Chapter IX: MAPS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
THE word Teleradiesthesia, or its French equivalent, was probably made up by the Abbe Mermet some time between the world wars to mean, as the name implies, the passing of information by means of radiesthesia, not only through the use of maps, plans and photographs but by receiving answers to questions of all kinds capable of being answered by “Yes” or “No”, signified by positive or negative gyrations.
If this could be done with 100 per cent, infallibility then, for certain people, there would be no secrets: a truly terrifying thought paleing the atomic bomb into insignificance. Fortunately this is not the case, although certain good operators claim that they get 75 per cent, successes. This needs verification, but should this figure be correct there is still a considerable margin of error.
I have just read an extract from a French paper, “L’Est Republicain”, which tells us that the Captain of Firemen of Livarot in Normandy, having lost his wallet, called in a friend, a radiesthetist, who discovered the missing wallet on the guilty person after an identity parade of the whole village. I have no means of checking the veracity of this statement and I give it merely to show that radiesthesia is in everyday use in France even if it is not in this country, although I have every reason to believe that more and more people, like myself, are taking a more than passing interest in it.
We, of course, hear of all the successes but none of the failures; that is the sceptic’s first reaction to anything new or something he doesn’t understand. His second reaction is to demand a public demonstration which, as far as radiesthesia is concerned, is doomed to failure due, to a great extent, to the extraneous influences exerted by the audience.
One can well imagine the reactions of a scientist working, shall we say, on atomic energy, if he were asked to demonstrate his highly sensitive instruments in a room full of whirring dynamos. He would, of course, refuse.
Teleradiesthesia, almost unheard of in 1930, had by 1940 become a matter of common knowledge in France. Whether it played any great part in the War seems doubtful, although an article appeared in the Italian press, prior to that country’s entry into the war, that the British were using an instrument to locate accurately German gun positions, suggesting that it was something to do with radiesthesia and that this science was being taught in our Military Schools. About the same time a French Admiral claimed to be able to follow the track of a submarine and an Army Officer to be able to locate a battery of guns 15 miles distant. As no details were given it is not clear whether it was merely by means of charts or maps that they made their findings or whether they considered that it was made possible by the metal in the submarines and guns, hence it is difficult to say whether they were cases for teleradiesthesia or just radiesthesia.
Teleradiesthesia and Radiesthesia are two entirely distinct faculties. The former belongs to the philosophy of Intuition and the latter to that of Sensation. This being the case they are not only distinct but actually opposed and do not appeal to the same intelligences although they both register the movements of the pendulum.
If we look up the word “intuition” in our dictionary we find that it means the immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning’ or “the immediate and complete cognition without reasoning”, which, in plain English, means that “ideas come to us which arise in our minds without reasoning” and, very often, bring the solution of some problem which we have been trying to unravel. This happens to us all periodically, although we may not take much notice of it at the time, and it may perhaps be regarded as the highest of our faculties, varying in power according to the individual.
I find it somewhat difficult to know where to draw the, very pronounced, line between Radiesthesia and Teleradiesthesia, especially in the case of maps. For example, we may wish to trace a person from a map, having in our possession as a sample, a glove or something similar, recently handled by the person. The map we use cannot in any way be connected with the person and is in no way a sample, so it amounts to our using pure Radiesthesia helped by Teleradiesthesia as an “auxiliary”.
HOW A MAP CAN BE USED
Teleradiesthesia or Map Dowsing with Sample
As my first example I will take my own case in Italy when I, with some success only, followed the movements of the Padre. For this purpose I used my military map, scale one inch to the mile, and as a sample I used the Padre’s Bible. Actually when I started I did not think it would be a very good test as I had, so I thought, a good idea where he was going and I was afraid that auto-suggestion would take a hand in it. My headquarters was on the lower slopes of Vesuvius and in order to get into Naples he had, firstly, to get down on to the main coast road, a matter of two miles, so I knew that I couldn’t go wrong. Having orientated the map and holding the Padre’s Bible in my left hand I held my pendulum over the only road he could take and it oscillated along the road as I had expected.
I was firmly convinced that at the road junction he would turn right as all the units of our group were situated in or around Naples, but, to my astonishment, my pendulum indicated that he had turned to the left and was proceeding along the Salerno road. I tried to rectify this but the pendulum stopped directly I moved it to the right of the road junction.