A Dowser’s challenge

In one BSD journal (no 208), the Editor made the remark that more communications were coming to them in which it was said that ‘I have proved it by dowsing’. The Editor added that “Dowsing on its own is no proof – we must have more evidence than this.”

This theme was picked up later by two experienced dowsers, in a short correspondence to the journal. I think they make important contributions. The first is from Mike Doney.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No228_1990_p92.pdf

Many Dowsers have leaned that experience is enough proof itself. But he asserts that dowsing successes are not proof, and is sympathetic to the Editor of the BSD journal, for their efforts to exert some restraint on the claims of contributors.

As an illustration of a dowsing “belief”, he sets out a “nutty” challenge to others, to confirm an idea of his own, or whether it was all in his imagination; that calcium somehow flows through channels, nine feet apart.

The respondent, Dan Wilson, provides a considered and particularly interesting response to Mike’s challenge.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No229_1990_p139.pdf

He asserts that the dowsing response is a reaction to artefacts created subconsciously within the Dowser’s mind. These artefacts are created in response to the latter’s speculations. His writing is a little difficult to follow in parts, but what he suggests, is that the Dowser’s mind can create different “realities”. The real question, he suggests, is whether these are helpful. This is why proof is important. He argues that the calcium channels referred to by Mike are real but are not particularly helpful. Instead, he suggests, searching for ‘islands’ of Calcium would be more helpful. In so doing the islands, which did not previously exist, would come into existence.

But the key point is not the Calcium, it is that the Dowser’s mind is creating reality through their intention. He has come to this conclusion through his dowsing practice. But interestingly, parapsychological research has also shown intention to be fundamental to reality.  

An important topic for Dowsers are so-called “Earth energy lines”, which we shall cover in future posts. The ideas in this correspondence, I believe, have a great bearing on these.

Helpful tips on dowsing for beginners

This extract is from a more recent BSD journal (1991). It is the content of a lecture delivered by a former president of the British Society of Dowsers, Major-General J. Scot-Elliott. He came to practice dowsing later in life and specialised in archaeological dowsing. He authored a helpful book, “Dowsing: One Man’s Way”, published in 1977. (It might still be available from the BSD shop, https://britishdowsers.org/ )

In his lecture, you can see how the explanation of the dowsing effect has moved from the idea of a mental radio (objects giving off emanations), to the realisation that it is a matter of mind. Interestingly though he suggests that the ability may not be evenly distributed throughout the population, with only 10% having the ability to become “good” dowsers. But the key he asserts is to find an application for one’s dowsing and concentrate on that, rather than apply dowsing to everything and then practice with that application. Early work needs to include good feedback, to build confidence. Expecting novice dowsers to perform well is not justified, and this has implications when one considers past experiments designed to prove the credibility of dowsing.

As in the post of 26/03/2020, he believes it is necessary to keep the process of dowsing as simple as one can. Avoid preconceptions as much as possible (in the dowsing field these are sometimes referred to as shibboleths). He mentions that samples are only an aid to focus the mind, they may be helpful sometimes, but just a written description of the object sought may also be sufficient.

He ends with a helpful description of his way of working and also some basic rules for beginners. Dowsing is the art of seeking, and for this to be successful, one requires practice with feedback, in order to develop confidence and identify confounding factors. But he also stresses that “the need to know” is important, ie the results are improved, if the search is personally important to the dowser. And of course, the question the dowser asks themselves in their search must be the correct one (otherwise, garbage in, garbage out) and interestingly, it often should account for time, because of the rémanence effect.

The article is entitled “Dowsing for beginners”, see:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No232_1991_p248.pdf

Dowsing with phantom maps

During the 20th century, the idea of dowsing over maps began to slowly catch on, although not all dowsers considered it possible. Here Evelyn Penrose, a remarkably talented dowser who we have met in an earlier post, writes about a surprise she had while map dowsing for water in Australia. She had previously map dowsed on many occasions, but as is often the case in dowsing, the practitioner will often discover something new about their art.

She had always considered, that it essential that the map she was using, should have sufficient detail of the actual land it represented, so that it could not be confused with another similar area of land. That is the map acted rather like a finger print. It is a method very much in keeping with the vogue at that time to use a sample of the object sought, when dowsing. The idea being that somehow, the dowser and sample worked together. However, on one occasion, much to her surprise, she discovered that she had successfully dowsed for underground water, using a map that represented not the actual layout, but the future layout of the land.

It is as if the real dowsing was purely mental, with the map only acting as mental prop, to help focus it and thereby shut out all distractions.

The article is “The Phantom Map”:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No83_1954_p285.pdf

The role of inhibitions in dowsing

This article, another from the very early editions of the BSD journals (in this case 1939), is written by a very experienced dowser, writing under a pseudonym. His tackles one the most important aspects of dowsing, that of having preconceived ideas, which will affect the dowsing response.

He gives an example. Traditionally, dowsing had been more of a country man pursuit and he talks of the “old village dowser”. However, new people, with new ideas were now beginning to take up the practice, such as our author. In his example, it is likely that the country dowser considered the dowsing reaction to be caused, at least in some part, by a flow of electricity through the body in/out of the ground, therefore the wearing of rubber soled boots would insulate one and prevent any dowsing.  To our author, this was simply an incorrect pre-conceived idea. The country dowser was inhibiting his own ability to dowse. But by using his fake instrument, to fabricate a supposed dowsing response, the author was able to remove the dowser’s inhibition.

He states quite clearly his experience, “… if one’s instruments, and oneself, are sensitive enough, nothing will stop radiation perception”, and there was nothing he could not dowse for.  (In fact, from today’s perspective, you might even say that perceiving radiation, was also a preconceived idea, but perhaps one that had little effect on one’s abilities to dowse). He says that it is necessary to achieve the right mental state, “… chloroform your imagination …”, but the hardest part, he stresses, is understanding (“translating”) the meaning of the dowsing response.  

The article is here:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/ BSD_No23_1939_p324.pdf

Sexing eggs

Here is an example of an application of dowsing – sexing hen’s eggs. Possibly unsexy to many, the accounts are still interesting, for the way they illustrate real dowsing problems, the pitfalls and discoveries along the way. This is presumably why many dowsers have often limited their application of dowsing, to only a certain range of problems.  

I have included two articles from 1940s editions of the BSD journal. The 1945 article is a dowser’s experiences working out how to sex eggs reliably. The author refers to dowsing as “radio perception”, a common idea at that time, being that dowsing was a person’s ability to act as some kind of radio receiver. (In fact, the BSD journal was renamed “Radio Perception” for several years).

The article is a little difficult to follow at times, as she recounts several unexpected discoveries along the way, but here are the main points. She found that pendulums comprising different materials gave different levels of reliability, up to a maximum of 80%. However, when she used a silver chain as a pendulum, an item which she wore regularly, she achieved a reliability of 100%. As she put it, this might have had something to do with the pendulum being more “attuned” to her.  She made the further discovery that there were four types of response when sexing an egg: male, female, infertile, or fertile, but the chick would not live long. Interestingly, the strength of the dowsing reaction was dependent on the vitality of the egg, such that it became possible to predict which eggs were worth incubating. Finally, and importantly, through careful breeding, she was able to test and successfully confirm to herself her dowsing ability.

The article is here:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/ BSD_No49_1945_p208.pdf

The 1943 article is a short letter to the BSD journal, from another dowser, illustrating their attempts to sex eggs. Here they provide actual figures, although the numbers are too small to be statistically meaningful, but still they might be indicative of a relatively high confidence level. What is particularly interesting I think, is the is that one egg had become coated in the remains of a broken egg, with the effect of masking the underlying fertile egg from the dowser’s search. An unexpected phenomenon indeed. Again, this shows the care required when dowsing. But with experience of dowsing for given types objects, suitable questions can be established to deal with such eventualities.  Another reason why a dowser might specialise in the way they apply their art.

The article is here:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/ BSD_No39_1943_p206.pdf

Mental projection

This article is from a later edition (1980) of the BSD journal compared with the previous posts so far. Therefore, the author has been able to use previously reported dowsing methods. As a result, he has come to some interesting conclusions as to the nature of dowsing.

He states that he uses the minimum of dowsing tools, namely a V rod (that is a dowsing tool made from two flexible arms joined at one end), and a pendulum. He does not use L rods (two pieces of wire, with a 90-degree bend to form handles), which are more commonly used by dowsers today. He points out that it is not the tool that responds to the sought object, but the dowser themselves, and demonstrates this by saying he has successfully dowsed using his hands alone (a practice often referred to now as deviceless dowsing).

He rejects the notion that the dowser is picking up anything emanating from the object sought (as we referred to in post of 13-03-2020) an idea widely accepted by dowsers. He justifies this my pointing out that he did most of his dowsing far removed from the actual site. To achieve this, he has successfully used map dowsing, proxy dowsing (with, in one case, only in contact with the proxy by telephone, some 15 miles away) and finally what he terms “mental dowsing”. In the latter, he pictures the site in his mind and dowses it that way.

Finally, he finishes on the possibilities such techniques might offer more traditional prospecting companies.

The article is available here:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No189_1980_p278.pdf

Dowsing by proxy

Within the BSD Journal, there are a few reports of what has been referred to as proxy dowsing. Here another person (a non-dowser) walks over the site to be dowsed, while not performing any dowsing action, while the actual dowser, stationary and at some distance removed, watches their movement. In this manner, the dowser can still obtain a reaction on their dowsing device, as if they were walking the site in the manner of their proxy.

This curious phenomenon can surprise even seasoned dowsers. In this article, written by Evelyn Penrose, (probably the most accomplished female dowser of the last century) experiences proxy dowsing for the first time. She is introduced to it by one of the great 20th Century dowsing pioneers, the French priest, Abbe Bouly (there were several French priests who were expert dowsers at this time).

Proxy dowsing is reminiscent of the Stanford Research Institute experiments in remote viewing, in which a target person visits a remote site and the remote viewer attempts to describe what the target person is looking at. Therefore, one might conclude that the basic mechanism is the same in both these applications of psi.

The full article is here:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No45_1944_p59.pdf

Errors in dowsing

During the earlier years of its existence, each Journal of the British Society of Dowsers contained brief reviews of European dowsing journals. One of these was the French dowsing journal named Radiesthesie pour Tous, now sadly a publication no more. These reviews were brief, but they included translations into English.  The content of these European journals, and particularly this one, were very interesting. One gets the impression that the French dowsers were more open minded than their English counterparts at this time, with regard to how dowsing might work and how it might be applied.

Anyway, here is a short extract from Radiesthesie pour Tous, Number 21, August 1951, p263, entitled “Errors in Radiesthesia”. There are two short accounts of dowsers performing a successful search, but which turned out to be failures, in very unexpected manners.

The first search was for a lost dog, but actually the dog’s brother was found.

In the second search, the dowser sought a husband and wife, with whom contact had been lost at the start of WW2. In fact, the couple had been killed, and instead he located their son in one location, and a relative in another.

Such failures show the importance of the dowser asking the right questions, or series of questions, about the object(s) sought during the search process.

The translated text is available here (look for p.263):

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No70_1950_p243.pdf

Another method to establish the object sought

This article, published in 1951 in the Journal of the BSD, is a description of a Dr Robertson, who evidently was a very good practitioner of the art of dowsing.

He seemed to specialise in water divining and the article describes him dowsing onsite for water in India. However, he had the ability to dowse, in a very precise manner, for any object. To do this, he followed a particularly interesting technique. He used a traditional Y shared dowsing rod, “.. afresh forked and pliable twig ..”. He would hold the two ends of the Y in his hands, and then touch the third length onto either the object, or example of the same, that he was seeking. What we have here appears to be a kind of programming of the search. It’s interesting that the author could also use this technique, suggesting it is not necessarily dependent on the dowser. However, in the last post, we saw the dowser holding a sample (a slipper in that case) whilst dowsing. One possible explanation is that this procedure somehow programmed the intention to find the object within the mind of the dowser.  Using this technique, an example is given, of the ability of a dowser to trace the path, previously trod by a person (like we saw in the previous post – “Tracing the lost” – 13/3/2020).

The author says that the “waves” of the object then entered the stick. That is his own explanation, but as pointed out in previous posts, the dowsing effect has been thought of as a kind of radio reception. He even talks of something “vibrating” the stick. But this is probably best thought of as an analogy. It seems that it was the author’s experience that not everyone can obtain a dowsing reaction (something we will hopefully return to in later posts). Then there was the curious observation that when the author attempted to use Dr Robertson’s dowsing rod (“stick”), he was unable to, for it seemed that the rod had somehow rather bizarrely become entangled with Robertson’s.

The full article is here:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No73_p38-39.pdf

Tracing the lost

One historical application of dowsing has been to trace missing people, either alive or deceased. In this account, taken from the BSD Journal of September 1950, we find the police working with a dowser in an attempt to find a missing young girl, who it turned out sadly had been murdered.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No69_p131-141.pdf

Although the girl was eventually located by other means, the account is an interesting study in actual dowsing. There are many accounts in which dowsers have successfully traced people. This is probably because it appears to be quite a specialised task and only a handful of dowsers specialised in it, but as a result they became very good. But dowsing is not always exact, because there are often confounding issues, however it may be a helpful guide.

The first part of this very detailed account is provided by the Police inspector who worked with the dowser, a Mr Latham, and the latter part contains the comments of the dowser himself.

The dowser begins the search by dowsing a large scale map using a pendulum.  He describes the action of the latter as he closes in on the area in which the girl was later found.  Changes in the pendulum’s swing  from oscillation to and fro to gyration is a common dowsing reaction,  but the meaning of the swing may often depends on the dowser themselves.

He later moves to on-site dowsing, using a traditional (and at that time widely used) Y shaped dowsing rod, here made of whalebone, which was a material of choice at this time. I think few dowsers today would use the Y rod.  He is feeling the “pull” in the rod, to get a bearing on the location of child.

Note also that he speaks of “emanations”. Dowsers, especially at that time, but also today, consider that everything radiates in some way, and that they are receiving and homing in on this radiation or emanations. If we stay with that metaphor, then to help him “tune” himself into what he is seeking, he uses a “sample” representing whatever is sought. In this case, it is the child’s slipper. As he points out, an inanimate object can become imbued with the characteristics of the thing sought, if the two are connected for a sufficient amount of time (often referred to by dowsers as rémanence). Interestingly though he mentions the child’s hair and dog’s hair within the slipper, the former should have aided the search, while the latter may have been sufficient to confuse the search.

Dowsers often give vent to their own ideas about how their art works and he expounds on this at some length near the end, hopefully this does not distract from the actual proceedings.

Welcome to this dowsing blog

Welcome to this new dowsing blog, I hope you find it of interest.

For the first post, I want to mention the British Society of Dowsers (BSD), see https://britishdowsers.org/

This organisation was established in 1933, by Colonel A. H. Bell. The early years of the society’s existence attracted several former officers of the British army, who either had, or presumably had, personal experience of the efficacy of dowsing, as practiced by those they commanded.

Since its inception, the society has published a quarterly journal. This began as “The Journal of the British Society of Dowsers”, then for a brief period it became “Radio Perception”, before reverting to its original title, and finally in 2000 it was renamed “Dowsing Today”. Throughout its history, the journal has contained accounts by members of their various dowsing experiences and experiments. It is a rich source of information relating to how dowsing has been and is practiced.  

Because of that, I will be drawing heavily on content derived from the BSD journals. Digital versions of the journals are not currently publicly available, so currently this blog is the only place where this material may be read online. But rather then full volumes, I will post individual articles of what I consider are of particular interest.

Today I have posted the editorial from issue number 1 of the BSD journal, 1933. Though short, it is a good introduction to some of the key aspects of dowsing.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No1_p1-2.pdf

Reference is made to the various tools that a dowser might use, while practicing their art. It also mentions that although dowsing might be more familiar as water divining, there are many more applications of which many people remain unaware. So for example, in addition to being able to locate items underground, dowsing can be used for medical diagnosis.  The example of tracing lost people is also referred to. There is a curious reference to an object having a “scent”, that is leaving some invisible trace behind once the object has been moved. This is what dowsers often refer to as remanence, and from the dowser’s point of view, it is as if the object is still in situ. Obviously, this can cause problems for while dowsing.

The dowsing mechanism might be thought of as being a physical effect. But dowsers can search by dowsing maps of some distant location of interest. So there appears to be some anomalous method of information transfer at work.

I hope to provide further illustration of these points at a later time.