Journal of Geomancy vol. 4 no. 3, April 1980
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I find myself in the very difficult position of both agreement and disagreement with John Billingsley’s comments in the spring 1980 issue of JOG on the connection between the pagan movement and Earth Mysteries.
He is quite right to be confused about the Earth Mysteries Conference held in Leeds last October. Talisman making and sex magic have very little to do with the Earth Mysteries per se. Hopefully the conference organizers will either change the title or the contents this year so that in future they cannot be accused of misrepresentation. I also agree that it is not the role of Pagans to proselytize. If we ever turned the Pagan movement into an evangelistic crusade we would, as John points out, be repeating the mistake of the established religions who have been our traditional enemies for centuries.
However, I am not so sure that the Earth Mysteries can be so easily segregated from Paganism. Any research into sacred
geomancy, leys, terrestrial zodiacs, healing wells, stellar alignments of stone circles etc. will eventually lead the
researcher to the inevitable conclusion that these are all aspects of an ancient spiritual tradition which is
pre-Christian (i.e. Pagan) in origin and practice. It is therefore impossible, in my view, to talk or write about the
Earth Mysteries without touching upon some aspect of Pagan philosophy – even if this is only the local folklore
and legends relating to ancient sites or their takeover as Christian places of worship. Anyone who doubts this has only
to read copies of that excellent (and much missed) Pagan/Earth Mysteries journal Albion which proved my
point that the study of leys and sacred geomancy is deeply rooted in the Pagan spiritual tradition.
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I note your comments about the article in Searchlight (Albion 2) which purports to associate “Magic runes, ley-lines and folk-lore” with fascism and right-wing traditions, or otherwise to dismiss geomancy as black magic etc. The terms left and right refer to a purely fortuitous disposition of groups on various sides of the speaker of the French parliament. You have kindly published certain statements of my own on the subject of dowsable ley energies and I feel our experiences are perhaps relevant in placing an otherwise dangerous argument in perspective.
Whereas a dowsing analysis of Hitler’s monuments in Nuremberg and the site of the Braunhaus and other important Nazi sites in Munich would indicate that Nazis had a working knowledge of geomancy and ley-energy and that is very important to understand, it does not therefore follow in any way whatsoever that the whole subject is “fascist”. What it means is that Nazis understood something about a particular subject, just as they understood about radar, atomic theory, rocket propulsion, etc. In parenthesis, I would offer the argument that the Nazi Party’s connexion with fascist theory was tenuous and misunderstood. The pure forms of fascism were exhibited by Mussolini, Franco and Peron, and by and large represent the dictatorship of the middle classes as opposed to that of the proletariat. Both may be dismissed as anathema by libertarians. Naziism was related to a prejudiced form of theological evil.
In order to establish a perspective, I would record the observation that whereas extant Nazi monuments are geomantic and exhibit energies the dowser may recognize as unpleasant, as do the party HQ of neo-fascist organizations such as Fuerza Nueva in Spain, identical energies may be detected emanating from or entering into Communist Party HQ in various European countries, and that the great Russian war memorial in East Berlin is no different. Nor their embassy in Paris.
The use of religious myth to advance political causes is not peculiar to fascists. The embalming of and deification of Lenin in his geomantic tomb in Red Square is an example of the use of more recent gods as archetypes, and profit emerges from a geomantic analysis of Karl Marx’s tomb at Highgate, as it does from President Kennedy’s in Arlington Cemetery, Washington, D.C., or Franco in the Valley of the Fallen in Madrid! {21}
What emerges from a study of geomancy is that systems that seek to dominate and impose themselves on mankind always use it, as do those which seek to do better, which gives none of them proprietorial rights. We may well ponder on the application of the system by the Christian church over two millennia. Or why the head offices of banks are also in the system (See page 16 of this issue – ed.). But so do systems that seek to liberate, as does the Christian in many of its aspects. A fair hypothesis seems to be that the system is open to or indeed implicit to all those who seek change, who raise themselves from a state of acquiescence in the status quo of their immediate environment, to create centres and monuments which attract the conscious or subconscious attention of their fellows. A monument that breaks the skyline or imposes itself geomantically in other ways on its immediate environment may provoke an unconscious awareness. Where centres of human activity for change are created of a non-geomantic nature, the activation of ley-energy is at a more conscious level. It is the motive that is relevant.
Having said all that, however, there is a presumption that ley-lore is true. I believe it is and all observations show it to be so. If it isn’t, then every political movement on a Jungian level, is guilty of creating its own propaganda mythology where no extant one exists in order to gain extra credence, and if it is true, then we may well ponder to whom geomancy, earth magic and the like really belong.
My only possible answer to this is that it is a phenomenon which relates humanity to the macrocosm in the Kabbalistic and religious sense. And as in all things, man has a choice. If he chooses to involve himself in systems which seek to enslave and dominate his fellow, then the whole art and science of geomancy, and associated myths and archetypes, are at his disposal to do so. If, on the other hand, he wishes to liberate his fellow through the power of love, a vastly misunderstood principle, the system is equally open and available.
A reading of Goethe’s Faust or The New Testament is relevant in this context and it behoves all men who take the macrocosm seriously to decide whether they operate with the principle of ego or ego-submission – love or hate. For those who cannot conceive of the macrocosm as having any reality, the idea of whether fascists or marxists have some sort of proprietorial sway over the system, would seem to have about as much relevance to their appreciation of reality as does a discussion on the number of angels one can get on the head of a pin, which as all initiates know, is 2,743,201, which proves that fascism, or communism, or social democracy, or conservatism, or liberalism, or the party for better conditions for mole-catchers have truth at their elbow, or that they are swinishly perverting the truth to their ends, geomants all.
If, as our work seems to indicate, geomancy and the macrocosm are intimately related, then, I submit, no party which limits itself to terrestrial ambition has any claim whatsoever to a phenomenon which towers above such limited and constricted objectives. Geomancy is not only an archaeological phenomenon but also a dynamic, evolving, contemporary one, and within it have been and will be reflected many significant human events. It is the context for the struggle for the spiritual liberation of man or his enslavement. Yes, let us take it seriously and let us decide for whom we operate when we operate within it, for it is the property of no terrestrial power, only the stage upon which humanity struts or elevates or degrades itself and can never be permanently appropriated by any political movement as its own.
But let us beware of those who do comprehend it and seek to pervert it to their own ends, whatever their political hue and however short their tenure.