The World of T.C.Lethbridge

Appendix H. Premonitions by Rupert Sheldrake

© Rupert Sheldrake 2012 [1]

Many animals seemed to anticipate the great Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004, although their reactions were much closer to the actual event. Elephants in Sri Lanka and Sumatra moved to high ground before the giant waves struck; they did the same in Thailand, trumpeting beforehand.

According to villagers in Bang Koey, Thailand, a herd of buffalo were grazing by the beach when they 'suddenly lifted their heads and looked out to sea, ears standing upright.' They turned and stampeded up the hill, followed by bewildered villagers, whose lives were thereby saved.

At Ao Sane beach, near Phuket, dogs ran up to the hilltops, and at Galle in Sri Lanka, dog owners were puzzled when their animals refused to go for their usual morning walk on the beach.

In Cuddalore District in south India, buffaloes, goats and dogs escaped by moving to higher ground, and so did a nesting colony of flamingoes.

In the Andaman Islands, 'stone age' tribal groups moved away from the coast before the disaster, alerted by the behaviour of animals.

How did they know? The usual speculation is that the animals picked up tremors caused by the under-sea earthquake. But this explanation is unconvincing. There would have been tremors all over South East Asia, not just in the afflicted coastal areas.

Some animals anticipate other kinds of natural disaster like avalanches, and even man-made catastrophes. During the Second World War, many families in Britain and Germany relied on their pets' behaviour to warn them of impending air raids before official warnings were given. The animal reactions occurred when enemy planes were still hundreds of miles away, long before the animals could have heard them coming. Some dogs in London anticipated the explosion of German V-2 rockets. These missiles were supersonic and could not have been heard in advance.

With very few exceptions, the ability of animals to anticipate disasters has been ignored by Western scientists; the subject is taboo. By contrast, since the 1970s, in earthquake-prone areas of China, the authorities have encouraged people to report unusual animal behaviour, and Chinese scientists have an impressive track record in predicting earthquakes. In several cases they have issued warnings that enabled cities to be evacuated hours before devastating earthquakes struck, saving tens of thousands of lives.

By paying attention to unusual animal behaviour, as the Chinese do, earthquakes and tsunami warning systems might be feasible in many parts of the world that are at risk from these disasters. Millions of people could be asked to take part in this project through the media. They could be told what kinds of behaviour their pets and other animals might show if a disaster were imminent - in general, signs of anxiety or fear. If people noticed these signs, or any other unusual behaviour, they would immediately telephone a hotline with a memorable number - for example, in California, 1-800-PET QUAKE. Or they could send a message on the Internet.

A computer system would analyze the places of origin of the incoming messages. It there was an unusually large number, it would signal an alarm, and display on a map the places from which the calls were coming. There would probably be a background of false alarms from people whose pets were sick, for example, and there might also be scattered hoax calls. But if there was a sudden surge of calls from a particular region, this could indicate that an earthquake or tsunami was imminent.

Exploring the potential for animal-based warning systems would cost relatively little. From a practical point of view, it does not matter how animals know: they can give useful warnings whatever the explanation. It it turns out that they are indeed reacting to subtle physical changes, then seismologists should be able to use instruments to make better predictions themselves. If it turns out that presentment plays a part, we will learn something important about the nature of time and causation. By ignoring animal premonitions, or by explaining them away, we will learn nothing.[2]

End Notes

[1] First published as part of Chapter 9 Are Psychic Phenomena Illusory? in The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry by Rupert Sheldrake (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2012, 392 pages, £8.99, ISBN 978 1 444 72794 4).

[2] See also three other books by Rupert Sheldrake: Seven Experiments That Could Change The World (1994; new edition 2002); Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home (1999; new edition 2011); The Sense of Being Stared At (2003).

Appendix G. Dowsing as an Object of Orgonomic Research by Wilhelm Reich

© Wilhelm Reich 1951 [1]

The discovery of water veins or concealed springs in the earth occupied a peculiar position in natural research for a long time. On the one hand, the use of the dowsing rod was laughed at; ‘divining’, as it is called, was discarded as mystical or charlatanry by ‘rigorous, objective, physical scientific research’.

No serious scientific researcher, so it was said, believed in the fairy tale of the dowsing rod. On the other hand, as is widely known, farmers and mountaineers used the ‘mysterious’ dowsing rod to uncover springs. The dowsing rod furnishes in practice what ‘exact physics’ so far had not succeeded in accomplishing: It discovers water in the ground.

In World War I the dowsing rod was highly esteemed in the dry Alpine areas (‘Korst’). In World War II the English Royal Air Force is said to have used the dowsing rod with great success. But the nature and mechanism of the discovery of water springs by means of the dowsing rod remained a mystery, exposed to the suspicion of charlatanry and mysticism.

In 1949, S.W. Tromp, Professor of Geology in Cairo University, had devoted some effort to the elucidation of the finding of water by way of dowsing. [2] Orgone Physics came to contribute to the understanding of dowsing in 1946 when I had a man who was supposed to practice dowsing come to Orgonon. The man displayed no special traits of character which would have marked him as a mystic. He explained to me that he had for many years - without asking money for it - been occupied with the discovery of water springs. He had learned the art long ago from a farmer’s wife. He could, so he claimed, find any water vein which was not more than fifteen feet under the surface of the earth.

I had him introduce me to his art while I led him into the neighbourhood of an old, concealed well. He cut a V-shaped branch from a young apple tree and held firmly with both hands so that the point of the V was directed upward and slightly forward; it was about the height of the pit of his stomach.

When he approached the region of the concealed well, the freely-moving end of the branch turned with great force towards his body. One could see that the man had to exert himself strenuously to hold the branch firm. I confess that I had the impression of a mystical process; I did not understand what was happening.

How was it possible that the branch turned at all? The man explained that one must cut the branch fresh from the tree if one wanted to obtain good results. Old, dead branches do not function. I had at first believed that the branch was drawn to the earth in the neighbourhood of the water. This later proved to be erroneous. In dowsing as we saw it, to be sure, it appeared as if the discovery of the water were an accomplishment of the branch. This erroneous conception is at the basis of the mystical interpretation of the process.

The farmers in this neighbourhood call the process of discovering water by means of the dowsing rod ‘divining’, which reveals the religious-mystical explanation clearly enough.

I had the man, with his dowsing branch, walk over a location where a water pipe, which supplied the laboratory with water, was buried five feet under the surface. Exactly at the spot where the pipe was buried, the branch turned downward, even though not as strongly as at the well. The man showed no sign of trance or any similar condition. He only appeared to be very attentively concentrating on the branch.

He walked now, with the branch in his hands, over a part of the terrain around the laboratory. At a certain place the branch began to turn downward. The man followed the direction. The movement of the branch became increasingly strong until finally the man could hardly hold it. “Here, at this spot,” he said confidently, “lies a water source not deeper than fifteen feet. You can depend on that.”

Since the dowsing rod had already twice designated the presence of water unknown to the dowser, I had no reason to doubt that the man was also right this time. Two years later, it turned out that water was accumulating on this spot deep in the ground, due to a special hollow formation of the terrain which permitted water coming down to remain there.

I now took up the rod myself and held it in my hands exactly as he had shown me. I walked across the same terrain, and quickly my doubting academism vanished. There was no doubt about it: The branch moved downward, slowly at first and then more strongly. The same thing happened when I walked over the water pipe in the ground, and when I approached the old well; more weakly at the pipe than at the well. Still I did not understand how this attraction was possible. A half-hour later the riddle was less obscure.

I repeated the procedure several times while I changed the position of the branch. Held laterally to the body, the branch gave no reaction in the same place where it had reacted strongly in the original position in front of the upper abdomen. The movement of the branch thus had something to do with its position relative to the body of the water finder.

The branch reacted weakly or not at all if one held it far away from one’s own body, just as it had little effect when one held it laterally to the body. Now it struck me that the freely moving point of the branch moved most strongly at the height of the pit of the stomach. That could be explained only if the middle of the body moved the branch toward itself.

The finding of the water is thus not at all an accomplishment of the branch or rod. The branch only plays the role of an indicator. It is the organism of the dowser which reacts to the water in the ground. This reaction is expressed in the form of an attraction of the freely moving end of the branch to the body and not to the spring. Thus it became understandable why the branch always turned toward the body and never away from the body to the earth, at least according to this single observation.

I had several experimental workers at the laboratory repeat the procedure. One assistant failed to react at all. Another felt a weak pull in his hands, a resistance of the branch against movement away from the body. A third and a fourth each felt a similar peculiar sensation in the solar plexus [3], when the branch was attracted.

The next step was the following conclusion: The organism reacts (without any perception) to the spring in the ground with orgonotic excitation, since both the organism and the water are strongly orgonotic and represent two orgonotic systems. It seems as if it were the plexus solaris in particular which reacts with excitation and attraction to the water. And it has been known for a long time that orgone energy and water are mutually attractive. In this way the riddle of the attraction of the branch is solved.

The drawing at the start of the article is to illustrate that the attraction between moving palms, [4] the scenting of water by dogs and other animals, etc., are akin to these functions.

To summarize: the dowsing rod does not move to the water, but is attracted by the body of the dowser.
Not the dowsing rod, but the bio-energetic life apparatus of the dowser reacts to the water in the ground.
The attractive reaction of the dowser apparently depends upon excitation of the bio-energetic system, which is accompanied by increased attraction in the orgonotic field surrounding the body. The organism and the water react upon one another as any two orgonotic systems with excitation and attraction. The dowsing organism must apparently be orgonotically vigorous in order to react with excitation to water and to attract the dowsing rod. An orgonotic or armoured organisms will get little or no reaction since the attraction in the orgone energy field is too weak to attract the branch.

Thus, again, the bio-energetic structure and sensitivity of the observer enters into the observation and detection of natural functions as a decisive factor. [5] No mystical operation whatever is here involved.

In order to test the given interpretation of the function of dowsing, I had to be able to reproduce it also without the presence of water. If my explanation were correct. That the dowsing rod effect depends upon the excitation and attraction in the contact of two strong orgonotic systems, then the same effect must result if the organism approaches a strong orgone energy accumulator. This expectation was confirmed:

The branch was attracted to my body when I stepped into the metal-lined orgone energy room. The effect was strengthened, clearly and irrefutably, when I approached the 20-fold orgone energy accumulator from the outside or when I sat in it.

It was a further valid proof off the correctness of the explanation, that the attractive influence in the accumulator was especially strong when I subjectively felt the well-known lumination sensation of ‘prickling’ warmth in my body.

The orgonotic potency of an organism can be roughly measured by means of the lumination of the incandescent bulb at the orgone field meter. [6] The lumination of the incandescent filament stands in direct relationship to the orgonity of the organism. Our dowser showed the strongest lumination at the orgone energy field meter, fully corresponding to the strength of the attraction of the rod in his hand. My reaction was somewhat weaker, those persons who had not reacted with the dowsing branch showed the weakest lumination of the apparatus.

The heretofore so mysteriously conceived function of dowsing may fall into line with the many other bio-energetic observations already well known for a long time: (a) The clear-cut attraction felt between one’s palms during mutual approach alternating with removal; (b) The ability of certain individuals to attract growing, green branches of certain flowers by approach and removal of their palms; (c) The activation of a Geiger-Müller device with the orgone energy field of the palm in bio-energetically strong organisms; (d) The orgonotic sensation of the presence of unseen persons in the dark. [7]

I believe that these facts speak a clear enough language, but they should be carefully tested from the standpoint of orgone biophysics. Their function submits without contradiction to the theory of orgone biophysics. The discovery of water sources by means of the dowsing rod, and similar functions, demonstrate the organism and the orgonotic sensation as tools of natural research in the clearest light.

The scientific conception and understanding of the function follow from the knowledge of the specific laws which govern orgone energy, i.e., Life Energy. The orgonotic contact between the living organism and a part of nature gains great importance as a principle of exploration of nature.

End Notes

[1] First published by the Orgone Institute Press in Orgone Energy Bulletin (Vol 3, No 3, July 1951, pps 139-143).
[2] Psychical Physics by S.W. Tromp (Elsevier Publishing Company, New York, 1949).
[3] The Solar Plexus chakra lies between the Sacral and Heart chakras and begins to open around the age of seven...suggesting an interesting set of dowsing experiments for infant schools. [Editor].
[4] See X-ray picture of orgonotic excitation in Orgone Energy Bulletin (Number 1/2 p50, 1949).
[5] Compare the section on Organ Sensation as a Tool of Natural Research in Ether, God and Devil, Chapter III.
[6] See The Discovery of the Orgone by Wilhelm Reich (Volume II, pps 124-127).
[7] See The Science Delusion by Rupert Sheldrake...extract included as Appendix H.

Appendix F. The History of Dowsing by Hamish Miller
© Hamish Miller 2002

In the mid 5th century BC the ‘father of history' Herodotus the Greek reported the use of wooden Y-forks for the finding of water while he was roving around Scythia north of the Black Sea. It's the first written evidence of true dowsing, although there are references to similar functions in ancient Chinese literature.

Cave drawings from thousands of years ago have been claimed to depict dowsing implements of various shapes but it's difficult to believe that these slightly hairy outlines are anything to do with dowsing. A silver coin struck in 936 AD clearly shows a wee man with a forked stick in action above mine workings.

Martin Luther outrageously pronounced that it was "Devil's Work” in the early 16th century and as a result the art has been fiercely opposed by religious establishments for centuries. Fortunately the knowledge was preserved and passed on quietly by people whose lives were closely connected to the earth.

About the same time a German mineralogist and metallurgist called Georgius Agricola published De Re Metallica, a treatise which included precise details of dowsing techniques in mining. It aroused considerable interest in the industry throughout Europe although Agricola himself, still acutely conscious of the association of the art to the occult, hedged his bets by admonishing prospective miners "not to make use of the enchanted twig”.

Elizabeth I of England first got wind of the valuable ‘forked stick' methods of finding metal ores through Agricola's work and introduced German miners to help develop England's resources. They brought their knowledge of dowsing with them, and by 1660 Charles II, recognising the importance of the art to the financial success of the mining industry, demanded to know everything about the operation of the ‘Baguette Divinitoire'…splendid name for a dowsing rod.

In 1693 Pierre de Lorrain, Abbé de Vallemont caused consternation in religious circles and Paris society by publishing his Occult Physics which included detailed illustrations of dowsing techniques. It was promptly put on the prohibited list by the Inquisition, and he was probably one of the first authors to create a bestseller by having his book banned. His work triggered a vigorous pro- and anti- debate in the world of scientists and religious leaders, leading to a proliferation of scientific tests on the abilities of dowsers over the next century.

In museums round the world there are some fine examples of seventeenth and eighteenth century artwork, including silver drinking mugs, paintings and Meissen pottery, which figure little men with Y-rods akimbo looking for minerals. The burgeoning mining industry was a major contributor to the development of dowsing and the art thrived under the increasing pressure to find more and more mineral and water sources.

In eighteenth century France, Germany and Italy, the use of ‘wands', ‘sceptres', ‘deusers', ‘twiggers', ‘dowsers', and ‘water-witchers' to find all sorts of things became fair game for scientists and priests to investigate, and for the public to have fun with. A plethora of essays and publications by Lebrun, Menestrier, Zeidler, Albinus and Thouvenal fired broadsides at each other for and against the mysterious art.

Barthelemy Bleton, a brilliant natural water-witcher, working with the Bishop of Grenoble (author of the ‘Bishop's Rule' for finding the depth of water) became the focus of Thouvenal's attempt to associate dowsing with electrical effects, but physicists could find no simple explanation of his talents.

Further work in Italy with the elegant Pennet, who constantly confounded observers by achieving remarkably accurate results, still failed to persuade the authorities that dowsing was a talent worthy of serious debate. On the contrary it seemed that as ‘absolute proof' in scientific terms was not readily available it was easier to accept the French astronomer LaLande's arrogant dismissal of all dowsing as trickery. He put dowsing rods in the same category as ‘flying ships' declaring "it is impossible for a man to raise himself from the ground”. A year later the Montgolfier brothers were off in their first balloon.

In the late eighteenth century William Cookworthy of Plymouth, England gave the art a shot in the arm by chronicling the undeniable talents of the Cornish mining dowsers. They had earned their reputation purely by the accurate results they had produced for that very tough industry, and had begun to be rewarded accordingly.

For a time local people who ‘could just do it' were used to find water sources, but gradually some eminent Victorian British and Irish geologists became aware of the growing water needs of industry and the larger estates. One of the greatest practitioners of all time was Wiltshire's John Mullins. The legendary stories of his successes probably did more to make dowsing acceptable in the right circles than any contemporary academic papers.

In 1912 the mighty Metallica was translated from Latin to English by Mining Magazine in London, and sparked a fresh interest for many lateral thinkers of all disciplines. Then, in 1969, Guy Underwood's The Patterns of the Past broke new ground by exploring in meticulous detail the energies of sacred sites and their connections with water.

In 1976 Tom Lethbridge's The Power of the Pendulum explored other realities and in 1978 their work and the perceptions of John Michell inspired Tom Graves to write Needles of Stone, a dowsing book which introduced far-reaching concepts of our relationship with earth and cosmic energies.

In the last few decades an international array of dowsers have applied their talents to an expanding range of dowsing disciplines.

Terry Ross from Vermont could find water for villages in Mexico by instructing a surrogate dowser over the telephone, and wrote that dowsing could lead ultimately to "co-creation with nature”. Bill Lewis of Wales had an awesome talent for finding objects in all parts of the world without leaving his home, and Roger Brown from Australia accurately recorded complex manifestations of earth energy field changes for a hundred-mile radius of Adelaide.

Russian specialists like Pluzhnikkov could pin-point mineral resources and archaeological remains, and paranormal expert Neklessa developed a unique combination of pairs of scientists and mystics working together using advanced dowsing techniques to investigate the reasons for the failure of historic civilisations.

Many ‘doodlebuggers' across the USA are fine-tuned to locate obscure oil deposits, while Elizabeth Sullivan of Wales is recognised by the authorities as an expert on the location of humans and animals by map dowsing.

Colin Bloy in Spain initiated a sophisticated form of the dowsing process in the delicate art of healing, additionally applying it to the energy centres or ‘haras' of towns and villages to improve the quality of life of people living there.

The list is endless and confirms a continuing global interest in the ancient art of dowsing.

I believe all of the 'sacred' relationships I've been talking about also apply here [1] a website by Jonathon Barlow Gee that deals with squares. I am sure there is also a hyper point or a hyper sphere. Look at the animation showing a section of the hypercube as it's rotated in 4D time space. It starts off as a large inverted tetrahedron. It also finishes with a smaller upright tetrahedron.

This is only three of the six cubes that are rotating in space. There are three other cubes on an opposite corner of the hypercube that would create the opposite shapes. Thus we would have two opposite pointing tetrahedrons...reminiscent of the 3D Star of David or Ed Leedskalnin's Latvian Star.

Over time in 4D rotation, this larger 3D Star of David becomes a smaller 3D Star of David that has rotated 180 degrees at least in one axis and points in the opposite direction.

That link seems to directly apply to the mathematics that combines Buckminster Fuller's world with the world of T.C. Lethbridge, Stonehenge, Tibetan Levitation, and Ed Leedskalnin.

It ties into the 4th dimension...hypercubes, hyperspheres, phi spirals, pi spirals...and light. I suggest there is a hypersphere that interacts with the hypercube because of what I've seen in the aforementioned works.

Jonathon Barlow Gee's website answers that hunch by saying that the hypersphere is a torus. This ties in directly with Dan Winters Phi Spiral and 'flame in the tent'...therefore into Genesis. It always seems to go back to light...and breath...the breath of 'god'. [2] Here is the applicable part of the website:

"Now, I would like to take a moment to compare some self-evident facts that we can observe in nature. I am not going to claim to have invented any of these things, as I hear doing so results in bad karma.

It is a self-evident fact, for example, that the seven basic colours of the spectrum of light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet in order) can be mapped onto the surface of a torus, or hypersphere, in only one way, such that each of the seven colours occupies the same area on the surface of the shape.

Now, once these colours have been mapped onto the surface of the torus, we see that the outline between each of the mapped areas forms a spiral that wraps around the surface of the hypersphere.

The spiral that outlines the seven colour spectrum is, and this also is a completely self-evident fact and was not 'invented' by any human hands, is a 'phi' spiral.

Now, this 'phi' spiral revolves around the circumference of the torus (clockwise or counter-clockwise) depending upon the rotation through the centre of the torus (outward from centre or inward toward centre, respectively) of the seven coloured areas mapped onto its surface.

In other words, the 'phi' spiral revolves around the circumference as a measurement of the surface of the torus. It measures the fourth-dimensionality of this shape by moving, that is, it changes over time, and is therefore, like the clock, a means of measuring the passage of the fourth dimension.

However, this measurement is only of the surface of the torus, measuring the revolution from the circumference (seen from above) to the centre. This is a measurement of area, that is, of the combined seven areas of the mapped colour spectrum."

Endnotes

[1] URL: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.benpadiah.com/basic_intro.html">http://www.benpadiah.com/basic_intro.html

[2] E-mail to Jonathon Barlow Gee on Thursday 10 February, 2011

My name is David Brandon and I found your webpage doing a Google Search for PHI and Torus. I was researching the idea of Dan Winters' and Stan Tenen's "flame in the tent". I wanted more idea of the actual mathematical formula that enables the phi spiral to relate to a torus. But the real reason I've been doing all of that is to reconcile mathematics of the Dowsing works of T.C. Lethbridge with the mathematics of Edward Leedskalnin and Buckminster Fuller. I was very impressed with your website...VERY impressed! I would like to take you up on your offer to send an e-book of any of your works...especially any of these involving the mathematics of creation, torus, phi, pi...or the hypercube.

But more importantly than this, I was wondering if you might help my friends and I work on this math since you seem much more comfortable with the complicated mathematics of 3D and 4D space time. I really like how you don't take ownership for kharmaic reasons...I tend that way myself...though I give credit to others when I learn through them. Here is a brief description so you can get an idea the task.

Tom Lethbridge's works can be found at one of my friend's sites here: At the top of this page is the downloadable pdf's of his works. If you go to the second to last of any of these pages, you will see Lethbridge's Pendulum Rate chart of some of all objects. He found there is a 40" Archimedes spiral that repeats every 40" from the center of an object. While holding a pendulum over an object and allowed to oscillate in 3D space and 4D time...the object will only oscillate until the length of the pendulum is proper rate for that object. For instance, a gold nugget would respond at 29" and so would any female species. A male and diamond are both 24". I've been working on the mathematics behind it here.

If you look at the above link and briefly peruse it, you will find a part where I possibly tie in the male and female pendulum rates to John Michell's Sacred Rod of Stonehenge of 41.70898 inches and Lethbridge's 40'" Archimedes spiral cycle. I also tied this in with the energy mass of an electron and PHI. This isn't necessarily important for you to digest unless you'd like to get into it. To put it in simple terms, I'm very intrigued by your statement: "This diagram depicts a large part of what I work with on a daily basis".

This very much intrigues me because it is very close if not exactly what I'm trying to find...a connection with the 3D Archimedes Spiral of Lethbridge with the 3D PHI spiral of Winter's Flame in the Tent. If we could succeed in this, it would be a huge step in understanding the ancient art of dowsing...and provide a much more mathematical and scientific bedrock for others to build upon in referring to this ancient art.

I personally have tried this long pendulum dowsing and know that it works for me as Lethbridge provides. If you are not interested, please respond anyway and simply say so. If this is the case, then please refer me to anyone else that you know might be interested in working with us. Thank you for your time in reading this long email...and thank you for sharing your great works online!

David Brandon
Naperville, Illinois, USA.

© David Brandon 2011

I've still been working on the math dealing with Lethbridge and Leedskalnin at the same time. I came across this website, which has helped me jump up my game a notch.

I then recently came across this website, which helped me fill in some of the math and computation that I've been toying around with in my head...because I know nothing of sound, light, and music. This guy puts it all together.

On the first site, this page about the Universal Life Force got me wondering if there is a similar relationship between the four levels of conciousness and brainwaves and Lethbridge's 40" whorls.

I read the description of the 2nd whorl (Micro Level) about ESP and what you can do on this level and it very much reminded me of Lethbridge's comments about the same 2nd whorl.

This was a major break-through for me because it got me seeing how brainwaves can be related to dowsing. It is rather obvious to me now but I didn't think about it before. When we dowse we are using our minds and a piece of string of various lengths. That's it. So, it is most obvious that the invisible force we use to communicate with buried objects or hidden objects would be related to brain waves.

I then started realizing why I might be naturally gifted in dowsing more than others...because I'm most often in this type of thought rather than beta waves that most are engaged in. It's like I daydream a lot thinking about things such as this...even while others are concentrating all around me on their daily tasks. So, I thought it most likely that alpha brain waves are the main thing we're tapping into when we dowse.

I then had another very important memory...see page 27 on the Lethbridge Symposium [1], where I wrote about my experience dowsing on a golf course near my house and experimenting with a large willow tree. I found this is the easiest, strongest object that I've yet observed to tune into dowsing.

In this email I discovered that dowsing wasn't instantaneous, rather it was time-delayed. I would stand there holding my pendulum swinging back and forth with my hand down...then raise my hand pointed at the willow tree...and then start counting seconds until my pendulum started rotating in resonance with the tree.'

This memory and experience gave me the idea now that perhaps the little scientific experiment I performed last summer could give me some insight into the mathematics of the frequency, wavelength, and speed of whatever vehicle I was using in dowsing.

So I found that I was communicating with a willow tree 610 feet round trip from my location...and it took 21 seconds. I changed around the frequencies and the wavelengths...and not surprisingly found an interesting relationship to the 12th root of 2 which is 1.059 and the Schumann Resonance frequency of 7.83 hz.

In other words, if I was sending out an invisible broadcast from my brain as I dowsed, I would transmit and focus through my fingertip. I would send this dowsing broadcast at a frequency of 7.83 hz and wavelength of (6th root of 2) meters.

The time it would take to travel 610 feet would be 21.15 seconds. When the return broadcast returned in harmony or in sync or in resonance with the willow tree's alpha waves, my pendulum would start to move in circles rather than back and forth oscillation as before.

Now it may be that there is other brain waves with a different frequency involved and thus a different wavelength but it has to tie in with this. The only thing that could adjust is if we took into account a different transferring medium such as refraction...but this is even easy enough to include if we had to.

However, from Lethbridge's years of experience dowsing and his testament of experience, I rather doubt any refraction is involved here because he spoke about dowsing through stone walls the same as dowsing in air.

Now, this 12th root of 2 is also part of the equations that Nick Fiorenza used on his website in calculating the harmonic scales of alpha brain waves.

Remember that this 1.059 meters is also the yardstick used by the ancients to build Stonehenge. There are 15 of these in the radius of the Sarsen stone circle or 30 in the diameter and John Michell refers to this and I referred to it as a sacred rod.

An interesting note on Nick Fiorenza's website is that there is 40 octaves between visible light and sound. This is therefore a doubling 40 times or 2^40. Then between sound and alpha brain waves is another 6 octaves, thus 2^46 between brainwaves and visible light.

Because of all of the above reasons, I started once again wondering why the ancient builders would have made a radius of 15 of these 1.059 meter cycles. I mean, if my reasoning is sound so far and they somehow determined the length of the wavelength of the alpha brainwave involved in dowsing, then what is special about 15 of these cycles or 15.89 meters?

I realized that 15 or 16 meters is now in the spectrum area of Ham Radios. I then found what I've been looking for over a year now here in Wikipedia: 'Because the 15-meter wavelength is harmonically related to that of the 40-meter band, it is often possible to use an antenna designed for 40 meters on the 15-meter band, as well.'

Remember how I've been looking for this gem for so long when dealing with the design scheme of Stonehenge and how it relates to Lethbridge's rate chart?

I figured out and is evident in the Lethbridge Symposium that Lethbridge's Chart can be overlaid on the Sarsen stone circle of Stonehenge. But I couldn't figure out why it would be scaled by 15 times rather than wait for the 40 inch whorls of Lethbridge.

However, when I did this, I also realized that if you scaled Lethbridge's 40" chart 40 times it would equate to the Aubrey Circle and to the outer henge of Stonehenge. So, I knew by the clues of the ancients that there was some sort of a 15/40 magic relationship...and here it is!

End Notes

[1]'...I spent all day yesterday and today dowsing in a local park by my house. I've mainly been playing around with the male and female sex rates. I found that the strongest reaction I get is some huge willow trees by a golf course in the park. I may have found a relationship between the English foot and inch. I found that since my strongest source is the willow tree, when I start dowsing I can test my gear and skills by pointing at it. Yesterday I subconsciously noticed it but today I noticed it consciously...there is a delay when I point at the tree and when it starts to rotate the pendulum in my other hand. It seemed to me that the further away the target was, the longer the delay. It therefore seemed that my supposition that the ‘invisible force for want of a better word’ was instantaneous as gravity…was wrong. I had a 100 foot tape measure in my backpack and so I measured how far it was from where I was standing to the center of the tree and I performed three experiments all with the same results. I swung the pendulum slowly back and forth and then pointed my finger to the tree and counted 1/1000, 2/1000, and so on. All three times I got a result of about 21 seconds before the pendulum started to rotate in a counter clockwise direction. So if this invisible force travels from my finger to the invisible cone of energy of the tree and back, it travels 610 feet. It made the trip in 21 seconds...so I figure it travels at 29 feet per second roughly…about 20 miles per hour. Strangely enough, a willow tree is Female and the length of string of the pendulum is 29 inches. So, we might see a new relationship between the foot and inch.'

© David Brandon 2010

I learned a few major lessons today dowsing. Maybe others can benefit from these lessons too. [1]

A couple weeks ago I was dowsing for Mastadon Bones in a field with very tall weeds…taller than me…when my brass pendulum got caught on some weeds and flew off in a backward diagonal angle to my right side. Since that time I've gone back looking for the pendulum bob three times and cleared the weeds in a circular area roughly twelve feet in radius.

The loss of my brass bob happened to coincide with the arrival of my new hazel pendulum. So each time I was clearing back some more weeds I was thinking I should be testing my dowsing abilities by using a hazel pendulum to find a brass one. I figured it should be relatively straight forward, though I knew I would get devoured by mosquitoes. And I did…despite taking every precaution to avoid it.

I looked up brass on the internet and found that copper was a major component. On Lethbridge’s rates table the rate for copper is 32-inches. So I thought it would be easy. It wasn't. I was getting a hit on one azimuth that kept pulling me further and further away from where I thought I lost it. It was a very frustrating experience. However I’m not someone who gives up without a fight. Today I went for the fourth time with my mind made up. I was going to find it without a metal detector…even if I had to stay out there all night long.

I started with the rate at 32-inches with similar results as before. I then thought maybe the pendulum bob was made out of lead so I tried 22-inches. I figured maybe I was getting problems because lead is an interrupter. [2] I had no success with this pendulum length. I then realized that my pendulum couldn't have been an interrupter because it worked for me with rates. I then felt totally lost.

I thought perhaps I could go back to the Theosophical Society Bookstore where I bought the brass pendulum and test the rate of a similar one.

Then I had one last idea. I remembered that Lethbridge was adamant that any abstract thought had a rate too...like sound or love or hate.

I've experimented with this in the past with mixed results so I try to avoid it and stick to physical objects as much as possible. In this case, I was looking for a physical object but I didn't know the rate of the pendulum to find the object. So, I started at 40-inches and kept making the string shorter until it started to rotate at 30-inches. The whole time I was simply imagining the pendulum bob that I was looking for in my mind and wondering what its rate was.

When I got to 30-inches I was still dubious if I was at the right length but I didn't go any further and try other lengths. I simply started pointing my left forefinger in an arc slowly to see if I got any hits at this length. I did but not where I expected...it was only three feet from where I always lay my bag of tools when I looked in the past.

I wondered if I was somehow picking up something in my backpack at the 30-inch rate. So I moved all of the objects and I still got a positive hit. I had to cut some more weeds to try and see. I cut into the uncleared area about another two feet. I was scouring the ground all the time but still didn't see anything. A bright metal object should shine very bright so I couldn't imagine what the problem was. I started to wonder if I had any dowsing ability at all.

So with one last effort I took my foot and scraped along the top of the ground and piled up all the dirt and vegetation in a small pile. I started sifting through it with my hand and found my object instantly at the top of the pile. Needless to say I was very relieved and content. I had finally succeeded in finding my first object by dowsing.

In the process I had learned that if I want to find something and don't know the rate all I have to do is think of it and start at 40-inches and shorten the thread until it starts to rotate. Then I can use that rate to point my left forefinger until the pendulum starts to rotate again. The object should be in that direction. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities in looking for lost objects with a pendulum…for me at least.

One other thing that I first learned a couple weeks ago, but had reconfirmed today, is that when I'm dowsing and thoughts pop up in my head, they are not accidents because I'm more in tune when I'm dowsing…in a psychic zone of some sort. Here is an example of what I mean.

A couple weeks ago I had used Google Earth and a pendulum to try and determine spots to look for Mastadon Bones...my first attempt at map dowsing. I then went to the exact location on earth that I marked on the map and started marking out a boundary that I had created on Google Earth. As I was walking, I was moving the knee-high weeds to the side and I had this thought pop up in my head that I might find something on the ground.

I started feeling this sense of excitement that I was getting closer and I imagined finding Mastadon Bones just lying on the ground. I looked between my legs as I took a step and saw a dark object. My heart raced and I wondered if it really could be. I reached down between my legs, pushed the weeds to the side and found my hand was just six inches away from the head of a coiled snake that looked just like a rattle snake.

My heart just about jumped out of my chest at the thought that maybe I was accidentally tracking snakes that might have the same rate as Mastadon Bones. This possibility had never even occurred to me before. Luckily the snake looked more scared of me than I did of it...and besides I heard no rattle. I’ve come across many rattlesnakes prospecting out west in Utah and later I found out it was a fox snake…commonly mistaken for a timber rattlesnake and killed.

I then walked back through the weeds, amazed that I never thought of the possibility of accidentally tracking dangerous living things while trying to track extinct animal bones! I was really on the look-out for snakes by now and proceeded very carefully until I got to some cut grass and could start to breathe more easily once again.

I thought I was home free. But I then had another thought go through my head. I had better look closer. And just then I saw another little snake headed right for me on a crash course head on. I stopped the same instant the snake did. We stared at each other. He hissed at me. I pointed at him and to my amazement (with hindsight) had the presence of mind to get a pendulum rate for snake of 12-inches. Afterwards I figured it was a grass snake which is not poisonous. Maybe the rate for grass is 12-inches…and Lethbridge has shown in his beetle experiments that we are what we eat.

Anyway, this was the lesson I learned a couple weeks ago. Lethbridge in his writings mentioned some premonitions or visions that came in from the future as well as the past. He mentioned once that he won some money on the Grand National this way. Anyway today I experienced this for the first time. The last couple times I walked through this field I had come across this manhole cover and always got this distinct impression to look out for a snake. It seemed a very odd thought but I made a mental note of it...and never saw anything.

Today when I passed the spot I had the same thought but walked through quickly without even looking for the snake thinking that I must have been wrong as I had passed the spot at least ten times and never seen a snake. But on the way back after finding my pendulum bob, I had the distinct thought again cross my mind - ‘snake’.

I could just make out the manhole cover and readied my hand-axe just in case my premonition was correct. Three seconds after doing this I saw the large black tail of a snake with a white stripe on its back slithering quickly on the path away from me as fast as it could move.

I was amazed at how in tune I was to a living object that I consciously did not hear or see any sign of. I also thought back at the premonitions I felt every time I crossed that same spot about a snake and never saw any sign of one...until today.

Lethbridge wrote about several examples like this that he experienced in his own life. We probably all do.

Endnotes

[1] Written for The Lethbridge Symposium.
[2] See Interrupters & Reversers by Tom Lethbridge.

© Brian R. Greene 2004 [1]

In 1919, Einstein received a paper that could easily have been dismissed as the ravings of a crank. It was written by a little-known German mathematician named Theodor Kaluza, and in a few brief pages it laid out an approach for unifying the two forces known at the time, gravity and electromagnetism.

To achieve this goal, Kaluza proposed a radical departure from something so basic, so completely taken for granted, that it seemed beyond questioning. He proposed that the universe does not have three space dimensions. Instead, Kaluza asked Einstein and the rest of the physics community to entertain the possibility that the universe has four space dimensions so that, together with time, it has a total of five space-time dimensions.

Kaluza proposed that in addition to left/right, back/forth, and up/down, the universe actually has one more spatial dimension that, for some reason, no one has ever seen. If correct, this would mean that there is another independent direction in which things can move, and therefore that we need to give four pieces of information to specify a precise location in space, and a total of five pieces of information if we also specify a time.

Kaluza realized that the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity could fairly easily be extended mathematically to a universe that had one more space dimension. Kaluza undertook this extension and found, naturally enough, that the higher-dimensional version of general relativity not only included Einstein’s original gravity equation but, because of the extra space dimension, also had extra equations.

When Kaluza studied these extra equations, he discovered something extraordinary: the extra equations were none other than the equations Maxwell had discovered in the nineteenth century for describing the electromagnetic field! By imagining a universe with one new space dimension, Kaluza had proposed a solution to what Einstein viewed as one of the most important problems in all physics. Kaluza had found a framework that combined Einstein’s original equations of general relativity with those of Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism.

Then, in 1926, the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein injected a new twist into Kaluza’s idea, one that suggested where the extra dimension might be hiding. Klein’s contribution was to suggest that what’s true for an object within the universe might be true for the fabric of the universe itself. Namely, just as the tightrope’s surface has both large and small dimensions, so does the fabric of space.

Maybe the three dimensions we all know about - left/right, back/forth, and up/down - are like the horizontal extent of the tightrope, dimensions of the big, easy-to-see variety. But just as the surface of the tightrope has an additional, small, curled-up, circular dimension, maybe the fabric of space also has a small, curled-up, circular dimension, one so small that no one has powerful enough magnifying equipment to reveal its existence. Because of its tiny size, Klein argued, the dimension would be hidden.

With this modification to Kaluza’s original idea, Klein provided an answer to how the universe might have more than the three dimensions of common experience that could remain hidden, a framework that has since become known as Kaluza-Klein theory. And since an extra dimension of space was all Kaluza needed to merge general relativity and electromagnetism, Kaluza-Klein theory would seem to be just what Einstein was looking for.

Indeed Einstein and many others became quite excited about unification through a new, hidden space dimension, and a vigorous effort was launched to see whether this approach would work in complete detail. Einstein continued to dabble in the Kaluza-Klein theory until at least the early 1940s. But the theory encountered difficulties in trying to describe the microworld, and in particular the incorporation of the electron into the extra-dimensional picture.

There was another reason scientists were hesitant about the approach. Many found it both arbitrary and extravagant to postulate a hidden spatial dimension. If you asked Kaluza and Klein why the universe had five spacetime dimensions rather than four, or six, or seven, or 7,000 for that matter, they wouldn’t have had an answer much more convincing than “Why not?”

More than three decades later, the situation changed radically with the advent of string theory, [2] the first approach to merge general relativity and quantum mechanics, with the potential to unify our understanding of all forces and all matter. But the quantum mechanical equations of string theory don’t work in four spacetime dimensions, nor in five, six or seven, or 7000. Instead, the equations of string theory work only in ten spacetime dimensions - nine of space, plus time. String theory demands more dimensions.

Prior to string theory, no theory said anything at all about the number of spatial dimensions in the universe. Every theory from Newton to Maxwell to Einstein assumed that the universe had three space dimensions, much as we all assume the sun will rise tomorrow. Kaluza and Klein proffered a challenge by suggesting that there were four space dimensions, but this amounted to yet another assumption - a different assumption, but an assumption nonetheless.

Now, for the first time, string theory provided equations that predicted the number of space dimensions. A calculation - not an assumption, not a hypothesis, not an inspired guess - determines the number of space dimensions according to string theory, and the surprising thing is that the calculated number is not three but nine. String theory leads us, inevitably, to a universe with six extra space dimensions and hence provides a compelling, ready-made context for invoking the ideas of Kaluza and Klein. Their original proposal assumed only one hidden dimension, but it’s easily generalized to two, three, or even six extra dimensions required by string theory.

However, there’s an awkward detail regarding string theory. Over the last three decades, not one but five distinct versions of string theory have been developed. While their names are not of the essence, they are called Type 1, Type IIA, Type IIB, Heterotic-O, and Heterotic-E, and they all share the same essential features; the basic ingredients are strands of vibrating energy - and as calculations in the 1970s and 1980s revealed, each theory requires six extra space dimensions; but when they are analyzed in detail, significant differences appear.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, with many physicists hotly pursuing an understanding of one or another of the string theories, the enigma of the five versions was not a problem researchers typically dealt with on a day-to-day basis. Instead, it was one of those quiet questions that everyone assumed would be addressed in the distant future, when the understanding of each individual string theory had become significantly more refined.

But in the summer of 1995, with little warning, these modest hopes were wildly exceeded when Edward Witten - who for two decades has been the world’s most renowned string theorist - uncovered a hidden unity that tied all five string theories together. Witten showed that rather than being distinct, the five theories are actually just five different ways of mathematically analyzing a single theory. The unifying master theory has tentatively been called M-theory.

Witten’s work revealed that the approximate string theory equations, used in the 1970s and 1980s to conclude that the universe must have nine space dimensions, missed the true number by one. The exact answer, his analysis showed, is that the universe according to M-theory has ten space dimensions, that is eleven spacetime dimensions. [3]

Much as Kaluza found that a universe with five spacetime dimensions provided a framework for unifying electromagnetism and gravity, and much as string theorists found that a universe with ten spacetime dimensions provided a framework for unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity, Witten found that a universe with eleven spacetime dimensions provided a framework for unifying all string theories.

Following Witten’s paper, the avalanche of subsequent results led to the realization that string theory, and the M-theoretic framework to which it now belongs, contains ingredients besides strings. The analyses showed that there are two-dimensional objects called, naturally enough, membranes or - in deference to systematically naming their higher-dimensional cousins - two-branes.

There are objects with three spatial dimensions called three-branes. And, although increasingly difficult to visualize, the analyses showed that there are also objects with p spatial dimensions, where p can be any whole number less than 10, known - with no derogation intended - as p-branes. Thus strings are but one ingredient in string theory, not the ingredient.

This raises an intriguing possibility. Might we, right now, be living within a three-brane? Like Snow White, whose world exists within a two-dimensional movie screen - a two-brane - that itself resides within a higher-dimensional universe (the three space dimensions of the movie theatre), might everything we know exist within a three- dimensional screen - a three-brane - that itself resides within the higher-dimensional universe of string/M-theory?

Could it be that what Newton, Leibniz, Mach, and Einstein called three-dimensional space is actually a particular three-dimensional entity in string/M-theory? Or, in a more relativistic language, could it be that the four-dimensional spacetime developed by Minkowski and Einstein is actually the wake of a three-brane as it evolves through time? In short might the universe as we know it be a brane? The possibility that we are living within a three-brane - the so-called braneworld scenario - is the latest twist in string/M-theory’s story.

If we are living within a three-brane - if our four-dimensional spacetime is nothing but the history swept out by a three-brane through time - then the venerable question of whether spacetime is a something would be cast in a brilliant new light. Familiar four-dimensional spacetime would arise from a real physical entity in string/M-theory, a three-brane, not from some vague or abstract idea.

In this approach, the reality of our four-dimensional spacetime would be on a par with the reality of an electron or a quark. [4] But if the universe we’re aware of really is a three-bane, wouldn’t even a casual glance reveal that we are immersed within something - within the three-brane interior?

Well, we’ve already learned of things within which modern physics suggest we may be immersed - a Higgs ocean; space filled with dark energy; myriad quantum field fluctuations - none of which make themselves directly apparent to unaided perceptions. So it shouldn’t be a shock to learn that string/M-theory adds another candidate to the list of invisible things that may fill ‘empty’ space. But let’s not get cavalier.

For each of the previous possibilities, we understand its impact on physics and how we might establish that it truly exists. Indeed, for two of the three - dark energy and quantum fluctuations - we’ve seen that strong evidence supporting their existence has already been gathered; and evidence for the Higgs field is being sought at current and future accelerators. So what is the corresponding situation for life within a three-brane? If the brane-world scenario is correct, why don’t we see the three-brane, and how would we establish that it exists?

The answer highlights how the physical implications of string/M-theory in the braneworld context differ radically from the earlier ‘branefree’ (or, as they’re sometimes affectionately called ‘no-braner’) scenarios. Consider, as an important example, the motion of light - the motion of photons. In string theory, a photon is a particular string vibrational pattern. More specifically, mathematical studies have shown that in the braneworld scenario, only open string vibrations, not closed ones, produce photons, and this makes a big difference.

Open string end-points are constrained to move within the three-brane, but are otherwise completely free. This implies that photons (open strings executing the photon mode of vibration) would travel without any constraint or obstruction throughout our three-brane. And that would make the brane appear completely transparent - completely invisible - thus preventing us from seeing that we are immersed within it.

That’s an intense realization with important consequences. Earlier, we required the extra dimensions of string/M-theory to be tightly curled up. The reason, clearly, is that we don’t see the extra dimensions and so they must be hidden away. And one way to hide them is to make them smaller than we or our equipment can detect.

But let’s now examine the issue in the braneworld scenario. How do we detect things? Well, when we use our eyes, we use the electromagnetic force; when we use powerful instruments like electron microscopes, we also use the electromagnetic force; when we use atom smashers, one of the forces we use to probe the ultrasmall is, once again, the electromagnetic force.

But if the electromagnetic force is confined to our three-brane, our three space dimensions, it is unable to probe the extra dimensions, regardless of their size. Photons cannot escape our dimensions, enter the extra dimensions, and then travel back to our eyes or equipment allowing us to detect the extra dimensions, even if they were as large as the familiar space dimensions.

So, if we live in a three-bane, there is an alternative explanation for why we’re not aware of the extra dimensions. It is not necessarily that the extra dimensions are extremely small. They could be big. We don’t see them because of the way we see. We see by using the electromagnetic force, which is unable to access any dimensions beyond the three we know about. Like an ant walking along a lily pad, completely unaware of the deep waters lying just beneath the visible surface, we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space, but the electromagnetic force - eternally trapped within our dimensions - would be unable to reveal this.

Okay, you might say. But the electromagnetic force is only one of nature’s four forces. What about the other three? Can they probe into the extra dimensions, thus enabling us to reveal their existence? For the strong and the weak nuclear forces, the answer is, again, no. In the braneworld scenario, calculations show that the messenger particles for these forces - gluons and W and Z particles - also arise from open-string vibrational patterns, so they are just as trapped as photons, and processes involving the strong and weak nuclear forces are just as blind to the extra dimensions.

The same goes for particles of matter. Electrons, quarks, and all the other particle species also arise from the vibrations of open strings with trapped endpoints. Thus, in the braneworld scenario, you and I and everything we’ve ever seen are permanently imprisoned within our three-brane. Taking account of time, everything is trapped within our four-dimensional slice of spacetime.

Well, almost everything. For the force of gravity, the situation is different. Mathematical analyses of the braneworld scenario have shown that gravitons arise from the vibrational pattern of closed strings, much as they do in the previously discussed no-braner scenario. And closed strings - strings with no endpoints - are not trapped by branes. They are as free to leave a brane as they are to roam on through it.

So, if we were living in a brane, we would not be completely cut off from the extra dimensions. Through the gravitational force, we could both influence and be influenced by the extra dimensions. Gravity, in such a scenario, would provide our sole means for interacting beyond our three space dimensions.

How big could the extra dimensions be before we’d become aware of them through the gravitational force? Hundreds of years of experiments have confirmed that gravity varies inversely with the square of distance, giving strong evidence that there are three space dimensions. But as of 1998, no experiment had ever probed gravity’s strength on separations smaller than a millimetre.

This led to the proposal that in the braneworld scenario extra dimensions could be as large as a millimetre and would still have been undetected. This radical suggestion inspired a number of experimental groups to initiate a study of gravity at submillimeter distance in hopes of finding violations of the inverse square law; so far, none have been found, down to a tenth of a millimetre. Thus, even with today’s state-or-the-art gravity experiments, if we are living within a three-brane, the extra dimensions could be as large as a tenth of a millimetre, and yet we wouldn’t know it.

This is one of the most striking realizations of the last decade. Using the three nongravitational forces, we can probe down to about a billionth of a billionth (10^-18) of a metre, and no one has found any evidence of extra dimensions. [5]

But in the braneworld scenario, the nongravitational forces are impotent in searching for extra dimensions since they are trapped on the brane itself. Only gravity can give insight into the nature of the extra dimensions, and, as of today, the extra dimensions could be as thick as a human hair and yet they’d be completely invisible to our most sophisticated instruments.

Right now, right next to you, right next to me, and right next to everyone else, there could be another spatial dimension - a dimension beyond left/right, back/forth, and up/down, a dimension that’s curled up but still large enough to swallow something as thick as this page - that remains beyond our grasp [6]

Over the last century, [7] we’ve become intimately acquainted with some previously hidden features of space and time through Einstein’s two theories of relativity and through quantum mechanics. The slowing of time, the relativity of simultaneity, alternative slicings of spacetime, gravity as the warping and curving of space and time, the probabilistic nature of reality, and long-range quantum entanglement were not on the list of things that even the best of the world’s nineteenth century physicists would have expected to find just around the corner. And yet there they were, as attested to by both experimental results and theoretical explanations.

In our age, we’ve come upon our own panoply of unexpected ideas. Dark matter and dark energy that appear to be, far and away, the dominant constituents of the universe. Gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of spacetime - which were predicted by Einstein’s relativity and may one day allow us to peek further back in time than ever before. A Higgs ocean, which permeates all of space and which, if confirmed, will help us to understand how particles acquire mass. Inflationary expansion, which may explain the shape of the cosmos, resolve the puzzle of why it’s so uniform on large scales, and set the direction to time’s arrow.

String theory, which posits loops and snippets of energy in place of point particles and promises a bold version of Einstein’s dream in which all particles and all forces are combined into a single theory. Extra space dimensions emerging from the mathematics of string theory, and possibly detectable in accelerator experiments during the next decade. A braneworld, in which our three space dimensions may be but one universe among many, floating in a higher-dimensional spacetime. And perhaps even emergent spacetime, in which the very fabric of space and time is composed of more fundamental spaceless and timeless entities.

During the next decade, even more powerful accelerators will provide much needed experimental input, and many physicists are confident that data gathered from the highly energetic collisions that are planned will confirm a number of these pivotal theoretical constructs. I share this enthusiasm and eagerly await the results.

Until our theories make contact with observable, testable phenomena, they remain in limbo - they remain promising collections of ideas that may or may not have relevance for the real world. The new accelerators will advance the overlap between theory and experiment substantially, and, we physicists hope, will usher many of these ideas into the realm of established science.

Endnotes

[1] Source: Chapters 12 & 13 in The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene. The published text, from page 360 to 400 in the Penguin 2007 edition, has been compressed by four-fifths to give a flavour of how our everyday ‘three space and one time dimension’ reality is being extended at the leading edge of theoretical physics as new facts about this reality emerge. [Ed]

[2] A string is a one-dimensional vibrating filament of energy, superseding atoms and particles as the smallest unit from which protons, quarks etc. are constituted. Superstring theory incorporates these vibrating strings as one dimensional loops (closed strings) or snippets (open strings) to unite general relativity, quantum mechanics and supersymmetry. [Ed]

[3] Lethbridge was very specific that ‘length’ has a rate of 13⅓-inches and ‘thickness’ a rate of 26⅔. A further 13⅓ would give a rate of 40-inches. Might this be the third space dimension? Lethbridge would have been aware of the significance of this possibility (hence the precision of the thirds), but I am not aware of any mention of this in his published books. Three whorls would be required to give the nine space dimensions of string theory, while a fourth would be needed to accommodate the needs of string/M-theory’s ten space dimensions. Perhaps somebody in London’s Docklands might care to experiment with left/right, back/forth and in/out in one of the atriums in the City of London’s Financial District?[Ed]

[4] You could still ask whether the larger spacetime within which strings and branes exist - the eleven dimensions of string/M-theory - is itself an entity; the reality of the spacetime arena we directly experience, though, would be rendered obvious.

[5] The strings (of string theory) are so small that a direct observation would be tantamount to reading the text on this page from a distance of 100 light years: it would require resolving power nearly a billion billion times finer than our current technology allows.’ Brian Greene in The Fabric of the Cosmos (page 352). [Ed]

[6] There is even a suggestion that gravity itself can be trapped, not by a sticky brane, but by extra dimensions that curve in just the right way, relaxing even further the constraints on their size.

[7] The last five paragraphs have been taken from the final chapter of The Fabric of the Cosmos (page 492 in the Penguin 2007 edition). [Ed]

 

© Tom Lethbridge 1972 [1]

I said before that this investigation was likely to get like a science fiction novel and this is what is happening. We may not be getting satisfactory evidence for flying saucers at an early time, but may we perhaps be getting suggestions that vehicles, resembling more efficient rocket capsules, may have been circling Earth a long time ago and looking for places to land? Is it not possible that the war in heaven may have been a fight between two planets as to which of them should colonize the Earth?

Let us, for our amusement, and not with any sense of conviction, try to draw a picture. A very long time ago, somewhere about 2500 BC perhaps, there were two planets in the solar system rather more advanced technologically than Earth is today. One was Mars, the other perhaps Venus. They communicated with each other yet suffered from the human failing of jealousy.

Mars, let us suppose, set up bases inside the crust of the moon, and began to dispatch rockets carrying partiers of explorers and prospectors to earth. It was during this period of exploration that the primitive Neolithic natives of the earth were persuaded to set up rings of stones and timber circles to act as guiding beacons for the use of incoming spacecraft. All round western Europe from Sardinia to Scandinavia teams were at work and beacons were set up. Perhaps farther east other ways of directing air traffic were devised.

For a relatively short time this reasonably happy state of affairs continued and then the jealousy of the other planet flared up into open war. Probably it also claimed earth as its private possession.

The first campaign in the war centred on the Martian moon base, then there was a slogging match between the two planets themselves. As a result of this, Mars was knocked out and the other planet so badly disabled that it has as yet been unable to take advantage of its victory.

But the interest of all this is in what happened to the exploring parties marooned on Earth by the destruction of the bases on the moon. [2] There was little they could do and after a very short time the Martians had to go native. In the hope, however, that relief expeditions would eventually be sent to fetch them home, they persuaded the real natives to keep up their dances at the stone circles and so on as a religious rite pleasing to the Great Ones in the sky , who had sent them down to live among them and bring them marvellous benefits.

This is a fairy story. I have made it up. But it is curious how it might be true. So much that happened in later history seems to add to the possibility. Let us see what might have happened to the Martians. Remembering that I have been on three Arctic expeditions myself, it is possible that I might have some idea how it all might develop. [3 We will continue our fairy story with some groups of isolated men and perhaps women too, dotted about on the surface of an undeveloped and foreign planet with little hope of ever returning home again; being shipwrecked on a desert island would be far less drastic.

These stranded astronauts would all be specialists in some way or another. If we may judge from modern trends in education, they might be deplorably lacking in simple general knowledge; but some of them must surely have known something about growing things in gardens. This was to be vital in their predicament and may well explain why such and such god is responsible in tradition for teaching a particular people agriculture. Botanists among them would recognize what plants might possibly provide them with grain and would institute an immediate search in the particular part of the world in which they had been stranded. A little was probably known by the natives already.

Much the same thing was likely to happen in the case of metals. There would be men among them skilled in the identification of metallic ores; but there was no fuel to pro vide great heat for smelting. Metal for tools was an urgent necessity and copper was available in many localities. Thus such and such a god became the Smith of the Gods, by teaching the natives how to make simple cupellation hearths. It is interesting to remember in this connection that the earliest metal tools were made of pure copper and only later was tin added to it to make the more satisfactory bronze.

The earliest copper axes and knives found by archaeologists remind me of my childhood’s efforts and are the kind of things which might have been produced by men who knew that copper could be melted from its ores and made into tools, but did not know the technique and had to build it up from their own imagination.

It is hard to see otherwise how metalworking could have been invented by chance. It is perhaps easier to think that some unknown ‘God’ appeared from the sky and taught men how to do it. Easier perhaps, but not very much easier, for you are only pushing it further back on to another world in another age.

There was very little else they could do to better their situation. All the mechanical civilization in which they had been brought up vanished with the failure of their fuel supplies. It was useless to try to build a boat, as many men have done on the loss of their ship, to take them home again, for their home was far away across the heavens and only a relief expedition could take them back.

But to the natives, to whom they had miraculously appeared from the sky, they were still wonderful. For a while they may well have retained some ammunition for firearms of some kind and from this the stories of the power of the gods to strike a man dead in an instant could well have arisen. So too could the idea of Zeus’ thunderbolts have originated in some kind of hand grenade.

As time went on in their isolation from normal life, ‘the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose’. Isn’t this exactly what was bound to happen? In our story too, we must assume that this took place not at the base of one lost expedition, but at several. The exploration parties were often cut off from one another by hundreds or thousands of miles of sea or impassable forest. The world they had come to was young, with none of the roads, towns or vehicles of civilization. Of necessity they must have taken to the sea, in the hope of joining up with others of their kind.

Thus, we may think, there slowly arose on earth little tribes of hybrids with a greater knowledge than others in the world at the time. Unlike the rest, they knew how to provide a subsistence from agriculture, they knew how to make metal tools and they learnt how to use the sea.

But the leaders in each group proudly claimed descent from their forefathers, who had come from the sky. Although this blood was slowly diluted by admixture from the natives; yet when possible they intermarried with those of their own kind and, throughout the old world at any rate, they became the ruling caste.

How much was handed down by word of mouth of the remembered lore of the lost planet is anybody’s guess. Scraps of the knowledge of how to handle bio-electronic power apparently spread to every corner of the globe and large sections of more detailed information remained in such doctrines as that of the Kahuna people in the Pacific.

The most colourful traditional picture of all this fairy tale is undoubtedly that which survives from ancient Greece. Here the myths and legends are just the kind of thing which one might have expected to be found circulating hundreds of years after the astonishing and little-understood happenings.

But, even in the old Celtic tradition, there seems to be traces of similar ideas. There we find cauldrons which revive dead men, magic spears, inexhaustible sources of food and suchlike things which, although clearly imaginary in their context, might yet be reflections of older events of a more concrete nature. Right down to the Viking age, men still wore coats in battle on which swords would not bite and carried unbeatable weapons.

Somehow it all seems too much for the imagination of the early Semitic, Indian and Greek peoples. We know the kind of thing which is imagined by the so-called primitive folk: ‘You must not swim in the sea, or a little worm will swim up inside you and you will have a baby.’

Of course you would not get anything quite so simple from people who watched and hunted wild beasts for their food, or kept them in domesticity for the same purpose. Yet even the hunters on the hill, however much they watch the soaring of the great birds of prey, would surely not have imagined easily gods who flew about the heavens and resembled them so closely; while the agriculturalists hardly bothered with the sky at all, except to watch for signs of coming wind or rain.

But if anything remotely like our fairy story should ever have happened, it appears to have been a mixed blessing. Did we not guess that the strangers came from Mars and was not Mars the planet of war? Why was it thought to be so, unless there was some vague tradition at the back of the idea?

With the coming of metal, not only were improved tools for peaceful uses made available, but the weapons of war were rendered far more efficient. ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fallen from heaven.’ War between group and group and tribe and tribe became endemic. The greed which had wrecked the original planets seemed to have come down to earth.

Endnotes

[1] Source: The Legend of the Sons of God. A Fantasy? By T.C. Lethbridge; Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972, ISBN 2-283-98128-8.
[2] NASA explorations of our solar system provide little support for Lethbridge’s War of the Planets and it seems unlikely that he would have chosen this particular scenario were he writing today. But Lethbridge believed there was evidence of a war in heaven and would have remained intrigued about what form this might have taken. However there are other matters Lethbridge raises with his fairy story. Lethbridge had a life-long interest in the dispersal theories of his generation of archaeologists. Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur is relevant in this regard, as are the voyages of Thor Heyerdahl. [Ed]
[3] Lethbridge had a close call on one of his Artic expeditions. For a few hours the expedition was convinced that their ship would be crushed by the ice. Maurice Cotterell has developed similar ideas about the fate of stranded ‘visitors’ from a higher culture based on the supposition that Atlantis did indeed exist and was destroyed suddenly in the manner reported by Solon and Plato. See Chapter 10 on The Atlantean Cataclysm in The Mayan Prophecies; Element Books, 1995, ISBN 1-85230-888-5. [Ed]

 

© Tom Lethbridge 1972 [1]

The standing stones of Callanish are in their way quite as remarkable as those of Stonehenge, for they form a strange pattern. In the middle is a single pillar fifteen feet high with a small and, probably later, rifled megalithic tomb at its foot. The central pillar forms the hub of a circle of stones enclosing an area thirty-seven feet across, or about the size of a tennis court. From this radiate one double and three single lines of uprights. They nearly form a cross, but do not quite do so. It is a strange and rather uncanny place to see in the usual pouring rain as it stands on a low hill. The double avenue heads almost true north for nearly a hundred yards.

Loch Roag is divided into two by the island of Bernara, which fits into it rather like a biscuit stuck in a dog’s mouth. On the shore of Bernara facing Callanish are two more standing stones, looking as if they once marked a path across to the island where now is sea. It was probably dry land when the stones were put up, for fresh water Bronze Age peats can be seen round the shore today for several feet below high tide mark.

Archaeologists as a whole pay little attention to Callanish. It does not appear strange to them that such a remarkable construction should be found in such a remote setting. If it had been in Kent or Gloucestershire it would be thronged, but in the Outer Islands nobody cares. Yet it is the very situation of the thing which is so strange.

It stands far out on the rim of the western ocean and there seems to be no possibility that there can ever have been a large population out there. Why should there be? The land must at the best of times have always been very poor. The Ring of Stennis in Orkney is not so strange, for the Orkneys are not so bleak as this stretch of the Long Island.

Not long ago it was suggested that Callanish was raised as a kind of substation of Stonehenge and both were intended as observatories to plot lunar eclipses. Even if this idea were correct, it implies a great organization far away who could journey to the distant north and either bring their labour with them or collect enough local men to do the work. I do not feel that it makes sense. Neither do I see how any great religious idea could have been called into play. Why put it there? There must have been more populous areas elsewhere, where such things could have been needed.

However, suppose that some survey party had been dropped off out there to look for minerals or any other purpose, it might have been necessary to construct a landing mark of identifiable shape so that supplies could be dropped, or the explorers could be picked up when their time was up.

Callanish in Lewis and Stennis in Orkney, could they not have been the identification signals set up by two exploration parties to draw attention to themselves so that there would be no doubt where their bases were situated? All this would be hundreds of years before another station, the bluestone ring, was transported to Stonehenge.

If this possibly absurd suggestion has any foundation in fact, was it all in vain? Were none of these stations ever collected again because something happened to their home planet? Did these pioneers work their way back to more developed lands and there, by their superior technical knowledge, become for a time sons of God? Did they naturally become kings and rulers and try to keep their stock reasonably distinct for thousands of years, until philosophers formulated the idea that all men were equal?

Probably we will never know the answer, but it is possible to ask the question now; first because men are beginning to make exploratory expeditions to worlds themselves and second because a very great quantity of information is being published suggesting that unknown flying machines may be coming from outside to examine our own planet. As I said before, I have had no experience of this, yet I find the mass of observed facts need an explanation.

There seems to be a considerable difference between the monuments on the outlying islands and peninsulas and others far inland. They may represent successive stages in some form of exploratory development. If I am right in identifying Tipperary as the original site of the Stonehenge bluestones, its situation is not unlike that of Stonehenge, being convenient to river systems and old trackway routes along both of which native labour could be called in to help.

Another famous circle, Avebury, could have been the original central point in the south of Britain before Stonehenge was thought of. If we are trying to plot the possible plan of exploration, then Avebury would come high on the list. But Avebury was less convenient by water though better situated for movements by land.

Of course the most dramatic of all these constructions in the west, for the later Stonehenge is in a different category, is Carnac on Quiberon Bay in Brittany. Here the remains of eleven long avenues of standing stones still survive, with parts of a great stone circle largely ruined by recent houses.

The stone avenues apparently once extended for several miles and over a thousand stones still remain in place. If there was a central base where power was generated to operate bio-electronic beacons, this would have been the place. Although much further south, it stands in a somewhat similar position to Callanish, with a drowned land surface beneath the sea in front of it.

The purpose of these great stone avenues is completely unknown.[2] There are many burial mounds associated with them as there are around Stonehenge; but that does not say that the rows had anything to do with burial. If there was any religious purpose in their construction, surely it implies a population much more of the order of that today than one of scattered and primitive farmers? One would have thought that the whole population of Brittany in those days would not have provided a fitting congregation.

We will leave Carnac for the moment and return to Britain. I have already mentioned the stone rows on Dartmoor. Of course these are in no way comparable to the massed avenues at Carnac, but they are reasonably impressive and there are quite a number of them dotted about the moor. I have taken the approximate bearings of eight of them and projected these lines to see what happens.

It was obvious at once that the one at Black Tor when projected cuts another row at Warren House, in an area seamed and scarred with very ancient tin workings. It may be a coincidence, but these two lines could have given you a cross-bearing on rich deposits of tin, long before maps are supposed to have existed.

In any case how did anybody know that there was tin in Britain without long and elaborate prospecting? I have never liked theories based on ideas of projected lines, but it is curious nevertheless. If there is anything at all in the beacon idea, this gives it some confirmation.

The two rows mentioned are not the only suggestive ones. That at Sharp Tor when produced runs very close to Avebury itself. Those at Fernworthy, Chagford and Higher White Tor hit the great monolith on the summit of Exmoor near The Chains.

None of this is quite exact according to modern measurements, but if you were making observations in an unknown and unmapped land, they would be remarkably good. It may all be nonsense, or it may not. But if it is nonsense something will turn up to show that it is.

It has been hinted that Carnac might be the most important place in the whole system. If so, and if there is anything in the idea at all, one at least of the stone rows on Dartmoor should give an approximate bearing on Carnac. Actually three do, the double row on Headland Warren and the single ones at Dartmeet and Butterdon.

I do not even suggest that this idea of bio-electronic beacons is the right answer. All I am trying to demonstrate here is that there is something here which could possibly fit into a picture of ancient exploration which we know nothing about.

However, to return to the spread of the remnants of bio-electronic knowledge, let us look at some of the traditions still handed on. The islanders of Easter Island believe that the great stone statues there were set up by the ‘mana’, that is the extra-sensory power of the king, who was especially trained to develop it.

This takes us at once to the world wide belief that such power was available and could be used. If such power can be utilised, surely that is how Stonehenge and other monuments must have been moved and erected? Merlin is said to have done it by marvellous power.

Is this very different, except in degree, to the almost universal stone-throwing trick of the poltergeist, which is frequently reported from all over the old world and the new? A poltergeist is apparently the involuntary mental movement of solid objects by what is now known as telekinesis. If the mind of a somewhat mentally retarded girl can somehow produce numerous wet pebbles from the bed of a stream and throw them about in a house, what could have been done by a mind specially trained to use this power?

What is known about telekinesis, if we must use this depressing technical term? It is probably much more common than most people suppose and frequently passes unnoticed. It may even take place at times in every family and simply be unrecognized as such, for the bulk of modern town-dwelling humanity is deeply unobservant.

How many people have not had the experience of a letter vanishing completely? Of course they usually put this down to carelessness on somebody’s part, or forgetfulness, or something of that kind. But very often there is no reason to suppose that this is the right answer. Yet it is usually so small a matter that it is passed over as an accident. It is only when poltergeist activity becomes really violent that anybody takes any notice of it and even then they often try to explain it by trickery. It was not so in earlier times. Everything out of the ordinary was carefully noticed.

But are we talking nonsense? Is there any such thing as mana? I must say that I existed for quite a long time with a complete disbelief in such a force; now I am not quite so sure. I rather wonder whether civilized man has not just forgotten how to use it through being so pleased with his other attainments. Even today people still say ‘thought is power’, although I doubt if many of them know what they mean by this remark.

Now it is possible to demonstrate that there is something in the theory of mana. We have, as I describer earlier, done repeatable experiments with pebbles picked off the beach at Seaton and tested them with a pendulum. If the pebbles are picked up with a pair of tongs and then tested one by one, they only react to their chemical composition.

But if I take one out and throw it against a wall, then it will respond to the 24-inch male rate. If my wife does the same, the answer is 29-inches for the female. This can be repeated as long as you can be bothered to do it. It is a scientific test, in that it is repeatable, and it shows that some unknown property of the man or woman passes from him or her to the stone. This makes the existence of mana a little less absurd.

The thing which surprised me most was that mana is extremely long lasting. I found the dates for the sling stones from the camps to be all around 320 BC. Was it then mana which gave the effect of an electric shock when my wife and I tested the stones of the Merry Maidens stone circle in Cornwall? It seems that it must have been. If so mana is apparently a bio-electronic force and it should be possible to learn a lot about it.

These experiments with pebbles differ from poltergeist phenomena in one important matter. The poltergeist operator does it involuntarily and probably has no idea that he or she is doing it. Our experiments were deliberate. We were trying to see whether we could put anything into the electromagnetic fields of the stones which could be detected. Call the anything mana if you like; whatever name is given to it, it appears to exist.

Now, if by using trivial objects such as pebbles off the beach you can show that it is possible to alter their electromagnetic fields by making use of them, what could be learnt if you really got down to years of study of the why and the wherefore of it all? Suppose many men through long periods studied it as closely as modern physics has been studied, might not the results be quite astonishing?

It seems to me that scraps of evidence all over the world appear to indicate that this has once been done. But was it ever done here? Is it not possible that what now survives is but a fragment of all that could be remembered of what was taught to the local people by our hypothetical explorers?

Were the local people not encouraged to build up the power of the stone circles and other beacon marks by dancing, and had not some explanation been given them of why it was necessary for them to do so? Of course this is just a guess, but where did so-called primitive peoples such as the Kahunas of the Pacific get their learning?

There is no anthropological suggestion that Pacific Islanders ever sat down to think out metaphysical ideas for themselves. The teachings of the Kahunas seem to have been derived from a far higher level of civilization than anything observed by Europeans when they first made their way into the Pacific.

Their control of fire, the forces of nature, of disease and so on and their beliefs in the different levels of man’s existence seem to argue a long period of deep reflection and study behind them. The higher self, for instance, is surely something which is only beginning to be glimpsed today by people working on extra-sensory perception; while the lower self seems to have been just touched on by modern students of the subconscious.

Your higher self, said the Kahunas, if you could get in touch with it, could do anything for you; but you had to be able to contact it. It was not God and you were part of it. In fact it was very like the group soul, whose existence was apparently reported by Myers and others, after their deaths, to the research workers of a generation ago and to the spiritualists of today. It is remarkable that something of the kind can be deduced from a study of the pendulum.

Endnotes

[1] Source: The Legend of the Sons of God. A Fantasy? By T.C. Lethbridge; Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972, ISBN 2-283-98128-8.
[2] The Lethbridge Symposium in June 2010 discusses new discoveries by David Brandon.[Ed]