Twinn
The First Glint of the
Sun on the Serpents
​
I hadn’t seen the North Sea for decades - and I’d all but forgotten the sheer edge of the trans-Siberian north-easter that sweeps across it. Perhaps it was a memory I’d actually deleted. But if the physical atmosphere lacked a few degrees, the warmth of the human welcome more than compensated.
Spring 2013 found the EEG on tour at the eastern extreme of the empire - at Hopton-on-Sea, home of the Sunrise Dowsers, and also the location of the pivotal site of the ruined church of Old St Margaret’s.
Hopton, on the Norfolk coast, is a quiet and unassuming holiday retreat with a small, but active, resident community. It was hardly on the RADAR of most of the rest of the dowsing world, until the publication of The Sun and the Serpentby Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst brought it to our attention in 1989. As Paul and Hamish were westcountry-based, Hopton was the last place they visited on their epic cross-country earth energy saga. Yet, as the sun scorches the touch-paper of the Mary/Michael matrix at the start of each day, it is arguably the first real step on their path.
It was Michael, Mary and Hamish that had brought the EEG to Norfolk, and it was a fitting theme for the weekend. Over 40 people, some from as far afield as Wales, Scotland and Ireland, made it through challenging travelling conditions to hear some top drawer speakers, and to get involved in some top notch field dowsing.
Saturday opened with a speaker whose long-awaited book has caused a major stir on the dowsing circuit. As a true sequiteur to The S&S, The Spine of Albion, by Gary Biltcliffe and Caroline Hoare, describes the rediscovery of a complementary north-south energy matrix stretching from the Isle of Wight to the north coast of Scotland, incorporating significant sacred and secular spots, together with cities ancient and modern, along its route. Although many of us have inherited shards of Hamish’s baton, it has fallen to Gary and Caroline to follow the direct etheric bloodline, by taking the Michael and Mary concept to other levels. Their work moves on the idea of long distance earth energy routes, known and used by generations of former ‘Britons’ (which was such a revolutionary idea 25 years ago) and weaves into it the landscape history and timeless cultural philosophy of all those who have lived along them. It is, in turn, part geology, part sociology, part psychology - and part spiritual quest. Gary and Caroline have rapidly become banker speakers, and their book is understandably selling like hot cakes. I am sure Hamish would have been delighted.
Next up was someone who has developed the theme of the long distance trail, and has merged it into an even more ingrained and venerated tradition - the act of going on a Pilgrimage. Richard Dealler is a travelling man, who imbibed the essence of pilgrimage whilst walking the legendary path across southern France and northern Spain to Santiago de Compostella. He loved the experience so much, he carried on past the destination shrine of St James, and walked all the way to the Atlantic coast! On his return to the UK, he felt called to set up something similar here. Canterbury and Iona may have their appeal, but we have nothing on the scale of the comparable continental pilgrim routes. So it was that Richard, and a few friends, decided to invoke the spirit of Hamish and create a new coast-to-coast pilgrim way, using the Michael/Mary complex as a framework. The story of the gestation and delivery of the route is almost as compelling as the emerging results, but the true essence of his work is in marrying the moving spirit of place with the awareness of the here and now. Private yet passionate, vulnerable but valuable, Richard provides a very different kind of presentation. Eschewing the PowerPoint handrail, he relies entirely on his own experiences, buoyed up by some delightful and pertinent poetry. He describes each talk as metaphorically stepping off a cliff. Thankfully, each time he has landed on a supportive, audience-shaped cloud. I felt the mysterious Millernet was again very much in evidence in helping him along.
The early afternoon slot fell to someone we might almost have forgotten as an earth energy researcher. Long before he took on the massive challenge of co-ordinating the disparate needs of the BSD and its members, Grahame Gardner was one of the rising luminaries of the earth energy community, with a particular interest in the re-emerging field of sacred geometry. His intervening years, as BSD President, have enabled him to consolidate his thinking and, almost as a byproduct of the role, to rub shoulders with many of the major dowsers and thinkers of his era. This presentation was a master class in taking the simple, practical building blocks of the study of earth energies, and showing how these enable dedicated researchers to inform and support their work as maturing geomancers. The goal of the quest is the achievement of gnosis (literally - ‘knowing’). GG has clearly made huge strides in this direction personally, and when he is released from his president’s responsibilities next year, he will be in pole position to help others along their personal paths.
After three very different voyages through the stratosphere of earth energy dowsing and application, it was time for a gentle descent into the more tangible atmosphere of here-and-now Hopton. Brian Howard, David Kelf, Su Pine and their colleagues have spent the last few years recovering the old parish church of St Margaret’s. Burned down in 1897 and subsequently stifled by rapacious vegetation, it is Norfolk’s riposte to the rediscovery of Angkor Wat. When Miller and Broadhurst had sought out this place, their most easterly node, back in the 1980s, they’d had to climb the security fence and carve a way through the brambles, David Attenborough style. Today, a new and grander fence girdles the still-crumbling ruin, but at least you can now see the building as an entity and, with the help of the Sunrise Dowsers, dowse inside it in reasonable comfort - without actually breaking the law.
Brian explained how the energies in the church had become contaminated over the years of neglect, and that the site had been abused and misused both physically and spiritually. Much of their work had been directed towards the removal of the ivy and scrub, but also to the cleansing of the energy currents. While there is still much to be done, and considerable funding still to be raised, the achievements of this small band of volunteers have been quite remarkable - as we were to find out for ourselves the following day.
Brian showed how the local group had also re-surveyed the Michael and Mary lines through much of their transit of East Anglia. Not all of their findings agreed with Hamish’s - but Mr Miller himself always said his results were only what he had found on the day he was there. Organic currents are not static, and all earth energy dowsing is an interaction of the dowser with their planet. Hamish’s invective to all of us was to get out there and sense it for ourselves, so he wouldn’t be at all concerned that a new band of followers has found a few discrepancies in the core data - in fact, he would have welcomed the new information and the constructive debate it has generated.
Sunday morning brought no more heat, but the snow horizon had crept a little closer overnight, preventing a few of our number from reaching the town. Those present divided into three groups and set out to dowse both inside the church and around the perimeter of the safety fence and - for those of a masochistic bent - to track Michael and Mary as they alighted on to Hopton seafront.
When it comes to coastal erosion, eastern East Anglia has, perhaps understandably, developed a distinctly siege-like mentality. The esplanade has been encased in concrete and wood, and the posters on the lamp standards said it all - ‘Who Stole our Beach?’ The remains of the Victorian groynes that Hamish and Paul would have seen were still there, but the sand and shingle they sought to contain was long gone. The whole scene was given a further air of surrealiarity by the constant onslaught of emulsified wave-foam, driven on to everything and everyone ashore by the persistent and pitiless wind. We did find both Michael and Mary, quite distinctly, despite our gloves and our wavering wands. We may not have totally agreed on the widths and the banding of the currents, but there was a good consensus of where they lay and their relative sizes.
In and around Old St Margaret’s the energies were strong and complex. It is a site with a lot going on. The major energy lines cross at a powerful node close to the former altar, where they become entangled with another significant current - an energy ley dubbed ’The Peter Line’ (see the diagram produced by GG, using the phone app. developed by AIW). Add to this the usual minor currents, several water veins, a number of pictograms and manifestations (as described on YouTube by yours truly, and recorded by the ubiquitous GG), not to mention some lively spiritual goings on, and you have a lot of inter-woven dowsing in quite a concentrated and uneven floorspace. I’m not sure we really did it justice, although Brian seemed pleased with the new pieces of his jigsaw that our various approaches had produced.
As the day wore on, and the weather forecast bleakened, people started to drift away wearing as many layers as they could muster, but also a very broad smile. It had been a cameo classic of earth energy dowsing in both theory and practice.
Many thanks to Mr and Mrs AIW, for the excellent organisation of an event they ended up missing themselves due to illness - and especially to Brian Howard and his team of tireless supporters, who left me with little more to do than stand in as MC and drink tea with attitude.
Happy days.
Nigel Twinn, Hopton on Sea, March 2013
