Earth energy

Earth energy is said to be a force that emanates from the earth at certain locations and can enhance human well-being in various ways, such as by healing illnesses or boosting creativity. Often these locations are places with unusual rock formations or other strange geologic features. For example, the red-rock landscape surrounding the town of Sedona, Arizona, is reported to have energy vortices, or energy currents, so powerful that they cause trees growing there to be twisted and bent. Other places said to have particularly strong supernatural energies are ancient sites marked with stone circles and/or standing stones, such as Stonehenge in England. In 1978 Paul Devereux, a researcher who studies prehistoric stone structures, decided to conduct a serious scientific study at Stonehenge to see whether there really were unusual energy levels there. Using scientific equipment designed to measure even very small traces of various kinds of energy, Devereux recorded an unexplainable energy at the site that only occurred around sunrise. He also detected that one particular stone had a high magnetic field that fluctuated rapidly. Other people have also noted energy fields at Stonehenge by using a process known as dowsing, which involves seeing whether a stick or piece of wire tingles or twitches when it is pointed at a particular object or plot of ground. Dowsers who have visited Stonehenge say they have been jolted with Earth energy so powerful that, in some cases, it knocked them unconscious. Some scientists scoff at such claims. Although they acknowledge that the earth has electromagnetic fields that can sometimes fluctuate for unknown reasons, they say that these fields are not powerful enough to affect human beings in any significant way. They similarly dismiss the notion, proposed by believers in an Eastern practice called feng shui, that Earth energy can be called forth, anywhere on earth, by arranging objects in certain ways. Under this belief system, objects should be positioned so that the Earth’s invisible life energy (called chi) will flow more smoothly—much like wind or water— through the environment; blocking this energy by positioning objects improperly, feng shui believers say, will bring bad luck.

SEE ALSO:

• Feng Shui
• Sedona, Arizona;
• Stonehenge

SOURCE:

The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of Paranormal Phenomena – written by Patricia D. Netzley © 2006 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning