Dowsing for Everyone 1

• This gives instances for generating the term Homolog. The first involves the use of a map, or even a sketch of an area, to find where water may lie. The results are duplicated when walking the land directly. The second involves asking simple questions, to get Yes or No answers, when asked with sincere, focussed intent. One may find any water, or potable water, or potable water from a vein of a water dome, by changing the specific question.
• Henry Howells the author has several brief summations:
• Almost anyone can dowse. However, different people need different types of rods, or even a simple hand. The odds are roughly 4 to 1 that a person who has never tried it will show some ability.
• Approach the subject with an open mind. If you are laughing and embarassed, you will fail.
• Success is most likely when there is a need. It need not be a major need; it is enough to show non-believers that dowsing might work. It is enough to do it to sharped skills. It should not be a greedy materialistic desire.
• Avoid errant thoughts and mental deviations from the search. This can be through keeping the mind blank, or through staying with a single mental image.
• Flippancy can diminish or even destroy the ability of the dowser.
• The question must be phrased specifically to get an accurate answer. Asking questions such as if a vein is 100 feet down, 20 feet down, or would give a flow of five gallons a minute or seven gallons a minute get numerical accuracy. However, once the investigator was admiring the lush turned fall vegitation on the other side of the Connecticut River, and walking had his rods indicate that he was walking across a culvert.
• Record your findings as they are made and check them against results. Don't equivicate with "maybe" or "perhaps" for only absolute self-honesty convinces absolutely.
• Adherence to the truth is the cornerstone of dowsing.
• There is much more to dowsing than the ability to locate water. It has been arround at least 6000 years, as cave paintings in the Sahara at Tassili-n-Ajer that were found in 1939 by archeologist Henry Llote attest. Dowsers have estimated that since colonial days, over three hundred thousand wells have been dowsed.

• The book is by Harvy Howells and was published by the Stephen Greene Press of Brattleboro, Vermont in 1979, with ISBN 0-8289-0341-7 and BF1628.H68.

The Jargoon Pard 1

• My book was written in 1974 by Andre Norton as a Del Rae book published by Ballantine Books with ISBN: 0-345-31192-2 and Library of Congress number 83-90024.
• This is a book of the Witch World, in an area north of Estcarp and Escore, called Arvon. The protagonist, Kethan, relates his life from birth, kidnapping by Lady Haroise to have a son that inherits and replace a daughter Aylinn that can not, estranged raising in a manor where all animals fear him. He inherits as he is the son of the sister of the House Lord Erach (who is unaware of everything happening), and the Maughus, Lord Erach's son, is his enemy, and Thaney, Lord Erach's daughter, is to be his bride. A visiting trader Ibycus leaves a belt of leopard skin with a Jargoon stone buckle with Lady Edris, Lord Erach's mother, who has Thaney give it as a betrothal gift to Kethan. Later, the full moon and the belt draw him out to run free, and as he sneaks back Ursilla, the wise woman 'serving' Haroise, demands it from him. He rejects her demand, and at a later moon, when it gives him a leopard's form, she has a servant hawk rip it from him, trapping him at that form. He finds his true parents, Gillan and Herrel, and Alynn his replacement, and they overcome their suspicions about him and help him regain his form and learn his true identity as a were-animal, like his father Herrel, who is a were-snow-leopard.
• This is a familiar story, and Kethan is sympathetic in his struggles, learning patience and how to change his form by himself. The feudal system is interesting, and the shadows of older power centers are well developed.
• At one point, Andre Norton actually imparts a full bit of structure. Magic comes in nine forms, all of which may be used for the Light and for the Dark.
• Red is for health of body, physical strength, the art of war.
• Orange is self confidence and strong desire.
• Yellow is magic of the mind, needing logic and philosophy, the art of Thaumaturge.
• "Green is the hue not only of Nature's growing things and fertility, but also of beauty and the creating of beauty though man's own efforts." (p 106)
• Blue summons emotions, whatever gods men believe in, and prophecy.
• Indigo is weather, storms, and foretelling though the stars.
• Purple has seeds of hate, lust, fear, and power, and is far too easily misused.
• Violet is the pure power of spirits.
• Brown is the magic of woods and glades, and of the animal world.
• Kethan seeks Brown and Blue, and honors Green. He several times abstains from murder of enemies (purple, orange, and red), and frees himself from an entrapping pentagon of candles by changing their orange and red color to blue and green flame. He reaches to his parents, declaring his allegiance to blue and green. When Ursulla traps Kethan and Alynn with purple flames, she generates silvery moon-light to extinguish them. (Moon light plays a role here -- is it silver, a new color?)
• Mention is made of Gunnora, one who presides at birth, and this presents part of the shadowy system of gods and goddesses which Andre Norton never does present in full, but only on part. They are as much shamanic heroes as gods, and their origin is often implied to be that of adepts in power, with allegiance to yet higher beings. This is not unlike the Finnish system of powers. The magic system is a framework against which the chain of allegiance rests.

The Gate of the Cat - has a Homolog

Andrea Norton wrote "The Gate of the Cat" in 1987 and it was published as an Ace book by the Berkley Publishing Group as ISBN: 0-441-27380-7. It is part of her extensive Witch World series.

• This echos the first book of the series, "Witch World" where Simon Tregarth of our world chooses to pass irrevocably through a gate into the Witch World where he finds unusual powers and a wife. However, Kelsie accidentally passes through in company with a Wild Cat (who is the only agent who seems to understand what is going on), ends up with a witch's lens, and uncertainly finds a mate Yonan, and uncertainly decides to accept staying. She is wearisome to read about.
• However, at the end, she wins her way with Yonan and with Wittle, a power-crazed orthodox witch, to a place where a valley basin shows a miniature model of the lands of Escarrp and Escore, even including its own miniature model. There, shafts of power strengthen the Dark areas, or weaken them, and we realize that the model is a true Homolog of the world of action. It reminded me of the Layers of walled garden at the end of C. S. Lewis' "The Last Battle" where within each garden of paradise is a larger, more real one. However, this Homolog is static, and at the end seems to map to itself, rather than a more glorious land.
• The blue-white rays of the Light seesaw with the red rays of the Dark, driven by a nameless dancer who generates the red with "some strange formal dance". Yonan vanishes into the basin, and the wildcat forces Kelsie to enter it, returning to the place of sanctuary, the Valley of the Green Silences. This is lovingly sketched as a rallying place for the Light in the land of Escore.
• Places and structures are judged by several senses. Color is a common one, with green and blue supporting the Light and yellow and red supporting the Dark. Stench indicates a place with different allegience, and this means for Kelsie, places of the Dark have a stench. For Kelsie, coldness indicates the Dark.
• I was disappointed when we meet Kemoc and Kyllan and their father Simon Tregarth, all heros of other books of the series. Robert Heinline has his heroes banter and reveal some of how they are doing when they meet from different story lines in "The Number of the Beast", but Andre Norton only sketches these figures. However, her sketches are evocative in general, making her a writer to return to. Heinline's interactions get heavy and cumbersome, and so I should accept my disappointment as the price for meeting the characters.

Dread Companion 1

• I read this Andre Norton again on Dec 25, 2007, many years after my first reading. A young lady, Kilda, is in charge of tutoring two children, and the older one, Bartare, acts as a changeling, compelling her younger brother, Oomark, to follow her into a fairy-land to join with the Folk led by her dread companion, Melusa. Kilda, equipped with a back-pack holding food for a picnic, follows them through a 'gate' and finds her-self in a world of shapes, where Oomark sees trees, rocks, and berries.
  
• There is a 3 way struggle in this land, for there is fruit for the Folk, other fruit for the Dark, and flowers of the notus for the original inhabitants of the land who were displaced by the Folk. The flowers allow Kilda to reverse the change in shape, by cutting through the transformative properties of the Folk's fruit. Kilda meets Kasgro, a first on planet scout who had stumbled into the land 400 years earlier, and who had existed on fruit when his home food was stolen. He had not offered allegiance to either the Folk or the Dark, and had been changed to a satyr, even as Oomark is changing into a faun. Kilda's food, and the flowers slowly change them back, and even manage to change back Bartare, who is rejected by the Folk. They return 100 years later, to a planet distorted by the chaos of an alien invasion. Bartare and Oomark are content to stay, but Kilda joins Kasgro in his 500 year old scout ship to see what is left.
  
• The agonies of avoiding the Folk's fruit, the struggles with agents of the Dark who may be controlled by their names, and the abilities to travel long distances by ritual paths are all familiar themes which are used to keep the tension going. I was concerned for Kilda, who knew nothing of the land, until she stumbles on the flowers of the notus, (her power base, along with the food in the backpack) and enlists the aid of Kasgro. I was opposed to the selfish workings of Bartare, who dominated her younger brother by fear, and who finally rejects the promises of the Folk, even being unwilling to record what she had learned of them for posterity. I saw the odd shapes of the unfamiliar land, where things are colorful cylinders and triangles, and where the temptation to eat the luscious food of the Folk must be fought.
  
• My book was published by Ace in 1970.
  
• This is my first entry, for reader travel. Since I have retired and ordered my books for packing for Finland, I anticipate writing many thumbnail accounts of books, short stories, and National Geographic travel articles.