Geomantica 93
September 2025
The magazine of Earth harmony, via dowsing, geomancy, esoteric gardening & agriculture,
and eco-sensitive living, since 1998. Edited by Alanna Moore.
Geo 93 Contents
Editorial
News
* Autumn program of workshops in Ireland, UK and Switzerland, is posted HERE.
* New book by Alanna Moore – ‘Legendary Leitrim – exploring north west Ireland’;
* Now selling – the magical site of Fairywood in north west Ireland; Electro-Culture Paradise and House in the hills of northern Italy;
* Informative and inspiring stories in the media –
Restoring woodlands with fungal inoculation; Marvellous microbes and frozen rainforests; Mother trees and socialist forests: is the ‘wood-wide web’ a fantasy?; Instant micro-parks popping up in Vienna; Ancient human artefacts from one million years ago found; Ghanaians celebrate death with colour and exuberance; America’s first peoples visit the Garma Festival in Australia’s Northern Territory; Yolŋu people celebrate 50 years of the homelands movement in East Arnhem Land (NT, Australia); Musicians in Spain rescue the sound and lore of its ancient bells; Bottled water goes gourmet in the UK & USA; 5G push back in Belfast; Where ‘hearing voices’ is seen as a good thing; The Genius of Trees; Blending science and folklore as they revive Somerset’s eel population.
* Features –
Forest Bathing Trail Divining, by Alanna Moore, August 2025.
Devas, in Principle, and in Singapore, by Steven Guth (RIP) 2013.
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G93 Editorial
Dear Folks,
Welcome to the September 2025 edition of Geomantica magazine.
After a wonderful long bright Irish summer comes the enjoyment of autumn coloured trees and crisp mornings, the joy of harvest and bumper apple crops!
There’s news of my new book ‘Legendary Leitrim’. If you haven’t heard of Leitrim, a tiny Irish county, you are not alone. Only 15% of Irish people have ever visited Leitrim, they are more likely to visit Asia than here. In the ‘hidden heartlands’ of Ireland, Leitrim retains an amazing number of ancient ruins, it is redolent in mystery and natural beauty, as described in the book’s introduction that was published in the last Geomantica. Leitrim’s ancient heritage is given alternative perspectives to mainstream narratives and glimpses of Other world realities and geomantic aspects are also featured in this August 2025 book.
Enjoy the uplifting and informative articles in this edition, they are a great antidote to the brutal state of parts of our world currently. Plenty of good news out there!
Readers contributions are most welcomed, the next edition will be published next northern spring, in February 2026.
Have a wonderful rest-of-your-year!
Your editor,
Alanna Moore
Geo 93 News
* New book, out now!
A guide book that time travels an unspoilt scenic backwater of Ireland, where the past is ever present and the Otherworld never very far away.
Legendary Leitrim, exploring north-west Ireland
by Alanna Moore
Published by Python Press in August 2025.
ISBN – 978-0-6452854-7-5
192 B5 b&w pages. Price – €20.
Time travel through serene green, hidden-treasure landscapes of County Leitrim. Be transported and enchanted, touring ritual sites, megalithic monuments, crumbling castles and fairy haunts. Follow less-trodden trackways through rural backwaters where ancient history shimmers close to the surface and grand legacies of engineering and craftsmanship point to an illustrious past. Discover original Pagan landscape lore, peeling away the dross of medieval mythos. Almost-forgotten sites lie waiting to be re-appreciated and re-experienced. Deep journeying, one gets a sense that the old sacred places are calling us to be remembered and protected!
Exploring invisible dimensions of landscape, beyond the range of our normal senses, the book dips into parallel Other-worlds immortalised in traditional place lore. Modern perspectives come from the author’s own paranormal experiences, as it paves a way for holistic site investigations to be better understood and appreciated. Author of eleven books, Alanna Moore is well qualified in reading landscape energies, having been a professional geomancer in Australasia and Europe for over forty years.
While it will stir the imagination of the armchair antiquarian, it’s best to visit the sites, take time to connect with and experience them. Mythic landscapes await you!
A Review: “What a beautiful peek into the magical northwest of Ireland. Alanna’s words and photographs bring this part of Ireland to life – transporting us to the beautiful villages and landscapes of the region, their history and mystery. It is a book that feeds your soul and inspires you to visit the region for yourself. Use this book to guide you in your quest or to fuel your dreams from a comfortable armchair.” Dawn Kirkham, Dowser and House Healer, Canada.
Find the book HERE.
* Now Selling:
1. the magical site of Fairy Wood in north west Ireland; and
2. an Electro-Culture Paradise and House in the hills of northern Italy.
1. ‘Fairy Wood’, south Co. Leitrim, north west Ireland.
This nearly one acre site (.8 ac) has been landscaped and reafforested (with 700 trees) in harmony with its geomantic nature. A fairy line runs through it, this terminates in a geo-vortex/fairy hole, now within a small stone circle made by the owner. Fairies are plentiful there! Preference will be given to a buyer who respects the fairies.
On the flattish top of the ridge there is an orchard and berry area, with an open, but sheltered, area that has been used for vegetable production; a food forest with some rare plants; several Monkey Puzzle trees around 2m+ high, and the woodland of mostly Alder trees.
A gravel track leads up to the top of the low ridge and a gravel pad there is where a car can park and turn around. Here a Shepherd’s Hut has been placed. In near perfect condition, it is some 2m by 8m and has inside it a built up, high up bed base, with storage area beneath, while it’s wired to have solar panels/power in the future (with points and lights) and a flue facility allows for a wood heater to be installed.
Note – There is no council permission to have this hut there.
The location is beside a small road around 10km east of Carrick on Shannon and 5km north of Drumsna. On the roadside boundary of the site and strung along the power lines is a fibre optic cable, with a broadband connection point for super fast, reliable internet. (Not every road has them!)
This site has potential to get planning permission to build a home here, subject to approval.
Imagine, a leafy and magical woodland hideaway, yet your home office is connected to the world….
Interested? Contact – info@geomantica.com
* 2. Electro-Culture Paradise with House in the hills of northern Italy
Unique and distinctive country house, completely detached, with convenient outbuildings and large botanical garden enhanced by electro-culture installations, in a quiet and panoramic location. Total surrounding land approx. 3000 sqm. Villa 200 SM + House 75 + Chalet 30 SM.
The property consists of the main house on two floors, comprising living/dining room, kitchen, hallway, 5 bedrooms, two bathrooms, boiler room, and two porches; high energy performance, insulated with 12 cm of cladding, new high-performance windows with double glazing, solar heating panels, wood-burning stove, photovoltaic panels with storage, WIFI; video surveillance system, Netatmo WiFi home automation remote control (the house is among the top 3% of the best performing houses in the mountain area, according to Netatmo data) and additional LPG heating system (practically unused)
Detached wooden cabin comprising kitchen, living room, bedroom, and bathroom. Small wooden chalet with Finnish sauna of about 30 square meters. Detached warehouse/garage of about 30 square meters and 3 wood stores. Covered barbecue and wood-fired oven.
Animal area suitable for poultry and rabbits. Edible energy forest garden (electro-cultivation) designed in permaculture with raised vegetable gardens and highly productive greenhouses (there are thousands of fruit trees, medicinal plants, perennials, and aromatic herbs); rainwater recovery system and automatic irrigation system. A residential complex for those seeking eco-sustainability and energy and food autonomy, with possible use for B&B, hospitality, workshops, conferences, wellness, and holistic center.
Here’s the link : Casa indipendente Lizzano in Belvedere – Rif. IM-372 – Espande Network Immobiliare
To contact the owner : andrea.donnoli@gmail.com
See – www.elettrocoltura.ch
Informative and Inspiring stories in other Media:
* Restoring woodlands with fungal inoculation
Extracted from
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/15/biology-mycorrhizal-fungi-map-restoring-world-forests
Healthy fungal networks help trees and plants to grow, making them an important key to the success of reforestation projects…. Britain’s woodlands, which spend much of the year blanketed in mist or rain, are a distinct form of temperate rainforest, one that survives only in western Scotland. After the success of Guy Shrubsole’s bestselling The Lost Rainforests of Britain, the UK government announced plans to restore the nation’s rainforests, which have dwindled to less than 1% of land in Great Britain. New research led by Leeds University shows the UK could play a globally significant role in reversing the decline of these rainforests. Temperate rainforests are a rare ecosystem that covers less than 1% of the Earth’s land, restricted to cool, moist conditions that are easily affected by climate change.
Planet-wide, about two-thirds of temperate rainforests could be lost as weather patterns shift, according to that research – with some nations, such as Austria, losing 90%. But the UK and Ireland have large expanses of unforested and rainy land, meaning these two countries have an opportunity to become “global leaders in restoration and reforestation of temperate rainforest,” the authors write.
Forests’ ability to regrow, however, is strongly dependent on the communities of mycorrhizal fungi that grow symbiotically with roots, allowing the fungi and tree to exchange nutrients. Although mycorrhizal fungi have seen huge declines across Europe, being planted in native soil microbiome with healthy fungi can stimulate the growth of trees and other plants by 64%, research has shown.
We are still only beginning to understand how to restore fungal communities. Hands-on measures include soil restoration by “inoculation”, either by adding scoops of soil from intact ecosystems when trees are planted or by transplanting fungal spores. Felicity Roos, a soil consultant at the National Trust, says: “In the right circumstances, restoring degraded landscapes and soils, inoculants can play an important role in restoration.” Commercial biofertilisers claiming to contain mycorrhizal spores are now a business worth billions, but scientific studies have shown the majority of products contain dead or ineffective spores, with some also containing pathogens, or disease-causing micro-organisms.
* Marvellous microbes and frozen rainforests
Until recent decades, most scientists assumed Arctic ice and snow were largely devoid of life. On Longyearbreen, a Svalbard glacier close to the world’s most northerly town, Edwards digs through the remnants of last winter’s snow pack, to explain how that assumption missed the mark.
Edwards notes that all fresh snowfall contains microbes and, remarkably, microbes themselves can trigger snowflake formation. Each cubic centimetre of snow on the glacier contains hundreds to thousands of living cells, he says, and typically four times as many viruses – a microbial habitat as complex as topsoil. “The organisms that can survive here are very, very evolutionarily advanced,” Edwards says.
Extracted from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/arctic-glaciers-face-terminal-decline-as-microbes-accelerate-ice-melt
* Mother trees and socialist forests: is the ‘wood-wide web’ a fantasy?
In the past 10 years the idea that trees communicate with and look after each other has gained widespread currency. But have these claims outstripped the evidence?
* Instant micro-parks popping up in Vienna
Grätzloasen – low-cost, urban ‘parklets’ built by volunteers – are on the rise in Vienna as sceptics are being won over by the splash of welcome greenery and boost to community spirits….
A grätzloase, or neighbourhood oasis – is a miniature park tucked into the side of the road. With the blessing of the city hall, more than 100 of them have sprung up across Vienna. The scheme has been growing since 2015, and its proponents say it’s struck a rare balance for urban projects: cheap, community-driven and appreciated by local people.
* Ancient human artefacts from one million years ago found
Ancient humans lived on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi at least a million years ago — 800,000 years earlier than previously known — according to stone tools found under a corn field.
The artefacts, which were unveiled today in the journal Nature, may even be up to 1.48 million years old. But exactly which ancient human species left the tools, or even how they managed to get there in the first place, is a mystery.
* You have a right to a non-communicating ‘smart meter’ in most of Australia
posted by Stop Smart Meters Australia, 18.7.25
The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) clearly states in its Guidance to retailers that consumers have the right to a Type 4A non-communicating smart meter when deploying or replacing smart meters under the National Energy Retail Rules and National Electricity Rules. However, it seems that many retailers are ignoring this and advising customers they have no choice but to accept a smart meter with an active communications card that emits electromagnetic radiation 24/7.
WA’s Western Power, although not part of the national electricity market, also clearly specifies in its FAQ webpage that customers can request to have the communications device removed (with certain exceptions) from their meter at any time.
Unfortunately, in Victoria, where smart meters were mandated via Victorian Government Orders in Council, consumers do not have the same rights as other Australians. Once a smart meter is installed, they rarely are able to have the communications card removed and have meters read manually.
* Ghanaians celebrate death with colour and exuberance
Under the mantra ‘celebrate death as we celebrate life’, funerals in Ghana can be colourful affairs filled with dancers and extraordinary personalised coffins.
* America’s first peoples visit the Garma Festival in Australia’s Northern Territory
Flying from across the ocean, feathered regalia meets an ochre-smeared bunggul… See the fabulous visuals!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-05/first-nations-americans-dance-at-garma/105606674
* Yolŋu people celebrate 50 years of the homelands movement in East Arnhem Land (NT Australia)
Yolŋu children from nine Laynhapuy homelands are shouting the Yothu Yindi anthem, Homeland Movement, in a ceremony in the Garrthalala homeland. “Power to the people, power to their land, power for cultural revival, power for survival,” they sing. The song is more than that to the Yolŋu people of East Arnhem Land — it’s a story of their elders claiming back a life that was ripped from them during colonisation.
The name Yothu Yindi translates to “mother-child” in Yolŋu Matha, which Layna senior cultural advisor Yananymul Munuŋgurr says refers to the relationship the Yolŋu people have to their land.
“We have a mother-child connection to this country, and it has always been a responsibility for Yolŋu to look after country, whether you are on your mother’s country, your grandmother’s country or your father’s country,” she says.
* Musicians rescue the sound and lore of Spain’s ancient bells
For centuries bells were the fastest means of communication, calling people to meetings, warning about wildfires, and were even believed to offer protection from storms – now they are being given a new life.
* Bottled Water goes gourmet in the UK & USA
See – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/28/water-sommeliers-rival-wine-terroir
A restaurant in the English county of Cheshire has launched a water menu, as have a number of US establishments. Is it really possible, though, to tell one terroir from another?…
The crucial factor in determining its taste is the minerality of water….Geology dictates the combination and quantity of these minerals and creates a water’s taste. “If it’s sodium, it’s salty. If it’s calcium, it’s slightly sweet. And if it’s magnesium, it’s slightly bitter”… Mineral content can be measured by evaporating a sample and weighing what is left as milligrams per litre of total dissolved solids (TDS). We are talking sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Low‑TDS, or soft, waters are delicate and have changed little since they fell from the sky, whether they have been locked in a glacier or cycled quickly through a spring. High-TDS, or hard, waters may have spent years sloshing around rocks, absorbing minerals underground.
I (Simon Usborne) go for the Lauretana (£12 a bottle), a gently carbonated spring water from the Piedmont region in north-west Italy. A waiter pours me a glass. “We always serve water in wine glasses; it shows it respect,” says Binder, who also drinks it only at room temperature – he says chilling it kills any flavour.
I swill a sip around my mouth before drinking. It’s a weird sensation. The water is so soft and smooth that it almost slides, rather than flows, off my tongue. It’s like drinking an Hermès scarf. Yet, a second later, I am left with a tacky, metallic dryness in my mouth – something to do with the water’s low pH level, apparently. When I follow a forkful of salty crab with another sip, the dryness goes away and the water enhances the crab’s creaminess. It works strangely well.
Binder and La Popote see an opportunity in the shift away from booze, positioning water as a rival not just to wine, but also to the low- or no-alcohol drinks, seltzers and mocktails that are flooding the market. “Even in France, people are saying they want more non-alcoholic choices,”… If health is driving the shift, even if that means “zebra” drinking – alternating between booze and no alcohol – then hydro evangelists believe that waters of note are going to be hard to beat when so many alternatives are packed with sugar and additives.
* 5G push back in Belfast
Sat 16 Aug 2025 – The Belfast Telegraph reported “another 5G mast has been set alight during an overnight arson attack in west Belfast. One local councillor said the campaign of destruction against the city’s masts was being fuelled by conspiracy theorists. Earlier in the night, officers had begun patrolling several masts in the west of the city.
Last night’s attack brings the total number of masts destroyed since 2023 to 21.”
* Where ‘hearing voices’ is seen as a good thing
Extracted from the BBC 3.9.25
Western medicine typically views anyone who admits to being told what to do by disembodied voices as suffering from psychosis. But that is not the case everywhere – so what can we learn from those who treat these hallucinations differently?
Hearing voices is more common than you might think. Studies through the decades have shown that a surprising number of people without any previously diagnosed mental health condition – often more than three quarters of those taking part – experience voices speaking to them from an unknown source.
In Western psychiatry, however, these auditory hallucinations are one of the principal symptoms of psychotic disorders. And the resulting stigma surrounding these mental health conditions means that few people will publicly admit to hearing voices in their head.
But in some cultures these hallucinations are not only widely accepted but actively celebrated. They are seen as offering guidance or as helping to keep people safe. What can we learn about mental health from other cultures? And can we see people who experience hearing voices in a different light?
* The Genius of Trees
It is easy to see tree-influence in the shape of human bodies. But trees are chemical manipulators above all, using sun and time and carbon to make incredibly complex compounds, which are finely tuned through evolution to domesticate people. The cacao tree does so using theobromine, the active ingredient and distinctive taste in chocolate. Theobromine, like cocaine, caffeine and nicotine, has a mild but pleasurable effect on the nervous system, which makes it irresistible to primates. They get a psychoactive high, which allows them to swing through the canopy for miles.
This is an essential trick for a tree that can only grow in specific niches that are scattered about the forest, often far from another of the same species. Ruthlessly, the trees select for larger monkeys able to travel further distances by using the toxicity of theobromine: just as chocolate can kill dogs, so too can a large dose knock off a small monkey. The trees grow large, heavy pods that can develop without breaking branches on the parts of the tree that can support the weight of larger monkeys. These large monkeys can eat the pods and turn the very high fat content of cocoa butter into the physical energy required to travel long distances, and the theobromine hit into mental energy to spread the seeds.
Here, the tree uses extraordinary powers of chemical synthesis to manipulate animals it will use to travel. Chemically, physically and existentially, animals have been shaped by trees, and few have been more shaped by trees than humans. Whole societies have arranged themselves around trees.
The striking relationship between the cacao tree and monkeys appears to have been seamlessly transferred into humans, even though our genetic paths parted from them 5m years ago. As a result of cacao domesticating humans, cacao trees currently grow everywhere in the world where they can survive, from south-east Mexico to the Philippines, Ivory Coast, Angola and India, and we plant them, nurse them and consistently destroy their competition and pathogens.
This is an extract from The Genius of Trees by Harriet Rix, published by Vintage.
* Blending science and folklore as they revive Somerset’s eel population
When the Somerset Levels flood in winter, their reed-fringed waterways swell into a glinting inland sea – haunting and half forgotten. Generations ago, these wetlands pulsed with the seasonal arrival of eels: twisting through rhynes – human-made water channels – and ditches in their thousands, caught in baskets, sung about in pubs and paid as rent to Glastonbury Abbey. Today those same waters flow more slowly, more sparsely: once-teeming channels now show only the barest traces of what was here.
Determined to reverse that collapse, the Somerset Eel Recovery Project is weaving together science, folklore and community creativity to bring back not only the eel but a lost sense of local identity.
Its mission is both ecological and emotional: to help restore a critically endangered species while reviving the human stories, songs and names that once made Somerset an eel country.
Across Europe, the population of the European eel has dropped by more than 90% since the 1970s. Between 1980 and 2009, eel numbers in Somerset’s Bridgwater Bay – once a thriving gateway for glass eels – dropped by 99%. The causes are multiple and connected: overfishing, pollution, hydrological infrastructure blocking migration, climate-driven shifts and the spread of a parasitic nematode damaging the eels’ swim bladders.
Vanessa Becker-Hughes, one of the project’s founders, has built partnerships across science, policy and the arts. She runs a growing school programme – 60 eel tanks were installed in local classrooms last year – as well as storytelling events, traditional rope-making workshops and citizen science efforts that test for eel DNA in rivers. “I try to come at it from different angles,” she said. “Sometimes we do science, sometimes we do a river blessing. But it’s all about connection.”
Becker-Hughes’ blend of wonder and urgency fuels her determination. She believes that rebuilding our lost relationship with eels means rekindling communal memory through shared rituals and skills. “We make straw ropes, which we put over barriers. They get wet and the little glass eels use them to climb up and over. But more than that – it gets people to visit these weirs. They notice the water. They count the eels. They start to care,” she said.
Andrew Kerr, the chair of the Sustainable Eel Group, says eels once shaped place names, customs and livelihoods. He believes it is crucial that we rebuild our lost relationship with them. “If we lose the eel, we lose a sense of our identity. We forget the songs. We forget what this landscape was,” he said.
Extracted from –
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/28/activists-blend-science-and-folklore-as-they-try-to-revive-somersets-eel-population
Feature Articles
*Forest Bathing Trail Divining
– by Alanna Moore, September 2025
The journey to my destination in the leafy Appeninos, the alpine spine of Italy, west of Bologna, took me to what was once a southernmost border of Celtic tribal lands in Europe, during the Iron Age, around two millennia past. From Bologna central, I zig zagged across the ancient border of Cisalpine Gaul for a one hour trip on the famous Porettana train line. In it’s day it was an engineering feat to get the train line routed along the valley of the River Reno, the mountain river that used to be a tributary of the River Po, in the agricultural heartland to the north. Since re-routed, it now flows by Bologna and its delta is south of the Po’s. Celtic name Reno is cognate with Rhein, named by those tribes who spread down from the Rhinelands in modern Germany. They nostalgically memorialised their homeland by bestowing its names upon new lands. Many such ancient Celtic river names (that are always feminine) still persist in much of Europe. (While in my part of Ireland we have the River Rinn, another name cognate with Rhein.)
In this region I discovered another boundary, the Gothic Line, from world war two it divided the Nazi and Italian spheres and around it battles were fought and much blood spilled. The proximal coincidence between these two divides seems to be no accident. The Nazis were fascinated by indigenous traditions, geomancy, Celticism and the like, which they wove into their nationalistic narrative and fascist power drive propaganda. Just look at the symbolism boldly emblazened across Milano’s Central train station, designed and built in the Mussolini era to represent the power and authority of his fascist regime. In the terrazzo paving of the grand station entrance you see the Celtic war god Segomo, a deity of ancient lineage, depicted as a spiralling, ram-horned snake with wings. After the Nazis retreated from the area at the end of the war, they blew up the famous tunnels and bridges of the Porrettana line. But it was restored and trains now leave hourly from the city.
The train line and valley of the Reno snakes it’s way through the foothills of the Appeninos and I cross the river for the last time before alighting at the main destination – Porretta Terme, a charming town on its banks, once a grand Roman spa centre with hot springs. Enjoying a cooling gelato as I stood beside the bridge over the Reno on a warm summer’s day, I saw on an old visitor attractions sign a roundel image that showed a white cow going to drink from the river, with hills behind it. A warm wave of recognition of the Celtic ethos swept over me. Since Celtic times in Ireland – Boann has been the white cow goddess who presides over her river, the Boyne. I wonder if the Po and Boyne might be named from the same root word, the Indo-European word for cow, Bo? The sacred white cows of Poretta and the Boyne may have been a medieval revival/recycle of Iron Age mythos? Certainly it is a common theme of geomantic legend where a bovine beast selects the site for a cathedral/city/sacred site.
Later I learned, from an online search, the story of the image. “According to an ancient legend, during the Middle Ages a sick ox went to drink at its waters and was miraculously healed. Since then the ox became the symbol of the municipality of Porretta Terme [now absorbed into Alto Reno Terme commune] and its thermal waters have become famous throughout the world. According to the archaeological sources, Porretta’s thermal baths were already used in Roman times, long before the story told by the popular legend”. (https://www.inbologna.it/porretta-terme-spa.html)
Poretta Terme’s renowned thermal waters are appreciated for their sulphurous and salsobromoiodic qualities. (https://emiliaromagnaturismo.it/en/towns/porretta-terme)
Rising above the town, I travelled along winding hill roads through farm land and oak forests with colleague Andrea Donnoli until we were in the leafy commune of Lizzano in Belvedere where he lives. The elevated landscapes are green and smell fresh and invigorating, for the air is clear here, high above the city smog. Skies are blue, unlike those above the plains. Villages are de-populated and peaceful, the mountain food wholesome.
The forested hills are riven by streams and Andrea knew a great many from when he used to fish in them. He once discovered, in the middle of a stream, a carved stone with curvy-linear designs. I suspect it could be a boundary marker from Celtic times.
For walkers this region is a haven, but there isn’t much else for visitors, despite being close to Bologna. A plan to attract more visitors – in a wholesome way, with a Forest Bathing Trail – was presented by the visionary mayor of the commune and the project successfully gained government funding to bring the idea to fruition.
Forest Bathing and mountain culture
Firstly, a study was made of the health benefits of Forest Bathing generally. Volunteers walked forest trails mindfully and engaged their senses with the nature around them. Health markers were checked before and after. The benefits were obvious. (This is well known already, the Japanese being the original experts in the benefits of Shinyoku.)
So then, to locate and define a trail. This is where the story gets magical! It was more a a case of the trail head suggesting itself to her, as I learned from Barbara, a self-described ‘shaman mayor’. Yes, she had been a shamanic practitioner for 16 years before being elected mayor, she told me when we met that evening. One day she looked up at a magnificent pine tree near the pedestrian-only road at the back of the little village of Vidiciatico. She was amazed to see white lights dripping out of its branches, in a beautiful, magical light show. An other dimensional message, perhaps to say – ‘Choose me!’? Barbara decided that this point, this tree, would make the perfect location for the first stop of the trail.
From there the trail follows on along the hillside to six other spots, where signage points out various significant features. You walk through leafy hills graced with chestnut trees, including many ancient gnarled old specimens that are interspersed with oaks and other trees. For millenia people have come here for chestnut gathering. Several casone stand idle now beside the trail. These are the old stone huts for the annual chestnut harvest that are now preserved and maintained, as part of the project.
Since earliest times, chestnuts had been the staple food of mountain people, before potatoes replaced them. They collected the nuts from the ground under the trees. When dried, they stored well. Later, they could be ground into flour and cooked into a diverse cuisine, such as chestnut flour based necci and a typical beer made with chestnuts.
One of the students told our group the story of how her grandmother helped the hungry family survive during world war two, when food was scarce. She would cycle the circa 50km from Bologna to these hills, where she gathered some 30kg of chestnuts. Then she loaded them onto the bicycle to return home the same day.
Left – Unknowingly flanked by rainbows, the group approached the start of the trail. Pic by Clare Orchard.
Enhancing the trail energetically
But just making a Forest Bathing trail wasn’t enough, Barbara wanted it to have interesting features as well. Andrea Donnoli got involved, installing a Pyramid and Power Tower at two of the points along the trail. (Other installations will follow.)
Our student group had been honing their pendulum dowsing skills the day before our visit, so this day we were exploring the energetic environment of the trail to put our pendulums to work. Around the first trail stop, Andrea explained about the pyramid energies of the installation there. Using it as a ‘check in’ point, we then focussed on ‘checking in’ with the local energies around us, sensitising to the place and asking permission to enter the forest. All was good and I saw, in my mind’s eye, curious little earth elemental spirits that were timidly peering out from behind trees, wondering about the visitors and staring at us intently.
When I had tuned into a map of the trail back in Ireland, the second trail point intrigued me. I had seen it inhabited with ancient hairy humanoid spirits that held spears and gave an impression of being hunter gatherers from mesolithic or paleolithic times. They reinforced the sense of long term human connection to the chestnut forests. When our group arrived there and all tuned into the place, I did see them. They stood in a semi-circle looking at us curiously and they told me that this was their territory. No-one else saw or sensed them that I know of, however, but they were on a different dimension to nature spirits, so it wasn’t surprising.
Lots of other spirit beings were present too, including ancient chestnut tree spirits. A Power Tower had been installed there and the big field of energy surrounding it is a great attraction for Other dimensional beings who love to feed off its beneficial energy.
At the sixth station of the trail a flat area was perfect for a sit down. Andrea hooked up a tree leaf so we could listen to Plant Music generated via the machine from Dhamanhur community. I sang some of my ‘Sacred Land’ song and shamanic drums were beaten rhythmically. I watched in my mind’s eye a tall forest spirit come up the trail towards us, attracted by the harmonious sounds and impressed by our presence, as we were of him.
Further up the track we stopped to dowse a suspected underground water line. A line of trees with warped or unusual limbs betrayed its presence by the irritating effects on them. People’s pendulums and a few dowsing rods confirmed the presence of water moving beneath those trees.
Finally we reached the seventh station, where a large casone hut allowed access inside to its dark interior. Here fires were once lit to dry the nuts and people would sleep over until ready to take the harvest home.
We were surrounded by the giant butts of gnarly old chestnut trees. One specimen, from which I first obtained permission to work with, was used to demonstrate to the group how to dowse for the chakras of trees (the same technique as finding them on a person). I noted the angle on the trunk where the chakras were located and when I checked other nearby chestnuts, I found them to be also located at exactly the same angle. This would indicate to me that the trees naturally grew themselves from seed in the forest, finding their Critical Rotational Point, as some scientists call it, or preferred orientation to the Earth’s magnetic field i.e. they had not been planted by humans.
Trees can harbour many types of nature spirits around them. My previous Map Dowsing had indicated a family of Earth elementals living under the ground below a chestnut tree at our last stop. I didn’t expect much interaction with them, but my brief was to introduce people to their worlds. So, as we approached the 7th stop I had sent my mind out to them in greeting, to say that we were coming. I heard a voice respond sullenly – “I don’t care. We don’t like to talk to humans,” it told me. Fair enough, I thought with a chuckle. Typical unfriendly gnomes!
I pointed out to the group the root chakra of a gnarled old chestnut tree, my pendulum spinning vigorously above it. Here, on the ground level of it and every tree, this chakra vortex provides a portal whereby gnomes and the like can come and go with ease to their world beneath the tree.
Now we were at the end of our morning’s exploration, so we walked back along the narrow track in a return to ordinary reality. If only other places would be so lucky to have a ‘shaman mayor’, as Lizzano in Belvedere has, I mused.
Magical connections are many here. I was told of a group that’s concerned with Bologna’s ancient mysteries, such as Etruscan temple ruins, Earth energy patterns and things magical. They have events and a website at http://www.BolognaMagica.com
Max, the creator of Bologna Magica wrote – “Bologna Magica is born from the desire to preserve and share the esoteric heritage of our city. A journey through the centuries, from the origins of the Tarot to mysteries yet to be revealed.”
* Devas, in principle, and in Singapore
By Steven Guth (RIP) 2013, Canberra, Australia
Steven’s partner Katherine was from Singapore, so he often visited there, until the level of electro-smog from all the wifi networks in the tower block where they would stay got too much for him. Such is life for sensitive people, Steven being highly clairvoyant. Both he and Katherine, who I knew from the 1980’s, died from cancer around 10 years ago. I’m very grateful that he kindly gifted me before dying a memory stick of a swag of articles he had written, for publication in Geomantica. Editor.
Let’s begin with a simple, one paragraph explanation of devic life:
All energy sources attract unattached consciousness which quickly occupies and proceeds to use the radiating energy.
The explanation then runs as follows … Like a moth drawn to flame ‘Devic’ consciousness is drawn to unoccupied energy radiations. If there a harmony between a Devas energy needs and a site the Deva attach to the site, settle down and participate in activities that relate to the site. The simple proviso is that the nature of the radiating energy determines the nature of the attaching Deva. A rock crystal and its tiny Deva is different a mountain Deva. And a tree Deva is different to one associated with a bend in a river. As you can imagine the diversity is immense.
I’ve just written about Singapore, its energies and how these affect people. Let’s consider some specific locations and their associated energies.
First a typical hilltop Deva ‘landscape angel’ type Deva that ‘lives’ in the energy stream that radiates off the top of Braddell Hill – the little hill on which sits the apartment block in which I’m writing. Like many similar Devas it arrived unknown countless thousands of years ago, anchored itself to the hill and became involved with the doings of the trees, snakes, monkeys and the occasional tiger and human. Now the hill hosts seven 25 story apartment blocks and the Deva has withdrawn. I sense it is still around but up high, a ball with only tenuous links to the few trees and water drains below. And strangely. It does seem to maintain some links to the Chinese graves that once dotted the hillside. I attribute this to the Feng Shui masters who placed the graves here in Singapore’s earlier days and created some direct connection.
I sense the Braddell hill Deva as a slightly comforting presence in my body. It seems to have some interest in the estate’s swimming pool, making it feel like a nice safe place. I suspect that I’m one of the few people on the 10,000 people estate who can sense the landscape angel’s comforting feeling. There are other types of Devas here.
Building Devas
These are strong beings that I’ve never sensed or experienced before. It took me a week after my arrival to piece together the bits I sensed. Below is an inadequate description.
These Devas are associated with buildings all over Singapore. Appearing to me as balls of steel grey that hover in the air over the buildings. On buildings under construction they sit inside the building. They utilise the mixture of electrical and earth energies that ‘flame’ of the tops of Singapore buildings with their deeply embedded steel reinforcing rod construction. Along the vertical framework runs what appears to be pulsating sine waves containing considerable energy. As the buildings age the vertical and horizontal webbed structure become co-joined and increasingly energised. Some geomantic experts believe that at the end of fifty years these structures become toxic to humans, I tend to agree.
I have noticed that some floors appear to be more affected than others. This maybe there are intrinsic harmonies within the building that make some places better and others worse. (Be interesting to see occupancy rates and sales turnovers for various floors.)
These Devas are strange beings, the ‘why’ of what they are really doing escapes me, but I’ve come to see how they operate. It worries me.
Perhaps the Building Devas are strong (and so noticeable) here because Singapore with its granite base is within about a thousand Km from the Indonesian zone of fire with its high level of radiating earth energy. Still, I suspect they reside above all large steel framed buildings everywhere on earth.
To me they appear as floating, slowly bobbing balls. They vary in size as they appear (jellyfish like) to breathe in and out. Not very large, they match the roof top foot print of the building.The worrying thing is that they run a strand of energy – a line – that runs from themselves to the navel of everyone that occupies ‘their’ building. I see this as a yellow strand that transmits human feelings and enables the Building Deva to learn about human ideas and interpersonal relationships. As said, I don’t like it. I have found that with visualization I can break the link between my navel and the Building Deva and once this is done I feel emotionally more focused and can think with greater clarity.
In turn each Building Deva is linked to a larger Deva that floats over a district. From here some connection is made to a consciousness that exists somewhere in space. This type of external consciousness has been describe by others as emanating from dolphin pods. The Dolphin pod exo -consciousness is rewarding to connect with, it’s about play, fun, joy, even love. While the Building Deva consciousness is sinister; it interferes with how we feel and think.
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