Jim Greatrix is one of our founder members and well known locally, having worked as a carpenter for local and national companies, and now an Honorary member of the Berkeley Buffaloes after 58 years of service.

Jim has been in and out of hospital lately, so we weren’t 100% certain he would make it on Thursday 9th August for his talk on Pendulum Power, but make it he did, and very entertaining he was too.

Jim has been dowsing for many years. It all began when he was repairing windows as an apprentice carpenter, when a plumber arrived, hoping to find a leak in a lengthy run of pipe. The local Vicar suggested they dowse for the leaks, and showed them how to go about it. From then on, Jim and the plumber became keen dowsers. ‘Dowsing was useful during my time in the building trade,’ said Jim, ‘for finding underground pipes and cables.’

In 2003 a friend of Jim’s attended the talk given by Peter Golding to the Slimbridge Historical Society; ‘Peter Golding is a man who can teach and inspire,’ said Jim. ‘There was such an enthusiastic response, Peter ended up running classes on his back lawn, and my friend invited me to go along.’

The little band of history enthusiasts ended up forming the Slimbridge Dowsing Group, and Jim went on to learn about all the different types of dowsing, and discovered the booklet he now recommends to everyone, ‘A Letter From Robin’, which you can download online, and tells you all you need to know about dowsing with a pendulum.

The pendulum is Jim’s chosen dowsing tool, although he generously makes rods in great quantities for other people. He uses it extremely skilfully too, combined with designed-for-the-purpose charts, which give him unusually accurate results.

‘If the doctor gives me new tablets,’ says Jim, speaking as a man who has had more than his fair share of prescriptions lately, ‘I always dowse to ask what proportion of this medication is detrimental, and how much is beneficial. If the pendulum responds that the medication will be, say, 20% detrimental and 80% beneficial, Jim then asks for the negative effects on his body to be neutralised. The pendulum goes crazy for for several moments, and when Jim asks again, ‘How much of it will be detrimental?’ the answer is zero, it will be entirely beneficial.

‘Prove it then!’ is something dowsers are often asked, and Jim can. Another friend of Jim’s named John, had a mystery on his hands. His cellar at home was always half-full of water, why? You have to expect water to come into your cellar to some extent, and that’s OK so long as it flows out again. John’s didn’t.

There had to be a blockage somewhere. So John contacted Jim, knowing he was a dowser. ‘Come and see what you can do,’ he said. ‘It’s getting serious, all the labels have been soaked off my wine bottles.’

Enter Jim with dowsing rods. His rods soon indicated a drain going across the beautifully manicured lawn. Uh-oh. Following the direction in which the rods were pointing, Jim ended up beside a lime tree. Could this be the root of the problem?

More dowsing, more crossing of rods. Eventually Jim was sure enough at having found the blockage, he put one of his white survey sticks in the ground.

‘Here,’ said Jim. ‘Dig here.’

So John hired a digger and dug down three feet. Nothing. Jim remained confident enough to say, ‘Keep digging.’

After another three feet down they found tree roots had broken and entered the drain, thoroughly blocking it. John was relieved – and amazed. ‘Over an acre of garden, and you found the exact spot!’ Maybe John should have then asked Jim to dowse the wine bottles to see which label belonged to which bottle!

It’s a brave man who claims to know how dowsing works, but Jim continued, ‘When you are dowsing, asking your pendulum or rods questions, who are you talking to?’ He believes you are talking to your subconscious, which is in turn in touch with your higher self, spirit, spirit guides, God, angels, guardian angels, infinity, call it what you will, but something all-knowing outside of ourselves.

He ended his talk with auras; everyone has an aura, which changes in size in relation to our health and feelings of well being. Illness is thought to begin in the aura, and it can leak too. So Jim instructed us to link our hands, focus our thoughts and open our minds. He then asked, via his pendulum to heal our auras and increase our well being. Dowsing with rods before and afterwards, some auras were indicated to have increased by up to 50%.