Many years ago, Reuters tried to film one of her jobs at a house in Dulwich. ‘The cameraman ran out [of] the building within two minutes, terrified! He said, “I’m not going back in the house.” The doors were slamming, there were these acrimonious smells, there were lights that kept flashing, even though there wasn’t electricity in the house. That was probably the only job where I felt uncomfortable.’
Both the properties she worked on in Italy recently were steeped in history, she says. ‘The first one was very near a Roman villa site from the four hundreds BC, and I was clearing the memory pattern and looking at the structure of the earth.’ In her work, she explains, she uses a variety of techniques from psychic perception, Spiritual Release Therapy (SRT), land dowsing, ley line reading, and targeted healing techniques. The idea is to identify and reorganise the underlying energetic structure of a property – restoring its coherence, flow and stability so that the space begins to actively support its occupants rather than work against them.
Alex, the American owner of the Sicilian house she has just worked on when we meet, confirms the clearing has been a success. ‘You could feel there was conflict, it was palpable. I did not want to move into the house until Amaryllis could come in and assay the situation and clear it,’ he says. ‘The energy that had pervaded is now gone, the house feels so much lighter – warm, welcoming, bright, a venue for happy gatherings and laughter.’ The other Italian property was an estate near Pisa, where the main house had been bombed and destroyed in the Second World War.
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Amaryllis also worked her magic on this beautiful estate in Corfu, where Dominic Skinner had restored 16 abandoned village houses.
Clive Nichols
Sometimes, she says, the clearings are about removing patterns of energy from more recent occupants. For example, if previous owners have had an acrimonious divorce, she explains, a couple who have moved in may find themselves fighting having never fought before. Amaryllis worked on a property near Soho Farmhouse in the Cotswolds recently where the previous owners had left a bitter energy as they had not wanted to sell the property. The new owners had a run of bad luck since moving and wanted the energy cleared.
Whatever the circumstances, Amaryllis will go in and ‘read everything in the room’. ‘I see the pattern, I see what happened, I can hear what they’re saying to me.’
Clearing can apparently be as short as an hour, or take a day or two depending on the size of the property. In her new book with Bloomsbury, Amaryllis is approaching her work from a scientific perspective, delving into neuroscience and logical explanations. ‘Quantum physics tells us that particles once connected remain in relationship regardless of distance – which is precisely what I observe in a field: it doesn’t stop at a wall or boundary line,’ she says. ‘The scientific term for what I do is “thin slicing” which is the mind reading the whole from a fragment – a real, trainable cognitive skill. There’s a growing cohort of physicists and neuroscientists now taking seriously what practitioners like me have worked with for decades – that perception isn’t limited to the five senses.’