Sensing the Subtle Seed

​

The Invisible Wave

 

Consciousness is rising.  Just a couple of decades ago, if you explained that sensing the energy of the earth was a serious topic of conversation, let alone one for hard-nosed research, everyone would have laughed at you - now only some of them do.  Everywhere you look social, emotional, environmental, even spiritual consciousness is getting closer to the surface of our current reality.

 

While there are many groups, organisations and strands of society that are spearheading the updraft of this undercurrent, two in particular epitomise the maturing change - and consequently they are some of the most accessible.

 

One is the Eden Project, opened with a blaze of publicity and international pride in 2001.  The sheer warmth of its welcome was a statement by a generation that ‘there must be a better way to live in this world’.   Eden showed that there was - and the positive energy of its founders has rippled out into this society and far beyond it.  Eden has been forced to evolve at a remarkable pace, driven by this surge of hope and expectation.  It’s been an exciting, but a tough, few years for the ‘bubble in the quarry’.  

 

Another flagship of an enlightened, but still clearly understandable, future is a much more subtle craft.  The British Society of Dowsers (BSD), formed by retired military officers in 1933, has spent the last couple of decades quietly shedding its cocoon.  The idea of the dowser, or diviner, as a weird old bloke with a huge forked hazel branch, theatrically finding water in a field, has given way to a much more diverse set of uses and users sensing the intangible.  Today’s dowsers are just as likely to be measuring the natural energy of the earth, helping archaeologists or mineral exploration companies, finding lost objects, assisting with complimentary health issues or investigating the impact of eclipses - as well as the noble and still essential task of finding sources of fresh water for impoverished rural communities across the globe.  The technology may still be endearingly low-tech, but the information the dowser seeks by asking simple yes/no questions - and usually amplifying the responses through a couple of wire rods or a weight on a pendulum - can be nothing short of profound.

 

In recent times, dowsing has adopted much more robust approach to investigation, to the extent that it is starting to overlap at the borders on mainstream science.  One of the main promoters of this trend has been the engineer and BSD stalwart, Jim Lyons.   After a long spell in the aerospace industry, Jim spent several years in academia, mainly at the University of York, and he retains a Fellowship in Computer Science at the University of Hull:

 

‘It is becoming increasing apparent to the cutting edge of scientific investigation that dowsing is just one entry point to a loop that includes both a wider understanding of what theoretical physics is telling us - and our own place in, and relationship to, the cosmos in which we live.

 

That may sound rather grand, but quantum physics, string theory and other emerging lines of scientific enquiry are all pointing to a need to expand what we have traditionally called the Standard Model.  Despite its great success, it is generally accepted that significant changes to the model are needed to explain both the nature of gravity and Quantum Non-Locality in particular. Dowsing is scientifically explicable if it embraces both of these concepts!  Hence, physicists are starting to actively consider the previously unacceptable - that at least some of the seemingly metaphysical world, potentially including earth energies, is in fact very real.

 

Just as it took a long time for the theoretical discoveries of Einstein to be found ‘in real life’ in hi-tech laboratories across the world, so the work of today’s visionaries will doubtless also take time to be accepted and proven.  However, I believe we are now quite close to a deeper understanding of how reality works. It definitely includes a way of understanding how dowsing can be used as a fundamental part of that explanation.  The emerging theory doesn’t have to be bent to include dowsing - this can beexpressed quite simply as ‘tapping into the Cosmic Information Field’, as predicted by the revised model.

 

The existing shaky bridge between Science and Spirituality is, at long last, being significantly strengthened!  It’s a very, very exciting time to be a theoretical physicist – and to be a dowser, for that matter!’  

 

 

The Insight of Hamish Miller

 

At first sight, Eden and the BSD would seem to be strange, even unrelated, bedfellows.   However, enter stage left the legendary, but sadly late dowser, author, engineer and philosopher, Hamish Miller.   

 

Following a near-death experience in 1982, Hamish cast aside a highly successful life as an internationally-recognised furniture designer and manufacturer, to take up a new existence in Cornwall as a blacksmith and a diviner.  To cut a long story short - and it’s told in detail in his biography A Life Divined - Hamish became one of the UK’s best known, and best loved, dowsers.  He literally wrote himself into history with the publication, in 1990, of his seminal book The Sun and the Serpent.  In it he describes how he and his co-author, Paul Broadhurst, found and then tracked two inter-related earth energy lines that traverse the south of England from Cornwall to Norfolk.   They termed them the Michael and the Mary lines.  The release of that travelogue generated little media interest, as it was way, way ahead of its time, but it did inspire a whole generation of new people to take up dowsing. 

 

In The Sun and the Serpent and in his subsequent works, Hamish indicated how the consciousness of the dowser seems to interact with the energy of the planet.  Strange though that may sound, there are simple experiments to demonstrate it that any of us can carry out anywhere and anywhen we like.  

 

Hamish found that investigating the energy of the earth through dowsing revealed hidden patterns in the ether that we can all find.  Furthermore, it showed that as the observer, in this case the dowser, worked with the energy; it changed - it reacted.  So just as someone with a JCB can redistribute the physical matter of the earth, complete with its inherent atomic energy - so a person with a bent coat-hanger also seems to be able to interact with the (less tangible) energies of the planet that surround us.

 

The Vision of Eden

 

And so to Eden.  The vision of the Project has always been more profound than simply raising environmental awareness - critical though that is to the survival of our species.  Part of the mission of Eden is to show to both this and future generations that the world around us is more that just the stuff you can hit with a stick - or dig up with a JCB. 

 

Eden has a diverse and ambitious arts development programme, which reaches out to both professional and to experimental practitioners, across the whole spectrum of the medium.  It engages with schools and youth groups throughout the county and beyond.  Eden also recognises the interconnection of all things - how we rely on one another - and how we are, as James Lovelock’s Gaia theory explained, all part of the same entity. 

 

The Ghost in the Machine

 

For many decades, people have been quietly investigating how certain man-made structures have a special something about them, which seems to derive from their peculiar mathematical dimensions.  Natural, or sacred, geometry, as it is sometimes known, has little to do with the religious use often made of such buildings, but it has a huge amount to do with the spiritual feel of them.  It derives from the way the form of the construction uses a range of specific geometrical measurements and ratios to bring about structures that may look subtly simple, but also feel deeply uplifting and inspiring.  

Grahame Gardner, currently President of the British Society of Dowsers, has devoted a great deal of time and effort to understanding the subject. 

 

‘The forms of sacred geometry naturally produce subtle energy fields that can be detected by dowsers. It makes no difference if it’s a chalk circle on your living-room carpet or the dizzying architecture of a Gothic cathedral; the principles are exactly the same. The spaces are designed to resonate on a subconscious level in such a way that the possibility of a spiritual connection is maximised.

 

To the masons who raised the great Gothic cathedrals and other places of worship, sacred geometry was also of paramount importance to the actual construction. Lacking our modern knowledge of materials science and load-bearing calculations, they relied on the use of harmonious proportions to build balanced structures that could support themselves without collapsing; so in a very practical sense it is this geometry that holds up the soaring vaulted ceilings of the cathedrals, not just engineering science. 

 

An impressive side effect of sacred geometry is that many of these structures possess extraordinary acoustic properties, a result of the inter-related harmonic structure behind both music and geometry. Certain types of music (e.g. Bach) were designed to be sacred geometry you can hear, so it is little wonder the buildings resound with it.

 

It is no coincidence that this understanding of proportion was incorporated into the design of the Core building at Eden; because of its ubiquity in both plant and human biology, it provides the perfect container for the harmonious integration and enhancement of the living systems within.’

 

Despite this eloquent and well-documented relationship, the physical and the non-physical aspects of the built environment seemed forever to exist on different planes -  until the Eden Project and Hamish Miller pooled their thoughts and intentions.  

 

Creation of the Core

 

To describe the educational centrepiece of Eden as unique would be something of an understatement.  From the outset, The Core was envisaged to be a harmonisation - perhaps even a synchronisation - of function, art, form and a sense of place.

​

The Building as Art

​

The design was a unique collaboration between artist and architect, and it was perhaps the first time that an artist had informed the design process to such an extent on a building of this scale. The visionary idea for the collaboration came from Eden’s Chief Executive, Tim Smit, and its Creative Director Peter Hampel. The result is a building inspired by the geometry which defines plant growth. At its centre it has a monumental seed-shaped sculpture, based on these same natural patterns.

 

Seed is the centrepiece of the Core. It started life as a 167-tonne boulder extracted in 2003 from De Lank Quarry, Cornwall. At 70-tonnes it weighs as much as ten elephants. It is made of prime silver-grey Cornish granite estimated to be 300 million years old. Carved into its surface is a pattern as intricate as the head of a sunflower. Seed, the most challenging work ever created by internationally-acclaimed artist Peter Randall-Page and one of the biggest sculptures in history made from a single piece of rock. Peter hoped that the sculpture would:

 

‘be an object of contemplation and meditation, a still quiet hub; both fossil and seed. The result of this collaboration … unites concept and form, object and structure, art and architecture in a unique and cohesive whole.’  

 

Quite some intent

 

The first phase of Eden’s development was understandably led by architects, landscape designers and engineers.  Artists and interpreters of Eden’s diverse stories contributed later to animate the “Stage”, and a more integrated approach was put in place for the design of the Core. Here, the artist was invited to play a pivotal role in the design team from the outset, ensuring a more holistic and rounded creative process.  The incorporation of artistic expression was fundamental and intrinsic, not an afterthought. Indeed it was Peter Randall Page’s passion for the geometry of natural form, which led to the final Fibonacci-inspired roof pattern. The Seed chamber and Seed sculpture were placed right at its heart. Peter’s deep knowledge of the subject actually contributed to engineering solutions for a very challenging structure.  His knowledge and passion is a fundamental part of the story behind Seed and Hamish’s discoveries. 

Peter Hampel felt that:

 

‘The completion of the Core felt like a major leap forward for us. Public education, right at the heart of our mission, now had a permanent home - and Seed its rightful place as the symbolic sacred heart and soul of the project. Maybe it could be more than that. That’s what Hamish and his work suggested. That we could be creating a genuinely sacred space’.

 

Because of the length of time it had taken to find a piece of granite of such scale and the sculpting challenge, The Core had been opened by the Queen a year ahead of Seed’s arrival and the Queen had placed a time capsule with a special dedication in the space beneath which Seed would eventually reside.

 

Hamish asked if he might be allowed to dowse at the site of the Seed before its arrival.  He visited the site early in June 2006 and was filmed with his rods, over a number of hours, patiently mapping out patterns of energy in his notebook. Hamish concluded that:

 

‘whoever decided to put the education building (The Core) on that spot was intuitively guided.  There are two main energy lines through the (Eden) site and they cross right in the middle of the building where the Seed will be planted.’

 

These lines didn’t cross anywhere else in the Eden complex.

 

While Hamish discovered that the two energy lines crossed in the middle of the Seed chamber, interestingly his detailed mapping showed that the precise crossing point was four and a half inches off-centre. 

 

After he had finished at Eden, Hamish duly drove the 15 miles up the road to De Lank quarry, where Seed was still being carved by Peter Randall-Page and his team. Standing above Seed on the platform at the top of a gigantic turning rig, Hamish reported with huge excitement that the same lines, albeit slightly fainter, could be detected crossing each other, again four and a half inches off centre. Peter asked why there should be this same pattern, emerging identically at both locations - and with the same strange 4-5 inch off-centre reading.  Hamish turned to him, with a huge grin and his usual sparkly-eyed enthusiasm - but also with his feet, as ever, firmly planted on the ground - and replied, as if it was blindingly obvious: 

 

“But Peter, it’s so clear and simple. The Earth is responding to your intent. You are well on your way to creating what could be another sacred site”.

 

Hamish was so excited, that he asked if he could come back and dowse the chamber a week before the arrival of Seed in June the following year, as well as the night before and the night after it was landed.

 

His initial dowsing at the prospective site of Seed showed that there were also 42 lines of energy, radiating out from the crossing point of the two energy lines, like the spokes of a wheel.  Hamish termed this sort of energy line ‘radials’.

 

The Ceremonial Planting

 

It seemed somehow appropriate, given Hamish’s discoveries, that the Eden team should give Seed the best possible welcome by arranging a discreet blessing – something that might resonate with some of the ancient belief systems which held this knowledge of earth energies as sacred. Peter knew that Hamish’s dowsing was:

 

‘being carried out with the knowledge of the artist, but I was well aware of the potential controversy of Eden being associated with such work.  I had therefore managed Hamish’s work with us with discretion. My heart and my gut said that we should support Hamish and his work, while being protective of Eden’s reputation, and I trusted his down-to-earth knowledge and wisdom instinctively’.

 

Peter and Richard Good invited Hamish and a few close friends to say a few prayers on the eve of its arrival.  The massive crane was standing by and thousands of people were expected to witness Seed’s final journey.  Huge celebrations were planned for the following day, including a special procession with 5,000 Cornish school children and a special concert with Peter Gabriel. Hamish closed the proceedings with a prayer of his own - and by pouring a few precious drops of his favourite Scotch whisky onto the space beneath where Seed was due to land.

 

That night Hamish measured the energy in the chamber a second time.  The number of radial lines had risen to 52, as if in anticipation of the forthcoming event. 

 

The arrival of Seed was complicated by the weight of the sculpture and the distance the crane needed to be able to reach across the erected Core building.  A wind strength of more than 20mph would have rendered the lift too dangerous.

 

With the permission of the somewhat bemused Health & Safety and Security officers, Hamish donned his high visibility jacket and went in, ahead of the public.  He dowsed The Core after the planting of The Seed, and found that a couple of hours after the craning in of the great sculpture, the number of radials had rocketed up to 144. 

 

Changes in natural energy on this scale are not unusual, but for it to be recorded by such an accredited dowser, in association with such a public piece of engineering, really is groundbreaking.

 

Through the Portal

 

Those who have traditionally relied entirely on the kind of science that can only been dissected and replicated in a laboratory have always argued that when there was any hard evidence of dowsing to investigate, they would look at it. 

 

Those who have traditionally regarded the former as monsters from another plane of existence, who only seek to make short-term gain from the wonder and mystery of the universe, likewise may also have to adjust their paradigm in the light of the work of the Cornish-Scot, who passed away - on Burns night - in January 2010.  

 

At Eden, Hamish Miller showed that there is spirit in the science, while there can be a physical appreciation of natural energies.  It was a profound revelation.  Hamish never claimed to have discovered anything for himself.  He never preached and rarely evangelized.  He said he’d just opened a few doors in a seemingly solid wall, for the rest of us to investigate.  Let’s go!    

 

​