Background 1: Re-enchantment

[I'm excerpting posts from a four-year-old blog that I never promoted called "A Dowser's Diary: An Experiment in Intuition." I'm going to erase the blog but figured I'd share some of it here.]

My period of re-enchantment began one year ago with a phone call from a woman in Missouri asking my wife if someone close to us had just died. Our young daughter-in-law had unexpectedly crossed over less than two hours earlier. That phone call launched my exploration of aspects of the other side, which continues to this day.

My re-enchantment deepened on January 1(Note: this would be 2009) of this year when a renowned astrologer in Michigan gave me a reading – over the phone, the two of us never having met – that stunned me in its accuracy and insight, both about me and about the members of my family.

The Crises Begin

Within a month I was nearly laid flat with a progression of unusual health conditions that persist to this day. My lifelong propensity toward hypersensitivity flared up while I struggled against crippling fatigue. My hearing became more acute, food flavors more vibrant, the daylight sharper even in Oregon’s heavily overcast spring. My dreams grew intricate, vivid and memorable.

On April 19th I fainted for no apparent reason and struck my head against a sink and bathtub as I fell to the floor. I was admitted to the hospital for the first time in my life for two days. I am still trying to sort out the effects of the fall – a solid whack on the head, cracked cheek bone, facial nerve damage – from what happened next.

As part of a medical follow-up related to the hospitalization, my physician said my blood pressure was high and wanted me on blood-pressure medicine. I resisted – figuring the elevated reading was due to white-coat syndrome – but then relented. I was prescribed Lisinopril, derived from the venom of the Jaracaca, a Brazilian pit viper. Perhaps worse, the diuretic component of the medicine contained a sulfa derivative. I've been allergic to sulfa medications since I was an infant, suffering extreme visual and mental disorientation.

I lost the month of May due to snake poison and sulfa. It was difficult to keep track of days. My dreams turned chaotic and ugly. My creativity withered and I could not write. I work as a writer, from my home. If I were more conventionally employed, I’m sure I would have lost my job. My body can no longer tolerate a number of foods and my senses of taste and smell are damaged. I took my blood pressure at the end of May and found it dangerously high, as was my heart beat. I stopped the medicine right then and there and waited for my heart to slow down.

Enchantment and Emergence

My life during these past six months has been held together by the love of my wife, my daughter and son, their children and spouses. They are wonderful people, each and every one. I have a good acupuncturist and a gifted cranial/sacral therapist who are helping me. The Missouri psychic who was helping to guide me has gone her separate way but left me with some valuable tools.

Earlier I used the term “re-enchantment,” borrowing it from Morris Berman’s 1981 book, The Re-enchantment of the World, tracing the cultural and scientific shifts from Cartesian and Newtonian science into the far more magical world of quantum mechanics, holism, systems thinking and other contemporary influences.

My personal world is being re-enchanted by all that’s happened in one year. And continues to happen.

That's where dowsing enters the picture.

Image is the 1888 "Flammarion Woodcut" from a volume by French astronomer Camille Flammarion.