More on Needles

Now completed the first drafts of both the two new chapters for the new edition of Needles of Stone, and selected the cover-art – a painting of Callanish by archaeological-illustrator / artist Liz Poraj-Wilczynska. More later on this an other related projects coming up over the next few months.

3 Comments on “More on Needles

  1. Dear Tom, I like getting broadband for free in Southampton libraries (my home town since 1980, so I have moved South, but nowhere nere as far South as you!). If it helps, ich witten seaxon getheoda.
    Having re-read your book Needles of Stone, I was surprised to see that a trigonometry method of determining water depth was not included, so here is an example. Is there a method of attaching JPG images to these emails?
    Jacob’s Barrow, dowsing and trigonometry calculation of signal origin depth:
    Jacob’s Barrow is a very un-inspiring mound in the North of the New Forest, on an elevated flat plain, close to the B3080 and the village of Hale. It is also known as Golden Cross.

    It could be described as a Bell or Disc Barrow, having an elliptical mound, about 10m across, with a ditch (revealed by dowsing) about 31m from the centre. Ugly electricity pylons on either side knock out mobile phone and many radio signals.

    Using dowsing rods to find the silted up ring ditch also reveals a series of parallel lines in highly significant positions. The primary line goes through the centre of the Barrow, a parallel pair of secondary lines define the outer perimeter of the mound and the 4th pair of parallel lines define the inner rim of the ring ditch. The tertiary lines do not correspond with any surviving feature. The lines project approximately ESE until they run along a kink in the B3079 at Bramshaw and intersect with St Peter’s Church, which is thought to be Saxon.

    The ring ditch would originally have been wide enough for a traveller to fall into, if attention was not being paid to the route – a kind of bronze-age “keep off the grass” notice to preserve the barrow.

    The lines are not at the same angle as the overhead power cables, nor are they at right angles to them, so the dowsing signal does not come from above ground. Measuring the distance between the parallel lines allows the use of trigonometry to calculate the signal origin coming from 12m below ground. This does not compel the dowsing signal to be electromagnetic, since a neutrino emission would also form parallel lines of energy, as would any energy emission composed of quanta below the Planck Length in diameter, since they would all traverse a waveform path.

    A waveform results in a signal that alternates between being coherent (in phase) and incoherent (out of phase), at certain distances from the point of emission, resulting in parallel lines.

    The distance between the lines can be used to calculate the depth of the origin of the signal, since they form one side of a right-angle triangle, if the ground is level. The signal origin is directly below the primary line and the signal emission gives a coherent (in phase) parallel line every time a certain angle from the origin is repeated. Image WaveBandsG.JPG illustrates this, if it is available to you.

    The distance between the primary and secondary lines hardly fluctuates at all and is 5.1m. The distance between the primary and tertiary lines hardly fluctuates at all and is 12.4m. A little experimentation with a scientific calculator shows that the repeating angle is almost exactly 23 degrees and the signal emission depth is very close to 12m.

    tan 23 degrees = 0.4244748
    tan 46 degrees = 1.0355303
    (signal emission depth) = 5.1/0.4244748 = 12.014847m
    (signal emission depth) = 12.4/1.0355303 = 11.97454m
    Very close to matching, difference only 0.040307m, so angle is almost exactly 23 degrees.

    A more wordy explanation is:

    (tangent of the repeating angle) = (width between primary and secondary lines)/(signal emission depth)
    so (signal emission depth) = (width between primary and secondary lines)/(tangent of the repeating angle)
    and (tangent of twice the repeating angle) = (width between primary and tertiary lines)/(signal emission depth)
    so (signal emission depth) = (width between primary and tertiary lines)/(tangent of twice the repeating angle)
    so at the signal emission depth (width between primary and secondary lines)/(tangent of the repeating angle)
    = (width between primary and tertiary lines)/(tangent of twice the repeating angle)

    As luck would have it, a nearby section of the plain rapidly descends to a stream just below 12m, where limestone and chalk gives way to a layer of Blackband Ironstone rock, resembling rust with millions of tiny quartz crystals embedded into it. It is easy to see that the Ironstone is built up of many layers tilted on their side. Geological compression could easily generate a piezo electromagnetic field, and hey presto you have a magic ley-line, without any generators, amplifiers or artificial equipment of any kind or it could simply be a side-effect of flowing water. The dowsed signal does not have to be electromagnetic, but it could easily be.

    Best wishes from Martin Straw.

  2. Hello Tom, not sure if you got my previous email about EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), since I did not submit it via your website, so here it is via the usual method of submission.
    To: [email suppressed]
    Subject: Re-introduction of Martin Straw and “Raw-De-Vay” at Rollright

    Dear Tom,

    I am particularly delighted to be able to send you this e-mail, because I had been told that you’re dead! I don’t personally equate Australia with death, but I suppose the Mad Max films have a lot to answer for. I am certainly looking forward to your update on “Needles Of Stone” at Megalithomania in May.

    Email Contents
    • Re-introduction of Martin Straw and “Raw-De-Vay” at Rollright
    • “Raw-Di-Vay” in a recording studio
    • Raudive EVP
    • Attempted Proof
    • Needles of stone

    Re-introduction of Martin Straw and “Raw-De-Vay” at Rollright
    Please cast your mind back to the days of The Dragon Project, when The Ley Hunter magazine described Rollright EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) recordings of somebody calling himself “Raw-De-Vay” or “Raa-De-Vay”. This character cropped up years later at a recording studio and in Latvian History, but more of that shortly.

    I met you when a Ley Hunter’s Moot was held at Glastonbury around 1978, because I had written a computer program to scan maps for ley lines, as had two other programmers introduced to me via Paul Devereux. You kindly allowed us into your home and allowed me to play with your type setting computer equipment in an outbuilding, where I was impressed with its rendition of sections of Alice In Wonderland, with slowly decreasing font sizes, showing a curved pattern of text from top to bottom of the page.

    Back in your house, the other two programmers worked on a Tandy TRS-80 personal computer. I only knew how to work on IBM mini-computers, but we all proved the same thing: scan maps for ancient alignments and you get loads of them.

    The conversation and people in your lounge changed over a few hours. At one point Paul Devereux walked in and you said to him “This Raw-De-Vay, he’s German isn’t he?” Paul replied “Dunno about that – Germanic certainly”. This is an important point for later.

    Paul announced at the Moot that “Raw-De-Vay” had given an American phone number to call for more information and that it had been answered by a surprised person who was interested in EVP. Over 30 years, Moot memories fade, but as I recall, although it was not announced until the another Moot near Arbour Low stone circle, Paul had taken part in at least one transatlantic phone call where “Raw-De-Vay” had joined in and changed ends whilst the conversation was in progress, as though a hop across the Atlantic was like walking from the kitchen to the lounge.

    I didn’t know about the transatlantic call at that time, but others clearly did, because that evening, in another room of your house, somebody said sceptically to Paul “How can you have a telephone conversation with some-one on both sides of the Atlantic?” He responded emphatically “Distances do not equate”.

    You and I met a few times. Once I sat with you on a stand at a New Age festival in Cheltenham, where I very much enjoyed your sense of humour and we both enjoyed meeting some live snakes that a lady was wearing as a necklace. I also saw you at another New Age festival somewhere in Greater London, where you showed a woman how to dowse for the first time with rods.

    As an aside, one computer analysis of Oxfordshire produced many lines intersecting at one particular tumulus in the countryside. I drove as close as I could get and walked for half a mile through mud, brambles and cow-dung, expecting to find something like Silbury Hill. The grand intersection point, the local hub of the bronze age universe, turned out to be a pathetic little pimple of a mound, more like megalithic acne than monumental magnificence. As the old saying goes, size isn’t everything.

    “Raw-Di-Vay” in a recording studio
    Years later I was reading Audio Media magazine, which concerns itself mainly with hugley expensive sound and vision recording environments. An expert on excluding unwanted signals was interviewed and asked if he had ever failed to prevent something intruding on a sound recording. He said “I have only been defeated once, when I couldn’t prevent a German idiot called “Raw-Di-Vay” coming through on tapes at a recording studio.”

    To him, “Raw-Di-Vay” was an absurd annoyance wittering on about life after death. Signal pollution as opposed to EVP.

    Raudive EVP
    It has been pointed out to me that Dr Konstantin Raudive, who’s name is pronounced Raw-De-Vay or Row-De-Vay, was a Latvian EVP expert who died in 1974 and supposedly creates EVP messages from the afterlife. Speaking several languages and spending several years in Sweden, his accent was Germanic without being exactly German.

    Having downloaded some Raudive recordings from the Web and put them through computer clean-up, I agree that the voice is a deep bass with a Germanic accent. Do Rollright recordings sound like that?

    Did Raw-De-Vay ever describe himself as Konstantin or Dr Raudive?

    Attempted Proof
    Discussion of consonant R
    When pronouncing any conceptually important words beginning with “R”, such as a person’s name, the voice claiming to be Raudive automatically shifts to a determined European idiom, quite different from usual relaxed speech.

    Frequency analyses of the ”R” in words such as ”Radio” and ”Raudive” give a remarkably precise match, with exact correllation of resonant peaks at 347, 403 and 456 Hertz. Two other peaks match with slightly less precision, at approximately 116 and 326 Hertz, whilst the lower bass has a distinctive curve in the frequency range 50 to 116 Hertz, looking roughly like the letters ”VMV” on a graphic view.
    Other instances of consonant ”R” in unstressed words have a very different and more random voice signature.

    Discussion of vowel U
    Frequency analyses of the ”u” in ”Raudive” and ”you” give a remarkably precise match between sound files, with exact correllation of resonant peaks at frequency pairs 335-341, 373-379 and 982-1000 Hertz.
    Frequency pairs are caused by comparing ”u” vowels spoken at fractionally different pitches, but producing identical graphic shapes. For instance: “is it for you?” gives a higher pitch “u” than ”this is for you”. A distinctive “V” shaped curve at 47-57 Hertz completes the frequency voice signature match.

    These voice signatures are very unusual, since few men speak at a sufficiently low pitch to produce the required combination of resonances and even within this catergory, the vast majority of people would produce their own highly individual voice signatures.

    I would like to get hold of a copy of part of the Rollright recordings, to run them through the same analysis, to see if Raw-De-Vay could be Raudive. Do you have a copy of any of the Rollright material? I only have a 56K dial up modem, not broadband, so please be gentle with me.

    Needles of Stone
    Having re-read your book, I was surprised to see that a trigonometry method of determining water depth was not included. I will send you an example in the next few days.

    Best wishes from Martin Straw

  3. Hi Martin

    I’m probably way out of my depth with anything relating to maths or signal-processing, so I can’t comment much on either of these!

    Your best contact re Jacob’s Barrow would be the Archaeological Dowsing Special Interest Group at the British Society of Dowsers – http://www.britishdowsers.org/whats_on/archaological_dowsing.shtml

    Your best (probably only?) contact for the Rollright material would be Paul Devereux – looks like his website is down 🙁 but I’ll see if I can dig up some other contact-details.

    Amused at your experiences back in Street – it’s thirty years ago and my memories are a lot hazier than yours! The two programmers with the ‘Trash-80’ would probably have been Pat Gadsby and Chris Hutton-Squire – I’ve heard from Pat in recent years, but long since lost contact with Chris, unfortunately.

    Hope this helps, anyway!

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