Up to now in this series we have barely mentioned dowsing for intangible targets such as earth energies. Perhaps it’s appropriate that we have left this for the later articles, as it is only in recent years that this form of dowsing has matured.
Our understanding of the whole ‘earth mysteries’ scene has similarly developed since the early days of ‘New Age’ thinking, with its talk of ley lines, UFO flight paths, spirit roads, ‘earthlights’ and so on. Researchers like John Michell, Paul Devereux, Tom Graves and many others too numerous to mention, have all helped shape our conceptual model to the point where in more recent years, it has become perfectly acceptable to talk about such topics in respectable circles.

As our understanding of earth mysteries has grown, so has the area of earth energy dowsing, which became the most rapidly expanding area of research in the BSD (British Society of Dowsers ed), leading to the formation of the Earth Energies Group (EEG) in 1995 - the oldest of the Society’s Special Interest Groups. And this gives us an insight into what is perhaps the main problem with earth energy dowsing - the fact that our consciousness, influenced by our individual worldviews and prior learned experiences, plays such a large part in interpreting what we find. So it is no surprise to find that people can construe things differently when it comes to earth energies.(1)
It is vital therefore, that dowsers working in this field compare findings and work together whenever possible to build up a common vocabulary, and this was (and still is) one of the main purposes of the EEG.
Over the early years of the EEG, a large body of knowledge was accumulated and disseminated in the EEG newsletter, ‘Earth Energy Matters’. Founding Chair, Billy Gawn, later collated the ‘EEG Encyclopaedia of Dowsing Terms’, which aimed to provide a common frame of reference for earth energy dowsing. Both of these are invaluable resources to novice and veteran dowsers alike.(2) Another problem is that dowsing earth energies can be a very interactive process - just as they can have an effect on your consciousness, so your consciousness can have an effect on the energies, changing what you (and others) find. The brain is like a computer - it’s just that some of us are Macs and some are running Windows. We each have to learn how to program our individual biocomputers, and advancing in our dowsing provides us with the tools to take control of our own operating systems. Dowsing has tremendous potential as a tool for personal and spiritual growth, and this is an area where I expect to see a lot more development in the future.

We’ll look at these aspects in more depth later, but for now just bear in mind that, although I will try to give a general picture of earth energy dowsing in this article, what follows is largely my own ‘map of the territory’. Nonetheless, it helps to have a baseline from which to start and hopefully you will find it useful in that regard.

Definitions and terms
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So what exactly do we mean by earth energies? It’s such a wide-ranging term and has been subject to much misinterpretation over the years. But basically, any energy that can be dowsed for on planet Earth can be classed under the heading, even though those energies may not originate from the Earth. Thus, it includes etheric fields from animate and inanimate objects, human auras, thought forms, planetary influences and so forth. We really should just be talking about Energy dowsing, but in many ways that term sounds even woollier.

The term ‘Ley line’ is another misnomer that has now become enshrined in common usage. ‘Ley’ is an archaic English term meaning a cleared straight strip of land, and was first used to describe an alignment of ancient sites, old churches, moats, crossroads and so on by Alfred Watkins in the 1920’s, because he found so many place names containing the term along the routes of his alignments.
Since ley already means ‘straight’, semantically it is a tautology to add ‘line’ to this. Watkins himself never used ‘ley line’, and even tried to stop using the term ‘ley’, coming to prefer ‘archaic track’ instead. Actually, Watkins wasn’t the first to postulate long distance alignments of ancient sites; according to Wikipedia, in 1870 a gentleman named William Henry Black gave a talk to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford, in which he stated that “Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe”. Later, pioneering archaeo-astronomer For dowsers the term ‘ley’ is doubly confusing, as not all leys are the same some of them seem to be purely visual alignments. Whilst these can be dowsed, the lines are very narrow and contain little or no energy, indicating that they may be purely conceptual in nature.

For dowsing purposes, we are interested in another sort of line, which sometimes corresponds with a visual ley, but can also be found independently. These dowse as wide straight bands of energy flowing on, or just above the ground surface. Veteran earth mysteries researcher John Michell suggested that we use the term ‘energy ley’ to describe these straight energy lines, and I try hard to adhere to that distinction.

Dowsing the leys

In addition to leys (both energy and visual), there are a bewildering variety of other energies that we can dowse for - you can find sinuous lines of energy, spirals, vortices, auras, toroids, several varieties of grids, and even geometric shapes! We’ll look at some of these later on, but for now let’s keep it simple and concentrate on energy leys, as these are relatively easy for the beginner to find
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Energy leys seem to originate and terminate at blind springs, and so are frequently found at sacred sites such as stone circles and in older (generally pre -Reformation) churches, which were often built on much older sacred sites (3). In a church, you will typically find a blind spring under the altar, and very often an energy ley running down the axis of the building. A site such as this is the best place to start when dowsing for energy leys although, since not all church users are keen on dowsing, a stone ring is probably a safer choice to begin your explorations.

In a typical stone ring, you will be able to dowse a blind spring inside it, although not necessarily in the exact centre. When you’ve found it, dowse the extent of the ‘dome’, then walk around the perimeter, and dowse the number of water veins exiting the dome. You should also find at least one stream entering the dome, which will be the feeder stream for the system.

Now that you know where the water is, try to find any energy leys. Walk around outside the perimeter of the water dome once more, telling your rods that you want them to indicate any energy leys. Visualise these as straight lines of glowing white energy flowing across the ground. You can dowse for them in the same way as a water line, find the centre of the line first, then step back a few paces and ask for the nearside edge, then the far edge. You should find that the width of the energy ley is approximately 2.5m, although they can sometimes be much wider.

Although energetically an energy ley feels ‘yang’, to the ‘yin’ of a water line, the ley energy is much subtler, so don’t expect to get as strong a reaction as you would from a water line. Initially it may take you a couple of passes to be sure that you have found one. I find that for leys, L rods will swing outwards instead of crossing as they do with water, and you can of course mentally program your rods to do the same for you. This technique is very useful as it allows you to dowse both water veins and energy leys in a single pass.
Pay attention to bodily signals too – I find that my feet will become warm or even itchy when I’m standing on an energy ley, whereas with water, I feel it more in the pit of my stomach. You can also try crouching down and placing your hand into the energy ley, about a foot above the ground surface, the air should feel noticeably warmer.

Having completed your circuit of the site, you should have found at least one ley, and usually not more than 3 or 4, unless you are at a major power centre. If you find an odd number, it means that one of the leys is originating or terminating at this power centre. You can determine which by dowsing for the direction of flow, just as you did with the water.

Usually an even number of leys will indicate a crossing point (although of course they have to be directly opposite each other across the dome for this to be true). The picture depicts a hypothetical example of water flows and two energy leys at a stone circle. Note that it’s easy for novice dowsers to confuse water reactions and energy leys. If you find more than five energy leys running through a site, you’ve probably become muddled somewhere. This is why it’s good to have a more experienced dowser on hand to confirm (or refute) your findings.

Character of energy leys

Just as we did with water, you can use colours to classify the energy of a ley using the Mager Rosette. The colour attributes may be different for you with leys, so you will have to learn from experience what each colour means. Some commonly used attributes are purple for ‘holy lines’ in churches, white for ‘normal’, black for unhealthy lines and so forth. It can also be useful to apply a wider range of colours as the Mager disk is a bit limiting in this regard - you may want to try using metallic colours such as gold, silver, copper or bronze. However, it may take several years of experience before you are confident and consistent with your personal colour system, so initially I would suggest that you use colour solely as a means of differentiating one line from another, without assigning any meaning to it.

An additional classification that you can apply is to dowse whether the energy is positive, negative or neutral; thus you might hear some dowsers talk of ‘negative green’ energy (generally thought to have a preservative effect). You have to be careful when using terminology like this, as many people perceive ‘negative’ in a pejorative way. Think of it like electricity; that can be positive, negative or neutral too, yet we don’t think of negative as ‘bad’ in an electrical context. More useful terms to apply to energy leys might be ‘healthy/traumatised’, . stressed/balanced’, or beneficial /detrimental mental’. Energy leys are built up from smaller, thinner lines of energy, and you can dowse these by making a slow pass over the ley, resetting your rods to the search position after each band. There always seems to be an odd number of bands that flow in opposite directions and are of opposing polarities. The majority of the bands will determine the overall polarity and flow direction of the ley, as shown. In certain circumstances, these bands can ‘delaminate’ for a short distance, before coming together again. I have noticed this in some church leys, where one or more of the outer bands left the main flow temporarily, to detour through the font or some other feature. You can also find what appear to be individual bands in isolation, unconnected with energy leys or sacred sites. These narrow ‘energy lines’ can be found meandering through the landscape, perhaps connecting with natural features, forming spirals and other more intricate patterns as they interact with themselves and their surroundings.
I consider these to be earth energy in its most ‘wild’ or ‘untamed’ form; unlike the more formalised

energy leys where several energy lines seem to have been wrought or channelled together to work as a whole - although whether this is a natural phenomenon, or indicative of human intervention is still a matter for debate. The bigger picture

The concept of a global energy grid has been around since the early 1970’s, when a group of Russian scientists proposed a global energetic grid, based on the geometric form known as an icosododecahedron. The geometry of the grid was supposed to determine the etheric pattern of the planet, determining the placement of significant geographical features; and there did appear to be some correspondence with the edges of tectonic plates.

In the 1980’s, US scientists Bethe Hagens, a Professor of Anthropology at Governor’s State University and William Becker, a Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago, developed the earlier theory to include the other Platonic solids - tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, and icosahedron; plus a couple of other regular geometric figures with even more exotic names - the rhombic dodecahedron and the triacontrahedron. They called the finished grid the ‘Unified Vector Geometry Earthstar 120grid’ - usually abbreviated to ‘UVG grid’. Prof. Hagens has recently produced a Google Earth placemark of the grid, which you can see in the illustration (see over).

The work of two other scientists also needs to be taken into consideration here. Back in 1979, scientist James Lovelock advanced the theory that the Earth was a living being in its own right, known to the ancient Greeks as Gaia - and that humans and all other life forms on the planet are a part of the same living system. More recently, biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake proposed the concept of the morphogenetic field, an energetic blueprint that determines the growth and form of living organisms perhaps better known as the aura to most of us.

These theories have profound implications for our perception of the landscape for if the Earth is indeed a living being, then she too will have a subtle energy body that not only determines the distribution of major geographic features, but also has chakras (energy nodes), meridians and energy flows that mirror those found in the human body and, importantly from our point of view, can be dowsed. Enter the dragon

If you’re familiar with the work of John Michell or Hamish Miller you will know about the Michael line, but you may not know that this corresponds to one of the lines on the UVG grid. The Michael line is a ‘geomantic corridor’ of sacred sites across southern England, running from St. Michael’s Mount through places including the Cheesewring, Brent Tor, Burrow Mump, Glastonbury Tor, Avebury, Royston and Bury St. Edmunds, many of which have an association with St. Michael.

The line is aligned on the direction of the Beltane sunrise, and the fact that there are so many significant natural landscape features along it lends credence to our hypothesis that the world grid determines the geographic placement of such features. Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst spent some time dowsing along this alignment documenting their findings in ‘The Sun the Serpent’. The pair later dowsed another long distance alignment the Apollo line, across Europe, and wrote up their findings in ‘The Dance of the Dragon’.

This line also connects several significant landscape features such as Skellig Michael off the southwest coast of Ireland, St. Michael’s Mount, Mont St. Michel in France, Monte Gargano in Italy, Corfu, and the Greek oracle sites of Delphi and Delos. Many of these sites are also dedicated to St. Michael.

Hamish found that these lines had serpentine yin and yang components to them, which wound back and forth across the nominal straight alignment, rather in the manner of snakes coiled about a caduceus. Often they crossed at a sacred site such as a church or well, where they formed a node point.
He found that the masculine, or yang lines tended to go through places of patriarchal power like
churches or high points in the landscape, whereas the feminine, or yin lines had a tendency to favour more goddess-oriented sites - churches dedicated to female saints, holy wells and low points in the landscape. He named the two serpentine currents Michael and Mary in the UK example, and Apollo and Athena in the European example. These ‘dragon lines’ have long been familiar to Chinese geomancers, where they are known as ‘lung mei’ or ‘dragon’s breath’.

There is another long distance alignment in the UK that was postulated by Guy Ragland Philips in his book ‘Brigantia: a Mysteriography’, and subsequently researched by Gary Biltcliffe and his partner Yana Nilsson. Running from Inverhope in Scotland down through St. Catherine’s Hill in Winchester, this is known as the Belinus line and its two component serpent lines are named Bel and Ana. When we When we look at these three leys in Google Earth in conjunction with the UVG grid, we immediately see that there is some correspondence, although each ley is displaced from the corresponding UVG line by around 10 degrees clockwise. Perhaps the UVG grid isn’t entirely accurate, or maybe it’s more of a Platonic ideal of a grid and things have moved somewhat over the years through tectonic plate movement or other causes - but leaving this discrepancy aside, the fact that there is any correspondence with the UVG is possibly the best confirmation I’ve seen that there is some validity to the world grid theory. Our planet really does seem to have a beautiful crystalline energy body that dictates the placement of sites along significant energy flows.
Summary

Each of these major grid lines has very strong serpentine flows associated with them and node points are found where the lines cross, which usually occurs at a significant sacred site. The dragon currents are of opposing polarities, yet they are complementary and interdependent on each other. A good way to picture these is to think of a vibrating string with nodes and standing waves along it; the polarised lines may just be different aspects of the same standing wave.

With this model, an energy ley at a local level can be seen as just a lower vibration of this same global grid harmonic. You can dowse serpentine currents associated with them, but the lower vibration means that the serpent lines are contained within the energy ley and cannot be detected outside of it.(5)
To continue our earlier electrical analogy, the ley system connecting stone rings and sacred sites is rather like our modern electrical power grid, with local substations stepping down and distributing the power from the high voltage long distance transmission grids. The man-made ley network of ancient stone rings and sacred sites may be doing just that, harnessing and distributing the energy of the global grid to areas where it is needed.

Next time we’ll explore some other energy forms that can be dowsed, and have a look at the detrimental effects that we call geopathic stress.

References

(1) Sig Lonegren’s hypothesis number 1: “Even if they were trained by the same teacher, when dowsing for intangible targets (like the Earth Energies), it is quite probable that no two dowsers will ever find exactly the same thing.”
(2) Online versions of both the EEG newsletter archive and the Encyclopaedia of Dowsing Terms areavailable on the EEG website:
http://www.britishdowsers.org/EEG si te/home.html
(3) Hence the reason why energy leys are often found corresponding to a visual ley.
(4) YOU can find the UVG placemark at:

http://www.vortexmaps.com/hagensgrid google.php. There’s also a link on the EEG website.
(5) Thanks to Richard Creightmore for this insight.

Dowsing Today June 2008

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