Journal of Geomancy vol. 4 no. 2, January 1980
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Tom Graves and Janet Hoult are well known in the fields of dowsing and dragonlore respectively. In this work, they have
edited together parts of Lethbridge’s later works to make a readable continuum. It is perhaps a comment
on the repetitiveness of some of Lethbridge’s books that this can be done successfully. However, this aside, the
‘new’ book is an interesting introduction for readers who do not know the work of a remarkable and
much-maligned researcher in the field of
dowsing, ESP and speculative history. Let us hope that the preparation of this work is not a prelude to the withdrawal
of Lethbridge’s full-length books from print. One serious error in the book – no blame on the late T.C.
– is that the illustration captions for figs. 3 and 4 (on different pages) are transposed. One tries to make out
what the captions are going on about, then suddenly it dawns that they are wrong. Apart from this, the book will prove
an interesting synopsis of Lethbridge’s ideas.
N. Caputmontis
The Whiteleaved Oak is well known to readers of Michell and Behrend as an important geomantic centre. This booklet is a reprint of an essay from McKay’s book The British Camp on the Herefordshire Beacon which was published in 1875. The usual mythology of the period is combined with a description of the place and its possible usages to weave a speculative picture of prehistoric Britain. The edition is a limited one of 250 copies, the profits from which go to fuel the Dragon Project.
The microwave communications system used by the British government and its multifarious subsidiaries never fails to be of interest. In a recent issue of The Ley Hunter, a correspondent chided a contributor over an obsession with the connexion of these eyesores and geomancy. The piece was titled Faulty Towers. Now a Monty Pythonesque image of loons connecting towers with geomancy is brought up. Tom Graves and Colin Bloy have indeed found some energetic connexion between the towers and earth energies – not surprising in the light of the power pumped into such things. Laurie is not a geomant, but his book sheds further light on governmental activities in this field, and if you think the energy-microwave idea with all its conspiratorial undertones is paranoid, then read this book. Since Watergate and other US government activities’ exposure and the Sir Anthony Blunt red spy case, nothing attempted by governments is too far fetched to be believed. Laurie details how, with unbelievable stealth, various successive British governments have constructed huge tunnel systems beneath London, carved bunkers out of hillsides at Cheltenham, erected literally thousands of microwave towers, duplicated telephone systems and done other things to prepare for Word War III or general insurrection. Painstakingly, at no little risk to himself from prosecution, he has pieced together the hard evidence that a massive secret conspiracy has been perpetrated over many years by the government, even down to requisitioning now underground railway lines in London, intended for {29} the likes of you and me, for the purposes of secret shelters. As we fry in the thermonuclear holocaust, our elected and unelected masters will sit, snug as bugs in rugs, underground, to emerge like moths from their chrysalises into the brave new world of devastation. Buy it and learn something to your advantage.
This is the book on feng-shui we’ve all been waiting for. Lavishly produced and illustrated throughout with colour photographs, it covers the everyday practices of Chinese Geomancy today. Mrs Lip, who is senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Singapore, has consulted the ancient Chinese texts on the subject as well as practising geomants in that City.
The book deals with the principles behind geomancy, the yin-yang correspondences, the five elements, ten stems and twelve branches, the directions and hours, and the trigrams. Methods for the divination of feng-shui detail the luopan, or geomancer’s compass. Various beautiful examples of this exquisite instrument are shown, with some indications of its use. The geomancer’s ruler is another instrument of great interest. There are good and bad dimensions for buildings, and the ruler enables the geomant to determine which are used. It is most interesting that one of the good dimensions is within 1 mm of Ludovic MacLellan Mann’s alpha unit which he found in stone implements from Scotland. Of less joyous import to sacred metrologists is the news that the English foot is well within the range of harmful measures!
Standard rule-of-thumb geomancy gives various instances of actual use for the orientation of houses etc., and beautiful
Chinese brush sketches show standard situations with commentary. Examples of buildings influenced by
feng-shui range from the Guan Yin Tong temple in Singapore to Nanyang University and the Hyatt Singapore
Hotel, built in the 1970s. Geomancy is a living force in Singapore. Mrs Lip writes: “Had feng shui
been developed and tested by experiment and research data it could have evolved into a branch of true science instead of
remaining a form of pseudo-science.” It is up to all of us to bring this about.
Nigel Pennick
In this sequel to The Drovers’ Roads of Wales, the author (or publisher) has decided to tackle the tricky subject of leys as well as the more outwardly visible trackways. The result is a rather mixed success. Seen as a guide to walking in East Anglia the book has much to commend it. Detailed instructions, including a sketch map for each walk, are given for getting from A to B, and map references of interesting sites appear in the margin. As well as describing tracks like the Icknield Way and Peddars Way from the viewpoint of straight archaeology, the author throws in plenty of information on farming history, geomantic legends, and prehistoric sites – all of which will add to the book’s interest for armchair geomants. Scattered through the text you will find snippets about Grimes Graves, Walsingham, the Devil’s Dyke, the lost city of Dunwich, etc. as well as such local worthies as William Kett, Joseph Arch, St Etheldreda and Woden. Aided by Oliver Caldecott’s sketches (there are no photographs) the book {30} captures the spirit of the East Anglian countryside in traditional guidebook style. The author’s detailed account of the tracks and paths should be of extra value in future years as a record of the countryside as it was in 1980.
Where Ms Toulson manages less well is in incorporating current geomantic ideas into her work. While the descriptions of the walks are based on the author’s first-hand knowledge of the countryside, the sections on leys and zodiacs – mainly the result of interviews with various researchers – are reported in a journalistic style with little attempt at critical evaluation. The book kicks off with yet another account of that mythical hot summer day at Bredwardine when Alfred Watkins … I feel that the author is more at home in the asides on social history than in discussing the ley lines of the title – rather oddly, the leys are not even drawn on the maps.
Perhaps, though, the difficulty lies in the subject matter itself. The existence of leys and zodiacs is still in dispute, and it is not the object of this book to go deeply into the pros and cons. As it happens, Ms Toulson accepts leys and rejects zodiacs, but both are used as the basis for country walks – it suffices that other people have written about them.
To those who hope for new geomantic insights, then, this took will be disappointing. Still, as a guidebook and a
scrapbook of local lore it should be of interest to East Anglians who can afford £6·95.
Michael Behrend
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This debate was initiated by Brinsley le Poer Trench, known in a particular time-warp as Lord Clancarty, and took place in their Lordships’ House on the 18th January, 1979. Visitors to the gallery included the crew of a passing UFO who declared that they thoroughly admired the picture of their “saucer” on the front cover of The House of Lords UFO Debate. As to the content of that debate they were none too sure that it had done anything to encourage a sensible attitude towards UFOs in particular and science in general.
It is hardly worth while discussing the existence of observed phenomena and then doubting its veracity simply because it does not fit in with Christian concepts. It took the Church many centuries and cost numerous critics their lives before the ‘holy fathers’ accepted the truth of the solar system. The attitude still held appears to have the Universe created entirely for the benefit of the planet Earth.
Astronomers for reasons of their own tend to adopt similar attitudes and reject the UFO simply because they haven’t seen one themselves. With the best of intentions a debate such as this does more harm than good: we are presented with everything from sightings by Thutmose III in the 2nd millennium BC to Foo Fighters in World War II. We are on safer ground with recent sightings in the 70’s and there are numerous quotes of great interest. We are on less firm footing when we retread the paths of George Adamski.
If one wishes to have a concise report on all aspects of flying saucers then the book is worth the £2·95.
If however you want to further a real study of UFOs you’d best go out and look for them yourselves. Study maps and
choose your site carefully and you may well help to establish the truth. And a final thought: might the UFOs have a
‘force field’ which makes them invisible to Jodrell Bank, yet visible to the human eye?
Rupert Pennick.
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This calendar has all the major Pagan festivals anybody would want to celebrate, from New Year thru Imbolc, Lammas and
Hogmanay. Expertly drawn by Jim Kimmis, the various months are related to their signs of the zodiac and the noble trees
of the Celtic year. Full, half and new moons for the whole year are also scooting round the edge of the circle, with
times for those wiccaceous personnel around.
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The once-universally held view in Europe that all ‘native’ people were savages scarcely better than apes dies hard, as did the Tasmanians and other ‘heathen infidel’ who succumbed to Christian Englishmen about their Christian duties. The natives of the Pacific, so long seen either as ‘noble savages’ or bloodthirsty headhunters (defending their own countries against invading imperialists), have been ignored as to their expertise in navigation. It was assumed that because vastly-complex instrumentation was not available, then they drifted from island to island in their boats willy-nilly. Lewis, a New Zealander, shows that this is not so. A seemingly primitive society had indeed developed sophisticated navigation, but without the sextants, astrolabes and bacula of Europe. Their methodology was dependent upon the accurate observation of the stars and the knowledge of wave-patterns formed by islands, however distant. In the Caroline Islands group, the ppalu, navigator, is a man whose status is higher than a chief. His training is long and intricate. A famous navigator, Piailug, began his training at sea when six years old, and by 18 was a fully-fledged ppalu.
The training is conducted mainly at sea, but also instruction is given in the ‘men’s house’, where pebbles are set out in circles and other patterns to indicate star points and swells. Various islands have their own patterns which are formed from sticks, making objects scorned as superstitious fetishes by Christian missionaries who destroyed them. They were (and are) analogues of the geometry of waveforms – each island and island group having its own unique patterns. When a royal flotilla was returning to Tonga, so the story goes, the blind navigator Tuita got the flotilla out of a sticky problem – it was lost. Tuita asked his son Po‘oi to indicate to him by touch where certain stars would appear. Having done that, he dipped his arm down into the sea: “This is not Tongan water, but Fijian” he announced. “The waves are from the Fiji Lau group near Lakemba island. Let us alter course to the westward.” The next day they sighted Lakemba.
Such expertise of star and wave patterns is paralleled with ancient knowledge the world over. In Tonga, so this book
shows, there is a megalithic monument, the Ha’amonga a Maui coral rock trilithon at Tongatapu. King
Taufa’ahau Toupou IV of Tonga recently discovered that this trilithon is accurately aligned on the point of
sunrise for the summer solstice. In this book, Lewis recounts a visit he and the king made to the trilithon on a June
21st, the shortest day in the southern hemisphere, where the king believed they would see if grooves worn in the rock
denoted the winter solstice. Tradition asserts that the trilithon was erected by the eleventh tu’i tonga or sacred
ruler, Tu’i tatui, who reigned around 1200 CE. Such knowledge, retained in oral tradition only, enabled the
inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean to sail between islands many hundreds of miles distant from one another. That they did
this without any written language must again put into doubt the aspersions set upon ancient megalithic man’s
ability to lay out stone circles and ley lines – a parallel exists in the world to-day.
Nigel Pennick