Lourdes, Pyrenees - September 1977. What was it that drew hundreds of thousands of people every year to this place? For some time I had wanted to go and see the primary shrine of Mary and eventually we did. In August, I had been discussing the ley-line between Santiago de Compostella and Rosslyn. Map-dowsing, I had found it to go through Lourdes and as other parts of the line had checked out on the ground with the rod, my interest in Lourdes had quickened further. We arrived about 7 o'clock in the evening. The first impressions were contradictory. The Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes was beautiful. The town was a desert of souvenir shops. I have never seen so many. The story of St. Bernadette of Lourdes is well known. The cynical would be forgiven for suggesting that a more profitable business enterprise for the town could scarcely have been conceived, and it was a timely shot in the arm for the Church, in an age in which its fortunes had not exactly prospered.

A preliminary tour of the town hardly diminished the cynical view, for there was nothing in the town - but nothing - not even a little line - nothing from the Chapel or the Grotto. We had driven right round the grounds. As I went down to the Chapel precinct, I tried to get the Elohim sign up: it came up - barred. A little further on, that soft 'phut' I had first heard or been aware of at the Pyramids, and there it was, the negative symbol. On the face of it, therefore, whatever there was at Lourdes wasn't working. I proceeded down the hill, taking a side road which passed the house where St. Bernadette was born - nothing. One rejoins the main road across a bridge, which aligns with the main axis of the Lourdes Sanctuary and Chapel, but there was nothing. It was just before midnight and the gates to the Sanctuary were still open. I went down the double avenue that leads virtually east-west to the Chapel and Basilica. The Chapel is neo-Gothic in style and, although it is beautiful and flanked by two octagonal towers, it does not have the true Gothic majesty of the Medieval cathedrals. Two sweeping rising colonnades like embracing arms reach round to take the visitor up above the Basilica to the Chapel standing on the rock above it. Within its embrace lies a piazza and the surface is of polished stone in different colours in which the motif of a rood cross is implanted. There was still nothing.

I moved cross to the right under one of these colonnades to where the Grotto was, and there were signs of activity. Apparently a Mass had just finished. I could see the Grotto with a blaze of candles around it, but clearly things were over, and so I repaired to the front of the Basilica and stood on the steps, and went through the mental prayer I have detailed elsewhere. Now, I say that with odd feelings, and these feelings are always with me on these occasions. What am I, the product of modern rationalist, humanist education, doing on this spot, praying in this way? The arrogance of it is enough to give one gooseflesh, and the fancifulness of it enough to make one laugh or weep in self-ridicule. But once again, I did it because the whole of this strange experience demands that one does it, and one's reason says that, if it is rubbish, no harm is done and, if it isn't then one would be failing in neglecting to do it. Anyway, it was done. I have prayed in the past, but routinely intoning the Lord's Prayer or Creed in the School Chapel is not real prayer. Since I learned the trick of dowsing, and since the whole experience of the Elohim communication, prayer has become an act wholly dissociated with words. It becomes a total submission of the consciousness to a series of images involving the celestial hierarchy, and a huge leap of the spirit into another dimension. It only takes a few seconds, but it is an enormous journey and it involves a state of mind unlike any other I have had until I learned to dowse the Grail and its wonders. Call it a 'plugging in', if you will. A flight of fancy, perhaps, but I can only compare it to a huge expansion of awareness which appears to take in for a moment the whole of the universe. I suppose megalomania is not necessarily any different, but there you are, that's what happens.

The whole place changed. A 49-bar line ran out of the Basilica, down the central axis of the cross, but keeping within the boundaries of the coloured stones. The arms of the cross had 14-bar lines. As I walked back, a 7-bar line now connected the two statues of St. Bernadette. At that moment the Chapel clock chimed 12, preceding it with the 'Ave Maria': I could not help breaking into a dance in time with it. I enquired whether I might additionally get the place going, and although many recent requests of mine to do so had been turned down, this seemed to be in order. So I did. In all vacant spaces, the twin double-square symbol in the square appeared. I was the last one out of the Sanctuary. The 49-bar line continued across the bridge, expanding as it went. The streets were full of the symbols. I returned to the hotel. My companions had retired for the night.

The next morning was cold, snappy and brilliant, and one had to walk briskly to keep warm. The symbols were still there. I walked down to the Sanctuary at about 9.00 a.m. to find it already crowded. I made straight for the Grotto, where a Mass was already in progress. It was for a sizable Italian pilgrimage. For the first time I could stand in front of the Grotto. I stayed for a time, moved by the expectations of the terminally sick arrayed in front of the priests. A purple skull-capped one started on a lengthy address invoking the Virgin's aid for the sick. Nothing happened. The crowd dispersed, and the stewards hustled everybody away, ready for the next group. One did not know what diseases were represented there - presumably terminal cancer, chronic arthritis, paralysis and the like. One was struck by the fact that the vast majority were aged, but of the younger element the majority were mongoloid or afflicted in kindred ways. As they were dispersing, I moved on and up the path which enabled me to overlook the scene. It was a moment to reflect. A little mongol child played around my feet. Her ugly features were full of a gentleness rarely seen in those whose bodies and faculties are whole. Would she be any happier if she were made 'normal', I wondered? The look of profound sadness on her mother's face and the resigned, but total patience, with which she treated her child, certainly deserved to be removed, but Lourdes never did that sort of thing anyway. From the vantage point, the whole sordid but beautiful mixture of Lourdes set itself in poignant relief - the brilliant morning sunshine, the chestnut trees with the conkers just ripening and the leaves turning to their autumn hues, the rush and sparkle of the river, the hopes and disappointments of so many, the vestments of the priests, the hundreds of candles, the earnestness of those who accompanied the sick, the cynical officiousness of the stewards, who saw it all every day, day in, day out. God knows how depressing it would have been, had it been raining. Yet a 49-bar line was coming from that Grotto. "Cure them all," I cried inwardly in anguish. Nothing happened. I turned away.

On one side of the Grotto are the baths, where those who can, bathe themselves in accordance with the Lady's injunction. The 49-bar line on the east-west axis goes through them. On the other side, still on the line, are the taps through which the Lourdes water flows - people drink it constantly. It is the best tasting water I have ever drunk, equalled only by the water from the spring of St. GeneviSve, the patron saint of Paris - clean and sweet, not like that of the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, which tastes as if it came from an ancient petrol can, furring the mouth and cleaving the tongue to the palate. I wandered back to the hotel, going to the Chapel and the Basilica en route, where Masses were being said in abundance. What struck me in the Basilica was that its interior was faced with small slabs of marble, hundreds of thousands in total. Each one was inscribed with a vote of thanks in gilt letters from persons who had had their prayers answered by the Lady. This was the most eloquent witness of Lourdes.

A visit to the Grotto revealed that its sides have been worn smooth by constant touching and kissing, rather like the worn toe of the statue of St. Peter in St. Peter's, Rome. I dutifully placed in a crack two medallions of Our Lady I had bought earlier in the Supermarket of the Rosary. Pendulum dowsing showed them to be highly charged - presumably as a result. As we moved round, however, I was able to establish something far more important. Within the Grotto, the 49-bar line began in the ram's horn spiral, and out of the rock to each spiral ran a 7-bar line, thus: (*illustration) At one side is the spring, suitably enclosed in glass, where a fairly powerful flow of water emerges, a far cry from the muddy patch found by Bernadette. Above the Grotto hang twenty or so abandoned crutches blackened with age. In an enclave within are half a dozen, apparently new, their stainless steel glistening in the candlelight. Rejoining the crowds one noted an air of almost jollity about the quick. The lame had been quickly wheeled away. Black-suited priests moved about, some earnest, some plainly bored, others distracted - Irish, English, Italian, Spanish, French - all clucking about their various flocks. A German bishop signed autographs with a hearty panache worthy of a manager of a successful football team. People asked blessings of passing priests. But the Grotto was emitting a 49-bar line and it had a ram's horn spiral, each horn receiving a 7-bar line from the rock . This was the crux of the matter.

Across the river, immediately in front of the Grotto, I noticed an open space with a raised altar of approximately double-cube proportions. It was an overflow area, primarily designed for the younger pilgrims when things at the Grotto got too crowded. I crossed the bridge to it and found that the line went to it. One was able to approach the altar - indeed young boys were playing on it. From the altar, the line changed direction and went towards a distant hill, which appeared to be hollowed out in a manner reminiscent of Wolstenbury. However, I did not have time to investigate further, but the flow was from the Grotto. I took the family to the Basilica and Chapel from which, with the compass, I confirmed their orientation was east-west more or less exactly, with the flow from the east. This corresponded with the map dowsing results. Around the Chapel, I detected no other lines, just the east-west line and the line from the Grotto forming, as it were, a Tau Cross. With mixed feelings about Lourdes, we left. One was left with the fact that Lourdes was clearly within the ley system and the Grotto contained a ram's horn spiral with two 7-bar lines attached. I remembered the strange photograph of the halo effect at Wolstenbury, that had shown up on the film but which I was not able to see. That also was on a ram's horn spiral.

Might it not be that it is through the spirals that the system gathers its terrestrial energy and that to those viewing the site of a powerful source of telluric energy, its presence may be made manifest in various ways. These could be by dowsing the spiral, by feeling the energy as intense cold, or by seeing Mary, the Earth Goddess herself, particularly when one's whole conditioning was to see things in terms of Christian iconography. An ancient Greek girl might have seen Demeter; a Roman, Ceres; an Egyptian, Isis. I perceive things through the rod as geometrical shapes, but is it not possibly all the same thing? All phenomena have their origin in the basic aeonal forms of the cosmos - the language of God - as Pythagoras would have it. The essential duality of the cosmos is expressed in the opposition of the mother-feminine-earth principle with the son-sun-celestial-masculine principle. The ley system seems to draw on both, where particularly felicitous conjunctions are achieved. The Earth temples of Sussex are terrestrial and celestial in their functions. Thus, it may be held that the cult of Mary, which in the Pyrenees predominates over the worship of Jesus, is nothing more nor less than the continuation in a Christian guise of the ancient cult of the Earth or White Goddess. I suggest that that is what Lourdes is all about.

In Andorra, the patron saint is Our Lady of Meritxell. A church was built to her in Medieval times because, says the legend, local folk noticed flowers blooming out of season in a particular spot and on investigation found a wooden statue of the Virgin and Child amongst them. They bore it off, but overnight it vanished and they found it next day in the same place amongst the flowers. They took it away again, but it kept returning, so they felt there was nothing for it but to build a church on that spot to house the miraculous statue. There it remained until 1974, when an unfortunate fire destroyed it. Now a new, larger, finer basilica is rising next to the burned-out church. And it dowses. It is on a 21-bar line and a 14-bar line - the 21-bar line running through the centre of Andorra. It is interesting to note the message of the Lady to Bernadette to get the priests build a church in Lourdes. The villagers in Andorra decided to build a church in a particular spot because the miraculous statue kept returning to the same spot.

In all parts of England similar legends abound, indicating the inevitable choice of the site of churches being out of man's hands. In Sussex, stones kept being removed at various sites in the night and placed elsewhere until the masons gave in, in desperation, and built on the site indicated by this supernatural power. Oxen which lay in the form of a cross dictated the site of others. In France, similar stories abound. What lies behind it all is the suggestion that the siting of churches is not random, but is dictated by factors other than simple human caprice: that certain sites are 'good' and that the divine force requires a church or similar religious monument to be built there - be it a stone circle or Delphic Oracle. As Louis Charpentier says of Chartres, it was a powerful point of the confluence of telluric currents recognised in pre-Christian times, and the building of the finest of the Medieval cathedrals there is witness to the particular forces operating at that point. And so the Earth Goddess appeared to Bernadette and demanded a church on that site and she got it. Is it any different from the Meritxell phenomenon, or the oxen, or the stones that moved in the night? I think not.

One is struck also by the presence of the sacred spring. Holy water has always been important in Catholicism, as have sacred springs. So were they in Greek mythology. One is obliged to note that springs and underground water, whilst not following the ley-system, do emerge at points in the system or at points where they burst through or are capable of doing so with a little help, e.g. Underwood's blind spring, and Bernadette's scraping of the mud. The line is attracted to that point. Lourdes, Chalice Well, the hot springs at Caldetas, the well at Tunbridge Wells, Abraham's Well at Shipley, Sussex, and many others are all in the system and, in some way or other, provide some sort of ,lan vital. Certainly, all such water reacts positively to the pendulum, whilst London tap water seems lifeless by the same tests. Taking the waters is d,mod, in Britain which has seen the decline of the great spa towns. Not so in continental Europe, particularly in France and Germany. Spa towns abounded in the Pyrenees, and one is struck as one drives down the AriSge Valley from Andorra by the fact that town after town advertises its springs for different complaints. The Druids point out that stone circles, dolmens and the like are all different in their healing properties, and a true Druid knows how to identify the proper place for particular complaints - and I think that we may accept that blind springs are also involved.

To that extent, what should we expect of Lourdes? I did not have a chance to study the 22 cases of miraculous cures. Maybe they have something in common. I venture to suggest that this might be worthy of some study and that Lourdes be identified for what it is. Lourdes may well have been overblown and oversold, achieving the cures within its powers, and disappointing thousands who should never have been there in the first place. That is not to detract from the sanctity of Lourdes or Bernadette's experience. It is only to point out that there are many other unsung spots of equal value for certain cases, and very likely many other cases of people seeing things. Most of them would never dream of telling anyone else, let alone prefects and priests. What on earth would the neighbours think?

The cult of the Earth Goddess persists, cloaked in many guises. It may be seen in the stories of the Quest for the Holy Grail, where the knights forever rescue virginal maidens from dragons and other diabolical manifestations. I take this to mean that he who would truly worship the Earth Goddess, or seek to understand the ley-system, or carry out the purposes of the feminine principle of the Divine, must protect her from the seriousness of evil, keep her paths straight and bind the dragon, the chaotic, turbulent, spiral primal Earth-force into straight, controlled, creative channels. Thus may the essential bio-rhythms of the Earth proceed without let or hindrance in the unfoldment of the gentle, loving, cradling, nursing influences of the Divine Feminine principle, and a Knight of the Grail be worthy of his calling. For the Grail is the cup, the chalice, the creative stone, and in that sense, as Emma Jung forcibly points out in 'The Grail Legend', is phallic, vaginal, womb-like, the cornucopia, the bountiful matrix. Not for nothing is the other Grail symbol the spear, the male phallus, the solar force, the instrument that slays the dragon and pierces the side of Jesus. For the male principle must find its true reconciliation with the female - not dominate and obliterate it - but protect it and permit it to proliferate in all its gentleness. As in all things in this Manichaean universe, equilibrium in the eternal duality of things is the prize. The whole Grail story illustrates this perfectly.

The pagan traditions of the White Goddess were also kept alive in the rules of courtly love sung by the Troubadours. Their songs should not be seen as trite invitations to platonic adultery with the ladies of the Court, but a survival of the cult of the Earth Mother. Their message could also be an attempt to preserve it from the hand of the Church which had become obsessed with dogma, fine points of obscurantist theology and an institutionalisation which set its own survival higher than truth. The reality of Earth magic had been assumed by the early Christian Church and practised. By the end of the Middle Ages outward forms had overtaken inner truths, to the extent that death awaited those who practised the ancient religion, like the 300 Cathars on the Camp des Cremats at Monts,gur.

As a postscript, Emma Jung further points out that, in Robert de Boron's version of the Grail, when Joseph wishes to use the Grail as an oracular symbol for the first time, the voice of Christ tells him that when he requires counsel he should call on the three powers that are one, and on the Holy Woman who bore the Son. Then he will hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in his heart. This means nothing less than that the Grail really forms a quaternity in which the blood contained within it signifies the Three Persons of the One Godhead and the vessel can be compared to the Mother of God, as in the Victorian hymn: "Salve, Mater Salvatoris, Vas electum, Vas honoris, Vas caelestis gratiae." This would lend further weight to what I tried to say earlier, namely that Mary, the White Goddess and the Grail are effectively the same thing, and that the ley system is the manifestation of this aspect of the Divinity.

This is borne out to some extent by an anonymous Grail contribution called the 'Elucidation' which recounts how the Kingdom of Logres was destroyed. "At one time there were living in that land in certain puis (burial mounds or grottoes of springs) maidens who used to refresh tired travellers with food and drink. If one went to a puis in need, a beautiful damsel would appear carrying a Grail vessel or cornucopia from which all kinds of food would emerge. And so it was until a king named Amangous ravished one of them and stole her vessel. His people emulated him and the maidens never came out of the grottoes again. From that time on the land went to waste. The trees lost their leaves, grass and flowers withered and the water receded more and more. In King Arthur's time, his knights took it upon themselves the duty of finding those puis again and of protecting the maidens who dwelt within them, and they swore vengeance on the descended of the villain that had insulted them. But they did not succeed, until Gawain and Percival found again the magical court of the Fisher King, which had been lost after the rape of the damsels, and the land grew green again."This again I take to be an allegorical reference to an abuse of the ley system and the White Goddess who manifests through it. The attempt to restore it - which still has yet to be achieved - is designed to re-establish a direct harmony between man and the feminine principle. This, while it remains disrupted, creates desolation, disequilibrium and all the jagged edges that the contemporary human psyche exhibits - not to mention the vast ecological problems that we are facing. Bernadette's experience was one step towards achieving that objective, vastly misunderstood, exploited and abused, but nonetheless evidence that all is not entirely lost. The damsels just occasionally do come out of the grottoes to provide for the innocent supplicant. This may well be the most fundamental truth of our times.