Quote by Albert Einstein
"I know very well that
many scientists consider dowsing as they do astrology, as a type of ancient superstition.
According to my conviction this is, however, unjustified. The dowsing rod is a simple
instrument which shows the reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which
are unknown to us at this time."
DOWSING THE ANCIENT ART
The earliest reference to dowsing as
it is practised to day came from the German speaking lands of northern Europe in the
fifteenth century. By the sixteenth century miners in several parts of Germany were using
dowsing to locate veins of mineral ore. Georg Bauer also known as Geogius Agricola (1494
– 1555) described how dowsers search for ore in his famous work De Re
Metallca. He
wrote: All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it
being necessary that their clenched fingers should be held towards the sky in order that
the twig should be raised at that end where the two branches meet. Then they wander hither
and thither at random through mountainous regions. It is said that the moment they place
their feet on a vein the twig immediately turns and twists and so by its action discloses
the vein; when they move their feet again and go away from that spot the twig becomes once
more immobile.
As demand for ore increased mines
opened up across Europe. Prospectors travelled far in the search for new deposits and
metal ore, amongst these prospectors were dowers.
In England, Elizabeth I encouraged
German prospectors and mining experts to develop the resources of her land. Together with
their expertise in smelting and metal working they also brought their art of searching for
metal ores with a forked twig.
One part of England that benefited
from German mining expertise was in the county of Somerset. By the mid seventeenth century
miners in the local Mendip Hills where using the rod to help them find veins of lead and
zinc ore and the practice came to the attention of Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691), one of
the founding fathers of modern science. Boyle was intrigued and reported: One Gentleman,
who lives near the lead mines in Somersetshire, leading me over those parts of the mines
where he know that Matalline Veins did run, made be take note of the stooping of the Wand
when passed over a Vein of Oar, and protested that the motion of his hand did not at all
contribute to the indications of the wand, but that sometimes when he held it very fast,
it would bent so strongly as to break in his hand. And to convince me that he believed him
self, he did upon the promises made by the stooping Wand put him self to the great charge
of digging in untried places for Mine (but with what success he has not yet informed me).
Among the miners themselves I found that some made use of the Wand and others laughed at
it.
The term dowsing may have come from
the miners in the Medip Hills. In 1692 John Locke (1632 – 1704) the famed Somerset
Philosopher, referred to the alleged ability of the ‘deusing-rod to discover mines of
gold and silver. Evidently the Philosopher had heard the local miners use their own word
for the twig known to the Germans as the wishing rod or Wunschelrute
The German dowsers also introduced
dowsing to another county in south west England, Cornwall where local miners developed
dowsing into an advanced prospecting technique. William Pryce, of Redruth, the great
authority on Cornish mining practice, included an account of contemporary mine dowsing in
his 1778 work Mineraogia Cornubiensis. It was written by his friend William
Cookworthy, of
Plymouth, a pioneering industrialist. Cookworthy reported that local miners made their
dowsing rods from a single forked twig of hazel or other wood between two and a half and
three feet long. Alternatively, they used 'two separate shoots tied together, with some
vegetable substance as packthread'. Then he went on to make one of the most penetrating
observations on dowsing that has ever been written, , A man ought to hold the rod with the
same indifference and inattention to, or reasoning about it or its effects, as he holds a
fishing rod or a walking stick.' For, according to Cookworthy, the rod , constantly
answers in the hands of peasants, women and children, who hold it simply without puzzling
their minds with doubts or reasoning’s.
William Cookworthy advised young
dowsers to gain experience over known lodes, such as those visible near the sea shore.
Then he instructed the novice dowser:
Walk steadily and slowly on with it
(the rod); and a person that hath been accustomed to carry it will meet a single repulsion
and attraction, every three, four, or five yards, which must not be heeded, it being only
from the water that is between every bed of Killas (slate), Grouan (soft granite) or other
strata. When the holder approaches a Lode so near its semidiameter, the rod feels loose in
the hands and is very sensibly repelled toward the face. If it is thrown back so far as to
touch the hat, it must be brought forward to its usual elevation, when it will continue to
be repelled till the foremost foot is over the edge of the Lode. But as soon as the
foremost foot is beyond its limits, the attraction from the hindmost foot, which is still
on the Lode, or else the repulsion on the other side, or both, throw the rod back toward
the face. The distance from the point where the attraction begun, and where it ended, is
the breadth of the Lode.
Cookworthy said that a good dowser
could in this way discover all the features of concealed lodes: their changes in breadth,
where they pinched out, and where they were displaced by crosscutting fractures. He noted
that dowsing was particularly useful for tracing lodes that were, "alive to
grass" in other words that contained workable ore right up to the surface. He also
recommended the technique for finding what geologists would now call fracture zones -
belts of rock shattered by past Earth movements. Although they were not necessarily
mineralised, miners found it much easier to drive their tunnels through these zones than
through solid rocks.
Clearly, Cornish dowsers had developed
their art into quite an elaborate technique by the eighteenth century. But did it really
work? William Pryce certainly thought so, for he quoted numerous dowsing successes in the
county. For instance, after the Reverend Henry Hawkins Tremayne had found some stream tin
in a pond at Heligan, miners speculated that a lode might be found nearby -. A dowser then
located what he thought was a lode below ground, and the miners sank a shaft there. A lode
was indeed found though unfortunately it did not contain enough tin to make mining
profitable. In two other instances, Fryce reported, miners sank shafts on dowsing
evidence, one at St. Germains, another between Penzance and Newlyn. In both cases, lodes
containing mundick - an old mining term for iron sulphides - were found. Again, Pryce
related, William Cookworthy managed to trace the course of a concealed lode near St.
Austell. At one point Cookworthy declared that the lode had been squeezed to nothing; this
was later confirmed to be correct by the local miners. On another occasion, Cookworthy
traced a lode from point inland to the cliff at St. Austell Down. There he found by
dowsing that the lode 'had a horse in it', in other words, it had been split in two.
Miners subsequently confirmed that this was indeed the case.
Pryce reported another dowsing feat. A
certain Captain Riheira had deserted the King of Spain's service in the reign of Queen
Anne and had been rewarded with the post of Captain Commandant of the Plymouth garrison.
Ribeira was a keen dowser and had by this means discovered a deposit of copper ore near
Okehampton, in Devon. Later, a mine w as started there, which operated for some years.
Pryce and Cookworthy's detailed
description of Cornish mine dowsing in the eighteenth century shows how highly the leading
English mineralogists of the day regarded the technique. This respect was echoed
throughout Europe. In the German mines, for instance, dowsers this time enjoyed a standing
that has never since been equalled. Officially their status was higher than that of
surveyors, and mine dowsers were expected to possess a professional diploma in dowsing.
Mineral lode dowsing was equally
valued in other parts of the world where Europeans had settled. In the fabulously rich
silver mines of the High Andes in South America, for instance, the Spanish mining
authorities were using the technique to help locate the abundant lodes of silver ore that
had made the region around Potosi the largest source of silver in the Western world.
Alonzo Barha, the Potosi priest and mining expert, described a peculiar T-shaped rod of
his own design which dowser then used in the Potosi mines.
How had mine dowsers achieved this
surprising status? One reason, clearly, was a record of success good enough to impress
hardnosed mine owners as well as technical experts like William Pryce. But success alone
would not have been enough in an age when scientific thought was developing rapidly and
causes were being sought for all phenomena. It seems'likely that an equally important
reason for dowsing's high standing was that it could he explained in terms of contemporary
scientific ideas. Thus, before quoting Cookworthv's description of practical dowsing,
Pryce gave a lengthy exposition of dowsing theory.
In fact, from the sixteenth century
onwards, the bending of a forked twig over a hidden mineral vein had spawned theories in
the same way as any other natural phenomenon. From the start, some sceptics had maintained
that the dowsers moved the rod themselves and that this had nothing to do with the
presence mineral veins. Nevertheless, this would hardly explain the successes the
technique.
DOWSING IN MODERN TIMES
In more modern times
dowsing has been and is still used in many areas of life. It is used for: Finding
underground water supplies, finding undergound oil and minerals, health and healing,
archaelogical searches, detecting Earth energies, site surveys for buildings, tracing lost
objects and people, Geopathic stress, agriculture and soil testing, fault finding and far
more.
Professor Hans Dieter Betz
(professor of physics, Munich university) headed a team of scientists that investigated
the ability of dowsers to find underground drinkable supplies, taking them to 10 different
countries and, on the advice of dowers, sank some 2,000 wells with a very high success
rate. In Sri Lanka, where the geological conditions are said to be difficult, some 691
wells were drilled for, based on the advice of dowsers, with a 96% success rate.
Geohydrologists given the same task took two months to evaluate a site where a dowser
would compete his survey in minutes. The geohydrologists had a 21% success rate, as a
result of which the German government have sponsored 100 dowers to work in the arid zones
of Southern India to find drinkable water.
In Russia they teach dowsing as a
science. Many of the top dowsers are doctors, engineers and scientists. Professor
Alexander P. Dubrov, Pro. Of Biophysics, Doctor of Geophysics (author of "
geomagnetic Fields and Life) being one of them.
Dowsing is an ancient art
successfully used to locate water for centuries. Professional dowsers may have a 99% hit
rate in locating water many operate their own drilling rigs on a no find no fee basis. The
average cost to drill is £3000 a time.
Dowsing has been used in USA texas
to locate oil wells. Dowsers are called Doodlebuggers. One of the most sucessfull dowsers
is Paul Clement Brown. From his contacts with leading oil and gas operaters
over a quarter of a century, Brown learned that many important oil fields were discovered,
not by geolgical trained technicians, but by gifted dowsers like him self.
US Marines used dowsing to accuratly
locate Viet Cong tunnels and booby traps.
DOWSING ALONG THE PSI-TRACK
By Jens A Tellefsen, Jr and Sven Magnusson
Have Swedish psi-researchers discovered
something very important - a repeatable experiment?
Introduction
When a person concentrates vividly on
a physical object in his surroundings, a "psi-track" seems be established to the
object. This track can be detected by dowsing.
What is a thought? An idea or a mental
image, Which appears in a mind and perhaps leads to action? Yes. That might be the answer.
But, The notion that thought may have an extension in the surrounding space, may be
something concrete and measurable, does not belong to our usual ideas about how the world
is structured. But Swedish parapsychological experiments suggest that that may actually be
the case.
The discovery of the psi-track
It is now (1997) ten years since the
so-called psi-track was discovered. The psi-track is the measurable track of a directed
thought.
Since the first experiment was done,
some Swedish researchers have performed a series of experiments, Which have been
intentionally published. Dr Nils 0. Jacobson and Dr. Jens A. Tellefsen wrote a report,
which won the first prize in a parapsychological contest in England and was subsequently
published in one of the leading parapsychological journals, the English Journal of the
Society for Psychical Research January 1994.
In Sweden. the first full-size book
about the experiments with the psi-track has been published. It is written by Gote
Andersson, a painter. who originally discovered the psi-track.
One day in 1987, when Gote visited his
father, Arthur Andersson, he asked him to try to detect the human aura around himself by
means of a dowsing rod. He had read in a magazine that this could actually be done.
Arthur, who is an experienced dowser, thought the idea was crazy but did what Gote wanted
him to do, and to his own surprise he obtained a strong reaction with the dowsing rod
around Gote.
Gote then concentrated his thoughts on
a chair some metres in front of him, and since he is an artist, he has a very good mental
image-seeing ability. He then asked Arthur to walk around the chair with his dowsing rod.
To Arthur's amazement, the divining rod reacted strongly around the chair and even
stranger, Arthur found that with the help of the dowsing rod, a distinct "track"
of deflection could be followed in the space aIl the way between Gote and the chair. In
that way, as far an we know the first psi-track wan discovered.
Scientific experiments
Gote became immensely interested in
this discovery and. during several years, he devoted much time to researching the
psi-track together with several experienced local dowsers, and he found that the
phenomenon repeated itself over and over again and seemed to follow certain basic laws. He
realised that he had found a hitherto unknown anomalous phenomenon and wanted it to be
scientifically investigated. With this aim in mind he contacted Jens A. Tellefsen, a
physicist and associate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (Tekniska
Hogskolan) in Stockholm. Later, Nils 0. Jacobson was also contacted and attached himself
to the research project. He is a psychiatrist with a very good knowledge of
parapsychology. Together with Jen's wife, Kristina Anjou, they studied scientifically the
psi-track for an extended length of time.
The experiments have mostly been done
outdoors with the help of dowsing rods, which have shown to be excellent instruments in
order to find the psi-tracks. In order to facilitate the experimental procedure they
preferred to work over large areas, for instance on fields of at least about 100 x 100
metres, which, before the experiments, had been carefully checked by dowsing for water
veins, electric cables and other possibly disturbing structures.
The participants in the simplest of
these (single-blind) experiments, have the following tasks:
One person, 'the sender', chooses a
spot as the 'sending place' and then hides a chosen target object within a reasonable
distance (20 to 100 metres) from the sending place. Standing in the sending place, he
makes a strong mental concentration on the target object. This, supposedly, creates the
psi-track. He will tell nobody about his choice of target and walks away from the research
area. A dowser now begins to look for the track. He or she works slowly in small circles
around the sending place, and, when the dowser gets the usual reaction from his rod, the
spot is clearly marked. The dowser will then continue to walk around the sending place in
successively larger circles and, when the markings in the circles form a linear track in
some direction, the dowser begins to walk in a zigzag way over this track. Through the
reactions he gets, it is then possible to follow the psi-track, mostly straightforward
toward the hidden object. When the dowser is not getting any reaction at all, the track
ends and the target is mostly found.
When performed in this way, with the
indicated procedure, it is a very striking experience for those who are witnessing the
whole thing. Experiments with the psi-tracks can be done in slightly different ways, not
necessarily with exactly the same protocol as described above. The results are usually the
same. In some experiments, an assistant takes part in the experiment and hides the target
object, whereupon the sender, who does not know the location of the target, creates the
psi-track by concentration on the object. In other experiments the same person may act
both as sender and dowser. This is the prerequisite for a number of double-blind
experiments, which have been performed.
It must be stated that these
experiments are so designed that absolutely no traces can be found on the ground from the
feet of the sender or the assistant and leading in some obvious way to the hidden object.
Of 40 double-blind experiments, at six
different occasions during a three year period, in 32 cases, the researchers succeeded
within a span of about in half an hour to find the hidden objects. As the object is very
small, for instance a rock crystal in a field of 100 x 100 metres size or more, the result
is remarkable, to say the least. Is this the first repeatable psi-experiment in history?
No one knows, but the experimenters are eagerly waiting for others to replicate their
results.
Real-life experience
The psi-track procedure can be used in
real-life situations, for instance to find lost objects or to locate animals or people who
have gone astray in deep forests. Here are two examples of very many, of an anecdotal
nature.
At Skaggebol estate in the district of
Varmland, a certain weed hoe had been lost since the summer of 1990. In August 1991, Gote
decided to try to find it with his method. Mrs Gertrud Holm, who sometimes helps in the
office at the farm, has some experience of dowsing, but had not earlier tried the
psi-track method. She was even sceptical of it, but, anyhow, agreed to give it a try.
Gote acted as sender and Gertrud with
her dowsing rod detected a possible psi-track, which was duly marked by sticks. The track
went directly behind the huge barn of the estate. There the hoe was found among
high-growing stinging nettles, about 100 metres from the sending place.
On 13th December 1992, Mr and Mrs
Anders and Berith Lindgren were out deep in a forest hunting with some friends. During the
hunt, their dog ran away and disappeared. They searched for the dog until late at night,
and also the two following days. On 16th December, they enlisted the dowser Leif
Andersson's help. Leif had at this time been extensively working with Gote and the
researchers.
Someone thought that he had earlier
heard barkings coming from a certain hill in the forest, so this was chosen as the first
sending place. Anders and Berith each made one sending, from different places on the hill.
The psi-tracks were detected in the usual way by Leif and marked on a map. The tracks were
found to point in the northeast direction, towards a small lake in the forest, about two
kilometres from the hunting place. The group started to search the forest. During the
search, Berith made three more sendings with the resultant tracks also pointing in the
direction of the lake. At this point, the searching had to be interrupted as it was
getting dark. On their way home, Anders made two additional sendings from the road, east
and north of the lake. Here again, the psi-tracks pointed to the lake. The next day,
Berith and an uncle of hers went directly to the small lake. Near the edge of the shore
they found the body of the dog in the water. Apparently, it had gone through the thin ice
that covered the lake on 13th December, and subsequently drowned in the struggle to
survive.
Sources of this article are a
report by Nils 0. Jacobson and Jens A. Tellefsen in the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research, January 1994 (49 Marloes Road, London, W8 6LA) and an article in
Sokaren magazine, 3, 1994, written by Elisabet Broome, Kristina Anjou, and Jens A.
Tellefesen, Jr