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Dowsing

Hi August,

I tried dowsing many years ago (1960's) and came to the conclusion that my results were a product of the workings of my subconsious mind. I feel however, that until the art of dowsing is held up to the light of scientific scrutiny, the dowsing community's claims can be taken no more seriously than those of the Feng Shui, aromatherapy or even acupuncturist and homeopathy practitioners.

I want a definitive explanation of how these things work. Surely, if we can decode the human genome, we can solve the "mysteries" of these claims.

Constant, unsubstantiated references to mysterious energy fields etc are, frankly, a yawn. Surely archeological survey teams would be using these "energies" (if they indeed exist) to locate likely sites?

I know that the great Mr Fort didn't have much time for scientific method, but things have moved on apace.

Why not "suck it and see"?
 
Hi David,

I don't know if dowsing is undergoing a revival, but I wouldn't be surprised.

There seems to be a backlash against technology by trendy middle class new-agers .

Witness the current MRM vaccine scare, where superstition, egged-on by certain newspapers, has resulted in a low take up of MRM vaccinations due to fears of autism (I read somewhere recently that a survey of children in the UK who had "mild autism" found that less than 20% actually suffered from that terrible disease. The rest had been labelled autistic by their trendy parents when they were, in fact, merely badly behaved or had learning difficulties.

Trendy things for your children to suffer from:

First it was allergy, then it was E numbers, then it was hyperactivity, then it was dyslexia, now it is autism.

Some poor children suffer greatly from the above, and my heart goes out to them and their parents, but do I detect a fashion...?

Oh, before I forget.
an article in the Independent recently suggested that research showed that only 10% of allergy sufferers actually have an allergy!

It's my belief that there is an element of fashion that cuts through most of these debates, and hypochondria is alive and well, and living in suburbia.

What say you?

(expecting the inevitable deluge of invective from bruised trendies...)
 
Colin Wilson wrote a lot about dowsing in his book 'Mysteries'. His friend TC Lethbridge was obsessed with dowsing (as in pendulum dowsing) and appeared to get a lot of results from it. I don't know whether I believe it or not, but it is a long and interesting chapter. The book is out of print, but you can sometimes pick up a copy in Watkins in Leicester Square which is an esoteric bookshop.
 
Hi Toxic,

Obsessives, as I'm sure you will agree, are not always the most objective of people when it comes to self criticism.
 
Interesting and sadly out of print book that may be of interest if you can find it... 'Needles of Stone'by Tom Graves pb 1978 and then revised in 1986 (pb Gothic Image Press) I believe that Mr Graves n longer has a real interest in dowsing now, but he did also write 'Pendulum Dowsing' which was a pretty good starting point for dowsing.

8-)
 
I'll be disappointed but not surprised if it is a passing fashion...the next thing we know Mr Titchmarsh'll be out in his back garden with his new range of 'Barleywood' positive energy rustic poles...
...and there was me hoping for a burgeoning of caring spirituality!

...anyway, can't chat, I'll be late for my chakra-balancing, healing-crystal colonic massage...ouch!:rolleyes:
 
Side bar

Good Lord! Another reader of Mr Graves. It was his book, at the tender age of 13 that really kicked off my interest in earth mysteries... Ah, memories

8¬)
 
It works

In my day job I work at a water treatment works, its over a hundred years old, lots of old water mains that have been forgotten about. If I get a couple of old welding rods, bend them to make two handles and wander around the damn things go mad. They also cross over if I pass under phone lines. So it seems it works up as well as down.
 
!

How could I subconsiously make it work when Idont know where the old mains are?. When excavations mae at later dates,old mains were where rods indicated. Nothing special about me ,expect anyone could do it.
 
I've seen several times words to the effect of "I was aware I was subconciously making it work"

Sorry folks that ain't subconcious.

Now I don't want to worry you but if you work on site you will find out dowsers are used. BT, in its in house magazine reported on its successful use recently.

To get rid if the FOAF side I have seen it used successfully by a site engineer (surveyor) who needed a quick fix on the line of a water main. He did not have time to wait for the Borough Surveyors or water company to provide a map (the BS map indeed would have been useless, the pipe had been laid some 40 years ago and the BS line was 5 m out of place). He spotted it to within 1m and gave an estimated depth accurate to within 30 cm.
 
Some fairly large-scale trials of dowsing have been done. Predictably, the dowsers claimed great success but CSICOP rubbished the experiments' methodology.

Check this article out:
http://www.csicop.org/si/9901/dowsing.html

Reading it, the experiments do seem flawed. But you have to wonder what sort of evidence for dowsing would be acceptable to this lot. Their conclusions make it quite clear that as far as they're concerned the matter is settled, and that they want to close down any possibility of further discussion:

"It seems very unlikely that any future careful experimental study of dowsing will produce results more favorable for the practitioners than the Munich experiments. An atmosphere more sympathetic to the dowsers, with so many concessions to their whims, seems hard to imagine. In view of the outcome of those experiments, it is very unlikely that any sponsor would ever provide funds for an even larger-scale study, such that very weak skills (which might conceivably have vanished into the statistical noise here) could be uncovered. (It is noteworthy that the U.S. Geological Survey concluded much earlier [Ellis 1917] that further testing of dowsing " . . .would be a misuse of public funds.") It seems appropriate, then, to reiterate here the general conclusion originally drawn from these analyses (Enright 1995):

(These) . . . experiments are not only the most extensive and careful scientific study of the dowsing problem ever attempted, but -- if reason prevails -- they probably also represent the last major study of this sort that will ever be undertaken. (Enright 1995, 369)."

Can you really imagine Randi admitting he's been wrong the whole time, acknowledging the truth of paranormal phenomena and handing over the cash? I don't know...
 
And, sure enough, I've still had no response from them. At least they could have the common courtesy, you'd think, of responding even to the effect of "sorry, correspondence closed". But anyway...
 
Had a quick look at some of the sceptic sites in relation to dowsing and the attitude seems to be that if an experiment seems to show no effect it is "well designed" and if an experiment seems to show an effect it is "badly designed" or "the statistical methods used are doubtful"

Odd thing is that dowsers who hunt for water for farmers get paid by results and I would suspect those who work for mineral and oil companies are as well, so if dowsing is a fantasy - how do they make a living? :confused:
 
"Odd thing is that dowsers who hunt for water for farmers get paid by results"
Quite right Intaglio, I covered that in an earlier post!
 
I'm new on this board, but two years ago I did a 20,000 literature review on scientific tests of dowsing abilities for a final year physics degree project. It's 2.8 MB unzipped, so maybe too big to post here (besides, I haven't got the disk today) but if the folks on the board wants a copy I'll be more than happy to e-mail it out zipped.
Brief summary of what I found- underground pipes/buried treasure etc- no experimental evidence for this ability.
Water dowsing (wells, karst channels etc,)- strong evidence that dowsers can find this. more research recommended.
Origin of field- possibly magnetic.
 
tesla said:
I'm new on this board, but two years ago I did a 20,000 literature review on scientific tests of dowsing ...
Brief summary of what I found- underground pipes/buried treasure etc- no experimental evidence for this ability.
Water dowsing (wells, karst channels etc,)- strong evidence that dowsers can find this. more research recommended.
Origin of field- possibly magnetic.

I am prepared to accept dowsers can find water, but they don't know how they do it.
The main feeling amongst sensible dowsers seems to be that they subconsciously detect an unknown field, possibly magnetic, and that causes them to rotate the dowsing implement, also subconsiously, as an indication.

Of course a simpler explanation would be that a good dowser is able to detect water courses from experience- subtle vegetation and soil changes, and the shape and slope of the area concerned. This is not evidence of fraud, but evidence of extreme competence and skill.
A competent physical geologist or soil scientist could make professional judgement and be right with comparable accuracy, no doubt.
If you don't know what the phenomenon is, don't look for weird explanations until all the down to earth explanations are exhausted.

just a thought.

steve b
 
Dowsing Breakthrough?

Calling all dowsers...Get yourselves onto the Rangertell infosite and pick up this sure-fire gadget. Here is a quick quote from the info site:

"Immediately you can detect gold, silver and precious metals. Also as close as the next frequency (on request and deliverable by email immediately when we can and don't need to obtain samples) you can find any gemstone even diamonds and US Notes. In the instructions you will find how to tune to almost any material once you have a sample"

Keeping an open mind (and trying to ignore the fact that the device appears to consist of a pocket calculator strapped to a cigar box and a toilet roll), do any of my fellow posters know of someone who has used one (FOAF tales eagerly accepted)?

I suggest that Gully Bull investigate this ground-breaking device, and that it should be a subject for revue in FT ASAP.
 
Blimey! It has an Anubis dial! That is so useful!

I mean how many times have you been looking for something and thought "well, if only I could adjust the Anubis levels here, I would find it easily"?
 
Re: Dowsing Breakthrough?

Originally posted by Arthur ASCII
Keeping an open mind (and trying to ignore the fact that the device appears to consist of a pocket calculator strapped to a cigar box and a toilet roll), do any of my fellow posters know of someone who has used one (FOAF tales eagerly accepted)?

Originally posted by Breakfast
Blimey! It has an Anubis dial! That is so useful!

I mean how many times have you been looking for something and thought "well, if only I could adjust the Anubis levels here, I would find it easily"?

Isn't that typical for "radionics" devices? goofy pseudoscientific instruments with controls not connected to anything?

Though the inclusion of a keypad / calculator into the mix seems like a new twist. (Here's another example.) Personally, I prefer honest cardboard cigar boxes with analog dials hand-drawn onto paper. But then, I'm a traditionallist.

(Speaking of which, is there any sort of overview of the history and development of the radionics field? I'm looking for something like the Sears catalog of kook devices.)
 
Another one!

Worked at a place today (gardening) and the owners of the house told me of a friend of theirs.
(I know, it sounds like an apocryphal tale!:rolleyes: )

The friend moved into a new home. Had a 'string of bad luck'.
'Got someone in' to 'dowse the leylines' and sort out the family's fortunes!
I got some contact details, seems the dowser's part of the local Spiritualist Church (?!). I'm intrigued...

Think I'll ring him... I feel a career change in the offing!:D (or at least a little 'side-line'!)
 
My stepfather dowses as part of his work as a gardener , he found a water pipe that he needed to avoid when putting in a fence, things like that.
The earth mysteries group I go to is very dowsing oriented (probably cause one of the people who runs it has written a few books on dowsing) .
I've tried it but haven't ever felt the need to do it seriously.
Apparently its not a science and if you get ten dowsers dowsing a site they will all come up with different results- so there is no way of proving if it works or not I guess!
 
Marion said:
Apparently its not a science and if you get ten dowsers dowsing a site they will all come up with different results- so there is no way of proving if it works or not I guess!

It is important to remember that not all Earth Energy dowsers 'see' these energies in the same way. Since Spiritual Dowsing was first published in 1986, dowsers Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst have dowsed the 'Michael Line' – a geomantic corridor discussed later in this book, running from St Michael's Mount in Cornwall to the Northeast through many important sites including Glastonbury Tor and Avebury. Instead of the energy being straight as with the energy leys discussed here, they found two curving lines (called the Michael and Mary lines), like the serpents on Hermes' caduceus, crossing at the major points of power along the way. It's OK to 'see' it differently.

By that bloke 'who's written a few books on dowsing'?!:)

I'm ashamed to say I've not tried it yet.

Where's me 'bic' biros and me coathangers?:D
 
Re: Dowsing Renaissance?!

David Raven said:
Recently, I have come across several people who have had 'the dowsers in'! This involved dowsing their gardens and metal rods being placed under the ground to divert 'black energies' from the household...
...or is this a version of the trendy Feng Shui?

That 'balck energies' thing sounds rather daft (i.e. neo-New Age) to me ;)

As for the 'Michael Line', I still think that's a bit of a red herring.
 
Here's what I posted on an old thread :
I learned how to dowse a few years back at a country fair whilst away from home, and proved that it worked on our local waterworks field. I then taught my son, and we went to a local stone circle to plot anything we could find. We plotted lines meeting in the circle on paper and then compared results, which proved to be identical. Then my son whilst walking around the circle discovered that his dowsing rods turned alternately inwards then outwards as he passed over each stone. I got the same result. there are 19 stones so each time one went around the same stone turned the rods alternately in & out! When back at home looking at a plan of the stones drawn in a local pagan magazine (Meyn Mamvro) I found ley lines drawn on it by a dowser who claimed water flowed underground along fissures that met in the centre of the circle and his plans matched ours.

So I'm happy about dowsing for water, but detecting energy lines does seem to be more problematical (personal?)
 
Dowsing never really disappeared though, it just went underground. Problem being, they needed a dowser to work out where it was buried.

:D

My coat, you say?
 
Arthur ASCII said:
...Trendy things for your children to suffer from:

First it was allergy, then it was E numbers, then it was hyperactivity, then it was dyslexia, now it is autism.

Some poor children suffer greatly from the above, and my heart goes out to them and their parents, but do I detect a fashion...?...
From my friends in the education industry, it would appear Aspbergers (sp?) Syndrome is the latest thing for children to suffer from. This of course has nothing to do with the extra funding made available for 'special needs' children in schools...
 
I took a vocational course in Agriculture alongside my G.c.s.e's- as I wanted to go onto Agricultural college.
It meant one day a week we had field trips with a teacher who was also well versed in dowsing- he was sound..used to let us get away with murder such as drinking on school trips (as long as we gave him some of our cider and kept him in cigarettes).
Anyway, I have surreal memories of my class being traipsed around the quite extensive and semi-pastoral school grounds being taught the rudimentary aspects of dowsing. All we managed to follow was the school's drainage pipes that came out into a local brook, and I must say that we didn't know we were following these until we found the outlet pipe and we certainly did get a 'reaction' from the rods.

In regards to Autism: when Asperger was originally carrying out his research during and after WWII, the only people able to afford quality psychiatric medicine were the upper classes. When the NHS was first introduced to Britain, it was observed that Autism was not a syndrome that exclusively affected the wealthy. Everybody has aspects of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, and many people with Autism can go undiagnosed, it also obviously depends on the severity whether or not you are classed as requiring 'Special Needs'
;)
 
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