Journal of Geomancy vol. 4 no. 3, April 1980
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Occasionally, the television services turn up material of geomantic interest, but then fail to take up the implications raised. This program was just such a transmission. It dealt with the biological and geophysical research on the magnetic field of this planet, and the implications to life.
At the University of New Hampshire, five years ago, Richard Blackmore noticed that bacteria he was examining tended to gravitate towards a certain direction, which was not influenced by light or other of the usual things. He discovered that the baccies were gravitating towards magnetic north! Having shown this phenomenon, the TV then cut to an ancient Chinese lodestone spoon as used in divination. Geomancy, I thought, and, sure enough, a luopan or Chinese feng-shui compass was shown, but … described as a navigational aid and then cut to a late medieval European mariner’s compass, and all the usual textbook stuff about William Gilbert and the magnetic variation of the compass. No mention of the Chinese geomancers who discovered it – Yang Yün-Sung (880 CE) was not named.
The work of Professor Parker at Chicago University on periodic cycles of the magnetic field was most interesting on a geomantic viewpoint. There is a 24 hour cycle, with a ‘wiggle’, a rise/dip, at about midday, larger in summer than in winter, monthly variations with the tides and in phase with the electrical charge of the ionosphere. There are also ‘random’ micropulsations a few days each year caused by magnetic storms. At this time, compasses go haywire, and the storms coincide with solar flares.
The scenario then switched to the Appleton Laboratory at Slough where Dr Joe King explained how a Dr Stagg in 1922–28 noticed correlations between magnetism and the weather. An Aberdeen chart of the period correlated the results. Following on to the Lamont Dougherty Geophysical Laboratory, we saw core samples of the ocean being analyzed magnetically, and were told that every few hundred thousand years the magnetic field of the earth ‘flips’ over and reverses. Extinctions of marine microorganisms were given as food for thought, that the next one is half a million years overdue! And as if to give credence to Mother Shipton’s adherents, we were told that between 1940 and 1960 the field strength was constant, only to nosedive after ’60, and to now be 98·5% of its 1950 figure. At this rate, the magnetic field of earth will collapse by 2230.
Cut back now to the original theme – the baccies which went north. Inside, shown by electron microscopy, a string of magnetite beads. Analyzed by Richard Frankl of MIT with gamma ray spectroscopy, and bingo! Magnetic detectors <were> used to detect the downward component of the magnetic declination at Wood’s Hole, Massachusetts, the preferred home of the bacterial cells. Then they checked the equivalent place in the southern hemisphere for south-seeking bacteria, and found them! Up the evolutionary ladder like a demented fireman to Stingrays, sharks and other cartilaginous fishes, which are equipped with an electro-sensory snout. Predictably, magnetic tests showed them able to distinguish fields, as were pigeons, crabs and other forms of experimented-upon animal life.
Charlie Walcott showed how pigeons get trapped at magnetic anomalies, especially the magnetic bowl at Jersey Hill, western New York State. Plotting pigeons’ flight-paths against magnetic contours, it was found that they follow ridges. Shades of Zeus divining the Omphalos, with his two eagles in flight? (But they didn’t mention the old thunderer). Onward through the eminenti of magnetic research to Frank Brown, a long-ignored Velikovsky-like champion of magnetic effects on life, who was suddenly called upon by NASA for their human experiments in space flight. His tests on potatoes – 1 500 000 ‘potato hours’ of data over 11 years – show the cyclic effects of the field. Then, NASA wanted to test astronauts’ resistance in weightless, magnetless space, and found significant neurological alterations in the spacemen’s brains, but research was terminated too soon (officially at least). At the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Syracuse, New York State, Robert Becker was shown demonstrating his ideas on bone regeneration which is accelerated with the passing of weak electric currents. This cuts out the natural currents which are affected {18} by the magnetic flux of earth. Magnetic storms, he claims, increase the number of admissions to psychiatric hospital. But, of course, no mention of acupuncture at this juncture (crank, you see!). But varying electrical potentials were demonstrated all over the body of a hapless anaesthetized salamander for all to see, equivalent with those found in Homo sapiens.
All such research naturally has a fundamental interest for geomants. The scientists involved in the research, like many
scientists (I know, I work among them), have no knowledge or interest in ancient arts and sciences. The fact that a
geomancer’s luopan was shown and then called navigational shows that the ancient science of geomancy
is unknown to such people, even though it is being practised this minute on Tai-Wan and in Singapore and Hong Kong. The
fact that orientation is such an important part of geomancy, and that the compass is a fundamental part of it (and was
in ancient Mexico, and perhaps Europe), must mean that it is related to the brain and body waves in all of us. Thus a
place correctly oriented with relation to the magnetic field would, if manipulated properly, engender various prescribed
physical effects – a feeling of peace or reverence or awe or fear, for example, as the natural result of the
interaction of the field with the brain. The modification of the field by large masonry constructions of precise
geometrical form, like pyramids or temples, would also tend to produce such effects. It is a pity that this exciting
realm of research was not gone into.
NIGEL PENNICK
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The mazes of village greens are of perennial interest. This nicely-illustrated handwritten lithoed booklet deals with
all the extant mazes of England, gives plans, analyses of the moves taken in traversing them, and maps on how to
actually find the labyrinths. A list of mazes extant and extinct, complete with OS map references, and sizes, completes
a thoroughly worthwhile book. And it’s in a very limited edition – so send for yours
now before it, like so many worthy shoestring ventures, goes out of print and becomes unavailable.
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The legend that Salisbury Cathedral was founded on the site of landing of an arrow shot from Old Sarum ramparts has been
examined in John Michell’s book The View Over Atlantis and Nigel Pennick’s book The
Ancient Science of Geomancy. Those two authors take a somewhat different view of the legend. Michell thinks it
may have been a compass and Pennick claims it was the misinterpretation by the local yokels of the use by surveyors of
instruments resembling a crossbow. Be this as it may, Garrard’s new booklet goes into the background of the
refoundation of the cathedral, and the legend which has given rise to the speculations on ancient geomantic practice.
The arrow site, interestingly, is connected with a brindled cow, similar in type to the legend current at Durham
Cathedral where the Dun Cow gave the monks a cue for their foundation. All in all, another brick in the wall of earth
mysteries, and more evidence for those who want the basic sources of material.
GABRIEL WEDMORE
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The ‘Megalithic Visions Antiquarian Paper No. 15’ Mother Shipton by Nigel Pennick and
Sheila Cann is a most comprehensive account of the life and prophecies of Ursula Sontheil, 1488 to 1561. No one
interested in historical
research could fail to benefit from the material gathered in this paper. We find that not only did Mother
Shipton’s prophecies refer to her own era but probably to events from the 16th to the 21st century. There’s
certainly food for thought contained in this publication.
Rupert Pennick.