Women & Mythology Conference 2012

Bronze Age Bee Goddess

"This gold plaque from Rhodes (7th Century BCE) portrays a powerful goddess of the natural world.  Myths and reality converge in the mysteries of bees.  The facts of their life cycles and behaviors provide the basis for stories of communication, prophecy, healing, and rebirth.  The founders of ASWM have chosen this image to represent the rich harvest to be gathered when women collaborate and communicate to promote understanding of women’s ancient myths.  The Bronze Age bee goddess also reminds us of our essential connection with the stories of all creatures, and our need to ensure their continued survival."

Speaking of "Pollinators", note the Melissae, or Bee Goddess on the logo of the Conference I just attended with my collaborator, Macha Nightmare.  (The name "Deborah" or "Devorah" also means "bee", and probably derives from a time when there was also a bee deity among the Semites).  I was not thinking of the logo for the Conference when I wrote the previous article about "Pollinators", but after attending the conference, I see now why I was thinking of this.  I love it when I find myself entrained with other minds and creators.......like a bee, you discover you participate in a kind of collective consciousness, and you don't even know it!  Abby Willowroot, creator of the Goddess 2000 Project, once said that she was sure she had a collaborator who lived in New Jersey, and she would probably never meet him.  She was only half kidding.

I have to say that the  Conference was amazing, and I felt very honored to be there among such an august company.  People who have informed my world view since college, among them Charlene Spretnak, Vicki Noble, D'Vorah J. Grenn, Marna Hauk, Joan Marler, Max Dashu, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Ana Castillo, Miriam Robbins Dexter, Annie Finch, Judy Grahn, Patricia Monaghan, Luisah Teish..........so much packed into only two days, so affirmed to hear the words of these women who have spent a generation pollinating a new paradigm for the future. 

Pachamama

My understanding of the importance of the kind of re-mything these scholars, teachers, artists and mythologists are doing was renewed.  I believe it's urgent for our time, because it's about re-membering when the Earth was not a "resource", but the body of the Deity, the Great Mother.  That re-birth of the Great Goddess is about bringing balance , healing, and perhaps survival itself.  Re-ligion derives from a Latin word, religios, that meant to "link back", to re-connect, re-weave, and mythology/religion form the templates upon which civilizations, and individual values, are formed.

The scholars who have devoted themselves to re-discovering and imagining ancient cultures of the Goddess are not saying we can return to a time that existed 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 years ago.  But by understanding what was, might have been, by seeing the submerged strata of artifacts, symbols and archetypes upon which contemporary mythos has been built, we can imagine and re-myth into the 21st century stories and theologies that are appropriate, and inspiring,  for the time we live in, its crisis, and its potential for great transformation. 

The "Her-story" these brave pioneers have unearthed is so important, and I am appalled at how little attention their work receives.  So many people are devoted to trivializing and denying their work, just as women's work in general is trivialized and denied.  Gender imbalance is deeply embedded in our culture, so deeply embedded that it takes courage to dig deep into mythic substratum of the collective unconscious.  Another way of putting it is......institutions and individuals in power rarely release power-over without conflict and upheaval.  In this country male slaves were freed, and allowed to vote, some 60 years before women of any color were granted that right, and only after the women themselves rose up and demanded it.  That's well worth thinking about as we face, once again, patriarchs in Washington who would like to deny women birth control.

I especially enjoyed the talks on Archeomythology, and the evolution of Marija Gimbuta's work on old Europe.  This is such a new field, a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding ancient sites and cultures that Gimbutas and her colleagues developed.  I find it truly paradigm changing, like looking at the world through an entirely different lens.

Some of the speakers,  among them the amazing Mirium Robbins Dexter, were also quite funny when they pointed out some of the prejudices of prevailing academia.  For example - the ubiquitous neolithic female figurines, with their round breasts and vulva shapes, or  sometimes a pregnant belly.  They point out that until recently they were (and still are) viewed as "fertility fetishes" or even a kind of pre-his-storical pornography.  Shift the view, and it's easy to see that they were, in all probability, like crosses or the Star of David are today, images of the deity herself, the regenerative  Earth Mother, sacred images.

In the  2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams  ,   Werner Herzog  followed an exclusive expedition into the nearly inaccessible Chauvet cave in France, which houses the  most ancient visual art known from the upper Paleolithic era.  Why did these  ancient artists create these spectacular paintings of lions, horses, mammoth and other animals deep within  sacred caves?  Mirrium Dexter pointed out that the only human image within the site is a female lower torso, or vulva form......the bull image was painted above it a later time.  Although it's never commented on in the movie, or in most discussions of the cave and its sacred paintings,  Dexter suggested that the symbolic act of  painting and honoring the animals within the cave was because the cave represented the womb/tomb where the magic of rebirth occurs, and by the act of honoring and representing  the animal powers which were both allies and sustenance for these ancient peoples, they were offering them for re-birth within the cave/womb of the Great Mother.  Hence, the vulva form, and later, the images of  breasts, belly,  and vulva forms, symbols that occur as the earliest images of  the human body.

Malta Temple

By viewing the ancient world through a lens different than the traditional eye of patriarchal prejudice we see that the entire landscape was  sacred, and to enter the Temple, or the Cave, was to enter the body of the Mother who gave life, death, and rebirth.  While we cannot know what exactly these ancient peoples thought or did, we can imagine, and bring forth into our time, the meaning of a sacred landscape, a sacred Earth, wherein the profoundly interwoven processes of life are revered.  To understand archeomythology is to enter a mind that mythologized the landscape in order to have an intimate, immanent relationship with the landscape, the living world.

More thoughts from the conference later.

Butterfly Mind, Pollen Heart

 

Beauty above me, 

Beauty below me,

Beauty before me,

Beauty behind me,

I walk in Beauty.

Navajo (Dine`) Prayer

"Art is not a thing, it's a way of life" 

(seen on the billboard of the First Congregationalist Church this morning in La Verne, Ca.)

It's May Day as I write, Beltane, although, considering the previous article, "May Day" may also mean a huge cry for planetary help.  

 I love the painting above, which I found in a magazine; I don't know who the artist is, but thank him or her often for this  "Butterfly Woman" from whom thoughts like butterflies emanate out into the world to do their work. Perhaps the artist will forgive me that I do not know his or her name........but be glad that the work has gone forth to do its work in my heart and imagination.  Pollen:  agent of new life, new hope, transformation. 

As we (well, some of us) wind our way to the May Pole, and plant that metaphor into the still fertile earth, weaving our dreams into the ribbons of this ancient ritual of fertility, perhaps I can find a way to image the celebration of love and hope with a vast, global cry for help that sounds like a beating heart beneath the surfaces of our lives, just beneath our feet.  As the drums and penny whistles sound, as we dance, may we all become Pollinators for our time, for the future.

Like the woman who walks above, this is my prayer:    May we have butterfly minds, pollinator hearts.

Peace March against the war in Iraq, San Francisco, 2003

 
The ancient Greek word for "butterfly" is ψυχή (psȳchē), which means "soul" or "mind".  And I have often found them mysteriously "soulful", as they seem to flit in and out of mystery.  The picture above, for example - it was from the San Francisco Chronicle at the time of the great peace march against the incipient Iraq war, and shows three friends with their "soul icons" - me in the mask of Sophia, Alan Moore, founder of the Butterfly Gardeners Association, and Nicole, creator of "Cosmic Cash".  Note that her icon, also, has occurred in this synchronistic photo. 

Transformers, pollinators .......... they begin their lives as caterpillars, build a crysalis, and generate imaginal cells...........

"When a caterpillar nears its transformation time, it begins to eat ravenously, consuming everything in sight. The caterpillar body then becomes heavy, outgrowing its own skin many times, until it is too bloated to move. Attaching to a branch (upside down, we might add, where everything is turned on its head) it forms a chrysalis—an enclosing shell that limits the caterpillar’s freedom for the duration of the transformation.....Tiny cells, that biologists actually call “imaginal cells,” begin to appear. These cells are wholly different from caterpillar cells, carrying different information, vibrating to a different frequency–the frequency of the emerging butterfly. At first, the caterpillar’s immune system perceives these new cells as enemies, and attacks them, much as new ideas in science, medicine, politics, and social behavior are viciously denounced by the powers now considered mainstream. But the imaginal cells are not deterred.  They continue to appear, in even greater numbers, recognizing each other, bonding together, until the new cells are numerous enough to organize into clumps. When enough cells have formed to make structures along the new organizational lines, the caterpillar’s immune system is overwhelmed. The caterpillar body then become a nutritious soup for the growth of the butterfly."

from Imaginal Cells and the Body Politic by Anodea Judith Ph.D.

Photo from: http://www.fishersville-umc.org/classes/nac/Pics/week0401.htm

 If we can see that our thoughts participate in  pollinating the future, we can  perhaps find ways of living with simplicity and honor, even in a time so very out of balance.  Regardless of where one is, there is a profound need to "walk in Beauty".  To be "on the Pollen Path".

Without the grace of the pollinators, the butterflies and hummingbirds and bees, there will be no future.  This idea is fundamental to spiritual traditions of native peoples of the Southwest, including the Pueblo peoples, the Navajo and the Apache.  As shown above, when this young Apache woman came of age and entered into her fertile years, she was honored by the tribe with symbolic pollen.

 "The Pollen Path" is a healing and initiatory ceremony/concept among the Dine` that variously enacts a mythic journey, and demonstrates a cosmology of non-duality.  "Pollen Path" art and sand paintings often show the union of opposites, such as red sun and blue moon, as well as mandalas, the balance achieved within the circle.   In keeping with May Day, Psyche in Greek mythology was a beautiful girl who was loved by Eros, the god of Love. Here is "fertility", generation, pollination..........the union of soul/mind with love.  

As I imagine a "pollen path" for our time,  and emanations of hope and beauty,  I reflect as well that some butterflies, like the Monarch or the Painted Lady, are migratory.  Monarch butterflies will migrate over very long distances, as amazingly frail as they seem.  Some travel from Mexico to the norther parts of the United States and into Canada, a distance of over 2,500 miles. 

Lastly, a few thoughts from one of my favorite storytellers, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, on the work of the Butterfly Dancer.  May we all, women and men, young and old, become Butterfly Dancers this May Day.

  "The (Hopi) butterfly dancer must be old because she represents the soul that is old. She is wide of thigh and broad of rump because she carries so much. Her grey hair certifies that she need no longer observe taboos about touching others. She is allowed to touch everyone: boys, babies, men, women, girl children, the old, the ill, and the dead. The Butterfly Woman can touch everyone. It is her privilege to touch all, at last. This is her power. Hers is the body of La Mariposa, the butterfly."

"La Mariposa" from Women Who Run with The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Clarissa Pinkola Estes  tells the story of waiting to see the "Butterfly Dancer" at a ceremony.  Tourists, unused to Indian Time, wait throughout a long, hot, dusty day to see the dancer emerge, expecting, no doubt a slender, ephemeral Indian maiden, and they are no oubt they were shocked out of their patronizing cultural fantasy to see at last the grey haired  Dancer/Pollinator emerge, slow, not young, with her traditional tokens of empowerment.

"Her heavy body and her very skinny legs made her look like a hopping spider wrapped in a tamale. She hops on one foot and then on the other. She waves her feather fan to and fro. She is The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that which most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine."

Because in the agricultural ritual these dances symbolize and invoke, call in, the forces that initiate the  vital work of pollination, this is no job for for an inexperienced girl, no trivial token flight for a  pretty child. It's a job for one who has lived through many cycles, and can seed and generate the future from a solid base.

"Butterfly Woman mends the erroneous idea that transformation is only for the tortured, the saintly, or only for the fabulously strong. The Self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough. A little goes a long way. A little changes much. The fertilizing force replaces the moving of mountains.

Butterfly Maiden pollinates the souls of the earth: It is easier that you think, she says. She is shaking her feather fan, and she’s hopping, for she is spilling spiritual pollen all over the people who are there, Native Americans, little children, visitors, everyone. This is the translator of the instinctual, the fertilizing force, the mender, the rememberer of old ideas. She is La voz mitológica."

"La voz mitológica". The mythic voice.  The Mythic Voice re-enchants the world around us, lending luminosity to each footstep, and pollinates, energizes, en-chants those who hear.   It is transparent, permeable.  And one way to walk the Pollen Path.

* The Pollen Path http://unurthed.com/2007/05/24/the-navajo-pollen-path/

Nuclear Situation in Japan

Image from the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/world/asia/15nuclear.html?_r=1)

"Fukushima radiation spreads worldwide.........the University of California at Berkeley detected cesium levels in San Francisco area milk above over EPA limits" 

WashingtonsBlog

My friend Fahrusha has written an article recently about the disaster that occured in Japan after last year's earthquake.  I know that this has nothing to do with art, but I feel her article is very important, and so, with her permission, I copy it here, and suggest those interested view her blog as well.  Do we need any more proof that we are, truly, all One on our planet?


 Fukushima, the Media, and the Reality-based Worldview 

By Fahrusha from Fahrusha's Weblog

I have not wanted to write about Fukushima, because I have nothing good to say. My grandmother used to tell me “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all.” Sadly, I have not entirely lived up to her words, but I have tried. The Japanese people have much to overcome in their current situation and I do not wish to make their lot any worse than it is, and that would be difficult to do in any case.

I have been following closely the situation involving the nuclear reactors which were affected so disastrously by the earthquake off the coast of Japan last spring. The site from which I have gotten most of my information is Arnie Gundersen’s Fairewinds Associates. Mr. Gundersen and his wife have been steadfastly reporting the bad news that is horrible to hear, but it is bad news that we must force ourselves to hear. His is a wake-up call to all Americans that nuclear power is inherently horribly dangerous and that danger once unleashed is complete and lasting annihilation. American nuclear reactors are mostly old and past the date which they were originally intended to be taken off line. This adds to the danger as leaks are more likely from old reactors. The single piece of good news is that solar power has surpassed nuclear power in energy production in the United States.

In a nutshell, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is far from being over. The site is still red hot with nuclear particles. Tokyo itself, 148 miles away from the Fukushima reactors, should probably be evacuated. The level of contamination of random ground samples in Tokyo would be considered hazardous nuclear waste in the US.  The officials of TEPCO (Tokyo Electrical Power Company?) who run the Fukushima facility and the Japanese government have been lying to their citizens and to the world. TEPCO is even burning nuclear waste and putting hot particles in the atmosphere that we all breathe. They have become mass murderers as many innocent people and animals around the world who unwittingly breathe those particles will die horrible deaths from various cancers. This is not supposition, this is fact.
The US is in collusion with the cover-up of the facts. Please read the following articles:
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-radiation-warnings-you-wont-get-from-the-mainstream-propaganda-machine_04022012
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/01/fukushima-radiation-spreads-worldwide.html

I am extremely disappointed in Hillary Clinton in that she signed an agreement to the effect that the US would continue to import goods from Japan without subjecting them to testing for radiation.
Why has the media chosen to ignore the obvious danger coming from Fukushima and why do the government and various states continue to champion the building of these reactors, these machines of certain doom, although there are other cleaner energy options such as solar, wind, water and geothermal energy available? Many European countries whose populations may be more awake than Americans have begun the phasing out of all nuclear power from their borders. In fact the nuclear industry is greatly tax subsidized by the American taxpayer: See this Alternet story by US Senator Bernie Sanders and Ryan Alexander.

The Fukushima situation is worse than the disaster of Chernobyl in the Ukraine. Take seven minutes out of your busy life to look at the legacy of Chernobyl here. Notice that Chernobyl is estimated to have caused nearly a million cancer deaths worldwide.  Now realize that the Fukushima disaster will continue to cause cancers for the next 100,00o years. Yet our mass media outlets continue to ply us with vacuous stories and little to no information on this very real menace.

Please keep checking these internet news resources for valuable information, it may be the most important thing you can do for yourself, the environment and generations to come.
Fairewinds Associates
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
The SchwartzReport
The Fukushima Diary

Orbs at my house

I had my artist friend Ginny over for dinner last night, and before leaving she took some photos of the night sky over my house.  I was amazed at the orbs that showed up!  She and friend Charlie asked for colors...........and sure enough, a beautiful red orb, and a blue, appeared in the photos.

And of course, she also shared the recent summer appearance of her lizard, Marco, at his Retreat.

Rumi and Rilke, a Moment

 When grapes turn to wine, they long for our ability to change.

When stars reel
around the North Pole,
they are longing for our growing consciousness.

Wine got drunk with us,
not the other way.
The body developed out of us, not we from it.

We are bees, and our body
is a honeycomb.
We made
the body, cell by cell, we made it.

Rumi (Translated by Robert Bly)

 

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors,
and keeps on walking,
because of a church
that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man,
who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children
have to go far out into the world
toward that same church,
which he forgot.

Rainer Maria Rilke  (translated by Robert Bly)

Anthropocene: the "Age of Man"?

"The  Council  of All Beings is a series  of  re-Earthing  rituals created  by  John  Seed and Joanna Macy to  help  end  the  sense of  alienation  from  the  living Earth that  many  of  us  feel.  Through  interactive   exercises,   we practice  letting  go of the socially constructed,  isolated self and come home  to our inter-existence with all  forms of life.  We  retrace our  steps through our evolutionary journey and allow other  life forms to speak through us. We shed our  solely human identification  and feel deep empathy for the myriad species and  landscapes of the Earth.  We see that the  pain of the Earth is our own pain." 

Council of all Beings Workshop Manual

It's ironic that as i listened to the video below, which suggests that we have rapidly been moving into the "Anthrocene",  or the "geological epoch of man", two earnest theological students are talking about God's goodness at the table next to me, and "His will".  I'm glad they can't read my mind..........

I think, once upon a time, I understood their faith. And by no means am I denigrating many of the compassionate teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.   It would be comforting to be nested into such a faith, a human faith that doesn't include polar bears, or plankton, or eco-systems, or even many women in its vision of  divinity and mono-theism.   I fancifully  imagine a discussion next door about the sanctity of  the evolution of all the eco-systems and  Sentient Beings upon this increasingly small, infinately precious planet....and find myself entering into  silent dispute with the commentators in the video as well..........what would it be like if this was the "Age of Woman", or at least, the more egalitarian "Age of Humanity"? Would it  make any difference in the face of our technology driven civilization, of a new god whose name is Profit? Sometimes I think so, other times I view our civilization is a run-away train.  

"THE GURU PAPERS critiques the guru/disciple liaison because it is a clear-cut example of the old, no longer appropriate paradigm of spiritual authority. It is not that we doubt that some who are considered gurus have deeper insights than their followers. Yet even with the best intentions, assuming the role of spiritual authority for others sets in motion a system of interaction that is mechanical, predictable, and contains the essence of corruption. Another purpose of this book is to show that corruption is not simply the failure or weakness of a specific individual, but is structurally built into any authoritarian relationship, and less obviously, any renunciate morality."(p.35)

In their book THE GURU PAPERS - Masks of Authoritarian Power,  Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad** coined the term "Renunciate" systems, referring to religious and social systems that are derived from an inherent renunciation of the world, a denial of body and flesh, of the  "here and now" of  life. I think it's a brilliant book that examines many contemporary spiritual systems from the point of view of the old paradigm of authoritarian, hierarchical systems, and is no doubt disturbing in the challenge it offers  to a broad spectrum of beliefs, from fundamentalist Christianity, to the "surrender to the Guru" advocated by Hindu ashrams, to a discussion of the "tyranny of Oneness" found in Eastern religions,  to such popular New Age systems as the "Course in Miracles". 

“Beware of organizations that proclaim their devotion to the light without embracing, bowing to the dark; for when they idealize half the world they must devalue the rest.”
― Starhawk

 One thing these systems share in common is a sometimes subtle underlying assertion that "This is not real".  That the ultimate (and hence, the only important "reality") is somewhere else than within our bodies and bodily experience (which include the collective cycles of nature), or within the living world.  Whether conceived of as a pristine heaven or paradise wherein the chosen or saved are rewarded (after suffering the indignities of life), or something more esoteric that is more "real" and "better" than life,  "renunciate" systems are "transcendent" in their message rather than "Immanent" or "numinous".  What is sacred is somewhere else, and you need a spiritual authority of some kind or degree to get you there.    

The Authors point out that systems that teach us to believe that "what is sacred is somewhere else" , or to continually render our will and discernment over to "spiritual authorities" will also not help us to deal with the actual crisis of our time.  I might add that many of the systems they discuss, renouncing  and devaluing  "worldly experience", also teach a kind of useless passivity as well (which goes along nicely with authoritarian systems).    As Starhawk once said, "If we go with the flow, we're flowing straight into extinction.". 

We need to break the long spell, to learn to speak and to listen to the Earth.  How can we create new theologies, mythologies, that can speak to the hearts and imaginations of the future in ways that teach Immanance?  I think as I write of the movie Avatar, for example............or the procession that took  the "waters of the world" to the river Brue, to flow out into the world as a healing from Avalon at Glastonbury last year when I attended the Goddess conference.   Small or large, important ways to re-myth, re-sanctify, so important for all of us to take in, and create out into the world.   It's our task to speak,  by whatever means, whatever means, because if not us.........who?  So many of our relations, and those who are yet unborn...........have no voice...

 Anthropocene, or the Age of Man.

___________________________________________________

www.authoritarianpower.com

“Easily the most comprehensive, erudite, and timely book in print to explore authoritarianism in religion, institutions, power, the family, intimacy and sexual relations, and personal problems such as addiction.... Argue[s] persuasively that any system of values that places tradition and the past above the imperative to question the present is destined to become increasingly lethal."

— SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

Sig Lonegren on Dowsing and Quantum Phenomena

I'm not able to find much time (or place) to write at present, so I'm going to cheat my own journal and copy here a recent article by Sig Lonegren, my teacher of old who, with his wife Karin (an extraordinary  healer), I was privileged to meet last summer when I went to Glastonbury.  But that's another story, my pilgrimage to Avalon.  Sig is wise, funny, and very much "down to Earth" on many levels.  Enjoy.

Tip o' the Week # 104 - Dowsing and Quantum

If you are not familiar with the Double Slit Experiment, please go to YouTube and watch a short animated film on it before you read further.  I have been reading about Quantum physics for over thirty years.  The first to catch my eye was Werner Heisenberg and his finding that there is no such thing as an observer being separate from the observed.  The Double Split experiment can help you see how this is possible.

The build-up of an interference pattern as individual particles pass through two side-by-side slits in a screen is one of the most famous examples of how an entity such as an electron can behave both as a particle and as a wave.  Aside from making the point that sometimes matter and wave can switch back and forth,  the main point I want to make here is that simply by observing the an electron shooting toward the two slits makes it act differently.  The observer becomes one with the observed.  One of the basic cornerstones of Newtonian physics is that the observer must remain totally objective.  But this double split experiment showed that this is not possible.

There is no such thing as a totally objective observer.  And the observer not only can, but does affect the observed.  Of course, one of the basic caveats in dowsing is not to be attached to the outcome, because if you are, your dowsing will support your unconscious need for a specific answer,  "Does my Aunt have cancer?"  ("Dear God, make it 'No'!")  You will get a "No," for sure.  Your unconscious wants to give you the answer it thinks you want to hear.  This is why in my eight steps to good dowsing, after tuning in and asking the question, I say repeatedly, "I wonder what the answer is going to be! I wonder what the answer is going to be! I wonder what the answer is going to be!"  As long as I am saying that, I can't be saying, "Dear God, make it 'No'!"

So we can create our dowsing answer.

Here is where Tony Talmage comes in.  Last weekend, I was at the BSD Earth Energies Group Spring Meeting just outside of Cheltenham.  Tony, who is Chairman of the Guernsey Society of Dowsers, spoke on "Dowsing and the Quantum Connection."  He spoke of quantum entanglement.  According to Wikipedia, "When a measurement is made and it causes one member of such a pair to take on a definite value (e.g., clockwise spin), the other member of this entangled pair will at any subsequent time be found to have taken the appropriately correlated value (e.g., counterclockwise spin). Thus, there is a correlation between the results of measurements performed on entangled pairs, and this correlation is observed even though the entangled pair may have been separated by arbitrarily large distances."

This is what happens with map dowsing and perhaps what happens when dowsers work at a distance - there is no distance.  Tony writes, "The hair, the spot of blood, gemstone, oil, water or other witness, (and, I'd add permission) is used by the dowser to connect to its parent.  This weird world of quantum offers a scientific explanation for the weird world of the geomancer."

Talmage then goes deeper to suggest that the dowser can actually create reality.  He feels that our human consciousness gives form to the symptoms we are told about, and so we bring in to manifestation the negativities described.  I believe this is behind what I call "Sig's Hypothesis Number One - Even if they were trained by the same teacher, the chances are very good that when dowsing for intangible targets (like the Earth Energies in a sacred space or in a 'sick house'), no two dowsers will find exactly the same thing."  We each find what our particular paradigm causes us to find.  We each have our own individual sacred point of view, and therefore create our own reality.

Throughout his talk, Tony spoke of how difficult it was to understand how quantum works, and used something Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman once said, "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't!"

But I feel that I got a better vision last weekend of the possible connection between Quantum and dowsing.  I believe that this will be an important  part of what the American Society of Dowsers meant when they chose their motto, Indago Felix! - The Fruitful Search!  Look for more discussion about this within the BSD in the coming year.

Sig Lonegren
MAG Webmaster
SunnyBank, 9 Bove Town
Glastonbury, Somerset
England BA6 8JE
http//:www.geomancy.org
http//:www.sunnybankglastonbury.co.uk
sig@geomancy.org
+44 (0)1458 835 818

p.s. If you haven't checked out my latest iBook, The Earth Mysteries Handbook: Holistic Non-Intrusive Data Gathering Techniques, please go to iTunes and download a copy.