Dowsing
You may have heard of dowsing before - no doubt it is an old practice with many purported uses. From the logical, like the claim it is a way to find water underground, to the woo-woo, that it is a way to see if spirits are about, dowsing seems to have many uses. You may also know dowsing by one of its other names - diving, water witching, and doodle bugging, just to name a few. But what is it, and how did this strange practice gain so much notoriety?
At its most base definition, dowsing is a type of divination that uses either a Y-shaped rod, or twig, or two L-shaped rods, or twigs. Sometimes other elements are employed (for example, a pendulum) but the most popular seems to be two L-shaped rods. It is believed that when the rods cross in a certain way, they can reveal ground water, buried metals, oil, gravesites, and even bad energy vibrations.
To dowse, grab the two ends of the stick or rod that fork outward, facing your palms toward the sky, and hold the dowsing rod so that it points out in front of you, horizontal to the ground. If you use two dowsing rods, hold one in each hand facing away from your body, horizontal to the ground, with your elbows bent at your sides. Ensure you are grasping them tight enough so that they don’t wiggle too much when you walk. Then, slowly walk forward. When you begin approaching an anomaly - like oil or water - the dowsing rods should bend towards the ground or, if you’re using two rods, they should cross each other when you are directly over the anomaly.
Originally, it seems, dowsing was employed mainly to search for and discover groundwater. In fact, some believe dowsing is a prehistoric practice. The Tassili n’Ajjer Mountain Range in the Sahara contains caves that have prehistoric paintings that depict a dowser with a forked brand searching for and finding groundwater. However, as time (and needs) have progressed it is believed dowsing can reveal a surprising amount of buried goods - from oil to graves.
Raymond C. Wiley, a founder of the American Society of Dowseres, defines dowsing as: “The exercise of the human faculty which allows one to obtain information in a manner beyond the scope and power of the standard human physical senses of sight, sound, touch, etc.” (American Society of Dowsers [ASD] online, 2013, Sixth Sense Reader)”. Thus, many believe that the dowser is equally important to the tools he or she employs in order to find the riches buried underfoot. So, a dowser employs some kind of sixth sense and, with the help of their tools, is able to find what is buried underneath their feet.
However, some believe it isn’t a sixth sense and instead is a physical reaction to the earth’s magnetic field. Basically, the doswer is an electrical conductor cutting a magnetic field, over groundwater, which causes enough voltage to cause an unconscious hand motion that is amplified by the rod. Others believe dosing to simply be an ideomotor response - a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject moves unconsciously. Thus, the rods aren’t moving because they’ve discovered anything but simply because of an accidental or involuntary movement of the dowser (who, perhaps, has a bit of luck).
Bill Banks, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Service notes that while there is no scientific proof to dowsing, that there may still be something to it…”For years chiropractors were seen as quacks, but a lot people walked away with better backs.”
Gene Wolfe, a dowser and retired mechanical engineer calls dowsing a “nonverbal knowingness” and acknowledges that, “Everybody can dowse. But it's like playing baseball: Some people find it easier than others.”
The above image is of a hazel dowsing rod from early twentieth-century England. Part of the Horniman Museum collection (70172). This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.