The Land Whisperer, Patrick MacManaway: The spiritualist doctor behind a global wave of regeneration

Welcome to a very special and unique episode. Previous guest on this podcast, Terry McCosker, co-founded RCS Australia 35 years ago. Fellow Australian legend and podcast guest, Charles Massy, is best-selling author of Call of the Reed Warbler. In that book he wrote, “When I look back over the rise of regenerative agriculture in Australia, I see at the forefront Terry and Pam McCosker and their RCS organisation. Today it remains a world leader in the field.” In light of that, I titled the first episode with Terry ‘Behind the Greatest Regenerative Agriculture Movement in Australia’.

Well, as I got to know Terry better over the years, I started to hear more and more about a bloke named Patrick MacManaway, who Terry had been working with since 2010. And Charles later shared with me his ‘missing chapter’ from Reed Warbler, the one deemed a little too ‘edgy’ to include at the time. Patrick features significantly in that chapter, along with some now famous stories of his father. 

So as the years went by, I became increasingly interested in learning about the man alongside the man behind the movement. All the more, knowing that Patrick’s extraordinary influence is far from limited to Australia. Born in Scotland to pioneering parents, when Patrick realised he shared his father’s gifts, he also shared his medical training, before his calling deepened and spread around the UK, onto North America, and beyond.

I caught up with Patrick at his home near Burlington, Vermont, to wander through life stories, gardens, projects, and new endeavour with Terry.

Title slide by Anthony James.

For more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Music:

Hours, by Patrick Sebag (from Artlist).

Stones & Bones, by Owls of the Swamp.

Patrick MacManaway.

The RegenNarration playlist.

Find more:

Ep.136 - Terry & wife Pam.

Ep.92 - Songlines.

Chapters

• 0:00 Music, Preview, Introduction & Supporter Thanks
• 4:05 Meeting in Patrick’s garden
• 5:45 The dilemma of global travel vs being in place
• 7:25 How the Australian connection started with RCS Australia
• 10:35 The family & cultural background that brought Patrick to Vermont (heading to the stones)
• 17:32 The risk of leaving once universal animist traditions behind
• 19:55 Where this work started in Patrick’s family
• 22:05 The famed story of Patrick’s father using his skills in the army
• 27:25 When Patrick recognised he had the same abilities
• 29:55 The influential connection between human health and ‘geopathic stress’
• 32:41 The Earth Clock and Stone Circles
• 35:35 Building his experience and understanding of the spirit of place
• 40:55 Visiting the stone circle – talking the new(ish) science of epigenetics
• 46:25 Patrick’s sense of ancestral connection to North America
• 47:15 The connection with Chögyam Trungpa & First Nations here now
• 50:15 Clarifying the story of his Dad’s work being sanctioned by the Pope
• 54:55 Repairing our relationship with time
• 58:10 Recovering animate awareness
• 1:01:20 The pivotal moment where stone circles were initiated in the UK - & constructing one in Burlington
• 1:07:25 Engaging the circle
• 1:10:50 Masaru Emoto’s visit & other regenerative outcomes since the circle was created
• 1:11:50 Lynne Kelly’s breakthrough visiting Stonehenge
• 1:13:20 The extraordinary tale of how Patrick became focused on agriculture
• 1:17:20 Walking back - so many things getting better, so many getting worse?
• 1:22:20 Off to the woodland labyrinth Patrick assisted with to support inter-faith church
• 1:24:50 Into the labyrinth - Ritual in landscape
• 1:33:35 Observations of the trajectory of human evolution
• 1:39:00 Our intuitive compass needed for our survival?
• 1:44:20 Leaving the labyrinth with tales of some of the remarkable food movement in Vermont
• 1:51:05 Visiting where McDonalds was taken over by a local farm to table restaurant
• 1:54:40 Back in the garden – shifts in academic thinking in recent times
• 1:59:40 One of Patrick’s standout stories of his work with land
• 2:14:20 Where did all the food allergies come from? – It’s at the plant’s discretion whether it’s edible or not
• 2:19:05 An opening in our culture?
• 2:20:50 Recovery at a site of an Aboriginal massacre
• 2:26:05 Terry McCosker’s pact with the wolves, & a story from Australia with dingoes
• 2:28:55 If this is in us all, how do bring it forth more?
• 2:32:25 Starting up a new phase of work with Terry McCosker (Quantum Leap Subtle Energy)
• 2:35:20 Music choice, and Patrick plays a tune

Transcript

Patrick: 0:00

So that's what I was doing was I was having a good hard think. However, what's clear from what happened then is the plants understood me. Even though it was an internal thought, they telepathically received the message. Secondly, they understood it and had capacity to change themselves and, thirdly, they changed themselves at my request, for our convenience, to support the people living in that landscape. And those three things put together. Frankly, first few times it happened to me, it was so mind-blowing I really pretty much went to bed for three days until the world reorganized itself.

AJ: 1:12

You might remember a previous guest on this podcast by the name of Terry McCosker. Terry co-founded an organisation called RCS Australia some 35 years ago. Fellow Australian legend and also a guest and dear friend of this podcast is best-selling author of Call of the Reed Warbler, Charles Massey. In that book he wrote 'when I look back over the rise of regenerative agriculture in Australia, I see at the forefront Terry and Pam McCosker and their RCS organisation. Today it remains a world leader in the field.' In light of that, I titled the episode with Terry, Behind the Greatest Regenerative Agriculture Movement in Australia.

AJ: 1:56

Well, as I got to know Terry better over the years, I started to hear more and more about a bloke named Patrick MacManaway, who Terry had been working with since 2010. And Charles later shared with me his missing chapter from Reed Warbler, the one deemed a little too edgy to include at the time. Patrick features significantly in that chapter, along with some now famous stories of his father. So as the years went by, I became increasingly interested in learning about the man alongside the man behind the movement, all the more knowing that Patrick's extraordinary influence is far from limited to Australia. Born in Scotland to pioneering parents. hen Patrick realised he shared his father's gifts, he also shared his medical training before his calling deepened and spread around the UK on to North America and beyond.

AJ: 2:55

G'day Anthony James. ere for The RegenNarration, your independent, listener-supported portal into the regenerative era. With thanks to generous listeners like Mark Kowald, Dave Godden and Steven at urban green space. Thanks, men, for being paid subscribers for over three years now, making all this possible. If you're not yet part of this great community of supporting listeners, I'd love you to join us. Get benefits if you like and help keep the show on the road. Just follow the links in the show notes. As always, with my enormous gratitude, I caught up with Patrick at his home near Burlington, Vermont, in the fall last year. Yep, this unique episode called for some time sifting through the hours of material we gathered in one long sunny day together. We start in Patrick's garden, journey to a couple of locations where Patrick has worked, a farm to table restaurant that replaced McDonald's. hen we're full circle back to the garden for a few more of Patrick's most memorable stories and news of his next endeavour, recently launched with Terry McCosker, before he takes us out with a little tune. G'day Patrick.

Patrick: 4:10

AJ, pleasure to meet you. Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for having us at your house. Thank you so much for making the journey here to northern Vermont.

AJ: 4:17

And here we are out back of your place. So I gather this is your block, but there's no sort of fences between neighbours and stuff around here, eh.

Patrick: 4:27

The Americans have quite an open plan approach to their yards and gardens. I've found, I've noticed.

AJ: 4:33

In.

Patrick: 4:33

Europe.

AJ: 4:34

We make sure we've got fences around Often Australia too, though Some are bringing them down deliberately. You know to just well not feel like you're imprisoning yourself as much as anything, as much as wildlife or anything else, there's always the matter of rabbits and groundhogs and vegetables.

Patrick: 4:51

But no, we define the edge with trees and flowers, and where you stop mowing is about the edge of it, that's cool.

AJ: 5:02

So we're looking at a little gathering circle around fire. I imagine you might use this a little.

Patrick: 5:08

We do, either for family cookouts or, sometimes, gatherings with a more particular focus. There's a men's group that meets here every couple of weeks and likes to light a fire and then visiting dignitaries such as yourself being entertained Very good.

AJ: 5:30

Yeah, is gardening. Do you manage to get very hands-on given your schedule?

Patrick: 5:37

No, and, as you can see, there's hours of weeding waiting to be done, so I'm hoping you guys are going to give me a hand pulling weeds later on this afternoon.

AJ: 5:48

A 10-year-old doesn't mind getting put to work, thankfully.

Patrick: 5:52

No, but it's just a pleasure. I travel too much to keep on top of it.

AJ: 5:56

Has that been a dilemma for you? I'm curious in terms of how much you get to embody your accrued knowledge and wisdom over time versus taking, let's just say, a global approach and helping others. Has that been a tension for you? Have you sort of longed at times to be more grounded in your place, or this is well and truly your calling?

Patrick: 6:19

Yes and yes, both AJ. I'm very much a homebody and I hate to leave wherever I am.

AJ: 6:27

Is that?

Patrick: 6:27

right, but circumstances of my work and profession have required me to go a lot where people are obviously working on places. I mean not entirely. I can and do do a lot of work long distance using maps and photographs, google Earth, and so forth now has revolutionized that Don't have to work off of paper maps anymore.

Patrick: 6:56

So quite a lot of my clients in fact I can serve without a physical on-site visit. But historically and still by preference, a physical on-site visit but historically and still by preference, um, being in location, meeting the clients, seeing and feeling what the concerns are, is preferable. So yeah, it is a bit of a life on the road, um and but uh, I grew up in scotland and I visited vermont here in 1984 first, so in a way I'm always coming home when I travel.

Patrick: 7:29

Either way Either way, and then Australia has just been such a pleasure since 2010, when Terry McCosker and RCS included my work in their programming. How did that encounter come about in their programming? How did that encounter come about? So I was brought in as one of their international speakers for their 2010 20th anniversary conference there you go.

AJ: 7:56

So we were just talking about their 30th that, due to COVID, you missed and so we didn't meet there Right, but a pivotal moment then was their 20th for you.

Patrick: 8:04

Their 20th was my introduction both to Australia and RCS and Marg Bridgeford at the time was CEO and with help from Peter Downey who was bringing resonant kinesiology into the RCS community, they tracked me down at the time I was president of the British Society of Dowsers Because they'd been running courses along these lines, as I understand it, for about eight years prior.

AJ: 8:34

I think they'd been running the quantum agriculture umbrella stuff.

Patrick: 8:39

The quantum started with me, did it Right OK, under that branding, but I think they'd had presentations from different dowsers. Alana Moore is a very well-known and well-published practitioner of this stuff. She now lives in Europe. She's Australian by birth and she'd given presentations and they had a couple of other people also do that. And then they got very much into the human health based resonant kinesiology work and knew there was a bridge but wanted somebody to create a program of specifically the subtle energy inside of agricultural context. Was how I got my invite and subsequently they kept on bringing me back.

AJ: 9:39

That's very interesting, considering your path, where the human health bridged out to the land. Let's come back to that. I'm almost sorry to leave this because I have felt a lovely vibe here, as, with the sounds, and notwithstanding the trains and the cars and other things, there's this beautiful little hum of life where we stand. But we've got a couple of destinations to hit up that are relevant to the story too. So shall we do it lovely? So I see your car of choice is an equinox. Was that deliberate destiny?

Patrick: 10:23

yeah, that that that was the last car. It got long in the tooth and expensive, so I gave it to David and now it's waiting for more repair. This was Heather's dad's car. He went into a nursing home and this was in the family.

AJ: 10:44

So you're picking up the story with your arrival in Vermont. What brought you to Vermont in the first place. That was nearly 40,.

Patrick: 10:52

Well, I guess, yeah, 40 years ago 1984 was the first visit, so very simple, aj. The American Society of Dowsers is based here in Vermont and dowsing was a central practice in my family's work, mostly using it for well, using it really for everything, from figuring out if the bread was ready to come out of the oven or which was the best horse or car to buy, or routes or timing or planning. So dowsing was very central to the families, just life and process. But in a professional context it for diagnostic assessment and therapeutic protocols.

AJ: 11:50

Because that had been in a center for such things. What was it called? Again, your family practice, yes.

Patrick: 11:57

My parents set up the West Bank Healing and Teaching Center in 1959 on a little farm in rural Scotland. At the time it was very unusual because of the legacy of the witchcraft laws to be practising be practicing mediumship, divination and spiritual healing outside of uh, the ordained and it had been illegal then it had been illegal under the witchcraft laws and then that changed.

Patrick: 12:37

I think in 1952 we got the fraudulent mediums act, which finally allowed us to be mediumistic and intuitive as long as we weren't fraudulent. It seems like a very good and sensible piece of legislation.

AJ: 12:55

That's very interesting. Our young fella of course asked you what's witchcraft at the table just before when a bit of this came up. But I might run with the same question for people who only know in a sense the stereotypes or the legacy of that period.

Patrick: 13:11

Yes, well, I think the big picture is, um, I think probably for 99.9 percent of our our history, all around the world we've effectively been what we might call animist and there's been very much an awareness of the intelligence not only of our own ancestral community of spirit but also of the spirits of place, the genius loci for the Greeks, the particular quality of intelligence of rock and mountain and stream and soil, and whether we're looking at sort of hunting-gathering communities or whether we're looking at agricultural communities, the communication with the governing intelligence of landscape has always been primary for survival. In Scotland back in the day, the Celtic kings of whom Macbeth was one, of whom Macbeth was one those were really not so much positions of arbitrary executive authority. The kingship was elected typically by women and chosen from senior sages and druids, and their job was of an ambassadorial nature. So equinoxes, solstices, cross-quarter days, times of significant serial times of significant transition and change in the landscape, moving between spring and autumn, winter and so forth, whoever was on the job, the King of Scotland would have to go up to the central sacred mountain, shehalion, the hall of the queen of the she, the she of the landscape intelligences. We would call them fairy, but they're not petite tinkerbell, they're sort of 45, 40 foot high, shining beings and a bit intimidating when you encounter them.

Patrick: 15:44

So, but literally, macbeth and his predecessors job was to, in meditation, in communion, in vision, we assume, with fasting, possibly with the use of fly agaric mushroom, which is fly agaric and psilocybin are both used for trance inducing in the Celtic countries.

Patrick: 16:14

So, but his job was to communicate with this overarching landscape intelligence and literally come down the mountain, sort of moses style, with a script of how many deer could be taken and how many fish could be taken and what the planting and harvesting dates would be. Because back in the day we didn't have Google, we didn't have Almanacs, we didn't have library, we really didn't have any written historical record, so your only source of information was anticipation and experience. And so they really did want to know what their grandparents and great-grandparents had done last time they had a flood like this or a frost like this or a plant illness like this, and so their only strategy was to communicate with tribal ancestors and the spirits of place, to follow in accord and guidance so that the wells would be full and the cattle would be fat and, as they say here in America, all the women would be strong and the men good looking and the children above average.

AJ: 17:35

You know you made the Moses allusion before.

Patrick: 17:39

It is striking that these archetypes of mythology recur across cultures and when you think about relying on your ancestry for knowledge, the ways that that's been left behind in some cultures my culture, our culture, maybe modern Western Enlightenment culture that that's been left behind but that it was a universal experience and remains well yeah, in our ancestry, if not in our DNA, it is and because of being raised in a space where that was ordinary, my sort of go-to support team includes companion angels and mum and dad variously, and also a number of other friends and colleagues, as well as genetic linear ancestry, who are available to help and help out in all manner of what we would consider miraculous ways because they're for us non-linear, non-logical. But to not be including your friends in high places on your power team is seriously missing a trick.

AJ: 19:12

That, I think, is dawning on many more of us. It might be worth saying, given we're in the car, so we're passing a university. I'm told it's a university town. Are we passing?

Patrick: 19:21

City University. This is it. This is the University of Vermont. Very gracious and elegant buildings. Here is the University of Vermont. Very gracious and elegant buildings here at the top of the hill, yeah, and awash with activity, because it may even be the first day of semester. Very close to it. I think they went back on a couple of days ago. Okay, yes, so we're full of eager and well-intentioned young learners here.

AJ: 19:46

You get a glimpse of the hope of youth darting about the Knowledge Centre as we have it, and on a lovely sunny day and, yeah, a bit of traffic, we're stuck in, but it gives us time to talk. So maybe it's a good juncture to follow that thread through some ancestry and go back a little further and how. This was how this did become a normal part of your life. Where did it start?

Patrick: 20:15

in your family, uh, in my family. I can't quite trace it back, aj. What I know is my Irish grandmother was deeply into it, but at this point both my parents as well as grandparents have passed. So I now would really like to sit down and have a good old chat and find where did that come from in her life? Was it an unbroken tradition running in a female lineage, or was she particularly gifted or curious as a result?

Patrick: 21:01

But certainly, um, she was part of what's now the White Eagle Lodge, which is a society of spiritual enlightenment and healing that still continues to this day and formed in the early part of the 1900s around a medium called Grace Cook. She apparently had a connection with a Native American old soul who went by the name of White Eagle. It's the White Eagle Lodge and there was a huge amount of spiritualism being practiced in the late 1800s and early 1900s Illegal technically in Britain under witchcraft laws, but very open here in the US, with a lot of summer camps for spiritualists. And that was a thing you went and did you know for your summer holiday was camp by a lake with a bunch of other spiritualists and talked to all your friends and family in spirit.

Patrick: 22:15

So in my family it was just a given, and my father went off as a 19-year-old with the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of the war in Europe in 1939 and found himself fighting rearguard defence around the perimeter of Dunkirk while troops were evacuated from the beaches. And at that point he was spontaneously moved, put his hand on wounded comrades. They had no opportunity for medical supplies or medical evacuation, so he just put his hands on people and, to his amazement, was able to stop bleeding and give pain relief and indeed keep people, keep people alive. The main killer, I think, is battlefield shock from trauma and blood loss in those circumstances. So, so he was completely amazed that, sure enough, just like it says on the box, we've all got a gift of healing and when circumstances arise to call it out, then it's there. But he was still surprised there. But he was still surprised. I think it was amazing. He'd obviously grown up with those concepts, but perhaps in a more sort of abstract and sort of sitting room conversation fashion, rather than in the raw heat of the moment when nothing else would work and only that could serve. So he then cultivated for the next 20 years through training and apprenticeships with different psychics and healers. I think most notably a gentleman called Harry Edwards who was a preeminent spiritual healer in the first half of the 1900s in the UK and Dad was both a patient and a trainee of Harry's of Harry's and then, as I think now being of psychic ability in a number of situations During campaigns I know across North Africa they had nightly seances amongst the officers to help them establish enemy troop positions and numbers in the absence of satellite or other aerial reconnaissance.

Patrick: 25:32

He was involved in studies where they doused the noon position of naval warships at sea to check on the accuracy of that. There were studies of that. Yeah, apparently they were absolutely dead accurate. You could find a designated warship at sea wherever it was. And then quietly the use of dowsing to find and then subsequently disable landmines. And I know that those were things that he was personally involved in and I know the sort of extent of military uses of both dowsing and psychic practices are extensive. Both dowsing and psychic practices are extensive, although often quite quietly done, yeah, but use of remote viewing was big, I think for a while, and so he was in the army for 20 years. He was a military brat. His dad had been a career officer and he'd been all the way through military college from, I think, aged eight until 19, so it was his life and his his media but conversely then not yours, because by then the center was up and running and I grew up with it.

Patrick: 26:59

yes, no, it was. It was gurus for breakfast and lamas for lunch, because it was the first of its day. And so people came from Tibet and America and Scandinavia to visit and study and they ran conferences and workshops and took apprentices. We had up to eight full-time live-in apprentices for a while. Marvellous as you can imagine. Fascinating Kitchen table chats.

AJ: 27:36

So these are your very young years. Then Do you recall like this that was my growing up.

Patrick: 27:43

Yeah, as far as I knew, that was normal.

AJ: 27:46

Yeah, well, when did you recognize that you were indeed carrying this ability as well?

Patrick: 27:54

I grew up fascinated by it and immersed in it and, frankly, very much hoped that I could do it too. As you would I can well imagine, and my plan was to join the family's business and we certainly learned skills and worked on each other and animals and so on, just growing up. But honestly, until one's really in a situation of applied need, then that's when you get to see whether the thing really works nicely or not.

AJ: 28:39

When did that come for you?

Patrick: 28:42

So I was encouraged to take a degree in medicine before going into the holistic therapies field, partly for training, partly for subsequent issues of licensing and insurance and so on. So I went through medical school and got my basic medical license and then at that point I took a year out to really focus on what part of the field was most interesting to me. And I was really fascinated by environmental health and working with places and the effects of those had on the people living there. And at the time the World Health Organization had released statistics declaring that 30% of our buildings were sick buildings, based on a criteria of 20% or more of the occupants having health or comfort problems arising directly from the location. And there's seven or eight things on that list, including air quality, light quality, sound quality.

Patrick: 30:05

But studies from Germany in the 1920s and 70s done by dowsers had shown a very strong correlation with human health and something called geopathic stress. And geopathic stress arises when something natural to the site is stressful for health, the most classic of which is water running in underground streams or faults or fractures and fissures, and because water is the most electrically conductive material in the landscape. Over a strong underground stream, the Earth's natural geomagnetic field expresses itself in a slightly more exaggerated and sometimes aggressive way, but also it acts as a pathway for atmospheric electromagnetism going to ground. So for hundreds, probably thousands of years, for hundreds, probably thousands of years, we'd known to avoid sleeping or building our houses or putting our animals close, confined in locations where underground water was there a study in 1928 by a Bavarian dowser called Baron Gustav Freer von Pol. He dowsed for people, for wells, but in the process of walking the landscape to see where the water runs, he observed several things. He observed that mammals and birds avoided sleeping over them or nesting over them entirely, and you'd have birds nests in an overhanging Eve, one in each rafter, and then a gap where there was no nest. And then he would pick up again and the dowsing rods showed indeed that there was an underground stream just cutting under that location. So mammals avoided them, birds avoided them, but insects very attracted to them and ants and bees and wasps would selectively and deliberately nest over them.

Patrick: 32:41

So he observed this species preference and also observed the same in plants. Some plants were very adversely affected, especially fruit trees and vegetables that came to a head above ground brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, things of that nature whereas some of our medicinal plants really thrived things of that nature, whereas some of our medicinal plants really thrived. So this was a curiosity. And he did a study in a town called Wilsbeberg on a tributary of the Rhine. At the time had three and a half thousand people and he'd previously doused municipal wells for them and asked if he could do a health-related study. So with various German burgers he went around the whole town and mapped out where all the water ran and specifically if and when it ran under people's houses and then especially if it ran under their beds, people's houses and then especially if they run under their beds.

Patrick: 33:49

And then they compared that study with the available records of death by cancer, which went back to 1918. This was 28, so they had 10 years still of statistics and they found that every single one of 52 people who had been documented as dying of a cancerous illness had been sleeping over one of these underground streams. So that was a real awakener for me as somebody interested in health and particularly interested in being outdoors and the environmental aspects. I'd just say, in terms of that study, it was 1928, before we had all the carcinogens that we now have in our environment and diet, so it was possibly a study that would be hard that we now have in our environment and diet, so it was possibly a study that would be hard to replicate now in terms of isolating causes and we also don't know from the study how many people were sleeping over underground streams and didn't die from cancer.

Patrick: 34:58

So it's not a complete medical study in that way, but a 100% association of if you want to die by cancer, then you need to find yourself an environmental, a geopathic stress was certainly, in my mind, worth exploring and sat very beautifully in exploring and sat very beautifully in the space of natural health, dowsing and medicine. So it was a bit ideal for me. Doesn't look, doesn't look. How do you block this? There we go.

Patrick: 35:52

So, progressing that theme of human health in environmental context and starting to work with people whose health was being affected adversely by their homes, I got to build up quite a lot of experience with what sort of patterns fitted, what kind of illnesses and what the mix of influences were. Influences were so air, sound and light, but beyond that then, the presence or absence of this energies, of human thoughts and feelings, very colouring of the atmosphere, with or without the presence of earthbound spirits, of ghosts in a place, with or without overshadowing of curses that might have been put onto a place with malevolent intention. And then, as you get deeper into it, literally whether the spirit of place recognizes its current identity and use and the intentions of the people living there. Because if a place is fully appraised of what the people are up to, the natural inclination is, to the extent that it can, to support us, whether that's in growing the best field of carrots or having the most delightful restaurant experience or commercial, domestic, agricultural.

Patrick: 38:05

Once the elemental consciousness is clearly, is clear and without residual stresses and traumas, and then has clear communication as to what the people are up to, then you've really got a sort of working team, a marriage between people and place really got a sort of working team, a marriage between people in place, because our mind spans at least four octaves of consciousness, the so-called beta, alpha, theta and delta, from 36 waves per second down to zero. And beta is our cognitive linear frequency set, and then below that, alpha is where plants and animals basically are having their communications, and then below that, theta is where the elemental realm has its cognitive consciousness. So we embrace all of those are. Western mind has been trained into rational linear consciousness exclusively and so we can miss out on all of the um. So, particularly for an elemental, uh, they're aware of the presence of a human mind, but they can't read our mind if we're in beta. So it's like being a diver underwater looking up at the shadow of a boat on the surface. Is it a fishing boat? Is it a warship? Is it?

Patrick: 39:53

kids out for a picnic? Don't know. We know that they're there, but unless they bridge into that elemental theta consciousness, they can't perceive our intention. And so what we look to do is identify, communicate with and create cooperative agreements, basically with those intelligences of place. And it's a slightly different conversation whether it's a farm or a or shopping mall or somebody's home, but it's effectively the same conversation. It's. It's just a conversation of communication and agreement, and we start by healing any hurts that are present in the landscape and then we get into communications and then, as required, we can optimize with sound or homeopathy or biodynamics or radionics, etc. Stem circles such as the one we're about to see, to really fine-tune like a musical instrument so that the harmonics of the space are optimum for its currently dedicated use and purpose.

AJ: 41:11

Perfect segue. Let's go to the stone circle. What an incredibly wonderful day we have landed on. It's almost too good to be true not a lick of wind pure sunshine, lovely temperature.

AJ: 41:41

I guess it's probably 20 degrees Celsius, so 70 odd Fahrenheit, lovely. You know what you were just saying there, patrick, fascinates me on so many levels. But I think immediately even of the scientific base, speaking of that cognitive linear line, although it's grappling with how not to be limited by that too, now, isn't it? But I guess, through that, partly the science of epigenetics and how it's looking at what we carry in terms of those human stories and transmissions, uh, and wounds, certainly uh. And you know, even when you mentioned light and sound, like getting so much more across the effects of light pollution, sound pollution, and we've come to tag like this because there's just such an excess of these things in what we've considered good societies to build, just flooded with light and sound and obviously fair whack of air pollution too. So it's interesting to me that the Western field of science and medicine seems to be cottoning on. Do you interpret it like that too?

Patrick: 42:59

Cottoning on to the influence of consciousness, I think it depends which way you look, aj, and possibly, possibly, which payroll you're on. Yeah.

Patrick: 43:21

We had the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Double Slit Experiment in the 1950s already. That was 70 years ago now and the observer effect and the inevitable impact of our consciousness on circumstance and environment has sort of remained as a curiosity and an inconvenience to science rather than, I think, being fully embraced and reintegrated into our traditional awareness of the literal and real impact of intentionality of prayer, of simple communications. Intentionality of prayer of simple communications. Maybe it's too difficult to control that process.

AJ: 44:15

In some ways I wonder if indeed we shouldn't worry too much about that, like, in a sense, leave the more controlled experiment, double-blind stuff, et cetera, to science. Just don't interpret it as the ultimate or only form of knowledge. Just say, ok, that's what that method's finding and this is what this method's finding, and you can sort of just cross notes, but don't seek necessarily to bend one into the other. What do you think?

Patrick: 44:49

um, I think that the world is not really divided into different sets of truths yeah I think our knowledge is more concentric, and any truth needs to include all other truths, and so if we have a conflict between science and experience, then what that tells us is that our science is not any more science but has become doctrinal. But the true spirit of science is to open-mindedly advance hypotheses to attempt to explain all observable phenomena, and the so-called science we have now is almost more reminiscent of dare.

Patrick: 45:46

I say the worst of the Catholic Inquisition periods, where non-believers or non-conformists are discredited, their influence marginalized and their work and laboratories destroyed. So I'm very reluctant to give the term science or scientist to narrow technological doctrines, whereas really if a thing is perceived and observed reliably and consistently over thousands of years, chances are there's a premium in the middle of it.

AJ: 46:36

You know speaking of which First Nations here I mean I noted before with the White Eagle Lodge. So, going back in your ancestry, there is this connection to here. I mean I don't know if it's here here, but this continent, turtle Island, interesting that you should find yourself with a second home, of sorts. I mean, if you call it now another home here on Turtle Island, given that ancestry, is it a connection you felt since you've been here or experienced in any way?

Patrick: 47:05

I felt at home in Vermont as soon as I arrived here, and it's it's geographically, geologically, very similar to Scotland. Yes, but I think there is also some kind of some kind of trail of something. A character called Chogyam Trungpa was one of the first lamas out of Tibet.

AJ: 47:30

Indeed, we went to Naropa University in Colorado.

Patrick: 47:38

Well, his first effort was Sammy Ling in Scotland, and before he did that and while he was doing that, he was a frequent visitor at my family's home.

Patrick: 47:51

I was too little to remember anything about that, but there's stories of going for a walk with Trumpa and it starting to rain and sitting down and Trumpa doing his thing in a six-foot dry zone around the sitters while the rain passed over for half an hour and then, once the rain had gone away, they stood up and kept walking. This is so interesting. Well, so he did Scotland, and then he came to Vermont and he set up Karmacholing, and then he went to Boulder and set up Naropa before, I think, think, finally going up to is it newfoundland? Yeah, I can't remember. You're right, but I've done scotland, vermont and boulder in his footsteps, so I wonder if there isn't yes, you do wonder threads of connection and resonances between sympathetic landscapes.

AJ: 48:45

You so do wonder. And with First Nations here, whose land are we on? Let's start with that.

Patrick: 48:51

First Nations here. Vermont not got a good history with that. The people here were the Still the Mohican up there Abenaki.

AJ: 49:00

Abenaki, mohican, right there, right In the Adirondacks, on the west side of the lake Right and then down to where we've come from in the south of Vermont as well, I believe Right but here we have Abenaki woodland Indians and they were never recognised and a treaty was never made with them.

Patrick: 49:21

They were acknowledged only, I think, 10 years ago, under Governor Peter Shumlin's period in office, and recognised that they existed.

AJ: 49:34

Which is sorry but wonderful, At least something that wasn't there before. Yes, yeah. And for you any connections in your 40 years here.

Patrick: 49:48

Very few. They mostly quietly do their own thing, keep to themselves because they don't have designated lands. A lot of them here took French names and disappeared into the woods Is that right? And just sort of became invisible. I think they got quite heavily Christianised to some degree, took French names and disappeared into the woods Is that right? And just sort of became invisible. I think they got quite heavily Christianised to some degree. And of course the hunting and gathering and permaculture lifestyle that they enjoyed is not possible now with land ownership as it is currently so.

AJ: 50:21

it's a very sad story, and just while I think of it, speaking of the christian element, somebody told me that your dad ended up doing work for the pope too. Is that right?

Patrick: 50:36

yes, uh, uh, not working directly for the pope that. So Dad was doing his healing and mediumship around the edges and the army was very tolerant and found it quite useful. But he ended up as a NATO super specialist in amphibious landings and taking beachheads. So he would be loaned around the NATO countries to help train their commando and assault forces. And his favourite posting, which happened three times, was to Italy, because he was big-time whiny and foodie and that was where he loved to be, but as a visiting dignitary Visiting dignitary, but technically, I guess. Episcopalian Church of England, yes, the regimental padres didn't want to tell him he couldn't do this in a Catholic country because of the circumstance and so, rather than say no, they kept. Each time he went they passed the buck up to somebody in a higher office and on three occasions he got approval from the papal office that it was fine he could do his healing as a visiting military officer and that wouldn't upset anybody, you guys, sanctioned by the Pope.

Patrick: 52:03

He was rather tickled, I think, at that, but it obviously was very circumstantial.

AJ: 52:09

Yes, it's interesting though, when we think of that. You know you drew the analogy to the Inquisition and my upbringing and my father's before me and what we're learning in Australia now through various royal commissions about the sordid institutional behaviours you know. Again, bless the people. Amongst them I mean my uncle, who went with my father for a while before my father left Christian Brotherhood. My uncle saw it through till his death and did it beautifully and affected lives. I still hear back from people in Perth wow, your uncle was a legend, you know, shaped my life. That sort of thing. Beautiful stuff's there and it's why people still believe in it. But, my goodness, the institutional abuse to levels that you don't even want to know about. They're so harrowing just to even imagine, let alone experience.

Patrick: 53:07

Why and how we do what we do is one of our deep questions. Horrifying what happened in Australia, and that was one genocidal land grab. Scotland we had like 12. Really.

Patrick: 53:25

Because we had whoever the Neolithic farmers were, and then they get kicked out by the Bronze Age guys, and then they get kicked out by the Iron Age guys, and then they get kicked out by the Romans. And then they get kicked out by the Romans, and then they get kicked out by the Vikings, and then they get kicked out by the Anglo-Saxons. And then, when there's nothing better to do, they fight amongst themselves over distinctions of religion, whether it's Protestant, catholic or the many sects of Protestantism, and then finally, they burn their own people off the land for an agricultural revolution and put them on ships and substitute people for sheep.

Patrick: 54:10

So Scotland, almost more than any nation, has perfected the art of genocidal land grabs. But what it is in our part of us, hey, and then, and then that part.

AJ: 54:29

I mean this relates to us all carrying indigeneity, let's say just for a bit of word, and the wounds of these experiences. I mean this is where australians came from in the first instance of settlers was the UK Mine Irish and English and many others Scottish, so that we're connected to this and I guess in that sense we share so much, don't we? For the best and worst of everything, we share so much as humans.

Patrick: 55:05

If we do, it really is a global family uh but that the separate way, the separation away from animism in um. Looking at sustainable versus non-sustainable cultures I speak of this first up every time I lecture. So this is totally so, but looking at the paradigms between sustainable and non-sustainable cultures, it seems to me there's just two things that we've gone astray with. The first is our relationship with time, and sustainable cultures run circular time, and so this is obvious for farmers, it's always going to be spring, it's always going to be harvesting, it's always going to be spring, it's always going to be harvesting. And so you're always repeating a now moment, and every time you do it, you get it better. Maybe we put a little more fertilizer or a little more moisture or a little more compost, or we wait a little, or plant the rows, a different spacing. So we're always doing the same thing better, but there's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to run, there's nowhere to hide, it's just it's going to be now again. Next time it's now, and so it. Circular time puts you into present moment and brings your awareness very much into what's happening around you and how to relate to it in an optimum fashion. Linear time puts us into a deferment pattern where we believe that what we really want is never going to be here now, but it's going to be there then, and so we chase down the road to try and get more money, more power, more sex, more notoriety, more whatever it is that our insecurities drive us to want more of. But it takes us out of the here and now and it projects us into some anticipated future version of ourselves, into some anticipated future version of ourselves.

Patrick: 57:06

It also, in a linear model, holds the fantasy of eternal growth and so, as we know, our country's economies are. The health is supposed to be reflective of the rate of growth. So the economy is healthier the faster it's growing. But if we walk that out and if we put that into a medical context, that is by definition cancer. So something that eternally grows without being matched, mirrored, integrated into its environment, is cancerous. So by being on linear time and linear economy, we've created a cancerous relationship with our landscape, literally. But there's lots of different things we could do about that. But it's more a question of the thinking about that Lovely classic movie, groundhog Day. Yeah, is exactly that. Yeah.

AJ: 58:07

That's why it's an adorable, beautiful.

Patrick: 58:08

The more he has to live the same day over and over again. He just he gets better at it until he's having the best day ever and then. And then time starts moving for him again. So that's the most classic circular time sort of exposition. And then the second thing is whether or not we have an awareness of the animate nature of our environment. Because if I know that I can change the quality and volume and standing height of water in a well by attention and prayer, if I know that a dry spring will come back to life, if I know that I can have influence on germination rates, biological pest management, if I know that I can actually have an influence with the weather, all the questions simply disappear.

Patrick: 59:10

It's not a question of whether we can do these things. It's a question of whether we do do these things and whether we use them to our natural advantage. And it's not a question of hunter and gathering versus agriculture, because we had 6,500 years of fully sustainable agriculture in Europe with all of the animism deeply and richly built into it. So it's not a question of we can be completely sustainable agriculturally. Agriculture isn't a non-sustainable practice. We practice agriculture now in mostly non-sustainable ways, but that's not an agricultural issue, that's an issue of practice. But again, if you're aware that your land is animate and listening and responsive to you, you simply make a different set of decisions than if you think it's really just a sterile petri dish that you've got to get the chemistry right to grow the thing on the agar plate.

Patrick: 1:00:12

So, whatever the practices, whatever the details on the ground are on the ground are, I think if we can re-embrace circular time and animate awareness, then really we've got everything that we need. Because we're so clever with our technology, well-used technology, fantastic, good Lord. The convenience, what we're doing right now, what we're doing right now we're doing right now, the electronic medium, the ability to move around the world and share thoughts and ideas with each other, but I I, the more I look, the more I'm I'm sure. Really, the circular time and um, animate awareness, those, those are the things that really separate us from sustainable versus non-sustainable. And I'm very concerned about the sort of indigenous label, because obviously indigenous doesn't mean anything other than that you were born there. We tend to have a romance of hunter-gatherer societies versus our own, but that's associating with agriculture, with disconnection from landscape, which is not at all true, Very interesting.

AJ: 1:01:31

For a while now it's occurred to me as almost a bit of a chuckle that we might have left animistic thought, because then by definition we'd have chosen inanimistic, like not alive, dead. So it sort of says it itself. It says it itself. If we paid attention to the language, but let's turn to this physical manifestation.

Patrick: 1:01:54

Let's look at this physical manifestation. So, historically, agriculture in Europe starts about 6,500 years ago A little bit earlier, I think in Brittany, maybe pushing back to 8,000. But certainly it's going in the UK by 6,500 years ago. And what happens initially is they don't seem to quite get their land management down. The bones after a while don't look so good, the teeth don't look so good on the archaeological record. And then they engage in this megalithic project of putting stone circles and hengis and standing stones across the landscape. And as soon as they've done that, all of a sudden the teeth look better and the bones look better, and you're finding traded goods from far off places which would suggest an excess of food as the basis of um, a real economy.

AJ: 1:02:57

And so when was this? When are we talking?

Patrick: 1:03:00

uh, we're talking.

AJ: 1:03:01

So these things start getting built around 3000 bc, about 5000 years ago and it's and you know, my son again quipped earlier this morning oh, like stonehenge.

Patrick: 1:03:11

So yes, to an extent, I mean it's the sort of yes, well, thousands of these get built across europe and they're clearly built by farmers in service of landscape fertility. And significantly, a study done in the 90s in South America Kajik and I'm forgetting a gentleman's name Stone of Knowledge, seed and Plenty was the book they wrote. They weren't mystics or dowsers, but they saw clearly that these stone circles were purposeful to an agricultural community. So they were measuring geomagnetism and finding always a stronger geomagnetic background in pyramids and stone circles and they extrapolated why this would have effect. Anyway, one of the experiments they did they took indigenous south american corn, split into two samples. One half the sample went into a pyramid for 72 hours before planting and the other sample did not. And then they got an 80 to 85 germination rate on the pyramid corn, 25 to 30 percent on the non-pyramid corn. Even rate of growth, uh, cross pollination, uh. With the pyramid corn, uneven, poor growth on the non-pyramid corn. Net on net they got a 300% yield increase for pre-germination energizing of their seed. And University of Vermont some years ago the Agricultural Extension Program did a trial in rice growing as a potential crop here in Vermont dryland rice and they gave same samples to five farms, one of which was a farm that I was working with and we built a mini stone circle and we're doing all the germination starts in there and the other four farms in the trial got 25 germination rate on their rice and in the stone circle we got a 100% germination rate. So other stories like that and now on farms, stone circles, australia and elsewhere, we see how we can start to take advantage of the energies in the landscape. I think a stone circle is like a magnifying glass. I think it acts as a geomagnetic lens, and typically the stones that are chosen to be used are high in paramagnetism, so they're acting in a sort of focusing and concentrating way to, I think, optimally charge seeds and such Interesting.

Patrick: 1:06:03

This one is obviously in public park, so this does not have an immediate agricultural purpose, although people do bring their seeds here, particularly in springtime, before gardening. What we do do here, amongst others, it's an open space for the public and people use it for weddings, they use it for yoga, they use it for kirtan, they use it for picnics. It's tremendously popular and you helped bring it in. Yes, I trained in the construction and uses of sacred space in the early 90s and then a an interest group of 30 of us had done 10 years of these things on private land, but we wanted to bring one to the community and so this was a. This was a non-profit volunteer job. I did the location and the volunteer job. I did the location and the orientation and the basic site map and then my friend Ivan Macbeth chose the stones from the quarries and supervised the installation and we had landscapers and all kinds of help doing it.

AJ: 1:07:17

And the city was up for it.

Patrick: 1:07:19

The city was up for it. They lent us equipment. We had an opening ceremony, cutting the ribbon, with the mayor giving it to the city officially.

AJ: 1:07:26

So this is cool. I wouldn't have necessarily taken that for granted.

Patrick: 1:07:29

We called it an educational arts installation, and so we used neutral language about it. That didn't make anybody worried and is there a particular way we should engage with it about it.

AJ: 1:07:41

That didn't make anybody worried, yeah, and is there a particular way we should engage with it now?

Patrick: 1:07:45

So if we step into the middle here, we've called it an earth clock. So it works in two ways. Firstly, this is what's called an analemic sundial, which means that you're the gnomon, and because the elevation of the sun changes through the year, you need to move where you stand so you can see it's marked out month by month. So we're about September 1st. So if I stand at September 1st, I can see that this is saying I'm just a little bit before noon solar time and we're on eastern summertime.

Patrick: 1:08:24

So the time actually is by our clocks, 12, 30 by our clocks. There we go. So that's fun. And then what's happening here, also marked out on the stone, is that these five stones show where the sun sets on the mountain ridge behind the lake as the year goes on, so it sets this one at winter solstice, and then this one is 1st of February, spring equinox, march 21st, beginning of May, midsummer solstice, and it comes back. So beginning of August, september 21st, beginning of November, and back to winter. So this gives us the pendulum swing of the sun through the year and it's supposed to work for a 5'8 person, I think. The sun just sits like a candle flame on top of these on the horizon at those times. So it's plugged into its astronomical environment.

Patrick: 1:09:33

This stone is aligned to the deepest point in the lake, to our lake monster Champ, one, our lake monster champ, and then this one with a square profile is aligned to an original Abenaki sacred site on Ile Lamotte, further up the lake. This is north and then this is south, and these ones are all then at 30 degrees intervals, which allows astronomical observation. 30 degrees is our way generally of dividing up the time. So the idea of this. We put it in as a peace park under a banner of circles for peace, based on the understanding that, by the simple witness of the cycles and rhythms of nature, inner peace is restored in the observer so it's almost what you're saying before time and animate time thinking yeah, there you are.

Patrick: 1:10:35

We did have. Every year we have a lake blessing at midsummer. This is a very shallowly shelving sandy beach. You can walk a long way out before you get waist deep. So with the Green Mountain, druid Order and various anybody who wants to come midsummer, we bring a great cauldron of water and we put it here and then there's singing and dancing and blessing and petals, and then the cauldron gets carried and poured back into the lake. And on one occasion, many years ago now, dr Emoto was with us and did before and after photographs of that and that all worked just the way it was supposed to. And also at the time we were getting algal blooms on the lake, I think primarily because of nitrogen fertilizer runoff from agricultural land. But once we started blessing the lake, the algae all went away and we were allowed to go and swim again. That's interesting. They were also cutting back on the fertilisers and the city was managing water runoff.

AJ: 1:11:55

Glad to hear it, because an alternative response would be oh, let's pump the nitrogen. If you're going to clear it, no worries Well it all works together.

AJ: 1:12:04

Yeah, yeah, good, ideally. You know it was visiting Stonehenge that caused an Australian researcher by the name of Lynn Kelly to investigate the song lines in Australia she's an Australian and then in other parts of the world, effectively the same sort of methodology and she ended up writing a book called ah, the something code. I remember her because she wrote a book called song lines with an aboriginal woman and it was amazing and it's become like the second or third most popular podcast ever as well. It was amazing and it's become like the second or third most popular podcast ever as well. Just seeing the similarities and overlaps yes, again, over the thousands of years of humanity that you were describing.

AJ: 1:12:48

Yeah, everywhere.

Patrick: 1:12:49

Now on the pilgrimage routes, the song lines of Europe. Henry VIII bans pilgrimage. Is that right? Earmarks people so that they can be identified if they're going out of county.

AJ: 1:13:04

It's interesting how power has occasionally done that. Yet we're talking about the armies, that power when they feel the utility, or even for the same reasons perhaps for power?

Patrick: 1:13:16

I think that's the thing. Yes, once you realise you've got some kind of power, do you concentrate that and manipulate it, or do you share that for community benefit?

AJ: 1:13:34

The age-old mythological story as well. So for you, then, you've ended up so involved with agriculture. I I can imagine the link between what you were realizing before to that, but how did it actually happen? How did you get so linked to agriculture?

Patrick: 1:13:53

yes, I think it was probably always in my stars, aj. Uh, probably literally. My parents had my astrological chart done as soon as I was born. Always in my stars, aj, probably literally. My parents had my astrological chart done as soon as I was born. Those kinds of parents, and at the end the astrologist comment is I can't tell whether this child will become a doctor or a farmer. So I kind of reckon I was born to do something like this. Yeah, I was born to do something like this, a hybrid yeah.

Patrick: 1:14:21

In circumstance.

Patrick: 1:14:22

What I realise now is mum was really really, really good at talking to plants and animals and landscape in ways that I so took for granted that I didn't really see it happening and negotiating with the birds which trees in the orchard they could take and which they needed to leave, and no rabbits or moles dared venture into our garden.

Patrick: 1:14:53

But for me I was more on a human health, environmental trail. But what happened was over the first 10, 15 years of my practice I was getting all this feedback. When I got somebody's home space nicely clear and tuned up and balanced, then they would tell me, and the cherry blossomed for the first time and we got fruit off the apple for the first time, and all of a sudden the chickens are laying eggs like they've never laid before. And so, even working with domestic, I was getting more and more feedback on the animal and plant impacts of the work. And then here in Vermont, farmers who came on dowsing workshops started asking me to work on their properties and, um, the first ones were dairy farms. I think the very first one was a dairy farm and then, as soon as I worked on the farm, they won Best Milk Award in Vermont and I think they got it seven years in a row. Wow.

Patrick: 1:16:06

Do you want to drop a name? Probably for client confidentiality. Okay, that'll need to remain anecdotal.

Patrick: 1:16:25

Anecdotal, but I I saw the impact on on dairy of working and then realized that that was one of the most common things that dowsers do in germany is to work with dairy herds, because cows are very sensitive to environment, and if they're getting mastitis or low fertility or difficulty with calving, that's one of the first places that you would look to see and check whether there was, particularly if it's isolated to one part of the farm. More and more, even here in Vermont, cattle are mostly living indoors and the forage is brought in to them as as hay or silage, so they don't really have so much capacity to move around, and if you put them in an atmosphere that isn't good for them, then it'll show consequential.

Patrick: 1:17:13

So I got working with dairy uh, more and more. And then, um, I had an opportunity to work with a mixed arable farm in Scotland over a number of years and did a lot of experimentation. And then, gradually, word got out and I started publishing results and that was what came to RCS's attention. There you go.

AJ: 1:17:37

Should we walk back? Yeah, should we walk back? Yeah. So yeah, walking back along the lake here now back towards the car to go to our next destination. It just occurred to me you know what you were saying before as we look out on the lake and you comment on how great it is for kids because it's so shallow, and and then I thought, oh yeah, and if it's getting cleaner, awesome. And then I thought there's another story of something getting better, and there's so many stories of things getting better.

Patrick: 1:18:01

Everywhere, Everywhere. So much positive energy, so much positive intention. I think people are hungry for a life of soul. Frankly, I think that's perhaps part of what's happened. We talked about circular consciousness and animism, but it applies also to ourselves.

AJ: 1:18:29

Yes, so so much deep desire to live in ways that satisfy and fulfill and allow us to be truly an integrated part of the family of things yet there's this other narrative, which sort of has its own a spiral that gets sort of more worked up and more worked up, and I'm and I'm talking from very genuine care and concern to many people. I know that see the climate crisis and the biodiversity, and then gaza, uh, and they might argue here, if they're with us, that they are bigger forces than the spots we're observing where stuff's getting better.

Patrick: 1:19:15

What do I think, historically, we've always had an element in humanity that seeks to dominate and control and concentrate power. Whether it's Chinese emperors or Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great, or fill in the historical details we seem always to have been perhaps moved by a sense of scarcity and moving towards what we conceive of as a more secure future for our family and tribe and community. So whether it's any different or worse now than it ever was, I'm not sure, or whether the names have simply changed, but I'm very encouraged. And actually, in terms of the physics of consciousness, when we're in a grace state, when we're in an unconditional love state, our electrocardiographic and electroencephalographic spectrum analysis shows increasingly rich golden ratio proportion wavelengths within it, and the golden ratio is a proportion where waves meet each other without creating disturbance or diffraction.

Patrick: 1:20:48

Any other proportion of wave interface creates distortional patterns when they come together, but golden ratio allows waves to stand and sustain in the presence of others. The point of that is that it's the most efficient way of propagating energy, and so love, in fact, is a more efficient waveform than fear and hatred. And so if you were to go pounds per square inch, pounds per square inch, with equal intensity, love always wins over fear and hate, because it's actually a more efficient and sustainable waveform. And so I'm reassured that the hobbits will always ultimately win out over the forces of sauron, because their simple, wholehearted love is ultimately indomitable. And I like to observe that the hobbits were the peaceful farmers and they were just trying to keep things nice in the shower in the shower, and so all of all of this trouble around them with the great and mighty was like a storm that washed through, and then they went back to growing vegetables and smoking their tobacco brilliant on that note.

Patrick: 1:22:20

On that note, let's head to our next stop ok, so I'm going to take you next to a woodland labyrinth. So we are arriving into the land of the Meach Cove Trust and this is a 600 plus acre estate the early 1900s, and now it hosts an interfaith community church, very beautifully poised, looking out with the same lake view as this town circle that we've been on. And when the current owners purchased this land 25 years ago, they had me do an extensive amount of work on the land and the buildings and bring it into nice and crisp and clear and fully engaged. But one of the things that they wanted to support their church, which is in these buildings. This is the sanctuary, which is built as a squared circle with golden ratio elevations and solstice to solstice windows, same as the solstice to solstice stones.

Patrick: 1:24:12

So, but one of the things that they wanted as part of their, their ritual complex, as it was a labyrinth which you may be familiar with labyrinths already. They're ancient, apparently universal meditative walking paths. We looked around and assessed quite a number of sites on the property and we decided on this rather charming woodland labyrinth. So now we're going into the woods. So the history of labyrinths goes certainly back 3,200 years, based on historical record, but quite possibly much, much older and later than that, and the design that seems to be the universal is the seven-circ Circuit labyrinth, sometimes called the classical Cretan labyrinth, but we find this design woven into baskets and rugs and blankets in the Native American culture here in North America.

AJ: 1:26:00

Is that right?

Patrick: 1:26:02

We find the similar pattern on the plain of Nazca in Peru. We find them widely through Europe and Asia and many of the oldest still existing ones are around the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden and date from the Viking period. Still existing ones are around the Gulf of Bothnia in Sweden and date from the Viking period. Oh yes, that was a squirrel. Yeah. I thought he was, but he was. He wasn't moving until he saw which way we were going.

AJ: 1:26:38

So again, is there a particular way you engage?

Patrick: 1:26:41

so, um, yes, with the sound of hay being moaned in the background in the field adjacent, uh. So there's a single walking path that enters here and then it continues around. Uh, if you number them from the outside 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and then a central area, the sequence of walking it takes you 3, 2, 1 and then 4, and then 7, 6, 5 and into the center, and they can be used in many ways as simple walking, meditation, problem solving time to quieten the mind. Often in historical symbolism there's a goddess in the middle, and one of the associated myths is the myth of the descent of Inanna, who is a Mesopotamian grain goddess and when she reaches the point of coming into her mature power as a goddess, she has to go and visit first with the Ereshkigal, who is queen of the underworld and a bit of a scary crown. So inanna goes through seven gates, the seven turns in the labyrinth, uh, to access the underworld and at each of the gates, nettie, the gatekeeper takes from her rather symbolic items of clothing. There's a tiara, a necklace, a girdle. You can sort of follow the chakras being unveiled as the path goes into the labyrinth until finally she achieves the center of the labyrinth and is naked in front of a Reshka gal who slays her and hangs her on a meat hook for a season, as goddesses will, before bringing her back to life and reanimating her. And then she comes back out of the labyrinth, putting all her things back on in sequence, and when she emerges she's now fully reborn into her full mature powers, having first been to that dark place of death and rebirth at that moment of transition in her womanhood. So there's a way that we can have a sense of going into the labyrinth of each layer, stripping away an outer veil of consciousness or worldly concerns veil of consciousness or worldly concerns until we're really at a still deep point of renewal and resource in the middle. That's a lovely way to use them. Another thing that's fun with these labyrinths is although it's quite a journey around this one, where 80 feet in diameter, which is what's required to make each path wheelchair accessible, which was one of the remits on this one is that although it's a long walk around the middle, you can actually walk across this central threshold and go from the outside straight into the middle, and so sometimes, with retreats or extended sort of focus time, it's nice to walk winding into the labyrinth at the beginning and then step across that threshold so that energetically you're still in the labyrinth until at the end of the event you cross again into the very center and wind out.

Patrick: 1:30:24

I used to do week-long holistic medicine retreats with a gathering of people who came together every year for 20 years. We would make a beach labyrinth below high tide and walk into it at the beginning and then at the end of the retreat we do another beach labyrinth and walk out of it, and it was a way of sort of energetically intentionally bookending that this one. We had the naming and inaugural ceremony of coming into the world for my daughter when that was her time, and her mum and I walked with her into the labyrinth and our friends gathered and there was singing and and praying and speeching and then Heather and Ali and I stepped across the middle to come out. So we're in the labyrinth, we're there for life was just a way of embodying that shared journey that will end at its own time.

Patrick: 1:31:28

So they can be used in very many ways. There's a way that you can do a lovely dance where people coming in and going out join hands, the walls and you can go four paths, in and out holding hands with people going in the opposite directions is a beautiful thing to do. So we don't know of them as having any agricultural context, but it's very much ritual in landscape and all of the original Gothic cathedrals had a labyrinth laid into their nave, and I think at the turn of the 1900s there were still over 120 turf labyrinths in parish churches around the UK. So it used to be every church would have an outside labyrinth, typically turf cut, and so you'd have celebrations indoors and then you'd have celebrations outdoors and that was a bit like, you know, having sweat lodges or saunas. It was part of, uh, the annual and regular cycle of people connecting with themselves and with source. When you say churches, what?

AJ: 1:32:55

churches would we be talking about?

Patrick: 1:32:58

uh, these would have been, um, uh, the Episcopalian ones. There's still one called Julian's Bower in Alkborough in Lincolnshire and several others, but most of them they didn't get maintained or they fell out of use. There was quite a resurgence of interest in labyrinths, particularly in the 80s and 90s, and I helped put a shark-style labyrinth into an Episcopalian church just five miles from here, but they seem to have slightly waned in. But they seem to have slightly waned in people's awareness again, or at least in a general sense.

AJ: 1:33:43

Yeah, I'm curious with all this stuff, patrick, and we talked before about so much good stuff coming on. What's been your observation over your time in changes and shifts in people, their appetite, their practice and, in agriculture, in these domains like cast a wide net on that what's been your observation of change in appetite for this stuff in people?

Patrick: 1:34:12

I think it's. We get very excited about the things that we do, but it does look to be rather generational to me and the things that our children grow up with become the norm for them, whereas it might have been quite unusual for us Watching what happened with holistic medicine huge excitement in the 70s and 80s, and you mentioned holotropic breath work, reflexology, aromatherapy, yoga practices such as Reiki, tai Chi Qigong Huge groundswell of interest generations later it's hard to find anybody who's next door neighbor isn't a reiki master and who, yeah, you know yoga, doesn't have yoga or, uh, some sense of of that.

Patrick: 1:35:11

in fairness, I think in the 40s and 50s we were fascinated with tibetan culture, uh, prior to that, uh, 20s and 30s, looking very much to native americans, and now I think the um, the sort of equivalent, is go to south america and engage with um, with practices, uh, mind-altering practices there, and the breathwork I mean, that's exploding, yes, right now. So I think and you mentioned epigenetics, aj, I think you know it takes it takes three generations, I think, for a thing to become really normalized and integrated. You do what your granny did or your granddad, uh, and I think the seven generations is probably how long it takes for us to get really sophisticated and elegantly simple with a thing. So my parents were sort of pioneers. So in a certain sense I'm second generation in the culture Grandmother was into it, but that was closed door stuff. Culture, grandmother was into it, but that was closed-door stuff.

Patrick: 1:36:23

But looking around at what's normal now, what we're exposed to, the explosion of Internet allowing us to listen, to learn from, observe practices from all over the world, and I think people are hungrier than they've ever been and the deconstruction of the human institutions in which we've held doctrinal religions, I think, as those deconstruct, or people are unsatisfied with the human elements of those. I think we've got a hungry population that just is literally soul searching for authenticity, for wholeness, for truth and for our fundamental reconnection. We've somehow become lonely on the planet as human beings. We've been told that we're the problem and that without us the planet would do fine. But in my experience, at least personally, any time I've connected and engaged with elementals, nature, spirits, there's been such a depth of welcome and warmth and support and guidance and encouragement, um, that I simply everything that I was raised to, but also everything that I've experienced, reassures me that we, we are part of life on the planet and we have a very particular and sacred role. I don't know what other than human being has our experience of watching a sunset or a sunrise. What other incarnate beings are singing and dancing and playing violin? Maybe we've got a sacred duty of digging things up and moving them around. There's nothing else that does that, not to that scale anyway. Scale well, maybe the place gets to express and experience itself in a certain way, uh, uniquely, through the eyes and actions of people, because at the end of the day, we've had ice ages and dinosaurs and meteor strikes and volcanoes and mass extinctions.

Patrick: 1:38:42

So it might be we should dial back our egocentric sense of power of actually being able to destroy a planet. We can certainly create ecocide and terrible land management and environmental harm, but I think that's a very brief and unusual thing for people to do. Actually, I think our nature is very connected and, historically as well, your intuition and instinct were your survival necessaries. We rely now on data and intellect, but if you can't perceive the presence of a saber-toothed tiger until you see it, it's too late already. And we have mountain lions and bears in the woods here in Vermont and you know if there's one around and you don't want to see it.

Patrick: 1:39:39

But you instinctively know and you don't want to see it. But you instinctively know and you can read nature because the birds are very quiet or they're making alarm calls or the forest has gone very still because nothing wants to move While that happens and the hair goes back up on the neck and the arms and you know there's a predator here and you know you want to move away. So that could be called irrational. I didn't hear it, I didn't see it. I know theoretically it could be here, but my body knows it's present. And if we couldn't find food, if we couldn't find water, if we didn't have that level of intrinsic awareness of landscape, you simply, you know, didn't make it till breakfast time tomorrow. So what used to be survival level awarenesses, I think, have become a little bit redundant with our infatuation with linear cognition and technology.

AJ: 1:40:34

It's very interesting, you say that I have heard almost the same words from people coming across this country, including in the very episode that's coming out today, which is on the buffalo restoration on the Great Plains another extraordinary story and he was describing the same thing, and that's even with the guy who's regarded, as you know, just about as good a buffalo wrangler as there is, that you will still feel that when it looks you in the eye and, and, similarly, if there's something coming that you're, you need to be aware of, but you're not to your visual eye. And I heard the same thing from a man in South Dakota who tracks mountain lions, so he's engaged with them all the time, but found himself in a situation where it was above him, but he didn't know it, but felt it and got the hell out of there and came back and then confirmed what was I feeling? I was up there oh my, you know.

AJ: 1:41:36

But this is true of a bunch of farmers obviously I've spoken to as well. It's partly how we've come together, and when I hear that, what I want to hear in your words is as much your senses are alive and sure you don't necessarily want to have to walk into the presence of a jaw that would eat you to feel alive. But we don't have to. We can feel it in the agricultural spaces you dwell in and can feel it in the agricultural spaces you dwell in and where we are right now. But to think then that that's what we've traded out for more secure, quote-unquote survival methods, that's a big price to pay.

AJ: 1:42:16

And I and I guess then it does make sense of the loneliness, epidemics, the anxiety, the you talked before, the grasping for the next bigger thing. Because what else are you going to do If you've lost what actually triggers your living instincts, your compasses shut down, so you grasp it's? It makes. There is a logic in that. Even that makes some sense of where we find ourselves. So, sure, maybe we don't need this for survival, but the way things have got, I kind of think we do. Perhaps not your physical survival, but then when you look at chronic illness exploding. I think maybe we do for just straight-up survival need these instincts, we need the compass lest we be lost.

Patrick: 1:43:13

I think we do. And even in pure economics, if you get them off camera, pretty much the most successful investors are hyper-intuitive and hyper-instinctive. That's true. Yes, good point. I think George Soros' wife called him out at one lecture where he was extrapolating his investment theory and his wife said he just invests when his kidneys hurt. Yeah, interesting. I don't know what else he's up to, but I've certainly been impressed, including back to our military conversation. Yeah, often the the people at the top of the tree, are using this stuff all the time.

AJ: 1:43:58

Yeah, and I even hear about, I mean, I mean, alan Savory told me. I asked him and he said there is certainly more than once that intuition saved him from being shot on the battlefield. Yeah, and it's not an isolated story, obviously. I was just curious on how he'd experienced it. Yes, yeah, well, that hay cutter's got close to us, it has. Maybe we should.

Patrick: 1:44:22

That's our time to continue to move on.

AJ: 1:44:24

I think so, but wow, what a special place. All right, patrick. Sorry in a way, because the machine's left us now and this is now feeling a whole other level of beautiful and powerful Just listening to that. So sorry in a way, but we've got somewhere else that it'd be good to visit. So let's go there now, and on route you've got a bit of a story to tell.

Patrick: 1:44:50

Yes, so Vermont gets settled mid to late 1700s and back in the day it was really the breadbasket of New England, really entirely agricultural state. 85% of the land was cleared for agriculture, huge amount of sheep as well as grain and fruit production. And then land opening up progressively in the west and the central sections of the country and changing agricultural economics meant that the small and often hilly vermont farms were no longer no longer economically viable and so most of the farmland was simply abandoned and forest is regrown and now again covers 85% of the land is now forested Wow. But when the farms were going out in the 50s there was a massive back-to-the-land movement that came into Vermont and New Hampshire and New England. The Neerings were kind of iconic of that period. So land was cheap and the alternative back-to-the land community came here. And then the same thing happened again in the 1970s where we got a huge influx of sophisticated, well-educated, often university graduates yes, so inexpensive land prices.

Patrick: 1:46:52

In the 70s we got a whole sort of wave of what we'd refer to as the hippie culture, people who wanted to drop out of mainstream and in their own way come back to the land. So Vermont found itself in an interesting position of being economically conservative and socially liberal, and a lot of very interesting projects got rooted and anchored in Vermont, became a haven for people concerned with food and alternative education, a lot of independent schools, strong presence of Steiner schools, and that's changing gradually with changing political and economic circumstances. But we still do have this very strong body of very holistic-minded people who, either themselves or their parents or grandparents, found their way to Vermont to live in a more land-based and independent kind of community, and so we've got a very strong slow food movement here, with a lot of farm-to-table style restaurants, direct purchase from identified agricultural producers. We've got a couple of substantially dedicated whole food supermarkets and on each tray of potatoes. Or and then very smart integrated farmers who grow grains for local distilleries and then the spent mash goes back to feed cows and pigs.

Patrick: 1:49:16

There's one facility in Hardwick where surplus whey from milk products is made into a very high-quality wall and flooring, almost like a polyurethane, a shellac that's a really good one that's entirely made locally from waste products of the dairy industry. And then a lot of small scale, multi-stacked farms that host small-scale, multi-stacked farms that host community-supported agriculture. But they also have their open days and their burger nights and their berry-picking days. We can go and take a picnic and listen to music while we pick our berries. There's a real strong support for the local as well as the organic in the state. So although we're small, we're in a way quite flagship for integrated holistic agriculture.

AJ: 1:50:41

Yes, that story certainly reached Australia and I did a podcast out of Vermont, out of actually Montpelier, maybe four years ago now, with Jake Claro with the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, I think it's called, but he was the manager of the what's a farm paddock to plate or farm to plate program or something of that nature, and that it was bipartisan support in this backed strategy for the state and all very interesting stuff. So that summed to a fascinating story. You mentioned to me where we're going now, to the heart of town where McDonald's tried to set up.

Patrick: 1:51:17

Yes, in the heart of Burlington. There downtown McDonald's some years ago was not being sufficiently supported to be viable as it was and the building now hosts a direct farm-to-table restaurant and it's slightly typical and rather iconic of how the public moves here that they'd support a farm-to-table rather than a McDonald's in their main downtown location.

AJ: 1:51:55

Oh, it's such a wonderful symbol, let alone physical enterprise. I have to see it. So, yeah, looking forward to this.

Patrick: 1:52:07

All right, let's go and check this out. Let's go to Macca's, let's go to Macca's, let's go to Macca's. They lost the franchise. I can't quite remember what the tipping point was for these guys, but it might be that a waiter or a waitress can tell us they should almost have the story.

AJ: 1:52:30

They really should have the story somewhere, probably because it's a great story on the surface and you know we don't need to know the specifics necessarily. I just rejoice even in the fact it's here instead of a McDonald's, do you want?

Patrick: 1:52:43

to grab a coffee or a beer or something.

AJ: 1:52:45

Sounds good, Mike Great idea, yeah, great idea, and we can even look it up. You're right, maybe even someone who serves us will know. They might just know.

Patrick: 1:52:55

Looks like our way in. Are you hungry at all or just?

AJ: 1:52:59

grab a beverage, yeah, Should we sit down and get a menu.

Patrick: 1:53:03

Sounds good Hi. Two of us. Two of us, yes, please, and we're hoping that somebody can tell us the story of how this became farmhouse from. Mcdonald's. I've been around since the 90s, but I can't remember what the tipping point was that switched this over.

Kate: 1:53:26

I think it just wasn't doing very well. And then they tried to build a drive-thru, but then the city decided not to allow drive-thrus and in 2010, this opened as a farmhouse.

AJ: 1:53:41

It's so good. I host a podcast from Australia and when I heard about this, it's just such a great symbol, let alone it's so funny.

Kate: 1:53:49

yeah, from a McDonald's to a farm-to-table burger joint. I know it's funny. We still have some of the McDonald's. So funny, yeah, from a McDonald's to a farm-to-table burger joint. I know it's funny. We still have some of the.

AJ: 1:54:00

McDonald's tiles like downstairs in the prep kitchen Really.

Kate: 1:54:02

Yeah, it's funny, that's funny. There's a spot, manhattan's Pizzeria, that used to be a Wendy's and as far as I know they still have like the Wendy's, like fry preps, like to hand, hand cut the fries.

AJ: 1:54:13

Even better, you keep it. That's how it's done. There almost needs to be a plaque out front. A plaque.

Kate: 1:54:17

Yeah, we run out. Plus, being fairly young, we run a lot of chains out of here. There was a Starbucks that closed. There was a Five Guys that didn't stay very long.

AJ: 1:54:30

Music to my ears. This is recording. Do you mind if? I include this in the podcast what's your name? I'm kate reed thanks a lot of course um inside or outside oh if there's outside.

AJ: 1:54:46

Well, patrick, back at home, base in the garden where we started, with a lovely soundtrack in the background to boot. Firstly, thanks for lunch. Wow, so I have to share that. I had a von trapp grapefruit beer wow, amazing. And and you've told me the story of how it's the von trapp family from the sound of music now well established in vermont and, yeah, the menu, incredible. So what a treat to visit there and such a great symbol, as we said. Now we're back at home.

AJ: 1:55:21

Let's sign off with a couple more stories before we go on to some of the stories of transformation you've been involved in, though, just to tie off on the thread we were visiting before, on on the shift over the, over your journey and the academic field. There's been some shift there too. The, indeed the publication that came out of the university of your friend there, julia right, you were saying that you penned an essay in, and charlie massey's previously missing chapter quote, quote-unquote from Reid Warbler, the one that didn't make the cut for being a bit too pushing the envelope, perhaps a bit too much at the time, made it into this publication too, out of a university. Something different's happening there too.

Patrick: 1:56:07

Yes, and very exciting, I think, and also somewhat generational. There are now degrees in spirituality and agriculture and spirituality in the environment and actually currently having a restructuring moment now, but places like Schumacher College in the UK, emerson College, like Schumacher College in the UK, emerson College, I think we're seeing more and more academic interest and offerings in the area of holism, including holistic environmental studies, which is lovely. I think. Often, as you very well know, one slightly follows the money trail in terms of narratives and what's presented, and so, for the most part, mainstream agricultural academia is funded by pharmaceutical, agrochemical companies and because they're funding the research, they're obviously then promoting their version of farming alongside of that.

Patrick: 1:57:22

So I think the places where this kind of more holistic research is happening is probably not the mainstream agricultural campuses, not the mainstream agricultural campuses, but either smaller schools or smaller departments catering to a vast hungry desire of the upcoming generation to I don't want to say break the mold, but find a dawning of a new and sustainable way to go. I also think the climate narrative has been so dramatically emphasized and forced onto that generation coming into their 20s and going through academia now that there's a real sense of people wanting to learn how to do better and different and there's also a generation of landowners, property owners who are coming to age either of inheritance or taking over established family businesses, who have a social environmental awareness and consciousness and are moving into positions where they can invest either substantial acreage or sometimes substantial funds towards making that happen. So I think it's spreading rapidly. I know Southern Cross has Reg regen ag on its menu, um and so it's popping up all over the place.

Patrick: 1:59:01

It's popping up all over the place, I I think, ultimately, it always has to be grassroots and that's where it belongs, because, um, whilst there's a philosophy that I think you and I are both very immersed in, of paradigm and thinking, it's in the application on the farm that we actually see why it's so beneficial, why I don't want to shoot on anybody, but why we should be doing it. Um, what's it all about, and why did our ancestors make such a fuss about it? Um, what's that really about? There's the perfect segue, then. Well, yes, so, um, as you can imagine, uh, many stories, but one, I think, very sal salient.

Patrick: 1:59:52

One that I do like to share is a story of plant and place whispering from the Cotswolds of England, which are very beautiful and, in the Roman period, created the sheep with the finest fleece in all of Europe.

Patrick: 2:00:11

The Cotswold sheep was the most splendid thing and they had a very fine and delicate pile. So, agricultural country Cotswold is actually a little bit the same story as here in Vermont Big-time sheep country, water-powered woolen mills and then post-woolen industry collapsed there. However, our story happens on the edge of a small iconic village, at a very wonderful, small-scale family dairy farm and family concern, organic milking, 20 cows once a day and able to make a living at that scale because their value add was cheese. They were award winning cheese makers and also they had a retail shop in town, so they were able to do both value add and retail and they had a small livery stable on on the side. So, as with a lot of small scale farms, uh, finding ways to to integrate and um support the scale of their enterprise and their cows were their friends. On one occasion I was there and the farmer was being harassed by his cheese-making wife, who thought that he ought to be euthanizing a 23-year-old cow with one eye and he thought she was doing just fine and to leave her alone.

Patrick: 2:01:47

So it was that level of you know scale. So I was in and out of that village regularly for a decade and became acquainted with them and no money ever changed hands. I worked on many occasions and I always came away with a bag full of cheese, and so that was our arrangement. But the story that I'm sharing with you now unfolds in October, which of course in the UK is moving into autumn weather, and they had two next to each other fields of alfalfa loosened depending where you live and these two fields had been planted same day, same operator, same equipment, same seed, and had been held back as the last green forage before the cattle were going to shift on to dry, dry hay and silage for winter.

Patrick: 2:02:49

So they were very critical at this moment in the forage budget in this farm and they were doing holistic grazing and so moving wires, narrow strips, the cows moved across the first field of alfalfa and so the cattle are grazed through the first field over a period of about a week, moving gently with moving wires to create the high-density grazing benefits to the grasslands, and then they move into the second field and within two hours of the first strip of the second field, seven of their cows are showing signs of bloat. First strip of the second field seven of their cows are showing signs of bloat. And bloat is something that farmers pay very, very close attention to when cattle are on alfalfa or lucerne, because the nutritional density and high nitrogen content of that plant, um, if the cow's microbiome doesn't totally get on top of it, uh, they can become swollen to the point of exploding and dying in that way because from that central rumen.

Patrick: 2:04:05

They can't pass gas either out the front or out the back, so it's a life-threatening condition. And when, when grazers move cattle on to that plant, therefore, they they generally pay pretty close attention to see that that's going to go well. So these clouds were being closely watched. Seven of them showed signs of bloat, and so the cattle were pulled off the field and put into the barn and I was called which obviously would be the thing to do if you've got an indigestible field of alfalfa is call the land whisperer. So, fortunately, I was in town. I was there within 15-20 minutes and what I did literally was to sit down and have a meditation with the field in the field. Literally was to sit down and have a meditation with the field in the field.

Patrick: 2:04:56

And what's happening here is very, very simple. Everybody has their own way of doing this. There's no right or wrong way to telepathically communicate with land or plants or animals. You just do it in a way that you find works best for you. So for me, sitting quietly, moving into a peaceful space, and then what happens is we naturally connect with whatever we think about, and when we think about a thing with love and peacefulness, then the connection establishes one of close rapport and creativity potential in that space. So in my imaginal space, my meditative, if you will, shamanic consciousness, I introduced into the circle of my thinking, effectively, a kitchen table chat of all interested parties. So first up, always one's own personal companion, angels and sort of celestial support team, and then, in this case, the spirit of the farm and the spirit of this particular field, the guiding intelligence of the soil, the gnomes as we would call them. The guiding intelligence is behind and within the plants, the diva of the plant, and then the spirit of the mob of cattle and also St Bridget, who is the Celtic patroness of domesticated animals. So I reckon she could help me out so effectively.

Patrick: 2:06:41

Now I'm, in my mind, in a kitchen table situation, having invited the conscious witness and dialogue with these vibrational intelligences of the farm, and it was a bit like being in a really noisy out-of-control children's party. There was chaos, there was confusion and what I came to realize quite quickly was that the first field that the cows had been nutritionally supported by had full identity and awareness, conscious awareness of its role in the agricultural cycle and that it had been planted to be food for cows which would give milk, which would give cheese, which would nurture people, and then it would be replanted again in its successional rotation. So its giving itself to be highly nutritional cattle fodder was effectively ensuring its survival in that landscape because it was integrated as an agricultural crop. The second field didn't have that messaging hadn't gone through, thought that it was wild and that these were feral herbivores that had shown up and that its survival was dependent on its make-and-go-away by poisoning them with toxic substances. And indeed plants have what are broadly called primary metabolites and secondary metabolites. And the primary metabolites are what they do to do their ordinary growing thing day to day. And then the secondary metabolites are a library or catalog of discretionary phenols, tannins, a range of chemicals that they can very rapidly manufacture and distribute within themselves to make themselves less attractive to the aphid or the locust or the cow or whatever might be the agent of its consumption.

Patrick: 2:08:55

And we hear from those who work in South Africa of giraffes having to creep up with quiet, soft footfall, noiselessly from down wind, creep up on acacia trees and get in a graze and a browse, because as soon as the tree realizes that the giraffe is on it, it instantly fills its leaves with tannins which render it disgusting and unpalatable to giraffe, and it tells all its neighborhood friends. So then it's breakfast over for giraffe and it's got to go and stalk another acacia tree to get second breakfast or the other half of the first one. I learned from an indigenous ethnobotanist here in the US about a ground cherry in Washington state which is delicious beyond belief. But if the plant spots a person creeping up on it, it almost instantly turns itself sour and disgusting, and so you literally again have to creep up from downwind, because it can smell you, apparently, and then grab it quick. Um, before it spots that you're there. So so plants, you and our stress response is run away. A plant obviously can't run away, so it has to change its expressed metabolism, not its morphology but its physiology in order to have its survival process. So this was a very clear situation of this inaction.

Patrick: 2:10:33

The first field had identity, the elementals, nature, spirits, totally happy to be on the farm. Crop was great. Second field didn't realize it was part of farm, didn't really understand what agriculture was and had mobilized literally this lethal cow killing, uh, secondary metabolic response. So, um, I had a good old chat with them about this and everybody seemed happy once they understood what was going on and why it was going on and um, within a very short period of time, much less time than it takes to tell the story, because telepath is happening at the speed of thought. So you know, from start to finish this might actually only have taken 90 seconds, but it doesn't matter how long it takes, it matters that you take the time to do it. So chat with the. By the time, everybody had had tea and cake, a second round, the kitchen table, everybody was on song, we got thumbs up and smiles, and so I left them to it. We waited 12 hours. We put the cows back into the field and, without any problem at all, they grazed off the whole of the rest of the field in strips over the subsequent 10 days and were well nourished and happy and um and everything was good.

Patrick: 2:12:00

So three steps back just to look at that story. Um, first of all, I didn't speak or move. This. This was an internal, imaginal, meditational, shamanic communication that I was having in situ. I've also done it long distance with maps and photographs, but in this case I was on site. So that's what I was doing was I was having a good, hard think. However, what's clear from what happened then is the plants understood me. Even though it was an internal thought, they telepathically received the message. Secondly, they understood it and had capacity to change themselves. And thirdly, they changed themselves at my request, for our convenience to support the people living in that landscape. And those three things put together. Frankly, the first few times it happened to me it was so mind-blowing I really pretty much went to bed for three days until the world reorganized itself around that, Because I knew this was possible. It was one of those.

Patrick: 2:13:12

This was one of the first times that I'd people had told me stories, people I'd trained with, but this was, I knew that I'd had a chat in my head and this whole crop had changed. So it leaves me in no doubt that nature can hear our thoughts. Um, nature can understand us telepathically, we can communicate and, as we were saying earlier in the podcast, they are happy to support us. It didn't need to do that. So, in this telepathic communication, clearly the plants heard me, understood me, had capacity to change and chose to do so, and so it really impressed me of how we live by their grace and generosity, and if they hadn't wanted people on the planet, they could have kept the thing lethal, and then all the cows would have died and the people would have perished and the flood would have come again as it were.

Patrick: 2:14:15

Not my experience. Clear communication, massive cooperation and support Three steps back again from that, though. My hair is grey enough now that I remember growing up at a time when people did not have food allergies.

Patrick: 2:14:33

Yeah, I remember that gray enough now that I remember growing up at a time when people did not have food allergies.

Patrick: 2:14:37

Yeah, and now? Well, now it's so common that it's all over every restaurant um waiters here in the states automatically and I think legally have to ask if you have any food allergies before they serve you anything and schools with peanut butter.

AJ: 2:14:55

Don't even have it near the campus.

Patrick: 2:14:56

Where did this come from? So we can argue well, it's come from pesticides, fertilizers, things in the air, things in the water, residues, various degrees. But what I've realized by the work that I do is, um uh, central to this, it's at the plant's discretion whether it's edible and nutritional or not, literally. And everybody always comments on how the food tastes better from your own garden than it ever can in the supermarket.

AJ: 2:15:32

Yes.

Patrick: 2:15:33

And joining the dots up. That's where the personal touch comes. That's where people are in communion with their plants. They love their plants. There's a personal cooperation. The plant knows who its person is.

Patrick: 2:15:47

Once we scale agriculture to a point where the farmer is no longer literally talking to their plants and their animals and their land, as example in this case, the land and the plants don't know what's happening and they mount a stress response. So I believe I've come to believe that unwittingly we're actually growing toxic food because we're not talking to the plants. And once you get your head around this, it's a bit of a big picture view. If I were to introduce a toxin into the food system, I would be considered criminally negligent and legally accountable. I'm not saying that we should sue our farmers for criminal negligence in producing toxic food, because they don't know that they're doing that and they don't know any different. But I think it's worth a bit of a three steps back. Stark, that crop was going to kill the cows and we chatted to it and then it was highly nutritious, and just to apply that to our food production systems, it's not just for you know the woolly-hatted hippies to go and hug trees, it's actually a survival necessity. If we're going to eat food, you have to talk to it in order that it knows who you are, what your intentions are, and, assuming you get its agreement, then you can safely go ahead and eat it. So I think you know that's.

Patrick: 2:17:30

That's a bit of an illustrative story that pulls a lot of threads together. That's what we used to call husbandry, now it's agricultural science. Husbandry is a marriage of people and place. It's intimate, it's intuitive, it's emotional, it's communicative. So, six and a half thousand years of sustainable husbandry, a hundred years of non-sustainable agricultural science, it's the communication and the heart-feltness, it's literally the love that's in the middle.

Patrick: 2:18:06

And I know from having worked for hundreds of farmers that they deeply, deeply, deeply love and care about their places and their crops and their animals. And they would be horrified to think that they're not doing best practice, and horrified to think that they're not doing a good job and horrified to think that the food going off farm was poisonous. And so I think that's a very exciting thought, that, uh, as I've been doing, um, as is happening more and more, this is very simple re-education. And it's not even re-education, it's, it's really a remembering. This is how our grandparents and great-grandparents and six and a half thousand years of generations knew how to relate to land by observation and patient practice in the same place, for you know, 20 and 30 generations at a time. Talk about epigenetics.

AJ: 2:19:03

Yeah Well, thousands in the case of Australia.

Patrick: 2:19:06

Thousands. So that story is, I think, of particular interest. Yes, it's brilliant. That story is, I think, of particular interest.

AJ: 2:19:14

Yes, and speaking of remembering the Navajo Denae man I was speaking with I mentioned earlier he and his wife in the podcast with them recently and his wife being from Pennsylvania Mennonite family, she said she came to a point where I think she was a bit frustrated with something and and james said to her you need to speak to the plants more and she sort of took that at face value. But then one day she really did and she heard. She heard it back, you know.

AJ: 2:19:50

Um, she describes it well on the on the podcast, you know, as this would be outsider, culturally speaking, conceptualizing herself as such yeah, not inherently, you know, consistent with what you're saying not inherently an outsider at all, but culturally, coming in and then applying what he had suggested was what was missing, and it all changed. And they're not. These aren't the only instances I've heard either, and in very, very pragmatic ways and contexts. And now, yeah, we are reading and learning so much more about this, even in the popular domain, through books and other research that's coming out at the moment, so it does seem to be an opening I think it is an opening, um, and it's a.

Patrick: 2:20:46

It's a pretty simple message and once you got it, um, it's one that you you know is informative. I'd also share another plant-based story, this one from New South Wales, on a property that the farmers described as a Rolls-Royce property with no spark plugs.

Patrick: 2:21:07

And they couldn't tell why it wasn't going well, because it should do.

Patrick: 2:21:10

All the analyses of soil and minerals were really rather good. Um, it was in a relatively uh, benign, uh part of of new south wales and, uh, they'd been doing high density grazingensity, grazing, crop rotations, biodynamics and radionics all on the farm, but they just couldn't get it to perform in the way that they knew that it really should be able to. So they invited me to go and look and what was immediately perceptible to me, looking through my lens, was that the land was terribly, terribly, terribly subdued and held down, held back, overcast by residual energy from an aboriginal massacre that was well known to have occurred there during the period of colonization. And when I looked more deeply into it, through intuition, psychic scanning, dowsing, it became clear that we had earthbound souls, ghosts, on property, left over from the residual angst and emotion of events leading up to and the displacement. And then, a little bit like the alfalfa crop as described, the land did not have the concept of monoculture agriculture at all. It still thought that it was a wilderness and that its job was to support kangaroos and possums. So in that circumstance, quite a lot of the work was first just a healing of the spirit of place, ensuring that the ghosts were properly attended to and successfully repatriated to friends and family in the heavenly realm, the intense emotional residues resolved and blessed and cleared up. And then, same as with the alfalfa, just a good old chat with the land to explain agriculture as we were bringing it and the plants and animals that were being brought to the farm and that we were asking to be supported. And again there was an aha moment where the land got it and said yes and thanks for the clarity and we'll do everything we can.

Patrick: 2:24:02

And two weeks later they planted a sorghum crop and previously their best yield had been 1.6 tonnes per acre, their average had been 1 tonne per acre. This one came in at 2.3 tonnes per acre, which was exciting. And it's not that it made it go faster, it was that that's what that landscape should always been providing. So it was bringing it to its normal, healthy state. Um, but even more exciting, aj, uh, than the, than the crop yield.

Patrick: 2:24:32

Was that one of the landscape intelligence responses, once it fully understood what we were up to and that sorghum, what sorghum was and that sorghum was our ask.

Patrick: 2:24:46

The landscape introduced into the crop so many spiders and wasps that they totally took care of the Heliothis grub, which is the normal predator on sorghum, and they were literally the only one of ten adjacent farmers all being served by the same agronomist not to have to spray for pesticides. So not only did we get this land up to its natural, healthy optimum of production, but we managed to integrate the intelligence so that it's completely self-managing. And that for me again is If that level of communication and cooperation is present, then that puts us into a truly sustainable and joyous relationship. And you know that the land did that for you because you asked it to do it, and so there's no thinking of it as a third party, abstract, inanimate thing. It's if it's, if it's doing that after I asked it to do it and it hasn't done it for the last 20 years, and it's not doing it on anybody else's place. This is a direct response to personal communications and just possibly the thinnest edge of the wedge of what's possible.

Patrick: 2:26:07

I'd also just share a couple stories, because we can communicate with plants. We can communicate with plants. We can communicate with animals. Terry's got a lovely story of wolf whispering in Montana that he may have shared with you.

AJ: 2:26:21

He didn't share that one on the podcast actually.

Patrick: 2:26:25

He was able to communicate with three wolf pack alphas and negotiate that if the wolves had free access to all water, including the water in the cattle troughs, um, and not be shot at that they would leave the calves alone. And uh, indeed, as far as I know, seven, eight years later that's that's still holding up. In my recent trips to australia I had the pleasure of connecting with a wonderfully telepathic Queensland cattle farmer who was losing up to 80 calves per year to dingo strikes 8-0-80 calves which was devastating and stressful and also economically very challenging. And he described a story out one day in the ute and had his rifle and saw an alpha male and shot it dead and then really felt like something had to change because this wasn't good for anybody. So he was naturally psychopathic from birth, had rather dismissed it and marginalized it, but he switched it on and he checked in with the alpha dingoes and came to an arrangement that he would never shoot them again and let them roam the landscape as they wished, as long as they left his calves alone. And this held up for three years. And then one calf was bitten not killed but bitten and he checked back in with the dingoes to see what was going on and they said we know that happened, it wasn't us, it was a rogue dog. Came in from the northes to see what was going on and they said uh, we know that happened, it wasn't us, it was a rogue dog. Came in from the north, we've chased it out of territory, we're still good, so this is all good.

Patrick: 2:28:00

And then a few months later the dingoes come and knock on his door, the door of his mind, and they want to know whether he's still got his gun. And he says yes, I put it in cupboard, but I still got it. What's up? They, well, there's a cat in the territory and we can't catch it. It keeps running up a tree. We're wondering if you'd come and shoot it for us. He did go out three times looking for said cat, didn't find it. And then the dingoes came back to him again, said we've caught up to it, it's all taken care of of. You can put your gun away. So I've come across many people who've got as far as a negotiation mutual with the dingoes, but this was the first time that the dingoes came back and asked for a mafia, hit A competitive predator.

AJ: 2:28:51

But so I'm equally curious then, if this is in us all, how would we people we go about tapping back in remembering? Hmm, I mean, aside from calling you in, Right, or maybe that is the thing. Well, I'm already busy and it's a large world, so I run workshops and do classes and podcasts like your own.

Patrick: 2:29:24

I think this is truly the most natural of all things that we can do. It's almost not a learned thing at all, aj, it's just we have a natural connection to everything. We have a specific connection to whatever we hold in mind and in heart. So, whether you need to talk to your car or your partner or your dog cow or your lawn or your cherry trees, the process is very simple. We just get into a peaceful space and lovingly hold the object of our connective intention in mind until we feel a loving rapport established with it, and then at that point we have these internal conversations and we're talking to things that don't necessarily have a physical voice.

Patrick: 2:30:26

So the return communication is by reciprocal telepathy, where the cow or the plant or the river or the weather is putting thoughts and images into your mind, and so we observe what comes into our mind.

Patrick: 2:30:44

Quite literally, we observe the idea that arises, we observe the thought, the vision, the instinct, the feeling, and we can go backwards and forwards, like that of asking for an idea and getting one back, or asking what they think about bringing the sheep back in or planting carrots next, and then wait and see whether that feels right, whether we get different guidance, whether we get a go-ahead.

Patrick: 2:31:13

So it's quite easy to project our thoughts. I find that perhaps the unfamiliar in the art is the deep listening of then, after having asked, just to sit with the question and allow the answer to emerge. And sometimes it's right there. Sometimes it comes in a dream the next night, sometimes it shows up randomly in a conversation with a friend the following day. The universe has a myriad of ways of getting information to us and getting our attention once we've made it known that there's guidance or information that we need. So I truly think it's when it works. It's effortless, it's one of those and you're relaxing back into your most natural state of being a part of the family of things and having conversations arising.

AJ: 2:32:12

That's a very. These are very consistent threads that come through time and time again over the seven years of doing this podcast and right through to even elite level sport, music, the flow state stuff it's very interesting that the ways that I think we're talking to the same stuff. We've mentioned terry a bit. You guys are still working together, but a bit of a different form, as I understand it.

Patrick: 2:32:38

Terry, avant-garde pioneer, iconic saviour of Australian agriculture. He had started a journey of exploration of dowsing and land whispering before I met him. I was fortunate enough to be invited to the 20th annual conference where, for the first time, rcs really put land whispering out on its main stage. There was so much interest that we then developed a program of three-day level one, three-day level two trainings for farmers, a two-day graduate circle where people working with it could come back and and skill share and support each other. And RCS hosted that until 2023, at which point it made the most sense to allow the Quantum Leap program, which we call this, to be hosted by its own independent body so that it could be developed and extended beyond RCS's capacity to do that.

Patrick: 2:33:59

So we feel very, very, very integrated and connected with RCS and really part of their family, of the menu, of everything that a farmer could possibly need to know, from grazing to profit to low-stress stock handling and fairy whispering. So we were inside of the RCS body for 13, 14 years and now the same characters have created Quantum Leet Subtle Energy. The same characters have created Quantum Leap Subtle Energy, which is a non-profit. That's allowing us to expand our range of offerings as well as the number of workshops. But it's very much a continuous thread. And there was a marvellous moment at the conference when Terry and I were still getting to know each other and for some reason or other we both pulled our pendulums out of our pockets and found that we both had nuts on the ends of strings.

AJ: 2:35:03

So Terry and I bonded by showing each other our nuts in public in a dowsing sense, and never, never, looked back all right'll look forward to, to seeing that come to fruition. Beautiful, very excited. All right, patrick, I think we've run the gamut and come through the large part of the day and it's probably even time to start getting dinner ready. But you know I end with talking about a piece of music, what comes to mind for you.

Patrick: 2:35:36

I think, probably particularly in context, vivaldi's Four Seasons, I think as a piece of music that really captures the spirit and essence of the many moods of a landscape, from its wild ferocity to its gentle peacefulness. It's a lovely piece of music and it was a great favourite as a child, and so I think I'd go for Vivaldi.

AJ: 2:36:06

That's beautiful. When I was 18, I think, and on Struggle Street, and you know a long lover of rock and roll. But at 18, Vivaldi was the first classical music I really got into.

Patrick: 2:36:22

Oh yeah, and four seasons, was it and then I so accessible, yeah, it's so accessible and so well classic it doesn't date no it doesn't?

AJ: 2:36:33

It's beautiful, Wonderful Patrick. Thanks a lot, mate.

Patrick: 2:36:37

It's great to be with you Absolute pleasure, lovely to meet you, lovely to have you here in Vermont and thank you so, so much for your interest in the work and being willing to share it with your audience.

AJ: 2:36:50

The music you're hearing is by Patrick MacManaway. When I learned he played the penny whistle, I asked if he'd play it for us. He said he was out of breath and practice but, blessedly, wasn't too proud to let it fly.

Patrick: 2:37:23

My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.