Many dowsers ask permission to engage in dowsing. In the BSD, you will find this referred to by them asking the questions: “Can I? May I? Should I?”. The format is
- State what you want to to achieve by dowsing, then ask
- “Can I?” (dowse for this)
- “May I?” (dowse for this)
- “Should I?” (dowse for this)
It seems that in the history of dowsing, that this is a relatively modern phenomenon. The first printed reference to it appears in 1986, in the book “Spiritual Dowsing” by a renowned American dowser named Sig Lonegren. Here he recommends using the questions as a focussing exercise prior to actual dowsing. Note that he uses “Am I ready to do it?”, rather than “Should I?”, the lack of should appears not to appear to imply the same ethical question. Sig Lonegren’s ideas appeared to have been influenced by another eminent dowser named Terry Ross. In BSD journal no239, 1992, Terry Ross quotes “Can I? May I? Should I?”, the form quoted today (within the BSD).
Sig Lonegren says that failure to get a yes to the questions means that the dowsing results will be unreliable.
http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/spiritual_dowsing_lonegren_p9.pdf
In the late 1990s, a member of the BSD, named Dudley Wheeler, surveyed members of the society on their views about asking permission. He suggested that requesting permission did not much predate 1970. He was surprised to find that many were hostile to the idea, or did not do it.
The first results of his investigations are recorded in a newsletter of special interest group, part of the BSD,
http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_EEG_newsletter_1999_wheeler.pdf
About the granting of permission: “The simplest answer to ‘who gives permission’ is that it is your own sub-conscious mind which provides the response, based upon your own set of moral and ethical values. This simple answer does not satisfy everybody.”
Some of the verbatim feedback is recorded here, in “Update in seeking permission to dowse”,
http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No271_2001_p14.pdf
If we assume that all members were capable dowsers, then it seems that asking permission is not a necessary prerequisite to successful dowsing. Perhaps what it really shows is a shift in emphasis in dowsing over time. It has moved away from seeking physical entities like underground water, utilising a dowsing effect mediated by radiations, to matters like health and well-being, and “Earth energies”. Dowsing is interacting with the life of others, and so the ethics of dowsing becomes more important, but also there seems to be a realisation that something else, other than the dowser, might be involved in making that dowsing work.