It doesn’t matter if you are interested in finding lost treasure or an ancient Roman fort, dowsing can be used to find long hidden archaeology and, in fact, we do not even need to leave our house if we do not wish to, although field work can be amazingly exciting.
All we need to decide is what it is we would like to actually find.
An Ordnance Survey Map of the area we are looking to explore is essential, and our pendulum.
Long-barrow
I am going to use as an example on how to find an ancient long-barrow (Neolithic burial chamber) which has long since vanished from obvious view within the landscape, although this can be applied to virtually anything you could be interested in locating both in the landscape or underground.
When I personally did this exercise I was in the general location of what I was looking for. Then I later set out on foot to explore and see if my dowsing findings made sense within what I could visually ascertain from the landscape.
Spreading out the map flat on the hood of my car (it was a nice still day, no wind) I dowsed first along the bottom edge of the map and asked “is the lost ancient long-barrow in a square upward of here?” and eventually got a yes response. Then I went down the left hand edge of the map to repeat the exercise, this time asking “is the lost ancient long-barrow in a square to the right of here?” and I got my yes response.
I can tell you for sure this is incredibly exciting when you are actually on location because now it was time to go along to the area my dowsing had found and see for myself. Sure enough there were clear indications in the particular field I was exploring that a long time ago there could well have been something there. Later I was able to confirm through networking the existence of the long-barrow, long since ploughed away by generations of farmers.
Use the same concept to search for anything that takes your interest. It is not actually necessary to leave your house if you do not want to, you could lay your map out on a table and dowse it in the comfort of your own home, although for me at least the thrill of becoming a landscape detective to search for long lost features is irresistible.
Our ancient ancestors could feel the landscape and the earth energy or ley lines, using them to decide where to construct monuments in the landscape and bury their dead; ponds along energy or ley lines are where they made offerings to their deities.
Here in our “civilized” 21st century we have forgotten so much of the genetic heritage from our ancestors; most of us do not live in tune with seasons as they did and most of us cannot read the landscape in the way that would have been perfectly second nature to them.
With practice and the help of our pendulum, we can train ourselves to be able to live, at least a little, as they would have done, understanding our relationship to our planet and seeing the landscape as a living evolving entity, which we are all inter-connected with. Learning to respect nature and her mysteries is all part of starting to feel through our intuition, getting to the point where we can know about energy in nature without actually needing to dowse at all, reading the landscape and trusting our inner knowledge.
Ley Lines
Archaeologist and businessman Alfred Watkins is credited with coming up with the term “ley line” and his wonderful 1927 book The Ley Hunter’s Manual still makes for interesting reading. Ley lines are a network of energy lines that travel sometimes great distances through the landscape, often connecting significant ancient sites. The theory is that our Neolithic and perhaps even earlier ancestors knew of ley lines and planned their spiritual areas to be located along established ley lines, forming an interconnection with themselves, the earth, and their deities.
It is possible to dowse for ley lines using OS maps. My suggestion is to firstly start with a well-known ancient site such as Stonehenge or Uluru (Ayers Rock) and find for yourself any ley lines running through or from these sites. Please avoid researching anyone else’s discoveries beforehand; leave it until after your own dowsing and then by all means go on the internet to see if your findings match those of others. There are some great online forums out there for exchanges of ideas and information; I shan’t suggest any websites as such information dates incredibly quickly.
Knowing more about ourselves and our interconnectedness with all things is the start of true wisdom. If we choose to attempt to grow we have a great tool to help us, our dowsing pendulum.
