… is the title of an article I have written for the website Pagan Friends. Their Autumn Equinox edition is out now. 🙂
Tag Archives: Ley Lines
101 Magical Uses For A Pendulum – Part One
A Pendulum. Probably more ostentatious than is strictly necessary but hey, I’m superficial like that!
Hey you sass that hoopy Alex Sumner? He’s a frood who really knows where his Pendulum’s at.
1. As A Radionics Machine
Radionics started out from the principle that a physician named Albert Abrams alleged he could diagnose a patient not by examining the patient’s own body, but by examining a proxy to whom the patient was connected with wires. It then progressed to the idea that one did not need wires, nor indeed another human to act as proxy, but a “Witness” (a lock of hair or other tissue sample from the patient), on the basis that the original patient was somehow mysteriously connected to the Witness by some sort of subtle energy connection. This in turn led to the development of so-called Radionics machines, which are not in fact machines at all in the sense usually understood but work by Cryptesthesia, i.e. the operator knows when the knobs and dials are set in the right place when he or she experiences a kind of sticking sensation when running his thumb over a rubber disc.
NB: The knobs etc are not actually connected in the form of an electric circuit. Indeed, Radionics practitioners have themselves admitted that a Radionics machine does not so much transmit energy but bolster the belief of the operator.
A Radionics machine is thus a glorified Talisman made out of electronic components. The idea that Radionics can be used for healing is a difficult enough concept for skeptics, but what really gets me is the amount of money that such machines go for. A quick look on Google reveals that a typical gadget sells for $1750. That’s $1750 for a device that does not actually do anything!!!
It therefore occurred to your humble blogmaster that given that the underlying principle to Radionics was basically the same as dowsing or pendulum divination, why not get rid of the Radionics machine altogether and use a Pendulum instead? I imagine that it would go something like this: you ask the pendulum “What is the first digit – is it 0 … 1 … 2 … 3… ?” etc etc, and then repeating for as many digits as you dowse to be appropriate. This is essentially what a Radionics machine does, the difference being that you can make a Pendulum from materials costing pennies, instead of having to pay out thousands of dollars.
(The pendulum belonging to your humble blogmaster actually cost a few quid, but that was only because I wanted something that looked nice!)
2. As a Telepathy Device
In the book Pendulum Power
This is of course merely anecdotal, but it has given me the following idea…
3. For Cosmic Ordering
IMO the authors of Pendulum Power did not exploit the full potential of their discovery of a new use for the Pendulum. Instead of using it to send a simple message to one bloke, why not use it to send an Order to the Cosmos?
4. For Finding Ley Lines
I have written about this in my post The Ley of the Land.
5. For Contacting Dead People
INT. ENGLISH COUNTRY PUB. DAY.
In a busy pub, ALEX and his DRINKING COMPANION are amongst a party waiting for their food orders.
DRINKING COMPANION
Did you know that this is the most haunted pub in Britain?
ALEX
Really? Well let’s have a look.
Alex takes a pendulum out of his pocket.
ALEX
I intend to use the pendulum to contact any ghosts that may be
in this pub. Can I do this?
ANGLE on Pendulum: it’s rotating anti-clockwise.
ALEX (cont’d)
No? Oh well, that’s my career as a medium at an end – for this
afternoon at any rate.
Alex puts the pendulum away.
DRINKING COMPANION
I wonder why though it’s got the reputation for being haunted.
ALEX
Perhaps it’s because they serve Spirits at the bar?
To be continued…
Filed under Supernatural
The Ley of the Land (slight return)
Yesterday’s post about Avebury garnered some very interesting comments (thanks to all concerned). I would like to share one further factoid which an astrologer friend first told me, which I could have mentioned yesterday but it slipped my mind at the time. It is this: Avebury’s latitude is 51º 25′ 43″ N – which is the same number of degrees as the seventh part of a circle.
Immediately the Sumner Family Brain Cell prompted me to say: “Aha! So Avebury’s position must be based on astrology!” My reasoning being that back in ancient times astrology and astronomy were the same thing. The ancients would have measured Latitude by comparing the angle between a true vertical (e.g. a plumb line) and the Pole Star. Hence it is entirely possible that the ancient builders of Avebury deliberately chose that site because of the particular angle.
This is of course speculation, but we should remember that the builders of Avebury did know their Geometry, so it would have been a simple matter for them to turn their attention Vertically to the Heavens, as well as Horizontally to the land.
This actually gives me a brilliant idea for further investigation. As I stated yesterday, Avebury is on at least one major Ley Line which passes through not just nearby Silbury Hill, but (thanks to correspondents pointing it out) places further afield, including even Carnac in Brittany. Hence, if my theory that astrological considerations played a part in choosing Avebury’s location is correct, we should expect to find sacred sites where major Ley Lines hit latitudes of (e.g.) 72º, 60º, 513/7º, 45º, etc.
Filed under Supernatural
The Ley of the Land
One of many standing stones at Avebury in Wiltshire, England.
Recently I had the opportunity to go hunting for Ley Lines out in the field, when I visited Avebury in Wiltshire, England. I only stopped there briefly one afternoon, so at some point in the future I would like to go back and make a more thorough investigation. I shall give my impressions of the place for those who have not already visited it. It is the most extensive site of standing stones of which I know. The stones at Stonehenge may be larger, but the architects of megalithic Avebury located theirs over a wider area, delineating a vast complex. The stones vary in height but are typically about 10′ (3 metres) in height (see right for example).
Modern Avebury is a small village, right in the middle of standing stones on all sides. There are so many that it is possible to walk in any direction from the local pub (which does nice food by the way!) and find an abundance of them. On a sunny afternoon Avebury is popular with hippies and pagan-types and others who appreciate Earth mysteries.
So, there I was, in a field just a short walk from the village centre, with lines of stones in front and behind me. I attempted some dowsing. I did not have any L-rods, but I did have a pendulum, so I went about it in the following manner. Concentrating on the first stone I could see, I asked the pendulum: “is there a ley-line in this direction?” The pendulum at first said no. I then turned to the second stone and asked: “is there a ley-line in this direction?” I kept asking this until I was finally facing one particular stone, and the pendulum gave me a Yes-signal. Just to be sure I checked out the remaining stones, but I did not get any further Yes-signals.
The horizon was obscured by a low-hill. I asked a companion who knew more about the area if anything interesting lay in that direction. His reply was “Yes its Silbury Hill.”
Silbury Hill (bottom left) through Avebury.
I was quite excited by this, not least because I honestly did not know Silbury Hill was in that particular direction. As to why this particular ley-line is significant I do not know. I note that Silbury Hill is a 4,750 year old artificially constructed earth-mound, but the actual reason for its existence baffles the scholars. Clearly this requires further investigation on my part, although the fact that these Earth-energies are detectable by dowsing at all is remarkable in itself.
Filed under Supernatural
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
Daily Telegraph reports on Ley Lines 90 years after they were first discovered.
The many millions of readers of this blog will know that I am not overly impressed by the Daily Telegraph’s reputation for up to the minute scientific reportage. Often a scientific story gets reported a few days or even a week late, and sometimes even the time-gap is even longer (e.g. getting round to reporting on Professor Chandra Wickramsingh‘s work in astrobiology only after he had been doing it for the best part of forty years).
Now however they have taken the biscuit. In today’s edition I read that “Prehistoric man navigated his way across England using a crude version of sat nav based on stone circle markers, historians have claimed.” Further:
Well, well! There is only one problem with this theory: it was first proposed by Alfred Watkins in 1922 in his book Early British Trackways (1922), which was the fore-runner of the seminal The Old Straight Track
(1925), which is the first major work on Ley Lines.
Note however that Watkins never claimed that Ley Lines were anything other than a geographical phenomenon. It was left to later writers to attach paranormal connotations. John Michell’s The View over Atlantis
(1969) is generally thought to be the definitive work in this regard, although in actual fact occultists had latched onto the ley-lines-as-paranormal-phenomenon barely a few years after Watkins first published his work. E.g. Dion Fortune’s The Goat-Foot God
(1936) describes a method of using ley lines to determine the best location to site a magical temple.
Actually the idea of siting a temple using ley lines is perfectly sound, especially when you consider that ancient places of worship would have been the very sorts of location that neolithic man would have wanted to find as he roamed over the countryside. Hence: it is inevitable that ancient temples would be located upon ley-lines not necessarily due to any paranormal significance, but so that pilgrims would succeed in finding them.
This is not to say, however, that Ley-lines do not have paranormal significance. One of Michell’s assertions in the View Over Atlantis is that ley-lines indicate currents of energy which he refers to as “dragon-current,” because they are comparable to similar currents of energy found in Feng-Shui. Moreover the idea of “dragon-current” appears to be archetypal because along at least one ley-line in Britain there is a number of Christian churches – built on the sites of old pagan temples – which are all dedicated to either St Michael or St George – two saints famous for killing dragons. The official explanation for this is that they represent the victory of the Christian Church over Satan – although one may point out that it really meant the victory of the church over the pre-existing pagan religion, on the basis that in those days any religion which one did not like was linked by the Church to Satan by default.
So far, so coincidental. However recently I found a book called Ancient Magicks for a New Age
in which the author, Alan Richardson described his psychic investigation of a conical tumulus somewhere in Wales known as “Bel’s Tump.”
* My emphasis.
The biggest irony comes however when Richardson comments on the interpretation of his vision. “I am unable to give any clues, even at this remove, as to what my poor, short-lived beast actually meant.” We may speculate that a conical tumulus may have been just the kind of earth-work that neolithic man might have erected as a marker along the direction of a ley-line. If so we then have the situation that a clairvoyant, whilst still ignorant of John Michell’s theory of “dragon-current,” nevertheless has a dragon-related vision in relation to this particular locale. It may just be anecdotal evidence but it indicates a tentative vindication Michell’s writing.
So, all in all it is at least worth keeping an open-mind as to the paranormal or spiritual significances of ley-lines as something far-more than just a primitive sat-nav system.
What next for the Daily Telegraph one wonders? Scientists discover round-things which help make transport easier???
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Tagged as Alfred Watkins, daily telegraph, John Michell, Ley Lines