Gawsworth Hall, near Macclesfield, Cheshire – 26th September 2010
I recently went on the second of the “Water Divining for Beginners” courses at Gawsworth Hall. I had been to the first one held in April this year. There I had met the dowser Michael Clowes, a man with a wide range of dowsing and spiritual abilities, and we had got on rather well. The title of the course was a little spurious and was probably designed to attract people in. The course was actually a beginner’s course on dowsing, water being only one of the possible objects available to be found during the day-long course, along with secret tunnels and buried architecture.
25th April and 26th September
Join Michael Clowes for a fascinating insight into the ancient art of dowsing. The course will include a talk, practical demonstration and question and answer session.
Following your tuition, you are encouraged to try and master the art for yourself. Dowsing can be used for water divining, archaeological searches, earth mysteries including ley lines and much more
The Gawsworth Treatment
Really, you couldn’t ask for a more delightful setting for such a course. The house and grounds are small enough to get around in with out getting too lost, and the activities and tests that have been designed are worthy of a dowse at many levels of experience, although they are specifically targeted at the beginner. However, the hosts were kind enough to set me some special tests as this was my second visit and by now they had ascertained my abilities and wanted to test them thoroughly, which they did.
The hospitality of the family that own the house and who run the course and serve the continuous stream of refreshments is exemplary. It is simply not possible to eat so many scones, flapjacks, buns, and to drink so much tea, coffee and water as they provide throughout the day. That’s not mentioning the lunch-time sandwiches. It’s a feast for mind and body!
Michael Clowes has worked with the resident family at Gawsworth for several years. They have come to trust his work through experience of his talents, despite having had a poor experience with other dowsers in the distant past, where many trenches got dug but few results were verified. Michael’s more cautious approach appears to have regained the family’s trust in the concept, and now they happily boast that they won’t erect their scaffolding or stages without consulting him or using the skills that Michael has taught them, in order that they verify the safest places to bore holes and avoid piercing buried cables.
In addition to its practical uses, dowsing has also been used at Gawsworth to try to uncover some of the history of the house. There are secret tunnels, chambers and buried features around the hall that Michael and Rupert, one of the family that owns and runs the hall, had been tracing and revealing for a few years.
Next, I would be trying something entirely new….twig dowsing….
Twig dowsing
In the morning I got to try something that is apparently the most difficult of the dowsing tools – the twig. I saw an ageing dowser called John Ashe using a twig and getting a strong response, so Michael wanted me to try it out too. After a bit of guidance on the correct way to hold it, and how to put some tension into the Y-shaped twig, I was off to see if I could find anything – I asked to find an underground water channel, figuring that this was what most wood-dowsers seemed to look for. I got to a spot on the manicured lawn in front of the house and the twig began to pull down alarmingly. Most unexpected! This felt very strange indeed. Much stranger and stronger than the copper L-rods turning, which, although initially startling, doesn’t pull with the same force as the twig was doing as it pulled hand hands down to the ground. Quite, quite amazing!
I watched John, an experienced dowser, who dowsed only with twig. His technique was odd – when he got a reaction the twig pulled so hard that he almost had to let go of it, and he jerked one foot into the air at the same time, which amused me no end. He also found it difficult to differentiate materials underground such as water, metal, clay pipe, etc. As for depth, ee only was able to determine depth using the Bishop’s Rule. When I showed him how easy it was to find things using my rods he seemed quite unable to comprehend it. He asked how I determine depth and I showed him my binary method of guesswork – “Is it deeper than 100 feet….”, if not, then I would half that to fifty, and so on. I conceded that his Bishop’s Rule method was possibly faster than my binary sort, where I cut the value in half until I zoomed in on the correct answer.
The Bishop’s Rule states that the depth of whatever you’re looking for is equal to half of the distance of the width of the object’s aura. So, if you dowse from the place where the object is, say a water main, and you find that the dowsing response dies off at twenty feet from the centre of the object, then its depth will be 20′ – in other words, it’s depth is half the total width of the object’s dowsable aura.
Pressure on the star pupil
In the afternoon our small gathering of would-be dowsers traipsed off into the relative wilds of the grounds to set about a series of tasks we had been given. Having done most of the tasks before on the previous course I was given a new set of tasks specifically to test me, and I intended to give them a good go. In the meantime I assisted my dowsing partner for the day, an older gentleman called John Ashe, as he set about trying to answer the first set of questions. I was interested to see what results he got, but with his twig he seemed to take a very long time to get anywhere, and I spent a long time waiting for him to finish. Michael noticed this and called me over to take a look at an area in the far corner of the grounds that he had been investigating with Rupert.
Michael directed me to one corner of tufted grass – “Let me know what you find in this sort of area“, he said. I began to look around but I had no idea what I was looking for. Usually I have an intention in mind and set about finding it. this was the opposite – there was something to find but I didn’t know what. After a bit of aimless floundering I asked the rods to locate the strongest energy spot nearby. They twisted in my hands and pointed to a large tuft of grass and crossed. I wondered if it was linked to something else, so I asked to be taken to anything else that was exhibiting energy and found another tuft of grass. Both spots felt firm and ungiving. I stomped on them and felt a thud that didn’t feel like earth. What was it? The rods helped me find that it was some form of architecture – perhaps some brickwork?
I gave my findings to Michael and he confirmed that the locations were the places that he had found previously. I asked him about the architecture, “What do you think it is?”. “We think is might be one of the tunnels going to the house.” he responded. I began to dowse some more – suddenly the information was coming quickly. “Here’s the entrance.” I stated, matter-of-factly. “The entrance is this wide, ” I said, indicating about 5 to 6 feet wide, “And the tunnel goes this way,” I said, moving off up the slope and across the wide expanse of garden. next thing I was veering off to join one end of a feature they call the “bowshot” – a raised earthwork at the back of the estate bordering the church next door.
Back at the ranch John was making ‘steady’ progress through the tests. I ushered him towards the last three questions – the new ones. These involved locating some underground water drains, and determining which ones had the best flow. Together we successfully determined the location of the various channels, and their direction and strength of flow. As it turns out – all correct, despite being done very quickly because time was running out. You see? Those L-rods are fantastic. the twig wasn’t very…er…productive. It was good at finding spots, but hopeless at tracking directions.
Limitations and furtherances
There were some other new things to try out – locating buried objects. Two things needed to be precisely located. I failed to find either of them! Luckily, so did everyone else, so it wasn’t just me, but I have long since realised that for some reason this is something I just can’t do! I have no idea why. I could find the water channels, locate cables, find tunnels, power centres, track earth energies, and so on, but ask me to find a bottle buried in the ground? No chance! Even with a ‘witness’ – a piece of the same material as the object being located. I still couldn’t find it. Just can’t do it.
As the day came to a close I realised that I was clearly beyond this beginner’s course. I had spent a large part of the day directing other people on how to hone their skills, on their technique, on the mindset required, and I knew now that I could not be back for the next beginner’s course. I was way beyond beginner, and yet I felt woefully short of export level.
That was when Michael stepped in to ask me if we could arrange to meet up. He felt we could learn from each other’s experiences, me being more practised in the field, and him being a more experienced healing and spiritual dowser. So now I will be doing some study with Michael to try to take dowsing to other levels, as Michael has experience of health dowsing, and working with spirit forces which is an area that I want to know better. So, stay tuned for some interesting dowsing directions in the near future.
Gwas.
