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Bruce MacManaway (1919-1988)

During the Second World War Bruce MacManaway was responsible for a number of men who had run out of medical supplies and in the absence of anything else he used his hands to heal them. He discovered he was not only able to reduce the stress and pain of an area but also to stop haemorrhaging and subsequent infection. He continued in the army until 1959 finding many opportunities to explore his healing on more than war-related traumas. In 1959 he started a healing centre at Strathmiglo in Scotland and it was here that in 1965 Peter Caddy visited him.

Bruce wrote a book called ‘Healing: the energy that can restore health‘ and in it writes as objectively as he can on the phenomenon of healing which was still considered illusory by the medical profession and at the time still came under the Witchcraft act punishable by death. Modern medicine has changed its rigid attitude over the intervening years but still the prejudice remains and no serious scientific research has been undertaken despite related studies into such things as Kirlian photography.

In the foreword to Bruce’s book Ludovic Kennedy, a serious minded reporter for the BBC, writes

“the scope of Bruce’s work has expanded over the years from the comparative simplicity of healing to embracing telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, levitation, ley lines, etc. Behind all this is his belief, based on the knowledge of man’s age-old aspirations to union with a spiritual force, that we have neglected our intuitive sources of knowledge for too long. It is an awareness of and a reaching out for this, he believes, that can give us true health, make us integrated and whole. It is basically the same message that the world’s religious leaders, philosophers, and psychiatrists have always preached; that fragmented man is a sick man who can only be cured, as Plato said, by assessing mind, body and soul together.”

(Healing, Bruce Macmanaway & Johanna Turcan, Thorsons 1983, p. 12)

A report by the BBC states:

“Mr MacManaway’s special studies include evidence for survival of death, the development of E.S.P., faculties, spinal and joint correction, release of trapped nerves, relief of muscle tension and dowsing. And at the time the page was prepared he was the vice-president of the British Society of Dowsers.”

In defence of healing from the hostility he had encountered Bruce writes that it is his hope that

“healing will become one of the next in the long line of initially unacceptable practices which have subsequently been acknowledged and incorporated into orthodox medical practices. The list includes antiseptics, anaesthetics, orthopaedics and psychology.”

(Healing, p. 20)

Further on, alluding to the ancient and recognised practice of healing, he tells us

“Healing in the past was usually inextricably tied with religion, but then so was virtually every other aspect of life. All knowledge and learning was based in the temples, and the gods were considered to permeate and influence all workings of man and his environment; the harvests, the rainfall, peace and war, sickness and health. All education, both what we would regard as secular as well as religious, was only available through the temples, and the wisdom acquired by the priests and priestesses and wise men and women (known in Egypt as the Scribes of the House of Life), was of a high order, even if it was not recognised as independent of supernatural forces. (p. 21)

Bruce MacManaway Book cover

Bruce MacManaway Book cover

In his book MacManaway is not trying to prove that healing works, it is evident that it does but he tries to discover the cause of healing ranging from spiritual science in the form of chakras through to modern discoveries such as Kirlian photography and even the role of quantum physics. He calls on the use of dowsing and the work of Maxwell Cade who was exploring through the use of the encephalograph the balanced polarisation in the brain of subjects. This last works on the basis that the logical functions are associated with the left-hand hemisphere of the brain and the intuitive faculties more with the right hand side of the brain.

MacManaway mentions the existence of several levels of subtle body which interplay and have some affect on the physical well-being of an individual. In his own use of dowsing he had remarkable results in a series of tests set him by Austrian doctors. He explains that there are only five answers a pendulum can give, a positive ‘yes’ reaction, a positive ‘no’ reaction, a neutral reaction or none at all, and weak ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses. In the case of the latter he says that this usually indicates the need for more questions to be asked.

He likens dowsing to radio and television, waves operating over a large distance. He writes

“The ability to pick up these wave-lengths depends, however, on the strength of the receiver. I think that dowsing is probably similar.” (p. 66)

He continues

“To push the radio analogy a little further, our sets (in other words ourselves) can act not only as receivers; they can also be used to transmit messages. Having tuned in, we can then actively resonate with the vibrations we pick up. We cannot prove this, but the simple concept of resonance is a familiar one to those who have studied any physics… by transmitting on the same wave-length we can reinforce and increase the strength of the original wave. This, I suspect, is the basis for absent or distant healing…” (p. 67)

He also studied Carl Jung’s work and in particular the role of the universal subconscious which he thinks may often hold information relative to a condition that may be accessed by patient and diagnostician working together.

Despite the mentions that Bruce gets in Peter Caddy’s autobiography it is uncertain whether he ever visited Findhorn.

Bruce MacManaway, Sir George Trevelyan. Photo www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org

Bruce MacManaway, Sir George Trevelyan. Photo www.sirgeorgetrevelyan.org

Publications

Healing: The Energy That Can Restore Health, Harper Collins 1983

You can find other stories about Bruce MacManaway on our website by following this link to his tag.


We thank the Findhorn Foundation for the permission to offer this document from their Archive on our website.
We thank the Sir George Trevelyan Archive for permission to use the above photograph on our website.