Dowsing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dowsing is a type of divination
employed in attempts to locate ground water,
buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil,
gravesites,[1]
and many other objects and materials, as well as so-called currents of earth
radiation (ley lines), without the use of scientific
apparatus. Dowsing is also known as divining (especially in reference to
interpretation of results),[2]
doodlebugging[3] (particularly in the United States, in
searching for petroleum[4])
or (when searching specifically for water) water finding, water
witching or water dowsing.[5]
There is no accepted scientific rationale behind dowsing, and there is no
scientific evidence that it is effective.
A Y- or L-shaped twig or rod, called
a dowsing rod, divining rod (Latin: virgula divina or baculus
divinatorius), a "vining rod" or witching rod is sometimes
used during dowsing, although some dowsers use other equipment or no equipment
at all.
Dowsing appears to have arisen in
the context of Renaissance magic in Germany, and it remains popular among believers in Forteana
or radiesthesia.[6]
History
Dowsing as practiced today may have
originated in Germany during the 15th century, when it was used in attempts to
find metals.
As early as 1518 Martin Luther listed dowsing for metals as an act that broke the first commandment (i.e., as occultism).[7]
The 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia
contains a woodcut of a dowser with forked rod in hand walking over a cutaway
image of a mining operation. The rod is labelled "Virgula Divina – Glück
rüt" (Latin: divine rod; German "Wünschelrute": fortune rod or
stick), but there is no text accompanying the woodcut. By 1556 Georgius Agricola's treatment of mining and smelting of ore, De Re Metallica, included a detailed description of dowsing for metal ore.[8]
In 1662 dowsing was declared to be
"superstitious, or rather satanic" by a Jesuit,
Gaspar Schott, though he later noted that he wasn't sure that the devil
was always responsible for the movement of the rod.[9]
In the South of France in the 17th Century it was used in tracking criminals
and heretics.[10]
Its abuse led to a decree of the inquisition in 1701, forbidding its employment
for purposes of justice.[11]
An epigram
by Samuel Sheppard, from Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick
(1651) runs thus:
Virgula divina.
"Some Sorcerers do boast they have a Rod,
Gather'd with Vowes and Sacrifice,
And (borne about) will strangely nod
To hidden Treasure where it lies;
Mankind is (sure) that Rod divine,
For to the Wealthiest (ever) they incline."
Dowsing was conducted in South
Dakota in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to help homesteaders,
farmers, and ranchers located water wells on their property.[12]
In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War,
some United
States Marines used dowsing to attempt to locate
weapons and tunnels.[13]
As late as in 1986, when 31 soldiers were taken by an avalanche
during an operation in the NATO drill Anchor Express in Vassdalen, Norway, the Norwegian army
attempted to locate soldiers buried in the avalanche using dowsing as search
method.[14]
16 soldiers died.
Dowsing
rods
Traditionally, the most common
dowsing rod is a forked (Y-shaped) branch from a tree or bush. Some dowsers
prefer branches from particular trees, and some prefer the branches to be
freshly cut. Hazel
twigs in Europe and witch-hazel in the United States are traditionally commonly chosen, as
are branches from willow or peach trees. The two ends on the forked side are held one in each hand
with the third (the stem of the "Y") pointing straight ahead. Often
the branches are grasped palms down[citation needed]. The dowser then walks slowly over the places where he
suspects the target (for example, minerals or water) may be, and the dowsing
rod supposedly dips, inclines or twitches when a discovery is made. This method
is sometimes known as "Willow Witching".
Many dowsers today use a pair of
simple L-shaped metal rods. One rod is held in each hand, with the short arm of
the L held upright, and the long arm pointing forward. When something is found,
the rods cross over one another making an "X" over the found object.
If the object is long and straight, such as a water pipe, the rods will point
in opposite directions, showing its orientation. The rods are sometimes
fashioned from wire coat hangers, and glass or plastic rods have also been
accepted. Straight rods are also sometimes used for the same purposes, and were
not uncommon in early 19th century New England.
In all cases, the device is in a
state of unstable equilibrium from which slight movements may be amplified.[15]
Other
equipment used for dowsing
A pendulum
of crystal, metal or other materials suspended on a chain is sometimes used in
divination and dowsing. In one approach the user first determines which
direction (left-right, up-down) will indicate "yes" and which
"no" before proceeding to ask the pendulum specific questions, or
else another person may pose questions to the person holding the pendulum. The
pendulum may also be used over a pad or cloth with "yes" and
"no" written on it and perhaps other words written in a circle. The
person holding the pendulum aims to hold it as steadily as possible over the
center and its movements are held to indicate answers to the questions. In the
practice of radiesthesia, a pendulum is used for medical diagnosis.
Scientific
appraisal
A 1948 study tested 58 dowsers'
ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance.[16]
A 1979 review examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found
that none of them showed better than chance results.[5]
A 2006 study of grave dowsing in Iowa reviewed 14 published studies and
determined that none of them correctly predicted the location of human burials,
and simple scientific experiments demonstrated the fundamental principles
commonly used to explain grave dowsing were incorrect.[17]
More recently a study[18]
was undertaken in Kassel, Germany, under the direction of the Gesellschaft zur Wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung
von Parawissenschaften (GWUP)
[Society for the Scientific Investigation of the Parasciences]. The three-day
test of some 30 dowsers involved plastic pipes through which water flow could
be controlled and directed. The pipes were buried 50 centimeters under a level
field, the position of each marked on the surface with a colored strip. The
dowsers had to tell whether water was running through each pipe. All the
dowsers signed a statement agreeing this was a fair test of their abilities and
that they expected a 100 percent success rate. However, the results were no
better than chance.
Suggested
explanations
Early attempts at a scientific
explanation of dowsing were based on the notion that the divining rod was
physically affected by emanations from substances of interest. The following
explanation is from William Pryce's 1778 Mineralogia Cornubiensis:
The corpuscles ... that rise from the Minerals, entering the
rod, determine it to bow down, in order to render it parallel to the vertical
lines which the effluvia describe in their rise. In effect the Mineral
particles seem to be emitted from the earth; now the Virgula [rod], being of a
light porous wood, gives an easy passage to these particles, which are also
very fine and subtle; the effluvia then driven forwards by those that follow
them, and pressed at the same time by the atmosphere incumbent on them, are forced
to enter the little interstices between the fibres of the wood, and by that
effort they oblige it to incline, or dip down perpendicularly, to become
parallel with the little columns which those vapours form in their rise.
Such explanations have no modern
scientific basis. A 1986 article in Nature
included dowsing in a list of "effects which until recently were claimed
to be paranormal but which can now be explained from within orthodox
science."[19]
Specifically, dowsing could be explained in terms of sensory cues, expectancy
effects and probability.[19]
Skeptics and some supporters believe that dowsing apparatus has no power of its
own but merely amplifies slight movements of the hands caused by a phenomenon
known as the ideomotor effect: people's subconscious minds may influence their bodies
without their consciously deciding to take action. This would make the dowsing
rods a conduit for the diviner's subconscious knowledge or perception; but
also susceptible to confirmation bias.[20][21]
Soviet geologists have made claims
for the abilities of dowsers,[22]
which remain unverified by any credible scientific means. Some authors suggest
that these abilities may be explained by postulating human sensitivity to small
magnetic field gradient changes.[23][24][25]
Betz
Controversy
In a study in Munich 1987–1988 by Hans-Dieter Betz and other scientists, 500 dowsers were initially tested for
their "skill" and the experimenters selected the best 43 among them
for further tests. Water was pumped through a pipe on the ground floor of a
two-storey barn. Before each test the pipe was moved in a direction
perpendicular to the water flow. On the upper floor each dowser was asked to
determine the position of the pipe. Over two years the dowsers performed 843
such tests. Of the 43 pre-selected and extensively tested candidates at least
37 showed no dowsing ability. The results from the remaining 6 were said to be
better than chance, resulting in the experimenters' conclusion that some
dowsers "in particular tasks, showed an extraordinarily high rate of
success, which can scarcely if at all be explained as due to chance ... a real
core of dowser-phenomena can be regarded as empirically proven."[26]
Five years after the Munich study
was published, Jim T. Enright, a professor of physiology who emphasised correct data
analysis procedure, contended that the study's results are merely consistent
with statistical fluctuations and not significant. He believed the experiments
provided "the most convincing disproof imaginable that dowsers can do what
they claim",[27]
stating that the data analysis was "special, unconventional and
customized". Replacing it with "more ordinary analyses",[28]
he noted that the best dowser was on average 4 millimeters out of 10
meters closer to a mid-line guess, an advantage of 0.0004%, and that the five
other "good" dowsers were on average farther than a mid-line guess.
He further pointed out that the six "good" dowsers did not perform
any better than chance in separate tests.[29]
Commercial
and "high-tech" dowsing devices
A number of devices resembling
"high tech" dowsing rods have been marketed for modern police and
military use: none has been shown to be effective.[30]
The more notable of this class of device are ADE 651,
Sniffex,
and the GT200.[31][32]
A US government study advised against buying "bogus explosive detection
equipment".[30]
Devices:
- Sandia National Laboratories
tested the MOLE Programmable System manufactured by Global Technical Ltd.
of Kent, UK and found it ineffective.[31]
- The ADE 651
is a device produced by ATSC (UK) and widely used by Iraqi police to
detect explosives.[32]
Many[32][33]
have denied its effectiveness and contended that the ADE 651 failed to
prevent many bombings in Iraq. On 23 April 2013, the director of ATSC, Jim
McCormick was convicted of fraud by misrepresentation.[34]
Earlier, the British Government had announced a ban on the export of the ADE-651.[35]
- SNIFFEX
was the subject of a report by the United States Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal that concluded "The handheld SNIFFEX explosives
detector does not work."[36]
- Global Technical GT200
is a dowsing type explosive detector which contains no scientific
mechanism.[37][38]
The entire wiki link on this subject (with images) can be
found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing
Poster's comments:
I was
trained in dowsing by my mother's father.
Locally, he
was often hired by local middle Tennessee country people to dowse for water
well digging sites. His hit rate was 100% as I recall. He died in 1978.
We often
used peach forks as well as weeping willow forks to dowse with.
He taught
other progeny, and his techniques worked for some of them, too. He even taught
a cousin to back off from the best well digging site, and the distance would
equal to well depth to detect water.
Dowsing
doesn't work for everyone.
Hence I
understand the controversy on the subject of dowsing.
His main
area for dowsing was limestone country, were the water generally flows
underground in veins vice existing in pools.
The
probability of hitting water is a decent alternative to consider.
I now live
about 100 miles away, and dowsing is still used as a method in east Tennessee,
to include searching for minerals, like even oil and gas. Though many dowsers
also use more modern instruments, like gamma ray detectors, to provide a second
opinion when it comes to mineral drilling sites.
I went to
GaTech, and am not very religious, but dowsing is something that has worked for
me. I just can't explain it to my satisfaction.
I suspect
if times get hard, then dowsing will come back, and probably many
"dowsers" will be "snake oil" types. Let the buyer beware.
Getting
clean water to cook and clean with, and having a waste water system, is a big
deal for our human survival and good (preventive) health.
Where I
live in east Tennessee on the Cumberland Plateau, most water drilling efforts
fail. While many find water, it is often sulfur (rotten egg) smelling, and not
used for human consumption.
When I
lived in southern California, the well water we (my wife and I) had then was very "mineral"
intensive, like we had to get a once a month service to remove the
"minerals" from the water. This room to do this was even built into
military housing units. To avoid this service often meant clogged shower heads
and failing washing machines. The human equivalent would be like having clogged
arteries.
1 comment:
Thank you for writing this, this was a great article, with new and different information on dowsing than I have viewed. Which is refreshing.
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