This article was written by a former president of the British Society of Dowsers (BSD), named Major-General J. Scott-Elliott. It is a transcript of a talk he gave to members of the society in 1966. At that time there was a good deal of debate about the cause of the dowsing reaction, did it have a physical cause, or was in a purely mental activity? Since then, I believe that the latter is the more widely accepted view amongst dowsers, but there are still those who believe it has a physical cause, or even a hybrid effect. Outside of the dowsing fraternity, most would attribute it to something physical.
His article is found here:
http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/ BSD_No133_1966_p288.pdf
In this article Scott-Elliott, gives examples of a few of the many possible applications of dowsing, in an attempt to unpick the physical from the psychic. He considered dowsing to be the art of searching based on some question, so he arbitrarily refers to the dowsing reaction as the ‘Q force’. He asserts that this Q force acts through the dowser and that the dowsing device is simply an indicator. I believe that most dowsers would agree with that.
His examples cover the three broad types of dowsing practice: dowsing close to what is sought, for example medical dowsing, and working with plants; dowsing from a distance (in either space and/or time), archaeological dowsing, including dating, depthing of water; and map dowsing, where he dowsed the movements of a ship. To Scott-Elliott, however, there is no differentiation between these practices, “all dowsing is one”.
He concludes that dowsing is “part physical and part mental”, but it’s not clear quite what he means by this. In some instances, for example in healing, something physical might be transferred something physical. Then there is the interesting effect of clay of the estimation of water depth. But as he asks, “is this fact or inhibition?”. Many dowsers have commented that it causes them problems depthing, so there is clearly an effect, but with all dowsing, the dowsing is bringing unconscious biases to the process. How influential are these. There are examples in the BSD journal of dowsers who are untroubled by clay. Take for instance this statement from BSD journal issue no129, page 62,
“The practising dowsers present also expressed the views on the real or spurious effects of clays upon their depthing readings, and here it seems that the mental school had an advantage over the physical school of dowser, the former experiencing no distortion, at all of course, by strata content.”
We perhaps have a bias for physical effects, but the simplest explanation for the dowsing effect is that it is purely psychic. In fact, it seems very difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate information glean by psychic means, from that derived from physical source. However, consider this. A buried object might give rise to weak magnetic field at ground level. If we postulate the existence of a magnetic field detector, we might explain the dowsing reaction when in the vicinity of the object. But how do we explain any additional information we might obtain, through dowsing, about the object? We would need to explain how information about the object is actually encoded in the magnetic field. The scientist and dowser, Zaboj Harvalik (see dowsing-research.net for some of his papers) did substantial work on the ability of dowsers to detect weak magnetic fields. He concluded that professional dowsers can detect changes in magnetic field of less than one millionth the strength of the Earth’s field. How can these people possibly function in the World? This seems more understandable if the sensing of the field is through a psychic filter. And finally there is the problem of explaining map dowsing …