Legacy of a Legend
Hamish Miller: A man who opened doors
A talk by Nigel Twinn at North Hill Village Hall
There are few people in the history of modern dowsing who have had quite such an influence on its development as the late Hamish Miller. The discoveries he made were significant - but the implications of those discoveries are profound.
Hamish will probably always be known primarily as one of the team that rediscovered the ‘Michael’ and ‘Mary’ earth energy lines that snake across southern England from Cornwall to Norfolk. Perhaps this is inevitable, as it was one of the first cracks in the dam of denial that had surrounded the subject of Earth Energy since it was first brought into the public domain back in the 1970’s.
The publication of the finding of these lines set off so many lines of enquiry, and so many people following those threads, that it has to be one of the most important ideas of its age. At the time, the publication of the story of the project - The Sun and the Serpent - hardly caused a ripple outside of the small and isolated band of independent researchers who knew ‘there had to be more to life than this’. Twenty years on, the S&S is selling steadily and its influence is finally being acknowledged. Many, like myself, who used to be thought of as being part of the Woodstock generation, are now proud to be part of the growing S&S community. Like a tiny firework in a massive arsenal, the S&S set off a chain of reactions that just keep on blowing holes in the walls of our inherited complacent reality.
Yet none of this was the intention of the Cornish Scot, who only picked up his rods at all as a result of the mind-expanding experience ensuing from his premature death. Miller was part of a surprisingly large proportion of the population who have passed through the veil, by virtue of a Near Death Experience, and returned to tell their tale. In so doing, he turned his back on a highly successful career as a big-league furniture designer and company director - to become an impoverished blacksmith, with an open mind.
His introduction to the arcane art of dowsing via Colin Bloy and Michael Colmer is a story that could grace a Harry Potter book - except that this one is real, it happened very close to us, and not very long ago. While Hamish became aware, in due course, of some of the written work of the leviathans of modern dowsing - including Underwood, Michell, Lonegren, Bloy and Gawn - his first steps were made largely without close supervision and without the slightest idea of where such a path would lead. Consequently, he set off on a course that would change his life, and ours, without a conceptual compass or a virtual hard hat.
However, despite his previous prowess as a captain of industry, he took little interest in gaining personal credit for the revelations of his research. He felt that he had merely been in the right place at the right time to channel insight from one realm to another. He was prepared to be the Front Man only to propagate the truth that had been passed on to him. His only real pride was in his work as a largely self-taught blacksmith. He clearly embodied the view that once you have been even slightly enlightened, then wealth, fame and status become matters of transient significance - issues of brief terrestrial concern, not cosmic importance.
Yet, while he stood, as we all do, on the shoulders of those who have gone before us - and in his case on the shoulders of giants - at least some of the portals he pushed open were all but unique to his work. There is scant reference in the pre-Miller literary cannon to the Pictograms that he researched with Colin Bloy, and none that I can find relating to the Manifestations that Hamish found to occur in the ether, at important nodal intersection points of earth energy lines.
His work on the spirit of place that evolved from his partnership with Barry Brailsford in New Zealand was cutting-edge - and his realisation that the consciousness of the dowser can interact with the consciousness of the planet, through the medium of earth energy, was nothing short of seismic in significance.
Being an engineer by trade and inclination, Hamish only ever put his name to ideas that he had thoroughly proven to his own satisfaction. He listened to the views of many people, but only when he had tried them out for himself, did he speak in their support. This gives his body of work a level of robustness that some other modern theorists tend to lack. He felt strongly that it was only worth espousing those concepts which worked for him in the here and now. He may have become something of a latter-day visionary, but he was no idle dreamer.
That Hamish Miller was one of the more accomplished dowsers of the post-war era is not in doubt. However, it is the appreciation that what dowsing allows you to discover could, and should, change your whole world-view - indeed, your whole understanding of the reality you thought you knew - that really picks him out as a vital link in the chain of emerging post-modern philosophy. Where the next links will form, as human history unfolds, is unclear. Many of us have been passed the shards of a baton - and maybe everyone has been shown the potential of their path.
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