Certain places on the earth are magical, emanating a numinous, tangible feeling of power. Our ancestors knew this, and marked the most important of these sites with stone circles, temples, or similar monuments, which became places of healing and raising energy through ritual. A whole network of these ancient sites exists, criss-crossing the landscape with alignments, apparently for the purpose of sending the energies from one place to another. Today, dowsers can pick up these energy lines, which are often associated with underground streams. Dowsing is a skill that anyone can pick up with just a small amount of practice.
The feeling in these places of power, the tingling of the skin, is very much like an electrical feeling, and if our ancestors felt this too, then this is another reason for such places to be imbued with an aura of power. Today we are awash with electro-magnetic radiation produced artificially, but nevertheless such ancient sites still retain their power, especially at certain times, following the ancient cycles of day, month and year, as they always have done.
So, are magic and electro-magnetism somehow related?
"Certain places on the earth are magical, emanating a numinous, tangible feeling of power.
The feeling in these places of power, the tingling of the skin, is very much like an electrical feeling"
Without any sources cited, this sounds most likely to be an emotional response to being in a place that you feel strongly about, rather than a physical response to physical forces.
“Today, dowsers can pick up these energy lines, which are often associated with underground streams. Dowsing is a skill that anyone can pick up with just a small amount of practice.”
Since we are in the science board, and I assume you’re bringing this up as a science related topic, it’s worth pointing out that the scientific community has tried and failed to find any evidence whatsoever of the validity of dowsing.
I can only go on my own experiences, and for me, it’s clear that both the electrical tingling sensation, and dowsing, are real.
I’ll give you an example. There’s a famous Neolithic stone circle in Oxfordshire called the Rollright Stones, which I’ve been to many times, and have camped there, too. Touching the stones at certain times of day, in particular, early in the morning, produces a mild static electric shock. There’s one particular spot where everyone who tries dowsing, even complete beginners, apparently gets a very strong reaction. I’ve tried it myself, holding two dowsing rods, and when I walked over the spot, the dowsing rods twisted in my hands. No one, of course, had told me where the spot was beforehand.
There’s more info about the Rollrights, dowsing and earth energies here. It’s a subject I find fascinating.
It is of course physically possible that some places on earth have different magnetic fields than other places - after all, compasses work!
It’s also possible that human beings have some mechanism to detect magnetism.
Neither one of those claims seems, on the surface, to sound like magic. Unless you’re using the definition of magic that says “any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic.” I’m sure a working compass would seem like magic to someone who had never seen or heard of such a thing before.
The mechanism that dowsing seems to work is by subconscious muscle movements. So let’s suppose there’s a spot at this site that does have a different magnetic field than the rest of the site, and let’s suppose again that people have a way of detecting that magnetism: all of those facts together would be sufficient to explain how people can dowse for this special spot, without proposing anything magical.
In fact I think many people likely CAN detect magnetic fields. I don’t think it’s any more magic than a compass
Yes, I definitely agree that it’s very likely that people can detect magnetic fields, and that this is how dowsing works. It’s also highly likely that people in the past were sensitive to this, and places where a strong magnetic field existed, due to natural factors such as geology and the landscape, became sacred.
Where the magic comes in is in how these energies were used. These sacred places became places of healing, for example. There are many known instances of this from Greece, among other areas, which survived into recorded history. This is similar, I think, to the Victorians setting up spas, with healing waters, as the ancient places were also associated with underground streams.
It’s vaguely possible that places on the earth with strange magnetism also promote healing somehow, but I’d maintain that if that were the case we’d be able to find evidence of it via studies and experiments. Do you know if such experiments exist? If not, do you know of any known mechanism where magnetism alone promotes human healing?
Which might also account for why such sites became numinous and sacred. Even today, many people report seeing ghosts and other weird things at these places. I’ve experienced what I assume were auditory hallucinations myself, camping at night.
Power(all energies formed by intelligence) is what existence is in its raw, unadulterated form.
Magic is power made more practical through greater accessibility and seems interrelated with all religious practices in vary scopes and degrees.
There’s truth to be pulled from all the ways we manage such energies(power), from Buddhism’s meditation(the accessible doorway), to Hinduism’s Chakras (our anatomy of power), to Abrahamic religions (combined will through prayers), to Paganism (the circle of practice). Am I forgetting any?
Now if only somebody would tie all the practices and beliefs together, essentially putting together all the pieces to the puzzle of Existence and its effects, we might more easily, readily understand what we are dealing with.
That’s why, let’s fact it, what else is there in this world but in either being able to or not able to demonstrate to others that what you believe [about anything] is in fact true.
I merely suggest that for some what they believe is true they believe is true more because the belief itself allows them to sustain a measure of comfort and consolation in regard to doing the right thing on this side of the grave in order [for the religious among us] to carry on doing things on the other side of the grave.
And yet the staggering mystery embedded in the existence of existence itself runs so deep that there’s not much that can’t at least be imagined to be true. Especially if it makes you feel snuggly grounded to nature. Or to the universe itself?
either waiting or doing.