Basic Dowsing Ideas

Insights from Dowsers

Dowsers detect subtle energy patterns and flows moving around and between ancient sites. Subtle energy is connected with the underground water system, water being a good energy and bio-electromagnetism conductor.

Alignments and energy-lines picked up by dowsers are different. Alignments aren't like pipes, conducting energy, as do energy-lines or energy-leys. Alignments are lined-up sites operating according to the same programming.

Some straight, overground energy-lines do coincide with alignments, but they don't automatically do so. It’s likely to be, at a guess, 10-20% of alignments that are also overground energy-lines - this has not been systematically researched.

Boscawen-ûn stone circle

Standing stones can be understood to act like acupuncture needles in the land. This was the observation Tom Graves, in his 1970s book Needles of Stone (PDF version here) - this was a breakthrough idea at the time.

A needle in the back of the ear will affect the stomach through a meridian connecting them. Opening up one node on that meridian opens up the whole meridian. A similar principle exists with energy-lines. It creates an integrated and amplified subtle energy system across the landscape.

But there's a non-local, unconnected energy-system too, rooted in the precisely aligned siting of ancient sites. This positioning factor makes them interact non-locally, without a 'connecting pipe' - they operate according to the same algorithm. In West Penwith the anchor-points upon which this energy-system is laid out are the neolithic tors and cliff sanctuaries.

Mên Scryfa sits on a vortex, decontextualised by fields and walls

Reality-Fields

We experience ancient sites as special places because they are psycho-geographic gravity-centres in a tapestry of energy-fields in the landscape. They have a psychoactive effect, acting as nodes of concentrated here-ness.

Dowsers find that ancient sites have sinuous underground water energy-lines and straight overground energy-lines connecting those sites. Different dowsers perceive things differently, but these underground and overground lines generally follow two main patterns: radials emanating outwards from the centre, following both straight and sinuous paths, and spirals and other resonance patterns moving round a stone, winding out vortically.

This applies particularly to larger sites located over blind springs (water domes). Blind springs are up-flows of 'primary water' generated by chemical reactions deep within the earth. They do not reach the surface. Instead they are splayed out in an array of detectable water lines radiating from a central place.

Smaller sites such as menhirs or cairns are often sited at the intersection of two or more underground streams that cross each other at different levels. Their interaction creates a rising or sinking spin of energy upon which a menhir, stone or mound is built, either to conduct energy to and from the heavens through the stone or to buffer, store or distribute it in a mound.

Tregeseal stone circle, sitting on a blind spring

The megalith-builders counted such energy-centres to be important, building sites on them to amplify and modify the energy-field of the site. Amazingly, these energy-centres seem to occur at places where there are also astronomical orientations, alignments or other locational factors present (more lower down).

Water- and energy-lines have directionality and flow to them - usually alternatingly, according to season or phase of the moon. But aligned ancient sites have a non-local relationship where there's no connection, no flow and no directionality. It's more of an information- than an energy-exchange. Somehow these two are connected.

For a short introduction to archaeological dowsing principles, try this article. (Note: its American author uses two terms differently from British usage: by leyline he means an 'energy line' (not an alignment), and by spring he means a 'blind spring', or an underground spring that does not reach the surface.)

Underground Water

Banns Farm menhir

It all centres around blind springs ('water domes'). These are upward-moving underground flows of primary water - a by-product of the dynamics between the earth's core and mantle and of chemical reactions deep within Earth, carrying nutrients and charged geomagnetic and subtle energy upwards through the medium of water. Blind springs are crucial in determining the location of the more important ancient sites such as stone circles and quoits, which are always located on top of them.

Primary water has no hydrological connection with secondary water derived from the rainfall cycle. When flowing in underground streams, secondary water almost always flows downwards. But primary water, pressurised from below, flows upwards.

Trevean 1 propped menhir

Primary water rises through fissures, cracks and porous rocks, in seepages, flows and underground streams. When it hits an impervious layer of rock, or the fissure becomes constrained, the rising water is compressed. Then it seeks other, more horizontal routes.

A blind spring creates an energy-vortex at the surface, and straight overground energy-lines (or energy-leys) connect them as a network across the landscape. This vortex forms a bubble, whorl or funnel of energy at the surface.

Boscawen menhir, near Boscawen-ûn

Boscawen menhir, part of the Boscawen-un stone circle complex

A blind spring can be quite deep down (hundreds of metres at least), but those under stone circles and certain other sites seem to come higher up. Hence the significance of these higher blind springs. For example, the author finds the blind spring under Mên an Tol to be only about 40 metres under the surface.

Such a vortex registers on the surface as a subtle energy centre from which sinuous energy-currents radiate outwards under the ground. Some dowsers register energy spirals emanating outwards too.

A vortex creates an energy field or power centre upon which the people of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages built stone circles and quoits. One of several purposes was to enhance, harness, focus and fix in place such energy-fields.

Energy-fields have an effect on consciousness, shifting our awareness to another level. Just stand or sit inside such a field and you will experience this, though it might be clearest when you leave the site, returning to a more 'normal' awareness. If you stand under the tip of the central stone in Boscawen-ûn, you might even feel your body being swayed back and forth, involuntarily - this is the biomagnetic field at work.

On top of Trencrom Hill

Sometimes two water lines cross each other at different levels or strata in the rock, and an energy-vortex forms at ground level over the crossing point. These vortices have less energy-intensity and a different character to blind springs, but the ancients were interested in them nonetheless.

Such a vortex usually has an upward, downward or alternating directionality to it, pulsing in tune with the cycles and configurations of the moon, sun and planets of the solar system. This periodicity has not been fully and systematically studied, so we don't know for sure what its patterns and cycles are, or how much they vary from site to site. But it happens, observably.

One of the Pipers menhirs near the Merry Maidens

Neolithic and Bronze Age people built mounds, quoits, stones and menhirs, and probably also special trees long gone. So a sacred site, major or minor, would involve a blind spring or a water-line intersection, either of which generates a vortex.

The ancients found that overground straight energy-leys connect these vortices. The remarkable thing Neolithic people found was that such vortices could sometimes line up with each other, even over quite long distances. This is uncanny. It suggests a certain geographical order to the way that subtle energy works.

Megalithic Locational Science

Trevorgans menhir, near St Buryan

Early in the Bronze Age transition, by around 2400 BCE, people were becoming skilled at subtle energy engineering. They had learned that you can enhance and channel subtle energies and create, change and transmit them, when conditions allowed, by engineering and focused thought, setting up patterns that weren't there previously or they were weaker or different in character.

If you build a megalithic structure correctly and at the right place, it will draw energy to it or make an existing energy-trickle into a flow. By inserting a standing stone, you can create or amplify an energy-vortex.

Someone in the past realised that menhirs would be a good way to pin down, fix, channel or enhance these vortical flows. Menhirs served as conductors or transceivers. They could also act as horizontal relays connecting with other megalithic structures.

Menhirs were erected for a variety of reasons, and the importance of each reason differs from stone to stone. Various of these factors are present or absent in the case of different menhirs.

alignments of ancient sites - in many cases a menhir is located where it is because of alignments that it is marking or staking down;
underground water and its associated subtle energies - many menhirs are sited on top of intersections of underground water flows or other water-related energy-points;
overground energy-leys and their patterns and distribution - menhirs are usually located at crossing points or terminals, or they are relays on one energy-line only;
astronomical factors: some sites are involved with astronomical alignments to mark the rising and setting points of the sun, moon and perhaps stars. It could be up to 10% (a guesstimate);
visual landscape setting - there is a characteristic artistry to this, in terms of the way a menhir fits with the slopes, views and visible horizon. There is an intuitive artistic elegance to the way many menhirs are located;
intervisibility, or the capacity to see other ancient sites from a menhir, and vice versa, creating a visual-psychic relationship between them;
genius loci or spirit of place. Each ancient site has a feeling to it, a presence or a spirit. When you visit an ancient site and relax there, allowing yourself to freewheel, it isn't too difficult to sense that something has dropped into your psyche that wasn't there before.

Since we don't know the ancients' thoughts, we cannot know how much other factors came into play, such as myths and histories or matters of feeling. Menhirs each seem to have three or four of the above factors applying to them, and they are not at all uniform. Each carries a uniqueness and character of its own.

NEXT: About Alignments

Privacy. This site uses temporary cookies to watch general trends only. We aren't selling anything, capturing, mining, passing on your data or making mailing lists. It's a public service - no strings. Any issues, please make contact.