If I’m granted another lifetime, I may come back as a geomancer. Earth is alive and she’s talking to us and I’d like to learn how to listen even more closely to what she's saying.
What’s geomancy, you ask?
Geomancy is commonly known as the “art of harmonious placement,” for it has been used to find the right time and place for all human activities.
~Richard Feather Anderson, The Power of Place
Before we built our labyrinth in the south meadow, our friend Laura and I dowsed to find its center. Just as medieval cathedral builders placed a pole in the earth to determine its altar placement and then built out from there, our labyrinth grew from its center pole.
(Illustration by Joel Speerstra
Hunab Ku, p. 128.)
When the earth seems particularly aligned, when we sense wonderful energy flowing, each of us can, quite naturally, practice the ancient art of Earth magic. The Chinese called it Feng Shui—wind and fire. The chi, the dragon-energy under and around the earth, moves just right and creates harmony in all things. Since I was born in the Chinese year of the dragon, I take notice.
Three wonderful women and I have been sharing thoughts about the pulse of life, powers of place and earth energy for many months, and as a result, we created a website/blog we call, Our Luminous Ground. Christopher Alexander, a mathematician and architect, wrote, particularly in his book A Timeless Way of Building, about how places can affect the energy we feel there, and how we can in turn, affect its energy. He called it creating a pattern language.
When we bought our Vermont house, I sensed patterns of sadness lurking in some of the corners. Before we brought any furniture in, I went down to our spring and brought back water in my mother’s precious green crystal bowl. My husband and I sprinkled blessings around our house. Especially in the corners.
Sometimes when people visit our mountain house, they say, “Ooh. The energy’s good here.” We just smile.
Energy is an essence that carries us along. When we say we “hold people in our thoughts and prayers,” and when we actually do that with great intention, we direct the flow. Carolyn Myss, a medical intuitive and prolific author, says we’ve reached a point in our human evolution that requires us to learn to “speak ‘energy’ fluently.”
Ions in the air are actually charged, and some carry an extra electron. These hidden negatively charged ions hang out around springs, in crashing waves, cascading waterfalls, trickling fountains, flowing brooks, meandering rivers and even in pine forests, as well around certain rocks and mountain peaks. James Swan in Sacred Places says “an abundance of negative ions reduces the level of serotonin in the blood…reduces fatigue, invigorates us, and improves the protective powers of the mucous membranes of the respiratory system, making us less susceptible to colds and infection.” In other words, energy can heal.
Because of a chronic illness, I’ve been visiting the Dartmouth Medical Center off and on since I was diagnosed in 2003. Often I am blessed with a Reiki healing session from one of about twenty Reiki professionals who volunteer there. I relish the warmth of their energy-filled hands.
And the hospital's permanent as well as rotating art collection carefully placed throughout the hospital offers another kind of energy healing we can all access on a profound level.
On my most recent visit, I paused in front of an exhibit of photographs and poetry that “happened” to be on my very route. A poem called “Happenstance or Not” caught my eye, along with a lovely photo taken in Somerset, Vermont where, as Larry Richardson, the photographer, said, “I found this tribe of flowers along the river’s edge…”
(Photograph used by gracious permission of the photographer for this one time purpose.)
Both Larry’s images and Charles Butterfield’s words filled me with energy that morning. I was caught and tossed in the healing flow emanating from the creative work of these two men. They have my deepest gratitude.
Happenstance or Not
Let us stop imagining
that around the bend
there could be something
more amazing
than random maples
sharing the flood plain
with haphazard daisies
right where you and I
happen to be standing
in such a way that light
off the wind-stirred water
by chance finds our eyes
and begins this cascade
of surprises.
(Used by permission. © Charles Butterfield, Another Light
No other use permitted.)
Another Light
by Charles Butterfield
photographs by Larry Richardson
Artists Define Two Ways of Seeing
It is as if there were three planets: the sun, The
moon and the imagination.
Wallace Stevens
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