Geomantica 96
May 2026
The magazine of Earth harmony, via dowsing, geomancy, esoteric gardening & agriculture,
and eco-sensitive living, since 1998. Edited by Alanna Moore.
Geo 96 Contents
Editorial and letters
News Links:
• Environment
Whale Birth. Grassroots movement to re-wild East Anglia (UK) + beyond. At night there should be darkness. Why are moths attracted to lights? Beavers + people. No Mow May!
• Indigenous Australia
What are Songlines? Aboriginal cultural value of water.
• Energy, Mind and Society
“Mystery Obelisks” – Power Towers in North Queensland, Australia. Our bio-fields affect others. 1 in 6 Australian adults sensitive to wireless radiation. ‘Dusking’ is being revived in Europe. Animals are smart. Your Consciousness Can Connect With the Whole Universe. Office buzz: UK beehives boost workplace wellbeing. Mass UFO event in Melbourne 60 years ago.
• Ancient History
Apocalypse no: almost everything we thought we knew about the Maya is wrong. Stonehenge tunnel plan officially scrapped after years of protests. Archaeologists study huge pits near Stonehenge. An ancient aquatic past restored in Ecuador. Ancient stepwells brought back to life as India begins to run out of water.
Feature article:
Holy Hill Divining in Africa
– an extract from Alanna Moore’s forthcoming book: Divining the Otherworlds.
The Deva behind Islam
by Steven Guth, Canberra.
————————————————————————————————
G96 Editorial
Dear Folks,
Happy (belated) Beltainne, May Day, the start of Celtic Summertime in the northern hemisphere!
Welcome to the 96th edition of Geomantica magazine, where all things geomantic might be found!
In the news links you can read positive environmental stories, Australian indigenous wisdom, inspiring tips, wholesome scientific research, and the like.
A feature article with African geomantic insights is an extract from my forthcoming book: Divining the Otherworlds.
In October this year your editor is making the big move back from Ireland to Victoria. So then, I will more available to teach dowsing and geomancy in eastern Australia (provisionally – Victoria in early November, Tasmania in February 2027 and Queensland in the 2nd half of July- August).
Potential workshop hosts are encouraged to make contact now via: info@geomantica.com
Meanwhile I will be teaching a few more days in Ireland in June-July and a day in Switzerland in late September. See the events pages: https://geomantica.com/events/europe-events/
Then there are two weekend workshops in NSW in November: https://geomantica.com/events/australian-events/
If you want to be on the Geomantica email list for occasional notifications (and let us know where you are in the world), email info@geomantica.com
Happy reading,
Your editor,
Alanna Moore
Geo 96 Letters
Hi Geomantica
Could you please share the website link https://paganireland.com/ or posts from https://www.facebook.com/paganireland/ – that would really help the magazine!
Thanks
Best wishes, Luke
Luke Eastwood
Editor, Pagan Ireland Magazine
Hello Alanna
…You have a mistake in your book: Stone age farming, 3.rd edition, on page 181, 3.rd section, where you write-
Direct citation out of your text: ….”According to Callahan, trees and Towers both collect Schumann waves, however trees adsorbe negative monopoles from the sun, while Towers collect positive monopoles, so a full comparison may not be appropriate.”….
We know for sure that the planet Earth and its soil is negatively charged. Thus according to Callahan the TOWERS collect and accumulate the NEGATIVELY charged south-monopoles. The TREES collect and accumulate POSITIVELY charged north-monopoles.
J., Austria
Thanks so much for picking up on this! I do appreciate any helpful corrections from readers! I shall make corrections for future print-on-demand books. AM.
Geo 96 News Links
News of the environment –
Whale Birth
See rare footage of a whale birthing and how the extended family stops the newborn from drowning.
Grassroots movement to re-wild East Anglia (UK) + beyond
Set up by three ‘eco-anxious’ farmers, WildEast has created UK-wide version of pledge to encourage people to restore nature. A grassroots movement to wild a fifth of East Anglia is going national with the launch of Wild Kingdom’s “map of dreams” to collect pledges and connect communities, businesses and ordinary people seeking to revive nature.
WildEast was formed five years ago when three “eco-anxious” farmers decided to commit at least a fifth of their land to nature. Since then, thousands of people have pledged to re-wild gardens, school grounds, communities and businesses.
At night there should be darkness
Why one Belgian national park is turning off ‘pointless’ streetlights. The radical project is an attempt to preserve wildlife in one of Europe’s most light-polluted countries, but can they persuade local people they will still feel safe?
Why are moths attracted to lights? Finally, an unexpected answer.
Insect flight paths were filmed at night using hi-res and infrared technology with surprising results. The take-away underlying message is: don’t have lights on outdoors at night, for bug’s sake!
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/30/why-are-moths-attracted-to-lights-science-answer
Beavers + people
As the number of the semi-aquatic creatures soars so can tensions. But the Swiss have a tried and tested system to calm the neighbours and restore harmony.
“I hate beavers,” a woman tells the beaver hotline. Forty years ago she planted an oak tree in a small town in southern Zurich – now at the frontier of beaver expansion – and it has just been felled: gnawed by the large, semi-aquatic rodents as they enter their seasonal home-improvement mode.
The caller is one of 10 new people getting in touch each week at this time of year. Beavers, nature’s great engineers, can unleash mayhem during winter as they renovate their lodges and build up their dams. For people, this can mean flooding, sinkholes appearing in roads and trees being felled. A single incident can clock up 70,000 Swiss francs (£65,000) in damages.
To cope, the beaver-rich canton of Zurich came up with the hotline. The local Beaver Advisory Centre is staffed by ecologists who give advice, assess damages and evaluate potential compensation (the oak tree-bereft woman is advised to wrap wire around the base of the other trees to stop the rodents’ chewing).
No Mow May!
Saving the planet, one lawn at a time.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/03/lawns-wild-no-mow-may-gardens
News from indigenous Australia
What are Songlines?
Songlines have been described as pathways that link landmarks and give meaning to important places. In Aboriginal culture, Songlines are like libraries — and they store knowledge that’s critical to survival.
Aboriginal cultural value of water
The cultural value of water will be front and centre in the High Court in Canberra today as a group of native title holders from Central Australia fight to assert cultural rights over an aquifer under their lands.
The dispute concerns a plan to develop thousands of hectares on Singleton Station, south of Tennant Creek, into an intensive irrigated horticulture business.
The plan is to grow mandarins, avocados, table grapes and other fruits.
The problem for the station’s lessees, Fortune Agribusiness Funds Management, is water.
As the submissions from the Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation — which has brought the case to Canberra — point out “The only water available is groundwater held in an underground aquifer”.
The native title and traditional owners say they are concerned the licence will lead to the destruction of too many sacred water sites and have an impact on native plants and animals that depend on the water.
At the heart of the matter is the Northern Territory’s Water Act, which the corporation says includes an objective to “protect Aboriginal Cultural values associated with water”.
Energy, Mind and Society
“Mystery Obelisks” – Power Towers in North Queensland, Australia
A ‘mysterious obelisk’ in Tarzali sparked a recent debate online. The Express newspaper picked up on it.
Rest assured that it was your editor, Alanna Moore, that first introduced Power Towers to this region, from late last century. Now the next generation are wondering – what are these things???
“Discussion in a recent Facebook post about mysterious obelisks, or “power towers”, located around the Tablelands, attracted hundreds of locals to share their beliefs on the topic.
“We are curious about the obelisk located in our yard in Tarzali. We’ve heard there’s a few around. Does anyone know the history behind them?” Facebook user SA Vass said in their post.
A lively debate soon broke out, and conversation revealed similar structures could also be found in Mareeba, Biboohra, Walkamin, Atherton, Malanda, Herberton, Ravenshoe, Tarzali, Tully, and even just “in the bush”. Many were confident the structures harnessed some type of atmospheric or electromagnetic energy, which supposedly increased the fertility of nearby land, among other things. Several people also noted that a Ravenshoe man, Bob Mathews (now deceased), built many that remain in the local area.
“I have one built in my yard and it works fantastic, basically works off magnetic area in the ground, at first I thought it was some sort of hippy trippy thingo, but I researched it… and the Druids used these back in the day, it brings fortune, good fruit growth and whatever you need,” Glenn Geerlings commented.
“…My property, s**t you not, grows everything. And fortune? Well, I tell you what I’m worth, but yeah, it’s worth every cent I paid for.”
Petrea Pont commented: “They were built by Bob Mathews… They are placed on grid lines and contain crystals, etc. to attract and enhance energy. There are many on private properties and farms on the Tablelands.”
“Yes, I had one on my farm for that reason, it captured energy from the sun, and it reaches up to 400 metres in radius,” a local farmer replied to Petrea.
Another comment said: “We have one and you can feel the energy when you place your hands on it. I have hundreds of happy frogs here so it’s bringing our place good vibes.”
“…It makes the soil healthier, plants give more flowers and fruit, and the animals and your family will sleep easier,” someone else said. However, others were skeptical – insinuating the practice was pseudoscientific, or that the objects were merely survey markers.
“They are concrete survey control monuments of the same type used across Australia from the early 1900s through to the mid and late 20th century. Their identification is based on geometry, materials, and construction style, not hearsay,” Liam Rollins said.
Another commenter said: “It’s a survey marker/trig point, essentially a geodetic obelisk. The comments about grid lines, crystals inside, copper conductors and enhancing energy refer to private structures built by individuals on private property, mainly from the 1970s–1990s, when ley lines or earth energy theories were popular. Bob Mathews did build some but yours is not one of them.”
However, this was met with a reply from Scott Collingwood, who said: “I’m a surveyor, this isn’t a survey mark nor trig point.”
…While others laid on the sarcasm: “Because the volcanic soils, abundant rainfall, and sunshine just aren’t enough on their own to make the land fertile.”
The jury is still out on whether the obelisk pictured in the post was the work of Bob Mathews, another local ‘Power Tower’ enthusiast, or whether it was just a survey marker.”
https://www.theexpressnewspaper.com.au/mysterious-object-sparks-debate-2026-01-20
NOTE – Alanna Moore plans to return to Queensland for teaching and Power Tower building mid year 2027.
Our bio-fields affect others
A new study from Athens takes a fascinating journey into the heart of the matter. Authors Andreas Palantzas and Maria Anagnostouli say that the heart emits the strongest magnetic field in the body (around 0.01mG closest to the myocardium) and that these fields affect a person’s body – and their emotions.
The authors suggest ‘that the body’s magnetic field, particularly the heart’s and brain’s, encode and transmit emotional information. Different emotional states generate distinct biomagnetic fields that may reflect the body’s metabolic state. Positive emotions (love, compassion, appreciation) generate coherent HRV [heart rate variability] patterns, radiating ordered electromagnetic signals, while negative emotions (fear, anger, anxiety) result in incoherent signals and energy loss. Among those, fear has the largest bio-field signature.’
Palantzas, A., & Anagnostouli, M. (2026). The Heart’s Electromagnetic Field in Emotions, Empathy and Human Connection: Biosensor-Derived Insights into Heart–Brain Axis Mechanisms and a Basis for Novel BioMagnetoTherapies. Sensors, 26(5), 1738. The Heart’s Electromagnetic Field in Emotions, Empathy and Human Connection: Biosensor-Derived Insights into Heart–Brain Axis Mechanisms and a Basis for Novel BioMagnetoTherapies
1 in 6 Australian adults sensitive to wireless radiation, new study finds
A new Australian study shows that over 26 million adults are likely to experience health problems from exposure to wireless radiation in three countries alone. That includes one in six Australians – over 4.5 million.
The study, by Dr Julie McCredden, Lyn McLean, and Professor Anne Steinemann, has just been published in the journal Next Research.
‘People report they feel unwell around common wireless devices and sources, such as mobile phones and WiFi systems. Doctors have diagnosed this sensitivity as a medical condition. So, we wanted to find out: How widespread is this condition?’ said Professor Steinemann….
Lyn McLean, a co-author of the study, is not surprised by the study’s finding that over 17% of Australians are sensitive to wireless radiation. ‘I have been working in this field for over 30 years and, in that time, thousands of people have told me they are sensitive to wireless radiation. Some of them have such severe sensitivities that they are no longer able to work or even spend time in public locations where there is wireless radiation. I’m glad our study was able to throw light on this important issue.’
A free download link to the paper and additional resources is available at: https://www.orsaa.org/ehs-research.html
www.emraustralia.com.au 20.3.26
‘Dusking’ is being revived
“An old Dutch ritual of going outside to watch the coming of night – or dusking – is having a revival across Europe. Fans of the practice say it’s a great way to disconnect from screens and find peace
“I’m wandering around a walled garden on the edge of the North York Moors at dusk. The darkening sky is faintly illuminated by a sharp sliver of crescent moon and the first stars. Bats are swooping in search of supper, an owl is softly hooting and the dark outline of a ruined castle looms beyond the walls.
But what is really striking about the scene is what’s missing: artificial light. There are no solar lamps or electric bulbs; no torches or phone screens. As parts of the garden recede into the gloom, others are thrown into sharp relief: the bare branches of winter trees; a russet-coloured hedge; clumps of snowdrops, glowing bright in the moonlight.
“I’ve spent the past hour at the UK’s first “dusking” event. About 20 of us gathered in a glasshouse at twilight to watch darkness descend. In the Netherlands, dusking, or schemeren, was once an everyday ritual, with families sitting together to observe the end of the day and the coming of night. The custom had all but died out until it was revived by Dutch poet and author Marjolijn van Heemstra a few years ago. Now she is encouraging other countries to adopt dusking, running events in Ireland, Germany and here in Yorkshire.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/mar/01/could-daily-dusking-make-us-healthier-and-happier?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-gb
Animals are smart
Scientists have been forced to rethink the intelligence of cattle after an Austrian cow named Veronika displayed an impressive – and until now undocumented – knack for tool use. Witgar Wiegele, an organic farmer and baker from a small town in Carinthia near the Italian border, keeps Veronika as a pet and noticed that she occasionally played with sticks and used them to scratch her body.
Wiegele, who said Veronika recognised family members’ voices and hurried to meet them when they called, began playing with pieces of wood years ago, then worked out how to scratch herself with sticks.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jan/19/back-scratching-cow-veronika-bovine-intelligence
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0n127y74go
Our consciousness can connect with the whole universe !
This latest clue about the architecture of consciousness supports a Nobel Prize winner’s theory about how quantum physics works in your brain. A groundbreaking experiment in which anesthesia was administered to rats has convinced scientists that tiny structures in the rodents’ brains are responsible for the experience of consciousness.
Office buzz: UK beehives boost workplace wellbeing
Providers report rise in demand for bee hives as companies seek mental health benefits and increased sense of community
Mass UFO event in Melbourne
60 years ago school kids in Melbourne saw ufos en masse, after when they were silenced. Until now.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-06/westall-ufo-mystery-witnesses-want-answers/106126614
Ancient History –
Apocalypse no: almost everything we thought we knew about the Maya is wrong
For many years the prevailing debate about the Maya centred upon why their civilisation collapsed. Now, many scholars are asking: how did the Maya survive? …Thanks to technological advances, we are entering a new age of discovery in the field of ancient history. Improved DNA analysis, advances in plant and climate science, soil and isotope chemistry, linguistics and other techniques such as a laser mapping technology called Lidar, are overturning long-held beliefs. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to Maya archaeology.
Last year, Estrada-Belli’s team, including his Tulane University colleague Marcello A Canuto, published a study with a central finding that would have seemed, just a few years ago, like an outrageously speculative overestimate. When Estrada-Belli first came to Tikal [the most visited of Guatemala’s Maya sites] as a child, the best estimate for the classic-era (AD600-900) population of the surrounding Maya lowlands – encompassing present day southern Mexico, Belize and northern Guatemala – would have been about 2 million people. Today, his team believes that the region was home to up to 16 million. That is more than five times the area’s current population. This would mean that more people lived in the classic-era Maya lowlands than on the Italian peninsula during the peak of the Roman empire – all crammed into an area a third of the size.
…For a long time, the idea that complex human settlements could once have existed in the Maya lowlands was seen as impossible. The theory was based on research in the Amazon rainforest in the 1950s and known as “the law of environmental limitation”. It held that lowland rainforests, with their thin soils, were not suitable for large advanced societies, as they could only produce limited amounts of food. This kind of land could only support small, primitive tribes. For many years, the idea was considered the closest thing to a natural law in anthropology.
When the theory was formulated, no large settlements had yet been discovered in the Amazon, but the Maya lowlands held thousands of massive stone pyramids, countless temples, raised causeways, engraved stone monuments and intricate tombs where buried royals were clad in luscious jade jewellery.
…Estrada-Belli… calls the lowlands in the 700s a “continuously interconnected rural-urban sprawl”. This was a cosmopolitan region with high degrees of trade and settlements interconnected by a close web of causeways and roads. The ancient Maya did not use pack animals, or carriage wheels. Everything that was built and traded had to be carried by human force alone. Shoes had to be repaired, and people had to sleep and eat – not by distances of a day’s ride by horse, as in Eurasia, but within walking distance. There was no wilderness in these lowlands, Estrada-Belli told me, but rather a low density scattering of people, businesses and agricultural fields, and managed wetlands and forests – everywhere. Interspersed with all this were larger buildings, presumably for members of the elite.
…He described “the enormous investments the Maya put into canals, terraces and raised fields in water. They used extremely diverse, advanced and flexible farming methods, rotating and combining hundreds of species.”
Yet today humans use the land “for cattle farming and monocultural corn plantations that does nothing but destroy the land,” he said. “We have a lot to learn.”
Stonehenge tunnel plan officially scrapped after years of protests
Campaigners have been fighting proposals to dig a tunnel for cars under the location of the world heritage site since the idea was first proposed in 1994. Now, the Department for Transport (DfT) has revoked the development consent order (DCO) for a tunnel, two junctions and a northern bypass, saying it was doing so under “exceptional circumstances”. It means the project is officially scrapped, and anyone wanting to revive it in future would have to begin the planning approval process from scratch. The plans were finally approved in 2023, but the Labour government put the scheme on hold in 2024 after costs were expected to reach £1.4bn. Ministers last year suggested plans to rescind the DCO, and on Wednesday the revocation was finally announced.
Archaeologists study huge pits near Stonehenge
Research team uses range of novel methods and equipment to analyse ‘extraordinary’ Durrington pit circle
An ancient aquatic past restored in Ecuador
When historian Galo Ramón uncovered a long-forgotten pre-Incan water system in Ecuador, he set about restoring it, and helped transform the landscape and livelihoods.
One day in 1983, while studying a hand-drawn map from 1792 of his home town in Ecuador, Galo Ramón, a historian, came across a dispute between a landowner and two local Indigenous communities, the Coyana and the Catacocha. The boundary conflict involved an ancient lagoon, depicted on the map.
“The drawing depicted a lagoon brimming with rainwater,” says Ramón. Ravines were depicted forming below the high-altitude lagoon, indicating that it supplied watersheds further down – contrary to the typical flow where a watershed feeds into the lagoon.
Ramón had discovered a long-forgotten ancient water management system conceived by the Paltas, a pre-Incan civilisation that inhabited the semi-arid region more than 1,000 years ago. Ramón set out to recreate the Paltas’ lagoon system and, 40 years on, the region has enjoyed an environmental regeneration, offering solutions for Ecuador – which regularly faces severe droughts – and other parts of the world struggling to address water scarcity with limited resources.
Ancient stepwells brought back to life as India begins to run out of water
Centuries-old wells restored to provide drinking water as parts of the country head towards “day zero” when no water will be available. A loud cheer and sounds of clapping reverberated around Bansilalpet, a neighbourhood in Hyderabad, when the first trickle of clean water dribbled out of the ground. After an 18-month effort to clear out 3,000 tonnes of rubbish and restore the stone walls and adjacent area, the 17th-century Bansilalpet stepwell had become a source of clean drinking water for the first time in four decades.
“It was such a joyous moment to see water collecting into the stepwell after clearing 40 years of garbage,” says Hajira Adeeb, a 45-year-old resident of Bansilalpet, who grew up seeing the well become transformed from the community’s water source to a dumping ground. “I visit almost every day. The area is clean and lit up in the evenings. I enjoy sitting there.”
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/26/ancient-stepwells-brought-back-india-run-out-water-day-zero
Feature Articles
Holy Hill Divining in Africa
Before we start the adventure, a relevant quote from Aboriginal Australia, that provides a perfect backdrop to Van der Post’s tale:
“Everything we know comes from Dreamtime. People even in towns still know how to sing the story for their country. Every jila [waterhole] has its own songs, stories and skin group. Without the snake [spirit] underneath, the water will go away. We have been looking after our waterholes and rivers for thousands of years. We have respect because we know that if you don’t treat it right many things can happen. This is the lesson that we need to make other people learn.” J. Brown, Walmajarri, Kimberleys, Western Australia.
(From – ‘New Legend – a story of Law and Culture and the Fight for Self-Determination in the Kimberley’, Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, 2006.)
Richly revealing the immanent power of the Otherworlds, the following story chronicles a real journey, an expedition to the Kalahari Desert that was undertaken to find and document indigenous Bushmen in the 1950s. Acclaimed African author Laurens van der Post was guided to mysterious holy hills, sacrosanct to the nature spirits, and here encountered supernatural and terrifying forces that sent them packing. Fortunately, one of the team was a local diviner who mediated between them and helped guide the expedition to a safe and sound conclusion. I found the long story compelling and felt it needed to be re-told. This is a condensed version and quotes are from the book The Lost World of the Kalahari, by Laurens van der Post, Odhams Press, UK, 1958.
In the 1950s Laurens van der Post had become obsessed with trying to find the indigenous people of South West Africa, as it was then called. The Bushmen had a unique culture and had tragically endured long periods of invasion and genocide in their ancient homelands. He hoped that some remained and were still living their age-old hunter gatherer lifestyle. So he organised an expedition to find and film the Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert region. But he couldn’t find any.
After various set-backs, a local team member told him of an annual Bushmen meeting place that he knew of. It was wild, mostly uninhabited country north of the Kalahari, a solitary rocky outcrop called the Tsodilo Hills, meaning the Slippery Hills. This was the sacred home of a great many important and very old nature spirits, Samutchoso, who had attended a gathering there many years before, told him. Tucked inside the hills were ‘rooms’, stations that were for “the master spirit of each animal, bird, insect and plant that had ever been created. At night the spirits left their homes in the hills to do their business among the creatures made after their fashion, and…the hoof marks left by their nocturnal traffic could be seen distinct and deep in the rocks of the Slippery Hills”.
“In a place in the central hill lived the master spirit of all the spirits. There below it was a deep pool of water that never dried up. Beside the pool grew a tree with the fruit of knowledge on it, and hard by the tree was the rock on which the greatest spirit of all had knelt to pray, the day he made the world.”
“The dent in the rock where his vessel with sacred water had stood so that he could rinse his mouth and hands before prayer, and the marks made by his knees as he knelt to pray over his creation, could be seen to this day. All around … there were paintings of the animals the great spirit had made, and in all the deepest crevices lived swarms of bees that drank at the pool of everlasting water and tumbled the desert flowers to make the sweetest of honey for the spirits. There…once a year, for a short season, the Bushmen gathered,” Samutchoso explained.
When asked for the reason why he’d gone there, it was “because my own spirit was weak and weakening and I needed help to strengthen it, if it were not to die. I went to those hills to ask for help and I saw all the things I have told you of, and I was helped.” Samutchoso revealed that he was a prophet and a healer for his people. When van der Post asked him to take them to the Slippery Hills he happily agreed to, as he also felt a need to return there. But he insisted that two essential conditions had to be met by the team before he could take them there.
“There must be no dissension…you must compose your differences with one another before we set out, otherwise disaster will come. And there must be no shooting or killing of any kind on the way to the hills. No shooting, even for food, until the spirits have given permission for it. It is a law of the spirits that none must come into the hills with blood on his hands or resentment in his heart,” he insisted.
Van der Post promised to follow these wishes. He returned to the camp intent on telling the others of his plan to go to the Slippery Hills and how the trip had to be undertaken. But there were frustrations and sickness amongst the men, too many issues to distract him, so he didn’t get around to telling them. Time passed sorting out various problems and he managed to forget all about it, even though professing to respect the Bushmen’s spiritual beliefs.
Eventually the expedition team were ready to head to the Tsodilo Hills, travelling in a convoy of three Landrovers in roadless country, two going ahead scouting the best way through the bush, while van der Post, Samutchoso and cameraman Duncan followed behind them, occasionally filming wildlife and scenery on the way. All was good. But then they heard two loud gunshots booming out ahead of them. His heart sank, with “an acute sense of guilt” for forgetting to tell the others about not blood letting on the journey. The advance party had shot a warthog and a steenbuck. Feeling awful about his omission, van der Post apologised to Samutchoso. But the damage was done.
Continuing their trek, ahead of them the formidable looking Slippery Hills loomed up suddenly from the flat desert lands, all hard rock formed into a horseshoe shape. The stuff of primordial legends, this sacred place was drenched in brooding mysteries that they were about to discover the hard way.
After a night camping in the bush surrounded by the hills, they awoke at first light to prepare for exploration. But suddenly the camp was attacked by swarms of bees that honed in on them aggressively, intent on crawling all over them and their stuff, going up their sleeves and trousers and stinging tender spots. But van der Post now remembered his promise and warned the others – “Don’t kill any of them, whatever else you do!” he insisted.
When the first shaft of sunlight burst through, as suddenly as they had come – all the bees raced away. Covered in stings, the men, some of whom had been sceptical about the sacredness of the place, had their breakfast very quietly, their faces bearing “chastened expressions”, he wrote.
But they stuck to their plan and went off to explore around the base of the hills. There they discovered amongst the rock faces amazing galleries of rock art and they often stopped to admire the Bushmen’s skilful rock paintings, usually of wildlife, that graced many of the smoother sections of the rock face above them. The most impressive one, a vivid panel with an enormous eland bull and a tall giraffe mother and her baby depicted in bright colours. According to Samutchoso, familiar with the work, these colours had not faded since his grandfather’s time. I imagine this means that artists would have regularly touched up the paintwork to keep them fresh, a sacred duty done by people elsewhere in the world, such as Aboriginal Australia, for the colourful rock art of Kakadu National Park.
Duncan quickly set up his tripod and camera with telescopic lens and began filming. But the whirring mechanism stopped after a few seconds. “That’s odd…the magazine’s jammed and yet it’s brand new” he said, a bit shocked. pg 190 He loaded the camera with another magazine and tried again, but a few seconds later “exactly the same stoppage occurred.” Bewildered, he tried the remaining spare magazine. Within seconds it too had jammed. “In all the years I’ve filmed this has never happened before”, he said, going back to the camp to clear the magazines and find more spares.
The others explored more and found more rock art. Some of the animal paintings were of species no longer found there, such as rhinoceros. The greatest masterpiece they came across was a huge panel with a crowded scene of the animal world and a tall man in the corner. Van der Post was totally blown away by the quality of the art he saw, such a vibrant exposition of indigenous culture that it was.
“From that morning I have been pursued by a vision of those hills as a great fortress of once living Bushman culture, a Louvre of the desert filled with treasure,” he wrote.
There was a disappointment when, just below the pool of ‘everlasting water’, they found the remains of a Bushmen camp that had been vacated only just a week or so before. It seems they’d missed the gathering!
On they ventured, starting up the well worn track that went from there up the hillside to the sacred pool. Adjacent rock faces were covered with art, vibrant painted animal faces and forms. It seemed to van der Post that he was hiking up through a great stony temple.
With an exalted expression on his face, Samutchoso was first to go over a rim to the top, followed by van der Post. “Before us was a deep cup in the crown of the central hill. I just had time to see a gleam of water, when a heart rendering sob broke from Samutchoso. He had stopped to kneel on a rock by the track, and was raising his hands like a Mussulman at his devotions, when he over-balanced backwards so violently that he nearly fell. Both knees were bleeding, but it was not the injury that was troubling him.” Profoundly troubled, he said that he was “not even allowed to begin to pray!” He showed van der Post the two deep holes in the rock where he had tried to kneel, and another nearby. “It was there, he said, that the greatest spirit of all had knelt with his cruse of water to pray, the day he created the world” and where he had himself prayed when visiting the hills before.
They continued on to the pool of ‘perennial water’. “In that high place and in that arid desert its mere existence was a miracle. Dragonflies and butterflies gratefully made gay over it and hip to hip the dark brown bees drank eagerly at its edges. Nearby grew the ‘Tree of True Knowledge’, as Samutchoso called it. From its branches hung large, round fruit like green navel oranges.” When ripe they were “more delicious than honey,” Samutchoso said, begging him not to pick any. “I felt I had already so hurt his spirit that I desisted and merely tried to film the fruit.” They also saw the inexplicable, “deeply impressed” hoof prints of various animal species that he’d been told about, set in the natural stone.
Duncan returned and proceeded to attempt to film the Tree of Knowledge. But again he failed and all six magazines jammed up. Returning to the camp, he worked until late that evening repairing everything, oiling, greasing and polishing the camera parts. “Well! I’d like to see anything stop me from filming tomorrow!” he said with a defiant grin. But it wasn’t to be.
At first light again they were invaded by aggressive bee swarms, that again vanished when the sun rose. Returning to the hills to film the rock paintings, the camera jammed over and over again. While Duncan doggedly overhauled his equipment, van der Post attempted to record some of the strange night sounds around the hills. “Then we got an additional shock. The machine, which before had worked so well, now went dead on us. We tried every test prescribed in the maker’s manual. We could find no fault in any of the parts. But the machine was dead…. The next day, from the invasion of the bees at first light to the jamming of the camera before breakfast, the pattern was repeated…until in the afternoon, the forces working against us decided on the final blow. A steel swivel in the camera itself (a part so secure that no spare for it is ever carried) failed and brought abruptly to an end our filming with that particular camera.”
By now, he was thoroughly spooked and “clearly we now had to leave the place as quickly as possible.”
Diviner at work
“But surely, master, you never expected those machines to work?” Samutchoso exclaimed to van der Post, who wanted to know why they wouldn’t work. “Would you like me to find out?” he asked. Yes, van der Post did. So the diviner got to work with his ritual method of attunement to the forces at play. Samutchoso asked for a clean thread of white cotton to use “with which he threaded a needle produced from his bundle. He knotted the two ends of the thread together, turned the double thread around his fingers and placed the needle in the life-line of the palm of his left hand….[then] stood gazing at his palm for about ten minutes and then in a voice we had not heard before, he began to speak to presences that only he could see.”
What Samutchoso was doing was asking for a consultation with one of the spirits, a particular being from amongst a throng that had confronted him. He eventually contacted that being and then “fell silent and appeared to be listening intently. Another quarter hour passed thus and then, like a man awakening, he rubbed his eyes, shook his head and, seeing me, said slowly – ‘Yes master, it is as I thought, the spirits of the hills are very angry with you…because you have come here with blood on your hands. They are angry because you have not behaved like a leader of your men. You allowed men…to trample all over the hills and drink of the water they provide for men and beasts without first saying their prayers and asking permission to do so…and [making] a sacrifice of food…This is why they have broken your machines. And master, they have not done with you yet’….”
There was no way to put things right. The only sensible solution was to leave the next morning, hopefully unscathed, for the spirits were well capable of killing them, Samutchoso had warned him! But later on that final evening in the hills van der Post had the bright idea to write a letter of apology to the spirits, which he promptly did and got all of the team to sign. It went as follows.
To the Spirits
The Tsodilo Hills
“We humbly beg the pardon of the great spirits of these Slippery Hills for any disrespect we may have shown them unintentionally and for any disturbance we may have caused in their ancient resting place. At the foot of this great painting, which is such clear evidence of their presence and of their power to make flesh and blood create beyond its immediate self, we bury this letter as an act of profound contrition, hoping they will read it and forgive us. We beg that anyone coming after us, finding this letter and reading it too, will be moved by it to show them greater respect than we have done.”
At first light, the letter was placed in a sealed envelope and put inside a drink bottle that was deposited into a crack in the rock below the site of the eland and giraffe paintings. Van der Post asked Samutchoso if things would go well for them now. Once again he took out his needle and thread, threaded it and knotted its ends, turned the double thread around his fingers and placed the needle along the life-line of the palm of his left hand, and stared intently at it in a trance like state, communing with the spirits. They conveyed to him that all would be fine from then on, however there was a warning that one more unhappiness was yet to come.
They returned to the camp, where no bees came to attack them before daybreak and they were able to leave without a problem. After dropping off Samutchoso to his home place, they headed to Maun, where they collected the mail. One of the team then learned that his father had just died and that he needed to go back to Johannesburg immediately. That was the last misfortune of the spirit’s prophecy, however it led to fortuitous events for van der Post. The burying of the message of contrition at the Slippery Hills had been the turning point in his fortunes, in fact.
The final chapter of the book tells of how they eventually found a small community of desert Bushmen, befriended them and were able to learn about their extraordinary cultural heritage and document it. They were shown how the Bushmen survived in such dry country and lived well and happily from it. The harsh, dry terrain and climate had kept them invasion free in land undesirable to cattle ranchers. Though it could be seen as a tough life for them there, they still had time and energy for the music, dance and cultural activities that were so important to them.
How did the Bushmen survive with no surface water available in the hot summer months? They extracted drinking water from under the ground, in dry river beds, that van der Post called the Sip Wells. This involved a great deal of strenuous sucking on giant ‘straws’, hollow branches some 1.5m / 5 ft long that were inserted deep into damp sand in holes in the river bed, enabling them to fill ostrich egg storage containers with water.
The visitors joined the Bushmen’s hunting expeditions and their guns brought in much prey. While fleet of foot and highly skilful with bows and stone arrows, the Bushmen appreciated this extra bounty. After helping bring down a big Eland bull in a hunt, an exhilarating dance of celebration was held and this bonded them all the closer, such that they felt safe to share their culture more freely afterwards.
“From the moment of burying the letter at the foot of the painting I had a feeling of having broken through one dimension of life that was full of accident and frustration, into a more positive one…[and] I felt rid of all anxiety and conflict,” van der Post mused in hindsight, happy that his mission – to show the genius and beauty of the Bushmen’s life – had been accomplished so successfully in the documentary film that he eventually made.
The Deva behind Islam
by Steven Guth (deceased), Canberra, Australia, October 2001.
I wrote this piece shortly after the New York 9/11 affair. I very much surprised myself with what my research discovered. Since that time many have thanked me for the insights presented in the article. People who have lived in an Islamic country find that it presents a good explanation of what they felt was happening around them. The idea that “big M” a Deva of massive size influences our planet’s religious politics is a fascinating, frightening and indigestible idea.
In my struggle to understand Islam – undoubtedly the strongest religious energy on the planet – I have had to reinvent a new cosmology, a world view that is both ancient and ultramodern.
In the 1950’s I believed that the Earth was watched over by a benevolent father spirit who, on prayerful request, would send down angels to help us cope with the devils that entered our lives from the underworld.
Since then I have come to learn that the Earth is an open system attached to a sun that in turn floats in the Orion arm of a galaxy that we call the Milky Way. A galaxy with a billion suns and billions of planets all set apart at distances so great that they challenge human experience. I now know that all this is set into a firmament of uncountable billions of similar galaxies stretching for an unimaginable 14 billion light years into the distance.
Another open system that I know about is one that I can understand. It is a child’s swimming pool. Into this tiny puddle – seemingly from nowhere – arrive green slime, black algae, water beetles and assassin bugs. A whole ecosystem set into motion within a week.
I have come to accept that planet Earth and swimming pools are similar open systems. Influences rain in from the stars. Astrology is an attempt to explain some of these influences. Astronomer Fred Hoyle staked his considerable reputation on the idea that viruses travelled to earth on meteorites. We know recognise that bacteria forms could be great travellers – they survive the vacuum and radiations of interstellar space.
I’ve come to believe ideas can come from the stars. I have experienced consciousness arriving. The clearest time was during a lecture series at Canberra’s Mt. Stromlo observatory. There was a presence in the hall that kept telling us backward earthlings that E=MC squared was an idea that needed revision. People in the room experienced the same thought and jiggled the astronomers with questing propositions.
Incidentally this inflow of ideas seems strongest at the solstices and equinoxes. It seems most noticeable inside buildings located on significant earth sites. Test it out at Xmas.
Now, I have come to understand that Devas are also intergalactic travellers. (Deva = a conscious being with energy focuses that often attaches itself to a location.) Devas don’t travel in space ships but in thought, in consciousness. Small ones seem to flit around in space like algae spores and alighting on any planet that comes their way. On suitable planets they survive and create around themselves the things that interest them… So new life forms come into existence – consider the impossible worms that live on sulphur sprouting from volcanic fistulas deep under the earth’s oceans – a life form once considered impossible and only recently discovered.
There are many types and subsets of devas. Mystics, the Christian church and esoteric schools have all tried to place them into the human terms of their time, calling them hierarchies, aspects of god or rays. But perhaps all explanations are inadequate in a cosmos with billions upon billions of possibilities.
I suspect that conscious ideas and devas are arriving all the time. Some find their way into human minds. Some power the evolutionary processes. Some create machines or bodies for themselves out of the materials of the earth, accumulating earth elements into shapes to fit their needs – like sea animals making their shells. Flying saucers may well be apports created by thought consciousness from who knows where. Space people the reformation of material taken from earthly life forms.
Does all this sound impossible? Well, apports happen, we accept that consciousness can does create material results, possessions are a fact of daily life. We live in a sea of consciousness and some of us can distance read what is happening in other places. In a few thousand years perhaps we will be able to visit distant galaxies, their suns and their planets in thought consciousness. Perhaps – like long distance runners apporting themselves to distant places – primitive people could once visit the stars.
Now setting all this aside. On the 15/9 a relative rang me from Singapore, a fundamentalist Christian she said, “The end of the world has come.” I replied, “No, it will all be over in a few days.” I was wrong and I was forced to explore the Muslim world by mediation and personal contact.
I am going to write about my meditational insights but first my a few words about the Islamic friends I have made. After an interfaith Christian/Muslim discussion – attended by about 80 people at the Indonesian Embassy – I asked if I could visit a mosque during prayer time. “Do you want to pray?” “No,” I responded, “I usually just sit up the back and mediate.” This was well received and I was invited to Friday prayers. Prayers were held in the new Canberra Islamic Centre in the far south of Canberra. There were about a dozen people from almost as many language and ethnic groups. English was the common language and I was impressed at the compassion the people radiated. The often used “Inshalla” seemed to mean “I have no attachment to the outcome of events” rather than the usually translated “If it pleases Allah.” I wondered if was amongst a Buddhist Kwan Yuan group. I keep going to the Friday prayers and hope to be able to help to get the CIC’s idea of the “Canberra National Islamic Library” functioning as an environment from which cultures, civilizations and energies can intersect and develop. I was delighted to learn about this project … I see it an example of the planetary spiritual/political role Canberra will play in the near future.
My meditative exploration of Islam has been difficult, very difficult and at times depressing. I used visualizations of the insides of mosques that I have visited as entry points to my reflections. Soon I had black panthers lurking in the corners around my personal space. They prowled, they jumped up and snarled, exposing long incisors backed off and starting again. It took me more than a week to connect them to the American ‘Black Pathers’ negro group. Seemingly I had stumbled on a force set up to discourage mediative investigations into Islam.
I then used the Kabah as a focal point for my visualisations. In the centre stands a stone cube with its peanut shaped black meteorite. Usually draped in black cloth the cube is the central point in Mecca and is the place towards which Muslims face when they pray. The direction is marked on the ceiling of bed rooms in Muslim countries. The building around the cube can accommodate a million worshipers at a time. Perhaps between a quarter to a half billon people pray towards the cube every day, many millions 5 times a day. The total Islamic population of the earth is about a billon. As a focal point for accumulated astral power the Kabah makes the Vatican or Canberra’s Parliament House seem like toy boxes.
I soon perceived that the area in the Kabah spun like a dervish dance. Pilgrims move in a circle around the cube and there is an apparent spin in the cube itself. It moves in a horizontal axis. This is something I have never seen before. In fact in my mind’s eye the Deva associated with the Kabah is strange. It is smoother and more refined that other devas that I have experienced or seen illustrated by people like Geoffrey Hodson. Its outside is almost metallic with no wisps of coloured spray. It reaches up into the sky, perhaps to 5,000 metres. After a few weeks I came to the conclusion that what I was being shown was a fire deva with its head in the planet and its tail exiting into the biosphere. The image of a sperm fertilising an egg comes to mind. I decided to call this Deva ‘big M’.
I dowsed other exit points for big M. There are many, the dome of the rock in Jersalem is a point, a mountain in Somalia is a point of ‘intellectual’ exit, Manhattan island has become an important exit point and so on. In Australia Mt Matlock, about 100 kms to the west of Melbourne seems the main exit.
Trying to understand the nature of big M I let my imagination sink into its energy stream. Carrying this with me I asked the local devas around me what I was experiencing. They looked at me in puzzlement, shrugged their shoulders (if they had any) and responded, ‘We don’t know, never seen such a thing before.’ I tried to gauge what I was feeling. It seems that big M has little time for people, far preferring animals and plants. Fish make no impression at all.
But perhaps the most amazing thing about big M is its newness. Indeed it seems to have arrived sometime between AD 300 and 500, buried itself into the centre of the earth and influenced people and events into making it possible to become the dominant force on the planet. A new god arrived on Earth in the first millennium.
So that is why the Bible and writings that predate its arrival call this period the end of the world. What is happening is new. It comes from interstellar space and not from the usual gods and devas that inhabit the Earth. The eventual outcome, will big M through plague or fire be able to change the world to suit its patterns of likes and dislikes? I don’t think there is a clear answer, many gods, devas and beings exist on the Earth. The ones that have been here for some time have learnt to live with each other. I guess in time the influence of big M will be held in check by the ‘old wise ones.’
I think that’s what happened after the 11/9. Somehow the influence of big M was restrained and the planet see-sawed back to something like its old equilibrium. I don’t for a minute doubt that big M will spring forth again, and suspect that this is something big M has done on many occasions in the past, slowly changing and modifying things to suit his, or is it her, needs.
Post script.
If all this sounds really weird – and it does to me – I refer you to Marko Pogacnik’s latest book, ‘Earth Changes, Human Destiny. Coping and Attuning with the Help of the Revelation of St John’ (Findhorne Press 2000). I got the book two days ago, working my way through it and I am amazed and frightened by the experiences Marko is relating. I think he has connected to big M without the insight that she is a new arrival.
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