Dowsing


Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, claimed radiations, gravesites, malign "earth vibrations" and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. It is also known as divining, doodlebugging or water finding, or water witching.
A Y-shaped twig or rod, or two L-shaped ones, called dowsing rods or divining rods are normally used, and the motion of these are said to reveal the location of the target material. The motion of such dowsing devices is generally attributed to random movement, or to the ideomotor phenomenon, a psychological response where a subject makes motions unconsciously.
The scientific evidence shows that dowsing is no more effective than random chance. It is therefore regarded as a pseudoscience.

History

Early divination and religion

Dowsing originated in ancient times, when it was treated as a form of divination. The Catholic Church banned the practice completely.
Protestant Reformer Martin Luther perpetuated the Catholic ban, in 1518 listing divining for metals as an act that broke the first commandment.
Old texts about searching for water do not mention using the divining twig, and the first account of this practice was in 1568.
Sir William F. Barrett wrote in his 1911 book Psychical Research that:
In 1662, divining with rods was declared to be "superstitious, or rather satanic" by a Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, though he later noted that he was not sure that the devil was always responsible for the movement of the rod. In southern France in the 17th century, it was used to track criminals and heretics. Its abuse led to a decree of the inquisition in 1701, forbidding its employment for purposes of justice.
An epigram by Samuel Sheppard, from Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick runs thus:

Modern dowsing

Dowsing practices used in an attempt to locate metals are still performed much like they were during the 16th century. 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 labeled in Latin and German; "Virgula Divina – Glück-Rüt", 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.
In the 16th century, German deep mining technology was in enormous demand all over Europe. German miners were licensed to live and work in England, particularly in the Stannaries of Devon and Cornwall and in Cumbria. In other parts of England, the technique was used in the royal mines for calamine. By 1638 German miners were recorded using the technique in silver mines in Wales.
The Middle Low German name for a forked stick was Schlag-Ruthe. This was translated in the sixteenth century Cornish dialect to duschen . By the seventeenth century the English term dowsing was coming into common use.
In the lead-mining area of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England in the 17th century the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, inspired by the writings of Agricola, watched a practitioner try to find "latent veins of metals". Boyle saw the hazel divining rod stoop in the hands of the diviner, who protested that he was not applying any force to the twig; Boyle accepted the man's genuine belief but himself remained unconvinced. Towards the end of the century, in 1691 the philosopher John Locke, who was born in the English West Country, used the term deusing-rod for the Old Latin name virgula divina. So, dowse is synonymous with strike, hence the phrases: to dowse/''strike a light, to dowse/strike'' a sail.
Dowsing was conducted in South Dakota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help homesteaders, farmers and ranchers locate water wells on their property.
The military have occasionally resorted to dowsing techniques. In the First World War Gallipoli campaign, sapper Stephen Kelly, of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, Australian Expeditionary Force, became well known for finding water for the British troops. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, some United States Marines used dowsing when locating weapons and tunnels. 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 a search method.
Dowsing is still used by some farmers and water engineers in Britain; however, many of the country's utilities have distanced themselves from the practice.

Postulated mechanisms

Early attempts at an 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:
A study towards the end of the 19th century concluded that the phenomenon was attributed to cryptesthesia, where the practitioner makes unconscious observations of the terrain and involuntarily influences the movement of the rod. Early investigations by members of the Society for Psychical Research endorsed this view.
Committed parapsychologist G. N. M. Tyrrell also believed that the action of the rod was caused by involuntary muscular movements and debunked the theory of external influences.
Dowsing over maps, prior to visiting the site, was also believed to work, hence some kind of clairvoyance was proposed. This was believed to act on the nervous system, rather than on the muscles directly. These various mechanisms remain in contention among dowsers.

Fraudulent security devices

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a number of dowsing-like devices were marketed for modern police and military use, primarily as explosive detectors, such as the ADE 651, Sniffex, and the GT200. In consequence of these frauds, in 1999 the United States National Institute of Justice issued advice against buying equipment based on dowsing.

Equipment

The device used by a dowser is typically referred to as a dowsing or divining rod, even though it may not be rod-shaped.

Dowsing twig

Traditionally, the most common method used is the dowsing twig, a forked 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 pointing straight ahead. The dowser then walks slowly over the places where the target may be, and the dowsing rod is expected to dip, incline or twitch when a discovery is made. This method is sometimes known as "willow witching." Some dowsers would hang a golden ring on the edge of the dowsing rod, or split the tip to slide in a silver coin.

Pair of rods

Many modern dowsers use a pair of 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. The upright arm is often free to rotate inside a tube. When something is "found," the rods move in synchrony. Depending on the dowser, they may cross over or swing apart. If the object is long and straight, such as a water pipe, the rods may point in opposite directions, showing its orientation. The rods may be fashioned from wire coat hangers or wire flags used for locating utilities. Glass or plastic rods have also been accepted. Straight rods are also sometimes used for the same purposes, and were common in early 19th century New England.

Pendulum

A pendulum weight on a short cord or thread is the tool of choice for many modern dowsers. An article in Live to Plant lists it as one of three common methods. The dowser holds the cord in one hand and allows the pendulum to swing freely. The dowser then observes how the pendulum is swinging and interprets the motion to offer insights.

Studies

  • Dowsing studies from the early twentieth century were examined by geologist John Walter Gregory in a report for the Smithsonian Institution. Gregory concluded that the results were a matter of chance or explained by observations from ground surface clues.
  • Geologist W. A. MacFadyen tested three dowsers during 1943–1944 in Algeria. The results were entirely negative.
  • A 1948 study in New Zealand by P. A. Ongley tested 75 dowsers' ability to detect water. None of them was more reliable than chance. According to Ongley "not one showed the slightest accuracy."
  • Archaeometrist Martin Aitken tested British dowser P. A. Raine in 1959. Raine failed to dowse the location of a buried kiln that had been identified by a magnetometer.
  • In 1971, dowsing experiments were organized by British engineer R. A. Foulkes on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. The results were "no more reliable than a series of guesses".
  • Physicists John Taylor and Eduardo Balanovski reported in 1978 a series of experiments they conducted that searched for unusual electromagnetic fields emitted by dowsing subjects; they did not detect any.
  • A 1979 review by Evon Z. Vogt and Ray Hyman examined many controlled studies of dowsing for water, and found that none of them showed better than chance results.
  • British academics Richard N. Bailey, Eric Cambridge, and H. Denis Briggs, carried out dowsing experiments at the grounds of various churches. They reported successful results in their book Dowsing and Church Archaeology. Their experiments were critically examined by archaeologist Martijn Van Leusen who suggested they were badly designed and the authors had redefined the test parameters on what was classified as a "hit" or "miss" to obtain positive results.
  • 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 that the fundamental principles commonly used to explain grave dowsing were incorrect.
  • A randomized double-blind trial in 2012 was carried out to determine whether homeopaths were able to distinguish between Bryonia and placebo by use of a dowsing method. The results were negative.