My friend Rich had suggested last winter that he, Cesco, and myself take a trip through the Balkans to see if we could bring the positive canopy over that so often unsettled region.

     This seemed like a good idea to me, which is one of the reasons I went with “Merlina” through eastern Germany and Poland in April: to bring the canopy as close as we could from the Baltic down south toward the Balkans. We brought it down and across the southern border of Poland, but I did not know how far it extended into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

     On June 2 Cesco arrived in England from Iceland, myself from America, and the next day, with Rich, we flew from Stansted to Ljubljana, Slovenia. At the suggestion of Rich and Don, I had written to Meta Kumer several weeks earlier asking if she would like to get together with us when we came. She has done much to publicize orgonite in Slovenia, and has made and distributed many good orgonite devices in that area. She met us at the airport and graciously opened her house to us during our stay in Ljubljana. She lives in a wonderful place up in mountains in the outskirts of the city, with a stupendous view, a garden, and an orchard, in which latter she gave us free access to pick cherries, strawberries, and raspberries. We could not have asked for a better hostess.
       The place was special in other ways as well, for two quite positive lines of qi crossed in the yard under a tree, and a quite nice spirit, in addition to a resident diva, were present nearby. And on the mountain, higher up, was a vortex just waiting to be opened, to which task we attended the first thing next morning.

     So it seemed an auspicious start. On the 4th Meta drove us gifting to the Slovenian coast on the Adriatic Sea (though she said that in Slovenia it should be called the Jadranskaya Sea). Besides the one mentioned, we gifted three other vortices: one in the forest, one on a hill over the Adriatic (in a heavy cloudburst), and one on a mountain ridge with an imposing  monastery on one end and a statue of Saint Francis on the other.
 
     Next day we took our leave from Meta and drove north into Austria, gifting vortices as we went north, intending to continue until we reached the boundary of the existing European canopy. We reached Vienna by dinner time, and although that city was not beneath the canopy, the latter was visible both to the north and to the east. So after our meal, we turned east and reached Hungary by nightfall, sleeping in the car (in the rain) close to a rest stop over the border.

     We were now under the canopy, but gifted a vortex some way into Hungary, just avoiding getting stuck in the mud after going a little off-road. Shortly before Budapest we turned south again, entering the northern boundary of Serbia. I was surprised and pleased to see a freeway in that country, through we found the tolls rather high. We of course had to leave the freeway to reach vortices, and due to the unexpected appearance of rivers with no bridges, were not always successful in reaching them.

     I recall that in one small town there was a pole with a stork nesting on a platform on the top, and on the base of the pole was written “KLINTON” in Cyrillic letters.

     Early in the evening, about an hour before dark, we were overdue for finding an accessible vortex, when one on a hill on the side of the freeway became apparent. Cesco and Rich stayed with the car on the side of the road while I took off up the hill. Part way up were a number of orchards and vegetable gardens. Not wanting to seem an arrogant trespasser, I walked up to an elderly man hoeing one of the gardens. He was extremely glad to see me. He shook my hand and placed his hands on my shoulders.  Even though we could neither of us understand a word the other spoke, he smiled, showed me his garden, and led me over to a small bench under a tree and offered me a drink out of a bottle of liquor he had there. I had to refuse, so then he brought me some water. I think he would have been glad to have me till dark, but I had to excuse myself and he showed me to a trail up the hill… When I came down after gifting the vortex, I was looking forward to greeting him again, but he had gone home
for the night. Afterwards I heard that Serbian hospitality is famous throughout the region.

     Next day we headed on south, and eventually entered Macedonia. We got the most for our money there of anywhere on the trip. The car we rented could not be driven into Greece, but we wanted to bring the canopy as far south as possible, so we drove right down to the Greek border and gifted a vortex not far by. Driving north again, and finding that we were once more in need of finding a vortex, not long from dusk, we stopped near one on a mountain next to the freeway.  As I began climbing up, I happened to turn around and noticed that a police car had stopped next to our rental car, and that the officer was speaking with Rich and Cesco. I hoped that they would still be there when I got back, but there was not a lot of light left, and so I kept going. Fortunately I soon found a marked path and reached the vortex much more easily than I would have guessed. When I got back to the car, they had eaten dinner, and while I eating my share, they told me that the officers had just been friendly
and were checking to see if they were in trouble.

     We had no good place to stay, and as it was raining off and on, so we decided to drive into the night. Rich did most of the driving, and I thank him for all the stressful work he cheerfully did in this regard. We were under the positive canopy now, and could drive without stopping to gift, so he drove all the way back to the Macedonian-Serbian border, over into Serbia, and up onto a road which our map said would take us to Montenegro. This road was a challenge, especially in the dark: part gravel and dirt, and what pavement there was being filled with potholes. We kept moving slowly up into the mountain and, somewhere about midnight, were stopped at a checkpoint by Serb police.
     The Serbian police looked at our passports, assured us that it was simply a checkpoint, and let us go on. Just over the hill was another group of police, who stopped us again. Turns out were at the de facto Serbian/Kosovo border, and the Serbians don’t officially recognize Kosovo yet, so they did not mention that they were actually on border patrol. The Kosovo police were quite friendly, freely gave us plenty of information and advice, but…. charged us €50 for additional auto insurance. We had to either pay it, or go back and around de facto Kosovo (which would have cost much more). So we paid it, and drove on into the night. Eventually we stopped at the side of the road and picked up a few hours sleep in the car.

     Next morning (Thursday the 7th) we woke up just after daybreak and drove (sleepily) through Kosovo, back into Serbia, and then over the border into Montenegro. We drove south, on mountain roads.
  We stopped for at an interesting Greek Orthodox monastery named Moraca , with a quite respectable spirit, on the edge of a high cliff over a river. 
  Then we went back to the mountain road in the rain behind slow trucks down to the coast. At the coast the weather turned sunny and we found a vortex on a small mountain, just a few miles from the beach.

     It is generally easier to find and reach vortices near the coast. To find, partly because vortices seem to occur on higher ground in a given area, and the beach is higher than the water. But it is more than this -- I cannot ever recall sensing a vortex under water close to the coast. I do not know the reason for this – just that it is so.

     We spent the night in the town of Kotor, and had a good cheap meal at a restaurant in the old town (within the old city walls). This is a vacation port, with plenty of tourists, but we luckily found a room to spend the night for €30 (though some of us had to sleep on the floor).
 
     Fortified with a good night’s sleep on Friday, we drove north into Croatia.
  Little of special interest occurred that day, and we slept in the car again, at a road stop. Actually two of us slept in the car, as Cesco found a miniature house in the children’s play area in which he could stick his sleeping bag.

     We had covered a considerable distance in four days, and it seems appropriate to mention a certain change. When Cesco and I began gifting in Germany two years ago, we had to to find a new vortex every 40 kilometers or so, in order to create a new positive canopy, and to keep it advancing behind us. On the trip to Thailand in February, and the trip to eastern Germany and Poland in April, I found that that minimum distance had increased to about 100 kilometers. In this Balkan trip we were gifting at about 100 kilometers, and find that in the morning the positive canopy would have passed us up and moved some distance ahead of us. It may be that the intensity of the positive qi in the canopy as increased to the point that it increases with smaller additions: or it may be that there is more positive qi now in the sky even where the canopy has not yet spread, and so makes increase faster. I simply do not know the reason – but the fact is certain that is is easier to extend the canopy now
than formerly.

    On our entire journey north through Croatia we were under the Canopy. It had moved down from Austria through that part of Slovenia near the sea coast (which we had gifted Monday with Meta), and west from Serbia, to cover all of Croatia. On Saturday we traveled north to the Slovenian border, thence to the Italian border, past Trieste, and turned south again.
     We passed Venice, Padua, Florence, and spent the night sleeping outside in a farmer’s yard (with his permission) in a area somewhat north of Rome. The weather ever since Kotor continued to be sunny, and I found it a much better sleep out on the soft ground and in a car seat,

     Next day was slow, due to traffic congestion and road repair. In the evening we tried an experiment when gifting vortex on a hill just before dark. But explaining the experiment requires a little background.
     
     Manfred, who writes in the German forum, wrote me about the beginning of May concerning a discovery he made. He made some TBs, placing them above a CB for the resin to cure. He found that these TBs had a special effect: positive qi swirls up above them similar to the way it comes up from a CB. He said he would send me some photographs  when he could. A week or so later I received the photographs, and from them it seemed that indeed he was correct. I repeated his experiment in my shop and found and obtained similar results. I made 12 TBs in a muffin tin and cured them by resting the muffin tin on top of the pipes of a CB (my first one, made 4 years ago). The five which were above the space encircled by the pipes were all special: the others were not.
     It then occurred to me that perhaps these special TBs could be used to charge water.  I placed one of them several inches under a wooden plate, poured two glasses of water, placing one to the side, and one on top of the wooden plate. After some hours I found that the water in the class over the TB was charged, as if it had been charged over a CB. The other on the side was not charged.

     This all occurred shortly before the Balkan trip, and I did not have time to report on it before now. I also wanted to do a couple more experiments as well: one was to see if a single special TB could change a negative line in the ground to a positive one, the way a carefully placed circle of 6 TBs will do; the other was to see if gifting a vortex with a special TB would produce any unusual results. We did the first experiment on a negative line at Meta’s place, and found that the single special TB did not change it to positive.
     We did the second experiment that night in southern Italy. I used three special TBs which I had brought with me from home on the vortex.  We slept near the vortex that night, and next morning positive qi was swirling up into the sky strongly. But several days later, on our trip back up north, I had a chance to view the opened vortex once again, and though working properly, it did not seem perceptively better than vortices opened by ordinary charged TBs.

     The morning after opening that vortex we headed on south.  The positive canopy was not over southern Italy the day before, but had proceeded ahead of us to the south, even  over Sicily. I felt that to bring the canopy as far south as possible during this trip, we should cross into Sicily and gift a vortex near its southernmost coast. This would stretch it far into the Mediterranean at that longitude, since the southern coast of Sicily is more north than is Tunis in Tunisia in northern Africa.
     We crossed by ferry, and made it about 2/3rds of the way through the island before nightfall. Now by then, the positive canopy had likely been over Sicily for 12 hours or more. Consequently we could not check to see how the sky above the island had been before coming of the canopy. But we could feel the trees, and lesser plants, and without exception their elementals all expressed painful stress. We slept on the ground that night in a camp site. Next morning the trees felt somewhat better, but were still under palpable stress.

    For a good part of the trip south through Sicily both Cesco and I could feel a strong vortex far to the south. Mount Etna, which is a volcano in the northern half of the island, felt quite negative driving past it, but I felt that it was not the right time for us to try to do anything about it.  The dormant vortex far to the south also felt negative, and this I had a clear feeling we should attend to.
     So next morning we proceeded south and eventually found the vortex. It was on the coast, and one of the southernmost points of the island. There was one strong point where it surfaced, and about this point we placed a circle of 6 TBs, in the manner one uses to change a negative line to a positive one. Almost immediately a very tall positive entity appeared on the spot. Before and after we had gifted the vortex Cesco had felt a huge and negative entity out in the sea not too far away from the shore, to whose presence I can attest.
       We walked back to the car and began to drive back. When we had found the correct road north, Cesco directed my attention to the trees. In the upper branches you could feel a huge expression of relief and thanks. The feeling was so strong, it made one want to weep. And this was within 20 minutes of opening the vortex.
  This feeling in the trees persisted strongly for some time, relaxing to just a positive feeling by the time we had returned half way up the island.

    Our trip back north up Italy to Slovenia was without special incident, although it took us more than two full days of steady driving. Our good weather finally deserted us when we crossed the mountains west of Ljubljana, and we drove through heavy thunder and lightning. Meta met us in the city, took us to her house for one more night of Slovenian hospitality (including an excellent soup made from her garden and some apricot knödel).
 
     The positive canopy now covers all of western and central Europe, with the possible exception of parts of Spain and southern France.
 

     I had made Ireland flight reservations before the German/Poland trip, and it was only then that I learned Ireland was already under the positive canopy. We considered altering our itinerary, but after consideration that Ireland is one foundation, as it were, of the canopy "bridge" over the North Atlantic, it seemed best to open some vortices on the "Emerald Isle".

     We landed in Dublin on June 19th. Our strategy was to identity those dormant vortices which exuded the most negative qi, and to attend to them, in sequence. While disembarking Cesco felt the negative effects of one in partictular and, upon consulting our compass, I found that the negative qi proceeded from somewhere almost due south. So we drove south, along the coast, and reached the beach near Rosslare near dusk. It was close to dark by then, and so we sought out a place to park for the night, and found one just off the beach. It rained that night, as it rained it least a part of every day we spent on the island, so we slept in the car. In the morning, after several false starts due to dead-end beach roads, we found the vortex. It was rather strong, having been observable from 180 kilometers north. Returning along the sandy beach, Cesco called my attention back to the vortex, now about 100 meters back, and sure enough, a strong positive entity had appeared above it.
 
     Our second vortex was also on the southern coast -- in this case just east of Skibbereen -- and we first noticed it near Waterford, as I recall.
  It was on the beach as well, but one not so easy of access. Above was a 40 foot cliff (with a negative entity), and to each side the rocks extended out into the sea. So we had to  park a kilometer or so away, hike back up the beach, and wade around the rocks through the water to reach the place. On the way back, after reaching dry land again, some nymphs showed themselves off in the waves. I asked what they thought of the opened vortex, and they seem in high spirits in their positive response. Then I asked if it might be of some help in the coming conflict. Once more the response was positive, but much more restrained, and given in a sober attitude.

     I had read of a large circle of stones located south of the city of Limerick, and wanted to see it. We proceeded north, through Bantry, Kinmare, and Killarney. Somewhere along the way we became aware of another negative vortex. While not intentionally following its spoor, we came to it, as it was located within the circle. Just as we drove in, a large party was leaving and, to our good fortune, the place was left to us (and about a half dozen Holstein heifers) for about an hour. There were many stones in the circle, which seemed unusually complete.
  I suspect that it had been long out of operation however, for virtually every rock required some work before reinitiating it.
     It is my experience that when these "neolithic" circles are operating, qi flows along the circle. The process of getting it going again is something like turning the flywheel of a car or tractor, but requires considerably more rotation than the latter before it "kicks in" and continues to move by itself. Of course there is no actual flywheel to grab or crankshaft to turn -- one must use his "mind" or "middle eye" to move the qi. Since the mind is doing the work, it might seem as though no actual physical action is required: but this is not the case. Suppose that you are situated within a circle, that you move your mind out to that circle, and that you move it in one direction continuously around that circle. If you try to keep it focused directly away from the center all the way, you will at some point feel considerable stress. It becomes necessary at some point along the circuit to permit your mind to rotate on its own axis. When moving the qi along the stone circle, it seems necessary to keep your mind on that qi fixed -- you cannot let it rotate on its axis. Consequently, if you are standing within the circle of stones, and moving qi around the stones, your head must turn in concert with the qi as it moves. And if your head turns, your entire body must turn, so you must whirl "like a dervish". This requires footwork, and resistance to dizziness.
     One begins slowly, and the stones appear individually as one turns. But the speed gradually increases and the stones turn to a blur. The appearance or "feeling" of the qi as it moves around the stones reminds me of nothing so much as flowing mercury. The speed at which this "mercury" will flow seems only bounded by how good is ones whirling footwork.
     In the present case, I ran out of breath twice, and it took three separate attempts to get things going.
     When we left the circle to eat our lunch sandwiches, a seemingly endless stream of visitors began arriving. One was a lady with a drum, who had to wait awhile before she could obtain sufficient solitude to commence her work. It reminded me somewhat of Merlina and her friends in Germany who drum to the spirits in special locations there.

     The most interesting site of our Irish trip was a church in the countryside between and south of the cities of Derry and Coleraine. The oldest part of the present structure is known to have been constructed in the early 13th century, but one tradition has it that there has been a church at the site at least as far back as 474 AD in the time of St. Patrick. Another tradition is that the site was found by the Irish St Muiredach O’Heney, who was led there by a white stag.
     One reason it was interesting is that it is on a vortex. The only other two such churches I recall seeing like that were the one reported on our German trip two years ago, and one we found later in a destroyed abbey on the Montgomery estate in the vicinity of Newtownards north of Belfast. In this case, as with the old church in Germany, there was a strong negative entity within the church as we arrived. Also in both cases, the vortex touched the surface in only one point. When this one point was gifted, the negative entity was greatly weakened, as before. And in this case, it shortly left, on its own.
     Outside the church were two smaller buildings, one reportedly housing the remains of O'Heney. Certainly a very respectable ghost was there and, as often is not the case, this ghost knew that his physical body was dead, and that he must leave at some point. It lingered there to protect the church in some way, and seemed to be determined to remain until it was no longer needed in this regard. Near the end of our visit, Cesco had an intimate quiet time with this ghost saint.
       We ate lunch outside the church, and while sitting there, a large band of some 50 to 100 crows flew over us, and circled many times around the church and the surrounding ground.
 
     Many years ago I had visited Ireland with my parents, and one place which remained in my memory from that time was the megalithic mound at Newgrange in the Boyne River valley. In those days one could just drive up to the site and inspect it freely at ones leisure. Now it is designated as a protected area, and one is permitted to visit it only by driving to a building about a mile away, buying tickets, riding a bus to the site, and only entering the passage into the mound in the presence of a tour guide.
     But it is still worth seeing.  First it is very old: constructed about 600 years before the Great Pyramid at Giza, and about 1000 years before Sonehenge. Second, as one might expect, its construction exploited interesting qi configurations, still extant and observable.
     The passage tomb is within a huge manmade hill, about 11 meters high and perhaps 100 meters in diameter. The hill was constructed from flat stones, placed so that they sloped away from the center, and so any rain seeping into the earth would drain away to the base of the hill, leaving the interior perfectly dry through the past 5 millennia. A tunnel penetrates the hill, about a third of the way through, and at the end of the tunnel are three vaults having flat stones at the base. Contiguous to these is a larger vault, some meters high, into which the tunnel enters. Above the tunnel is a small passage way, just large enough to permit a beam of light, and on only one time of one day of the year (winter solstice) does the light penetrate completely through this upper passage, to reach the middle vault at the end of the main tunnel.
     A ring of stones, each perhaps about the size of a man and brought from many kilometers away, serves as the boundary at the base of the hill. Above them is a wall of white quartz stones, which has been restored as well as possible to its original state.
     On some of the base stones are carvings: in particular the stone at the tunnel entrance, and the stone directly opposite on the back of the mound. On these two stones are carved sets of swirls, some swirling in clockwise, and some counter-clockwise. On each there is exactly one spot where a clockwise swirl contacts a counter-clockwise swirl. If one could push the tunnel entrance stone directly through the mound to match it with the stone at the back, so that these contact points coincided, he would find that the swirls would exactly match.
       There is in fact a strong positive line of qi in the ground, straight as a string from horizon to horizon, which runs through the mound, directly under said swirl contact points. The direction that the qi flows through this line is such that it passes from the back to the mound to the front of the mound: roughly from northwest to southeast. This means that the tunnel of the mound was built so that the beam of light penetrating to the uttermost vault inside on winter solstice would be in exact allignment to with the positive line of qi. Furthermore, the light from the sun would be flowing in the exact opposite direction in which the qi was flowing. I believe it would be quite interesting to be present at that point, during the appropriate time on winter solstice. Unfortunately only a few people can fit inside at one time, and some thousands of people draw lots for these few positions, and even the lucky few cannot be sure that the sky will not be cloudy when the time comes.
     There is moreove a second line of qi which passes through the mound. It is not perfectly straight like the first, but runs roughly north-south: or rather south-north, since the qi flows from south to north. It is in a way more interesting than the first line, because the qi does not flow straight along it, but rather in a swirling way as if along a coil. This second line intersects the first line, nigh as I could tell, through the vault directly at the end of the tunnel. 
     The people who constructed the mound are thought to have come to Ireland about 4000 BC, and the flat rocks at the base of the vaults within the mound are thought to have been in place long before the mound was constructed.

     Also in the Boyne Valley is the Hill of Tara, home of the old kings of Ireland. When we arrived there were tents, caravans, and people protesting a proposed freeway which is planned to run through this old historical area. Tara is a sheep run now, though you can see outlines of the old ruins. It was worth the trip to see it, but perhaps more interesting was a rath some distance down the road. A rath is [Oxford Enlish Dictionary] "an enclosure (usually of a circular form) made by a strong earthen wall, and serving as a fort and place of residence for the chief of a tribe; a hill fort". This one is serves now as a farmer's pasture, and one must actually get inside it to appreciate it.  As the definition indicates, it is a large circular earthen wall, surrounded by a ditch (likely formed when the earth was dug out to form the wall). Cesco proceeded me out into it, and found that near the center was a vortex, something which was not to be found on Tara Hill proper.

     The final vortex we treated on the trip was a peat bog. This was one of those vortices, like one I found last year in South Africa, and one a month or so ago in Poland near the Russian border, where rather than touching the earth's surface in several points, it spread out over a larger area and could be gifted anywhere on that area. We of course chose a place where it seemed the peat would not be harvested (dug out) in the future.

     We returned the rental car in Dublin the night before our departure. Since Cesco had to check in for his flight at 4 AM the next morning, we tried to catch a few hours sleep on the airport floor. Due to repeated loud warnings from the loudspeaker not to leave our baggage unwatched, we didn't succeed too well however. My plane to America was delayed and did not get away until 7:30 the next evening, and by then I was pretty drowsy. I only managed to stay awake until the plane had passed over Greenland, but up until the time I fell asleep, there was never a time on the Atlantic flight that I did not see positive canopy in every direction. When I woke we were in northwestern Canada, there was again positive canopy in all directions.

Photos are from Cesco and his camera.
  ~Laozu