of warmer Mediterranean climate zones. This means that these ancient pyramid structures create an artificial microclimate in the Visoko Valley. U.K. scientist Dr. Harry Oldfield developed a photographic method similar to Kirlian photography that captures the "shapes" of electromagnetic energy in a two-dimensional photograph.

Images: rising energy fields of the Bosnian pyramids
Dr. Oldfield's photos of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun showed that the electromagnetic fields above the pyramids are oriented toward the vertical rather than the horizontal. This is unusual because the electromagnetic patterns above natural features such as hills and mountains are normally vertically oriented. Vertically oriented electromagnetic fields are characteristic of artificial (manmade) structures. In addition, Dr. Oldfield recorded more activity than expected, with strong electromagnetic fields above the Bosnian Pyramid of The Sun.
Corroborating Dr. Oldfield's findings, Dr. Slobodan Mizdrak, a physicist from Zagreb, Croatia, led a team of experts who measured both electromagnetic radiation in the Bosnian pyramid complex in 2010 and 2012. The team also measured an unusual 28 kHz ultrasound phenomenon exiting the top of the Bosnian Pyramid of the Sun. A two-day experiment in April 2012 demonstrated that the source of the ultrasound "energy beam" is beneath the pyramid at a depth of 2440 metres (1.86 miles). Analysis of collected data has shown that a metallic plate located deep under the pyramid in combination with underground water flows and unexpectedly high concentrations of negative ions generates electric power of more than 10 kilowatts. 
Image: artistic reconstruction of the Central Fire
The presence of high concentrations of negative ions has also been detected also in other locations of the valley, namely inside Ravne tunnel labyrinth. Different measurements performed during the past six years have shown a tremendous increase in negative ions inside the tunnel system, reaching levels of up to 40,000 ions per cubic centimeter 200 meters inside the tunnel system. Negative ions are atoms or molecules that have more electrons than protons in their nuclei. Series of analyses in the last 120 years have proven that negative ions clean the air of dust, spores, mold and pollen and provide numerous health benefits to human beings. Thousands of people who have visited the underground tunnel labyrinth during the past six years have been able to experience the healing power of this negative ion-rich location.  
Janez Pelko, a Slovenia researcher who studied the effects on the human aura of a short stay in Ravne tunnel labyrinth, demonstrated that the human aura increases and reconstitutes itself significantly in almost 80% of cases among people after a one-hour stay inside the tunnel labyrinth. Janez Pelko's research is mainly inspired by the work of Prof. Konstantin G. Korotkov, a renown Russian scientist who invented the Gas Discharge Visualization technique (GDV), which represents a breakthrough beyond Kirlian photography, allowing direct, real-time viewing of human energy fields.


Thus we come to the conclusion that ancient cultures had developed an understanding of the subtle effects of various invisible life energies and created structures to both generate and magnify them."

February 21, 2013, The Invisible but Vital Life Energies of the Bosnian Pyramid Valley

Thursday, September 1, 2016

James Swan and the Spirit of Place

Avebury
  
I've been thinking about what kind of proposal I might make at the next Pagan Studies Conference in Claremont, and I find that the only thing I keep coming back to in what I feel is Pagan Theology has to do with activism for the Earth, and reverence for the sanctity of the living Earth.  

 Dr. Swan has published numerous books about Numina, the Spirit of Place.   His book "The Power of Place" draws on  26 presentations drawn from the five year Spirit of Place symposium  held in the US and Japan between 1988 and 1993.  I wish the symposium was still happening, because I believe people like James Swan, and Gloria Orenstein, are among those who are helping us how to have a dialogue again with the earth.  

I'm kind of academic, so I guess what I'm doing here is gathering voices to help me understand what  "numina"  means to me.....in essence, I want to know how we can speak to the Earth, and how people have spoken to the Earth in the past, and elsewhere.  I agree with  Swan - I think this understanding is so very vital to us now.  It's a blue moon......seems like a good time to share another article that I've reflected on  over the years.





The Spirit of Place Symposiums: 
 Seeking The Modern Relevance of Ancient Wisdom

By James A. Swan, Ph.D
________________________________________
"Modern man will never find peace until he comes
into harmony with the place where he lives." Carl Jung (Pantheon, 1964)
________________________________________

Introduction

The ancient Greeks spoke of the "genus loci," or spirit of a place. They sited a shrine to honor the Earth Goddess Gaia at Delphi in Greece because the unique personality or spirit of that place was divined to be especially suited to Gaia residing there. Understanding the forces that drew the early Greeks to reach that decision may well be a concept that is at the very root of developing sustainable human societies on earth and creating tourism programs that maximize the unique values of each destination.

Like trees, the human spirit needs roots, and a primary root of the psyche is in the land. Psychiatrist Carl Jung was an explorer of those deeper regions of the mind, the unconscious, where symbols and primal energies originate. Jung declared there were two types of unconscious: personal, which is unique to each person, and collective, which is shared by all humans, and seems to have loose boundaries with other objects and creatures (Dell, 1968). In our sleep, the unconscious comes to the forefront, and Jung observed that people tended to have dreams of a similar archetypal nature when sleeping at certain places. Jung called such place perception "psychic localization," and asserted that it was an important part of human nature.

East Indian scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy agreed with Jung about the unique association between place and consciousness and noted that myths were frequently linked to certain places. He coined the phrase "land-nam," a term derived from the Icelandic tradition of claiming ownership of a place through weaving together a mythic metaphor of plants, animals and geography of a place into a unique mythic story (Luzac, 1935).

The spirit of place plays a strong role in traditional societies, where it is commonly held that each place has a personality and some places are associated with spiritual sentiments. Ancient wisdom deserves respect and preservation, but what additional value may such concepts as the spirit of place have for modern society?

The Spirit of Place Symposiums

From 1988 to 1993 my wife Roberta and I produced a five-year series of annual symposiums -- The Spirit of Place: The Modern Relevance of An Ancient Concept -- seeking to help restore the wisdom of the past about the significance of place and explore its meaning to modern times.

Each symposium was begun with an open call for papers, inviting people from all disciplines and cultural heritage backgrounds to share in a common quest for understanding the subtle power of place. Nearly 300 speakers participated in the programs, four of which were held in the United States -- University of California at Davis, Grace Cathedral, Mesa Verde National Park, and at the San Rafael, CA, Marin Civic Center designed by Frank Lloyd Wright -- and one was held in Sendai, Japan. Speakers represented disciplines as diverse as aerospace engineering, biophysics, psychology, architecture, biology, law, history, anthropology, music, dance and art. Members of 20 different American Indian tribes participated with speeches, music singing and dancing, along with others from Eskimo, African, Polynesian, and Oriental ethnic backgrounds. The rule that was used to organize such a diverse group was that they had to participate as peers, equal experts in whatever their profession. 

Thus panels blending a salmon fisherman with a physicist and an aerospace engineer with priest and a farmer became a common search for truth where many new alliances were forged. At each program, we concluded with a performance inspired by special places. Artists who performed included flutists Paul Horn and R. Carlos Nakai, dancer-choreographer Anna Halpern, keyboard artist Steven Halpern, Japanese recording artist Jun Hirose, and the rock-fusion band Earth Spirit.

Lessons of The Spirit of Place

In producing these programs our principle goal was to explore the modern validity of this ancient concept. We did not to try to start a spirit of place movement. Rather, we hope that what has taken place will set the stage for others to conduct programs that will advance our understanding of the power of places everywhere.  In these five programs, listening to nearly 300 speakers, formally and informally, we heard common themes emerge. The following are some of these shared areas of agreement:

1)Among indigenous cultures all around the world, the belief in the existence of special places of power and spirit seems universal. It is commonly believed that some places have spiritual powers, and these places are normally seen as cornerstones of traditional cultural belief systems. Modern society has often not paid much attention to sacred places, which is a source of great concern to traditional cultures. Another concern is that modern cultures tend to see places as only having value to the past or to other cultures, rather than to society in general.

2) At each of the five Spirit of Place symposiums researchers and designers from many disciplines agreed that gaining a sense of place is a very important part of their work, yet there is very little research on this topic or professional organizations seriously investigating the topic. Modern people are often aware of the unique spirit of a place, but do not have a vocabulary to express their feelings, except through art.

3) A characteristic style of art seems to arise from a geographic region; it is a voice that speaks to us through indigenous art of the spirit of that place. Drawings, paintings, carving, sculpture, stories, songs, poetry and dances, are all fed by the spirit of a place. The artist's mind is not so encumbered by the constraints of intellectual reasoning and so it becomes a more clear channel for the unconscious to expressed. He or she gives voice and form to the spirit of the land.

4)The experience of place is multi-faceted and influenced by culture, personal uniqueness and modality of awareness. There may be many more sensory processes by which we perceive the earth and nature than modern science and psychology are willing to admit. Ancient traditions such as Chinese Feng Shui assert that we have at least 100 senses to perceive place. The needs of modern society for ecologically conscious design suggests that in the training of designers we should seek to cultivate the inner designer as well as training professional skills.

5) Each place has a unique quality which in turn influences what can best be done there.
The built environment can serve as an amplifier of the powers of a place, or it can negate the influence of locality, yielding what Frank Lloyd Wright called "cash and carry architecture." Architecture and design that honors the spirit of place and gives it meaning and form expresses beauty and nourishes health and creativity. Architecture is ultimately a ritual in structural materials.

6)The act of making a pilgrimage to special places is among the oldest acts of human respect for nature and spirit, and one of the least understood and appreciated by modern society, despite the facts that we undertake pilgrimages by the millions each year. Psychology needs to better understand the value of pilgrimage to human life as it may be one of the most important ways that we can discover our meaning, find health, and be inspired, as well as build reverence for nature.

7)The lack of feeling connected to a place, especially a place where one lives and works, can be an important source of mental and physical stress. People need to feel peaceful where they are, and maintain a psychic connection with a place of natural beauty if they do not reside in one. Actor James Earl Jones, who gained his awareness of the power of place by growing up on a dirt farm in northern Michigan has observed: "I have always thought it quite wonderful and necessary to keep connected to nature, to a place in the country landscape where one can rest and muse and listen" (Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1993).

8) Geomancy is the spiritual parent of modern design. Many ancient geomancies understand the importance of the relationship between place and personal experience and take elaborate measures to insure people are harmonized with the spirit of a place. When principles of design from Feng Shui and other geomancies are applied to modern buildings and communities, positive results occur. We need to set aside our limiting beliefs and appreciate the power of such approaches in the same fashion that western science has acknowledged the healing values of acupuncture, even though modern science cannot prove the existence of the life force chi and other geomantic concepts.

9)Modern science is beginning to measure the subtle properties of place. We now know that air ions, electrical and electromagnetic fields do influence health and well-being. More research needs to be devoted to the study of subtle environmental fields. Documenting the existence and value of these fields, may well lead to a whole new art and science of design with modern science and ancient wisdom working together.

10) In a Spirit of Place keynote, psychologist Robert Sommer observed that people can become "a voice" for the spirit of that region as much as for a human community or a relationship. John Muir, for example, seemed to embody the spirit of Yosemite Valley. The Lakota holy man Black Elk was a voice for the Black Hills of South Dakota. Rachel Carson was inspired by Cape Cod to write about "the sense of wonder" in nature as well as the dangers of pesticides to ecological balance. Becoming a voice for the land creates a "psychic anchor" that seems to be important to mental health.

11) The spirit of place concept is less understood by modern society, and one result is that conflicts about the value of place can and do arise between traditional and modern cultures.It is easy to flame the fires of conflict in such situations, creating enemies to raise funds to wage wars that should never have to exist. This kind of self-righteous scapegoating is as exploitive as developers who wish to commercialize sacred places for the sake of pure profit. The more difficult task is to build bridges of respect and cooperation between traditional and modern cultures, but it is the only path that can lead us to greater harmony and understanding.

12) We need new laws and land-use categories that facilitate honoring the power of place, including recognition of sacred places. Creating the public policies that yield such laws will require cross-cultural communication, cooperation and understanding unprecedented in modern society.

Conclusion

The consensus among participants in the Spirit of Place Symposiums is that we must rediscover the wisdom about the power of place and turn it into practical concepts that will guide modern people to live in harmony with the earth, as well as show respect for ancient traditions. Learning to plan and design with respect for the unique spirit of each place is a touchstone of responsible eco-tourism that respects traditional cultures and provides important benefits to modern culture as well.

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This paper is drawn from Dialogues With The Living Earth  by James and Roberta Swan (1996)

Bibliography

Coomaraswamy, Ananda. 1935 
Jones, James Earl. 1993 Voices and Silences. New York, NY: Chas. Scribner's Sons, p.358.
Jung, Carl 1964 Civilization In Transition: Vol. 10 Collective Works of Carl Jung New York, NY: Pantheon.
Jung, Carl 1968 Man and His Symbols New York, NY: Dell.
Lawrence, D.H. 1923 Studies In Classical American Literature. New York, NY: Thomas Seltzer and Sons, p.8-9.
Swan, James 1990 Sacred Places: How The Living Earth Seeks Our Friendship Santa Fe, NM: Bear and Company.
Swan, James ed. 1991 The Power of Place Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Swan, James and Swan, Roberta 1996 Dialogues With The Living Earth Wheaton, IL: Quest.