For some reason, six TBs placed equidistantly in a circle seems more potent than other circular arrangements of TBs. In the spring of 2008, while visiting me in America, Cesco came up with an idea incorporating this fact in a more complex arrangement. It seemed worth testing out to me and we cleared a large space on the shop floor to test it out.

Perhaps the simplest way to understand it involves the so-called "18". To make an "18" one may first construct a regular hexagon. Then he draws straight lines joining alternate vertices of the hexagon. The lines cross in six new points inside forming a new regular hexagon inside of, and concentric with, the first. Now he repeats this process on the new inner hexagon to obtain a third hexagon inside the second. After placing a TB on each of the 18 points of the three hexagons, he has an "18".

To construct a "108" one may first construct 7 identical hexagons as in the "18", and then arrange six of them around the seventh, where one edge of each of the six touch one edge of the inner seventh. The inner seventh "18" shares each of its vertices with two of the other "18"'s, and each of the six other "18"'s shares two of its vertices with its two immediate neighbors. Thus the total number of vertices is 7 times 18 minus 12 minus 6, or 108. One places one TB on each of these vertices to get a "108".

After we constructed a "108" on the shop floor, we noticed a ring or wall of positive qi some distance away from the "108" and concentric with it. We moved the old shop couch so that the wall passed through it, and sat down on it. It felt quite positive and relaxing on the couch. We were impressed enough by this experienced that we decided to construct a more permanent "108" outside, so that we could view it without the restrictions of the ceiling and walls, and so that we could observe its effects over time.

I purchased several sheets of plywood, cut it and arranged the pieces into a square, and drew in the places for TBs on the plywood. We made wooden cylinders with holes in them just large enough to place the TBs inside. Then we moved the plywood into the center of an adjoining field and glued the cylinders to the plywood. Finally we placed the TBs into the cylinders, which were designed to keep the TBs in place in case of wind.

Don and Carol Croft came visiting several days later, and they told us that they had noticed an empty spot in the cloud cover over the "108" long before they came with in sight of the field. Cesco left with them later that afternoon, to spend several days before returning home to Iceland where he was living at the time, and explained to them how the "108" was constructed. They built a few models which Don has described on EW.

Several weeks later some person or animal had kicked loose some of the wooden cylinders on the plywood, and I had to go out into the field to repair them. During the process I discovered that I had not accurately drawn the geometrical figure for the "108": there were 114 cylinders instead of 108. I emailed this fact to Cesco, and about this time he took his drawing off his web site.

I was rather busy at the time, and did put attention to the matter until this August, about a year and a half later. This was after I learned that others were making "108"'s and that there was public discussion of the subject. Since I had made the mistake which led to Don and Carol's interest in it, I felt I had a responsibility to look at both the "108" and the "114" more closely.

I went out into the field and stared at the configuration on the plywood. I found that not only were there six more TBs than in the "108", but that they were arranged in a fundamentally different way. The arrangement consisted of "18"'s, but the "18"'s were placed together in a different manner. Instead of the sides of the outer six being next to the sides of the inner seventh, the vertices of the outer six touched the vertices of the inner seventh. Thus each vertex of the inner "18" shared was shared with the vertex of one of the outer six, each each of the outer six shared two vertices, one each with one of the other outer six. Hence the total number of vertices was 7 times 6 minus 6 minus 6, or 114.

I went back to the shop and made seven "18"'s, each on a separate piece of plywood, so that I could arrange them either as a "108" or a "114", and compare. I first looked at the "108", this time outside. I found that there was a concentric wall of positive qi around it, as before, but that the wall curved in and joined together over the center as a dome or hemisphere. Furthermore there was a cylinder of small diameter based at the center of the "108", composed of negative qi, which extended as high up into the clouds as far as I could perceive. There seemed to be little motion of the qi, either in the dome or in the column. It looked as if somehow the arrangement may, like the Cesco "little secret coil" have separated neutral qi into two parts: one positive and one negative.

What I found when I constructed the "114", I will describe in another topic of the same name. At this point I will emphasize that I am not promoting either the "108" or the "114" -- just describing my observations.

This is a drawing of the 108: