Over the year, the dowsing-research site has been slowly expanded. Digitised versions of the journal of the British Society of Dowsers are now being added, beginning with the first edition published on 1933. Over the years, the journals have contained transcripts of talks given to the Society by its members and invited guests. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to resurrect a selection of these talks, and breath life back into them, by using modern technology to convert the text into the spoken word. The process is reasonably time consuming, so some patience is required. However, the resulting videos will be added to the new “Talks” section of the site.  Hopefully you will agree with me that the results are reasonably acceptable and where possible I will provide a link back to the original transcript.

Some of the most interesting writing to appear in the BSD journals are often the letters. Letters can be of complaint, praise, desires, but many of these simply relate the curious experiences of dowsers.  Here are two such letters.

The first, entitled “Ghosts”, is a letter from Michael Jack:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No266_1999_p377.pdf

He begins with the observation that he can use dowsing to communicate with his dead wife. She helpfully provides the necessary settings for his washing machine!

He then describes using his dowsing skills to find the identity of a “ghost” he encountered. Amongst the BSD articles there is very little of this nature that has been written, so it is particularly interesting.

Next is a letter from Gillian Collins:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No240_1993_p281.pdf

This describes an example of dowsing by proxy. The author’s unconscious appears to have connected with that of her friend, such that the author’s dowsing responded to her friend’s requests. Maybe the author consciously allowed this to happen, but it makes me wonder whether some of the reported dowsing results, might arise from conscious, or unconscious ideas or wishes, espoused by others; maybe akin to the idea of a “meme”?

Here is a nice tail of a very practical use of dowsing, that of car maintenance. In

“Australian Experiences”, by Alex Deans:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No255_1997_p208.pdf

The article speaks for itself, but it shows just how useful and accurate dowsing can be.

There are a couple of other points of interest for those not familiar with dowsing. He uses graphical aids to obtain (in this case) numerical readings, which he says people are “amazed” by the correspondence between readings obtained this way compared with those taken using standard measuring equipment. Also, he uses a pendulum, which typically gave him a binary yes/no response, by gyrating in either an anti-clockwise, or clockwise manner respectively. It might be thought that this was the limit of its use. However, the motion could be nuanced, with any oval motion indicating some uncertainly.

Here is an account by a self-styled “veteran dowser”, of 44 years, of his experiences as a dowser in South Africa before WW2.

“Water and mineral divining experiences in South Africa “, by Mr  J. J. Morton.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No20_1938_p159.pdf

In his article, he simply narrates some of his experiences, working mainly as a water diviner. It is typical of many down to Earth accounts submitted to the BSD journal in the earlier years of the society’s existence, often by members working in many countries across the World, often dowsing in very tough environment. The society acted as a means of linking these people together, to exchange information. They illustrate how important dowsers were in past days and how practical the activity of dowsing was back then; in contrast one feels to the more spiritual direction it has gone in more recent times.

Mr Morton seems to have been another dowser of remarkable sensitivity, for he describes how he could sense water up to ten miles away. The reaction of his Y shaped dowsing rod seems to have been considerable, which makes one wonder whether some form of psychokinesis was at work here.

He was intrigued by the harmful effects attributed to subterranean water flows. He remarks how trees appeared to be weakened when growing over such flows. And indeed, his own is sensitivity to water, seemed to have a deleterious effect on him, if exposed for some time.

For much of the BSD’s existence, the effect of underground water flows on health, has been of considerable interest to many dowsers. Maybe this effect is real and is mediated by one’s sensitivity to water? But something that has puzzled me often, is that the claims that underground water is causing some ailment, is never substantiated by actually drilling down to the supposed flow. And rather interesting, Mr Morton observed that in his experience, mineral deposits could be interpreted by many dowsers as underground streams, though he himself had a certain “gift” to differentiate between the two. It just makes me wonder.

Here is the content of a talk entitled “Dowsing is not just for water”.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No237_1992_p113.pdf

It was given by Chris Hinsley, to the BSD annual conference of 1991. It’s a nice illustration of applying dowsing to three unusual ‘practical’ problems. Namely:

• Identifying certain genes in sheep.
• Identifying the origin of a plant disease.
• Locating the prior positions of stones removed from a stone circle.

The interest in the article is not so much about whether the dowsing results were right or wrong. In fact, feedback was only obtained for the first application, and in that case the dowsing failed. Rather, it is how the dowser goes about the task, the steps involved, the questions asked and his analysis of why his dowsing failed.

He says, “The better the understanding of the request the better and more accurate the dowsing results” and stresses the need to establish a clear mental witness. This was easier for the second task, then the first.

When the subject of the quest cannot be easily visualised, a physical witness might suffice.

It seems necessary to know just enough to, but to be careful of preconceived ideas.

Repeating the dowsing question with the same subject, to get better “odds”, and therefore a more reliable result, seems not to work for dowsing.

Map dowsing can be a helpful first step if the search area is large, but site dowsing is necessary for precision.