What Is It About Geomancy That Makes It Special?

When we talk about geomancy, we are really speaking about how people have discovered the effects that the Earth has upon the body and how it can be corrected.

In Western geomancy, there have been several significant steps which have broadened and deepened that understanding. But they have all developed from a close relationship with, and an understanding of, the land.

Brief history starts here...

People have always known about the land and how it can make you ill or not.

• The Vikings, for example, knew that the land had spirits in it that were necessary for its vitality. So, when Iceland was first settled, they made a rule which said that all ships returning to port had to remove the fearsome carvings on the prow. They were worried that the spirits (or ‘Landvaettir’)would be frightened off and the land would be sterile or ‘alfreka’.
• Before the Vikings, the Romans also knew about geomancy. Or, at least, they knew about the problems that not being in harmony with the land could bring about.

  Plutarch, a Roman writer in the 2nd Century BCE wrote: ‘Men are affected by streams of varying potency issuing from the Earth. Some of these drive people crazy or cause disease or death, the effects of others is good, soothing and beneficial.’

• Later on, Nostradamus, the French seer, said, ‘Where plants perish and animals are absent, there you also should not live, the place is unhealthy. You will experience disharmony and lose your poise. When you, however, find the place where happy, vital and healthy people live, and many old folk are in good health, than stay there. You will soon do without medicine or physicians. The mysterious forces of Earth will make you healthy.’

However, despite this understanding, very little actual discovery took place until the beginning of the 20th Century.

While Alfred Watkins in England discovered ley lines, which later became confusing in how they were thought about, more important discoveries were being made in Germany and later in Austria.

The Germans and Austrians today are still the most serious in their acceptance of geopathic stress. They are also the ones who have helped us in our understanding about geomancy. They had long known about what they called 'krebs houses'. (Krebs is their word for cancer. Their discoveries validated the use of such a term.)

• The first investigation of note was in a small town in Germany by a dowser, Baron Gustav Freiherr von Pohl. His findings caused a revolution in thinking about disease and cancer in particular.
• Later, other researchers such as Dr Ernst Hartmann and Manfred Curry spent many years researching the effects of earth energies on humans.
• Perhaps one of the most impressive pieces of research about geomancy was carried out by Kathe Bachler, originally a teacher in Austria. She was concerned about some of her students not performing as well as she thought they could. Dowsing indicated problems with earth energies. And this led to a vast investigation involving 14 countries.

Although health issues are one important aspect when speaking about geomancy, there are other aspects to this as well. For example, Guy Underwood, a British dowser, made some interesting discoveries about how sacred sites were intricately connected with earth energies, especially underground water.

Despite the variety of topics involved in western geomancy, the aspect which is central to all is the close harmony of land and people and how that delicate balance can affect the human body.

Without appreciating that relationship, by living without caring about the land, even if you live in a one-room apartment, you are missing out on one of the most vital parts of what being alive is all about!