21) Radionic Photography

The delirious pace of development in the Delawarr Laboratories after the war proceeded unabated. One has to realize that as fast as Bill de la Warr and his team were designing and building new devices, Marjorie was busy perfecting their use and treating patients with them. They were having excellent results. They were also carrying out their operation with very high professional standards, especially as to who could buy and be trained to use this technology. Aside from the animosity aroused on the scientific issues (or lack thereof), for all appearances the de la Warrs were in the midst of an extraordinary surge of discovery. These discoveries were similar to Radionics in America after Abrams. Only "instruments" in the visual sense of the word, their ability to function successfully remained subject to the operator’s psychic ability. The main difference between the instrument and pure psychic ability was that anyone with the prerequisite skill could learn to calibrate and tune the instrument to a specific goal.

What is not generally acknowledged is how much radionic technology influenced the arts. Ruth Drown should be considered the first radionic inventor to invent an art-form. This would be Drowns discovery of radionic photography.
Later, Delawarr Laboratories, without intending to, took the radionic/art overlay much further. With each refinement of their light boxes, diagnostic tools, radionic cameras and abstract renderings of the human energy field, all utilizing controlled pattern affects the Delawarr technology grew closer to art.

Their concepts evoked a Surrealistic vision of Nature; their devices shared the aesthetic qualities of artists like Marcel DuChamp and others experimenting with ‘Radio Art’. While these similarities were most likely accidental, the convergence of European occult traditions with Dada and Surrealist Art were certainly anything but. Avant Guard thinking permeated all new fringe ideas and drew from them for inspiration. The de la Warr’s discoveries could hardly have escaped this scrutiny. Artists fed up with war, materialism and bourgeois culture could easily have taken joy and inspiration from the odd (and beautifully crafted) therapeutic devices produced by the de la Warr and others that appeared to function through magic.

The fact that British Radionics’ connection to art remains obscure can be attributed to several factors. The de la Warrs were ultimately hoping to obtain funding and the approval of the medical community. For this reason, their research efforts were structured in a quasi-scientific manner. In order to sustain credibility as a healing technology, Radionics under the de la Warrs needed to project a clean, untarnished public image as void of cultural controversy as possible.

All semblances to Voodoo or the occult were a liability in this regard. Even connecting their instruments to Avant Guard art could potentially relegate their technology to metaphor. As it was, even without scientific approval, clients were reporting cures and more and more people; including MD's were beginning to give radionics the benefit of the doubt. Radionics was walking a tightrope.

The precarious balance sustained by the de la Warrs was soon to meet a serious challenge. The tension between the self-referential methodologies employed in their research and the "burden of proof" required meeting scientific standards met headlong in a tempestuous fury when it came to the subject of radionic photography. As the debate over the authenticity of these radionic photographic techniques has recently resurrected itself, we will examine de la Warr’s original radionic photographic efforts.

On January 18, 1955 the Delawarr laboratories received a French Patent, No. 1,084,318 titled “Improvements in Research into Fundamental Radiation” for what was being called “the de la Warr radionic camera”. In practice, it worked much the same way as the Drown instrument, though it had no design similarities. Like the Drown camera, it could not produce photographs by itself without the addition of a stimulus from the operator or someone in the room with psychic abilities. This impediment did not prevent the Mark I camera from taking over 12,000 photographs in the eight years following its invention.

A description of the way the Mark I de la Warr camera operates is taken from a recent study of how it works, to be discussed in due course. “The Camera consists of 4 major "boxes" mounted on a plinth which contains a vibrator driven by a 220 volt supply. The vibrator is turned on during the time the Cassette is inserted into the Light Tight Box, which is mounted superior to the other three specimen and tuning boxes. The Cassette contains the unexposed film or photographic plate (as in the original silver emulsion plates). The film is "exposed" in total darkness. There are focusing devices inside the top box which "direct" the information/energy towards the plate or film. The three other boxes are mounted beneath the top box and two of them contain specimen plates, magnetic tuning devices and radionic dials (to specify the information "codes"). The boxes also contain various types of focusing devices. The technique requires that the photographic medium (film or plate) be "sensitized" briefly in the dark room (no half-light is permitted at this stage) before being placed in the light tight Cassette. When this is done the Cassette is inserted through a slot in the bottom of the top box where it is "exposed" to the information being sought by the operator. After the Cassette is withdrawn it is taken to the darkroom and development of the film or plate proceeds normally. Before the Cassette is loaded the operator(s) place an appropriate specimen on the plate(s) of one of the 2 tuning boxes beneath the Light Tight Box. The box dials are then "tuned" directly to the information being sought--e.g.: Myocardial, Infarction or Tuberculosis etc, etc. The individual doing the plate sensitization is not necessarily the same person operating the camera. The camera will not produce an image if the condition etc is not specified precisely. A good example of this occurred years ago when a patient was suspected of having carcinoma in his jaw. The camera would not produce any image until the code was reset for Osteomyelitis at which point the image was produced."*

For a time, the Mark I was loaned to an unidentified doctor and hospital where roughly 400 photos were taken of patients under treatment, allowing for an independent verification of the cameras medical benefit. Edward W. Russell in REPORT ON RADIONICS describes meeting this mysterious Doctor. The Doctor reported to Russell that the only time high quality photos emerged was when an operator from the Delawarr lab was present at the time the pictures were taken. However, in spite of this drawback, the Doctor did not believe the pictures were fakes. Russell, after asking bluntly about their authenticity quoted the Doctor as saying: "No, even if they had wanted to do so--and I have no reason to whatever to think they might – the people at the laboratories simply do not have the anatomical knowledge to produce some of the pictures that came out of the Camera."

By way of example, the Doctor told Russell of an incident where he obtained a cross sectional photograph of the brain of a patient from a drop of blood that revealed a large tumor. An autopsy following her death revealed a tumor in the exact position and of the identical shape and size of the tumor in the photograph.

In spite of the many clear cut cases of correct medical imaging and substantial evidence that the camera could become a valuable medical tool, the Doctor was forbidden to continue his investigation as soon as word leaked out to higher authorities regarding his success with the Camera.

From a strictly artistic point of view, there are other discoveries that were made in the Delawarr Laboratories with the camera that are of great interest. First of all, there is the camera itself. If thought photography could work merely by psychic concentration, then why bother with a large, cumbersome instrument the size of a refrigerator (which is how the de la Warr camera has been described)? The answer, the lab discovered, was that while it was possible to produce an adequate photograph by psychic means alone, the camera was needed to produce repeatable identical ones.

One might surmise that the instrument be recognized as new type of camera. If radionic cameras function in part like ordinary cameras, then any photographer seeking to extend the boundaries of his medium would undoubtedly find these cameras of interest.

Another subjective facet of radionic photography soon emerged from the outside verification process. People not familiar or positively disposed to accept radionic photography could jam the output onto the negative with hostile thoughts. Occasionally, this problem could be circumvented if a skilled operator 'pre-conditioned' the negative for positive results. All in all, the case for scientific analysis of radionic photography became much too vulnerable to skepticism.

By contrast, clues to the artistic potential of the Camera lay in de la Warr's early experiments. In these, photos of rudimentary elements and simple salts showed the existence of arrow like shafts of light he believed were the 'fundamental rays' of each material. When these materials were combined, so were their rays. These shafts of light had different angles for different elements.

What appears significant about these basic radionic photographs is that a baseline for approaching the phenomenon of "rays" could be visually established by experimentation. Once the results were repeatable, variations from the norm could be introduced and catalogued, providing a visual library of overlaying input.

During this same period of time at Yale, modernist painter Joseph Albers was demonstrating the relativity of color. Through his famous series of paintings which demonstrated his Color Theory, every color is subtly changed and shifted in tone and hue by the presence of the color next to it. Within the de la Warr photographs, perhaps an even deeper abstract layer of light had been discovered and photographed.

De la Warr also discovered that in order for an operator to obtain such a photograph, the operator had to stand beside the Camera and be aware of what the Camera was trying to detect. These pictures appeared to reinforce the discovery of a measurable 'Life' or 'L' field discovered by Dr. Harold Saxton Burr and his associates at Yale University, at roughly the same time.

There is another interesting aspect of the role subtle light played in de la Warrs research. Rotation of the substance caused a single, narrow shaft of light to appear from the element the instant it hit its "critical position". DelaWarr photographed (radionically) this light emitting aspect of matter as it hit the "critical position" many times. This phenomenon brings to mind the eloptic energy (energy+light) described by Hieronymus in his patent.

Both the discoveries of Hieronymus and de la Warr of a fundamental ray within materials have a much earlier precedent in the Hermetic idea of "the prime material". "In the centers of form/ The prime material hides/ Informing the host/ That it secretly guides," write researchers Henry Hallmon and Carl Hollingsworth in their article "The Geometry of the Naked Singularity", (Nexus, Nov./Dec. 2002). In presenting a theory that attempts to explain how geometry and dark energy interact in physics, genetics and neuroscience, they explain Hermetic science this way:

"For thousands of years….Hermetic scientists concluded that prime material was a subtle spirit substance, hiding within the myriad forms of the universe by occupying a strictly ordered geometry of locations. Great importance was placed on the golden ratio and the Fibonacci series, both evident in the golden rectangle.

"The golden rectangle is a gnomon which regresses to a potential prime location in a gnomic regression. Gnomon is defined as "any figure, which suffered no change, save for magnitude".

"Since everything physical generates from central prime material in a gnomic growth pattern, the material world is considered a network of gnomons without independent existence of their own."

Any tangible connection between visible subtle energy and the gnomon would provide a window into how sacred proportions, and therefore much about aesthetics itself, can be understood energetically.

In the introduction to Robert Lawlor's book SACRED GEOMETRY, the author quotes Professor Amstutz of the Mineralogical Institute at the University of Heidelberg as saying:

"Matter's latticed waves are spaced at intervals corresponding to the frets on a harp or guitar with analogous sequences of overtones arising from each fundamental. The science of musical harmony is in these terms practically identical with the science of symmetry in crystals."

De la Warr was convinced that his element and crystal radionic photographs support a connection to geometry. Assume radionic instruments change these geometry's through treatment. Crystals in a drop of blood would have an energetic signature, both before and after treatment, which could be supported photographically.

If the healing nature of certain art forms also produces similar changes in the blood of the patient, an empirical basis for connecting radionics to art could be established. In particular, such a comparison could provide a clearer understanding of how shamans and native healers apply aesthetics in curative ceremonies.

In their writings and discussions, radionic inventors often return to the idea that it is the basic patterns of geometry at the core of all form that are being changed by radionic treatment. In illness, this geometry's have been thrown into distorted relationships with one another. They are out of harmony. It is the job of the radionics practitioner to identify where that has occurred. Once diagnosed, the practitioner transmits an intention or signal through the instrument directly to the afflicted patterns instructing them to return to their proper harmony.

The process of refining a task over and over again until harmony is established is not dissimilar to how an artist approaches organizing an aesthetic into form. There is no need for the artist to "prove" that this process advances him to his goal. Likewise, someone treated successfully by a radionic instrument finds it unnecessary to "prove" that he was healed.

The Delawarr Laboratories went on to produce numerous variations of their Camera. Some were designed to detect inanimate objects in the ground. Some were used to detect lost people and things. Other experiments were designed to use the camera's photographs to impress radionic energies on inert substances and vegetation, in the manner of Curtis Upton. Best of all, experiments were carried out to see if photographs could be obtained of past events! De la Warr was convinced that a radionic photo he took in 1950 using blood spots from he and his wife, holding the intention in his mind, 'My wedding day 1929', produced an image of that day. The picture was described by Edward Russell as "two dark patterns with a very faint resemblance to human beings"!

Going beyond the concept of the camera, de la Warr created a device that could be described as a subtle energy communications technology. Called the Nodal Point Detector, this device was based upon identifying a lattice-work of points in three dimensions in the space around a magnet plotted radionically using the stick plate. He discovered that these points could extend far beyond any possible magnetic field, even miles away. Once the points were identified and the magnet was then moved, he claimed that it could be detected remotely by radionic methods. These phenomena encouraged him to experiment with communications.

Apparently, a noise near one magnet could be detected at all the other the nodal points. De la Warr determined to design new equipment that could impress the magnet with recorded frequencies and another device to detect those frequencies at a distance. The results were generally favorable in tests that were performed at distances from a few hundred feet (with intervening walls) to thirty miles away. De la Warr concluded from his experiments that he was dealing with a hitherto unknown attribute of space. Whether that was true or whether his results were an early form of psychic remote viewing (and hearing) will never be known for certain.

Sadly, after a period of so much brilliant work, de la Warr was faced with a similar legal challenge as Ruth Drown had faced, nine years before his death in 1969. A woman that he had sold a Radionics instrument to in the late 50's claimed, through court proceedings, that he had acted fraudulently. She did not believe that de la Warr was himself convinced that the Radionics box worked as stated. She claimed that in trying to learn how to use it properly, she had been driven from "a healthy optimist to a frustrated neurotic"!

Ultimately, the de la Warrs honesty and integrity were upheld and the case thrown out of court. Though not thrown in jailed like Ruth Drown and Wilhelm Reich, the de la Warrs were nearly bankrupted in the process. With their savings and vitality severely depleted, undergoing such an ordeal seemed harsh payment for helping so many people, in so many ways, for so long.