This is the remarkable account of the experiences of one dowser when they put dowsing firmly at the centre of their life as a guide.

“The high prairie adventure” by John Living,

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No263_1999_p206.pdf

It seems to exemplify what is possible when one fully trusts the dowsing response (with the proviso that one is careful to ask the right question of course). The author recounts a number of incidents in which dowsing successfully guided him, including interestingly some future encounters. This success, further increased his faith in dowsing and through the virtuous circle, apparent synchronicities emerged.

There is an audio version of this article available here:

https://youtu.be/MSmIChJaEgY

Several other talks and articles have been converted into speech and are available from the “Talks” section of www.dowsing-research.net

This post concerns a short note taken in translation from the French dowsing journal, La Radiesthesie Pour Tous (L.R.P.T.) of December 1936, page 335 (now sadly a publication no more).  It appears that the dowser was using her pendulum with something simiar to a Ouija board. It is a dowsing practice which I have not found reference to previously, at least in the BSD journals. Here is the summary of the account (tanslated from the original French).

“Last year some Canadian readers visited  the L.R.P.T. office, among whom was a Mme. Sergerie. This lady demonstrated a semi-circular diagram in which letters and figures are inscribed. It is claimed that answers to any questions can be obtained with the help of the pendulum from this diagram, providing that the operator has the necessary aptitude …. Some operators find it better to orientate the diagram before using it, but for others this is not necessary. ” [the original article contained  a reproduction of the figure].

“Dowsing along the psi-track. Have Swedish psi-researchers done something really important – a repeatable experiment?” by J. Tellefsen and S. Magnusson

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No263_1999_p200.pdf

This is a short account of a remarkable discovery, the ability of a dowser to detect an apparent “line of thought” between an object and a person thinking about that object. This connection which was named the “psi-track”.  The method involved a person (“the sender”), imagining the object hidden at some distant. The dowser would then walk in ever wider circles around the sender, and when they passed over the supposed line connecting the sender with the object, they obtained a dowsing reaction. From these reactions, it was possible to deduce the direction in which the object lay.

The Swedish researchers appear to have conducted their experiments with some care, using double-blind protocols and reported very good results. The article appeared in the BSD journal, but it is a shorter version of one that can be downloaded from the Articles section of dowsing-reacerch.net, entitled: “Dowsing along the psi track – a novel procedure for studying unusual perception” by the same authors.

The implication was that the act of thinking about the object, created some influence that existed independently of the sender. Now although, the psi-track is presented as a novel discovery, it seems similar to suggestions made by certain members of the BSD, in relation to the origin of supposed “Earth Energies”, in which they challenged this orthodoxy, suggesting instead that the energies were really “mind constructs”. For instance, see the following posts:

19-06-2020 – The Beadon Cube controversy.

21-06-2020 – We find what we believe.

However, the method of using the psi-track to locate a lost object (animate or inanimate) does seem to be new. A lone dowser would presumably find the direction in which an object lies directly from their dowsing device. But perhaps, in the case were the dowser is not particularly familiar with the object sought, or maybe their dowsing abilities are not so well developed, errors might occur. In such cases, the psi-track method might offer some advantages. First, the sub-title of the article suggests that the tracks can be can be made by anyone. We might speculate that if there is a deep connection between the sender and the object, it might create a more reliable (perhaps even a stronger) line of connection?

Here is a short account by a former British Army officer who learned to dowse for water in the Sinai desert during the first World war:

“Initiation into dowsing” by J.S. Millar.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No153_1971_p228.pdf

What was interesting to me was that the episode the author described followed the Gallipoli campaign, which was a time when the army desperately needed water and dowsing came to the fore, (as mentioned in earlier posts). This obviously left quiet an impression on many officers, since some went on to found the British Society of Dowsers.  

The author was taught to dowse by his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who it one must suppose used dowsing in his former life as a Water Engineer. But one thing that stands out is that the Colonel was actually map dowsing, to locate promising areas, prior to searching for water on the ground. This makes it the earliest reference to map dowsing that I have so far come across, around 1917 for this account, I would say.

Another wonderful source of dowsing anecdotes in the early BSD journals was to be found in the “Notes and News” section. Here was a collection of short notable news reports and letters recounting the diverse dowsing activities undertaken by members of the society.

Here is an example of two such items. The first deals with finding water in support of the building of a railway in northern Sudan at the end of the 19^th Century. It includes a short account of a local man who had a very particular method of dowsing for the presence of water. Also there is an account of the British army using a the dowsing abilities of one of its own soldiers to find water in an otherwise unpromising desert location, challenging the sceptical response to water dowsing, in which the dowser is unconsciously using some in-depth knowledge of the land to find a bore hole.

The second anecdote refers to the hunting of moles and of the location of blocked drains. Interestingly, to assist in finding the moles, the dowser used a handful of soil thrown up by the moles, before moving to the use of the pelt of the first trapped mole, which seemed to provide better results, despite the fact that it did not belong to the next mole sought.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No25_1939_p34.pdf

Here is an example of perhaps my favourite style of article in the Journal of the British Society of Dowsers. A simple account of dowsing practices, devoid of much interpretation. “Some dowsing experiences” by Helen Wedderburn-Maxwell:

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No25_1939_p19.pdf

The lady, who does not appear to be a dowser herself, describes the abilities of a local dowser, before giving an account of several “experiments” made by her husband, after he had discovered he had an innate dowsing talent.

We see as in the last blog post, that the dowser uses a sample of the object sought, using the motto “Like to like”, and we learn how effective this method appeared to be at differentiating between similar objects. In fact, even a sample was unnecessary, the dowsing instrument only had to be “initialised” for the search, by being placed in the vicinity of where the object (in this case a fox) had been. (She even mentions the use of dowsing in central Germany, to track down criminals, but that this was not always as straight forward as it might seem). This all possibly suggests that there is a mental aspect to the initialisation. More evidence for this comes from the manner in which the diviner sought the depth of underground water.  As we have seen in other posts, the depthing method is personal to the dowser, rather than apparently being a property of the water; the Bishop’s rule did not work for this man.

We are told that her husband appeared to have a natural dowsing ability and set about experimenting with his newly discovered ability. He seemed particularly sensitive to water and the accounts suggest that this was neither self-delusion, nor (in one case at least) possible ESP transfer from spectators, who might have knowledge of the presence of water. An observation of particular interest, is when her friends formed a human chain beginning at one end of the dowsing rod, held by her husband, and ending at the other end, held by a  non-dowser. If there was any beak in the chain, the rod would not move over water. I think that this is the only account of such a phenomenon in the BSD journals. However, we might speculate that it was caused unconsciously by her husband’s intention, or maybe even by her own. We have seen that a person new to dowser may have their ability apparently “initiated” by a dowser, when both hold either ends of same dowsing rod, or even if the dowser uses their dowsing rod to touch the novice. The intention to assist the latter is often reported to be effective. And just to add to the mind over matter conjecture, she ends with a description of a man with obvious dowsing ability, who tried to prevent his dowsing rod from turning, only to have it break in his hands. This is another story recounted often in the BSD journals. Is it due to psychokinesis?

Here is a short article about a simple, but still profound, application of dowsing – that of finding lost objects. It was entitled “Lost Property” and describes the experiences of an experienced dowser named Mrs G. Barraclough. It was published in one of the early journals of the British Society of Dowsers and makes an easy read and interesting read.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No25_1939_p15.pdf

In those days dowsers often held a sample of the object sought while searching. She refers to the effect of the sample as having an amplifying effect. Some dowsers attributed the dowsing ability to supposed “emanations”, or “radiations” given off by the object, and the sample somehow helped attract these to the dowser. In fact, she makes a reference to a current  dowsing theory attributed to a M. Lakhovsky (M. Georges Lakhovsky, who wrote much about the effect of unknown energies, on the human body and proposed devices to mitigate their effects), in which he suggested the dowsing response is in the ear.

Despite this however, she observed that when searching for the lost property of others, it was not possible to use a sample, but since the ability remained, she concluded that “… all foundational dowsing ability must be psychic.” In which case, one presumes that the effect of the sample was that it helped focus the mind of the dowser. She also remarks that dowsing success was due to “… mentally excluding other radiations without at the same time undue concentration on the objective.” This seems to imply a mental action, in which it is important to free the unconscious mind of conscious ideas. It is a technique often referred to in other articles, (see previous postings).

The finding of other’s lost property, she compares with map dowsing (ability to remotely locate an object on a map and a relatively novel technique at that time), there having been no contact between herself and the object sought. (She also refers to a written description of the object sought, but this has subsequently been verified by many other dowsers.)

She recounts some incidents when searching for her own and other’s lost items. She used a pendulum for her searches. The method she used would have been to ask the pendulum to indicate the direction in which the object now lay. The line of to and fro oscillation of the pendulum, would then change until it swung along a line, the direction of which pointed to the object. Of course, the line indicates two directions, but by moving to another position and repeating the exercise, the pendulum would indicate another line directed towards the object. Therefore, the point of intersection of the two lines should coincide with the position of the object. In the accounts she gives, this indeed happens, but it was not always as easy as it sounds and shows how important faith is when interpreting dowsing results.

The problem of locating one’s own lost items, is that one might have preconceived ideas about where they are, and this can confound the dowsing response. So, searching for the items of others is perhaps easier, if one can maintain the belief that this is indeed possible. Her account of children dowsing is interesting here, in which we might presume that they experienced less inhibitions than adults might.

Interestingly, she notes that when items were deliberately hidden as a means of testing her dowsing abilities, her success was not so good. This she attributed either to her (conscious) need to succeed, which presumably interfered with the working of her unconscious mind, or to the spectator’s consciousness. In the latter case, we might speculate that she is finding the position of the item through ESP from the person who hid the item, or perhaps the intention of any spectators somehow interfered with her abilities. Similar action might account for the reported failure of dowsers when tested in experimental setups. A good example is “A controlled Test of Dowsing Abilities”, by the skeptic James Randi, available in the Articles section of dowsing-research.net. And indeed, dowsers profess that their results are better when working on “real-life” problems, rather than contrived ones. I might then argue that demonstrating thar dowsing works is not a particularly constructive enterprise and that it is better to examine their accounts.

Dowsers ae perhaps famed for their ability to discover underground water, but there are a number of articles in the BSD journals that describe another ability – that of diverting the flow of underground water, without any apparent physical interaction. This ability was reported in the early days of the Society’s existence, when the work of dowsers was largely focussed on divining for underground water, or minerals. Note that a dowser walking along the ground experiences one or more a dowsing reactions above an underground stream. The idea in the early days, was  that water gave out some sort of “emanation”, or radiation, which was picked up by the dowser. From these actions and using their experience, they can deduce where to drill for water and how deep to drill. From the beginning there was uncertainty about whether it was the dowsing reaction that was being diverted, or the actual “stream” of underground water.

There is another aspect to this. As time has progressed, water divining has become a fringe activity in dowsing, replaced by concerns for health. The notion arose that underground streams could be deleterious to one’s health, if they passed under homes or places of work.  For instance, there was the idea of the “black stream” that was particularly nasty. So much attention in recent times has been paid to the detection of these streams and how they could be diverted away from the places they supposedly flow under.

I have outlined the discussion below, based on articles in the BSD journal.  This whole area of dowsing is confusing and opinionated. Apologies for the length of the post, but I think it is possible to tease out some interesting conclusions related to dowsing process.

In the first article,  “Dowsing experiences in Australia”, the transcript of a talk given by a Mr Hawker to the BSD in December 1938.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No22_1938_p263.pdf

The article is an interesting account of one diviner’s 20 year, during which he helped to find 300 successful boreholes. In the article, he mentions another dowser (probably the renowned dowser,  Mr H. Busby), who demonstrated an extraordinary ability. It seemed that he could apparently divert the flow of an underground stream, by placing a flat stone on the ground immediately above the centre of the stream, and then striking this stone with a hammer for several minutes. In fact, what was actually observed was a divergence in the dowsing reaction felt at the surface, indicating the path of the stream. After the hammering was stopped, the stream appeared to take up its original course again.

Several months later, this observation was taken up by one of the greatest diviners of the 20^th Century – Evelyn Penrose (the life of whom has already been descried in the blog posts of 31-12-2020 and 01-01-2021). She penned an article “An experience and a difficulty”.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No24_1939_p357.pdf

In this, she described repeating the hammer and stone test over an underground stream, with two other diviners. After several minutes there was no effect. But after an hour, she recounts that despite the bedrock being granite, the water signal had diverted into a semicircle around her of 9 feet radius, and the water depth had risen by 70 feet. However, she was still unsure whether she had actually diverted the water, or only the dowsing reaction. Therefore, she suggested that it was necessary to repeat the test on an underground stream that clearly issued from the side of a bank or cliff. Any effect on the water might then be observed.

In his article, in issue No26, p65, “The Radial Track”, Mr A. Cook took up the report of Miss Penrose and performed some experiments of his own. He concluded that, “The water is not affected with the striking of a stone above any stream, but the radiations from the stream are.” Here the “radiations” refer to what he considered gave rise to the dowsing reaction at the surface. He also concluded, “It is not necessary to have a stone to strike – just beat the earth with a hammer or stick, or even stamp heavily with the foot.” And in one instance the hooves of cattle had diverted the path of a stream which he had earlier surveyed.

Over time, other dowsers became interested in the observation.

In a letter to the editor (issue No36, p83), a Mr Morton claimed to have diverted two streams using the hammering method.

J. Wheeler wrote a letter to the journal, about “displaced radiations”.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No46_1944_p120.pdf

He had dowsed the line of an underground stream and a borehole was being put down, but for various reasons, it was not positioned on the dowsed streamline, but 10 feet to one side. He noticed that during the drilling the course of his dowsing reactions over the stream had moved to lie along a path directly over the bore hole, but when the drilling stopped, the reactions relocated to the original path of the stream. Later, by banging on the ground to one side of the streamline, he was able to reproduce the movement of the line of reaction.   

It was sometime before a dowser found a convenient stream to test miss Penrose’s ideas. R. Erlank, wrote to the BSD (issue No49, p231), about their test on an underground stream, with a reasonable flow, that emerged from underground. It seems that this dowser successfully displaced the path of the stream by several feet, but this had no obvious influence on the issuing flow. It appeared to them that the movement was only the stream indication at the surface and not the water.

Several months later, Miss Penrose wrote another article “Unblocking wells”.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No52_1946_p346.pdf

It tells of her experiences using the hammering technique to unblock a well, in which the previously good supply of water flowing into the well, was now only a “trickle”. By dowsing, the blockage appeared to be 10 feet from the well. She used the hammer/stone technique to draw the water back to the blockage point and beyond, at which point no water was seen entering the well. From this she concluded “… it was an absolute proof that water could be stopped from running in the ground.” She then drove the water a further 16 feet away from the blockage, before ceasing the hammering action and allowing the water to return towards the well. She monitored the return journey by dowsing. The water passed the blockage and entered the well, but this time water entered the well as a stream. She had successfully unblocked the well.

In issues No81 and No103, p30 are reports by the dowser Countess Anka Von Knoblauch.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No81_1953_p122.pdf

She appeared to specialise in diverting underground streams. Such streams, she considered harmful, if they flowed under homes or places of work. This was an idea that had been introduced into European dowsing in the 1930s. She seems to have heard about “..an Australian dowser who found he could shift underground streams by beating two stones against each other..”.  For her, hammering a piece of iron seemed to work faster, so she used a hammer and specially made steel hand anvil. She never appears to test for the actual presence of water through drilling and seems to have relied solely on using her dowsing reactions. One has to ask, was the dowsing effect really due to the actual presence of water?

Michael Guest submitted an interesting review article “Through dowser’s eyes. A survey of Deraying Techniques” (see also the blog entry – 16-06-2020 – Clearing energy lines)

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/BSD_No209_1985_p111.pdf

In which he reviewed the new interests amongst British dowsers  from the late sixties /early 1970s, where the search for underground streams was increasingly replaced with the notion that underground streams are somehow deleterious to health, especially if they flow under homes or places of work. Their  “intent is to nullify or divert the influence : later it becomes to divert the streams themselves, in a literal physical sense.” Interestingly as we saw above, he comments that early methods used “sonic means”, such as “striking the ground with an iron rod”. This was later superseded by a host of less violent/physical methods and the introduction of more passive “devices”, such as crystals and coils.  

What to conclude from all of this? Well, it is not a huge body of evidence, but I would like to posit the following conclusions.

Considering for the moment just underground water, it seems that the dowsing reaction is not caused directly by some physical influence arising from the water, eg radiation effect. Rather, it appears to be more a manifestation created by the mind of the given dowser, as if the dowser is interpreting the information about what they are seeking and reducing this to some sort of  “guide”. Incidentally, rather than treating the dowsing reaction along a line as a metaphor for the water flow, it is more often taken literally, to represent an actual stream flowing underground. This often incites criticism from hydrologists who ague that water does not flow this way.  In the post of 30-09-2020 – The Single-handed rod, there was a discussion of the reaction bands on each side of a streamline, and how these may be used to obtain the depth of the stream (The Bishop’s rule). But for some dowsers, eg the former BSD chairman, Dr Arthur Bailey, the side-bands represent only half the stream depth, ie the true depth is double the distance of the first reaction band from the central stream line. This fits better with the idea that the dowsing reaction arises from the dowser’s unconscious, based on their presumptions about the significance of the reaction (either conscious or unconscious). If we are dealing with a fundamentally mental phenomenon, then the intention of diverting the dowsing reaction is perhaps more understandable. The banging process is simply some ritual behaviour to reinforce the intent, and could be replaced with any ritual which has the appropriate significance for the dowser.

The idea that the dowsing reaction to underground water appears to be mentally derived is quite intriguing. It is not only locating the water, another aspect is estimating the depth of the water using dowsing, for which many methods have been used. For instance, simply standing over the stream and counting down in some unit of length, until a reaction is obtained, to the more elaborate “The point depth method”, see the post of 02-09-2020 – How long is a piece of string? All the depthing methods utilise an anticipated dowsing reaction when the correct depth has been reached. The complexity of the depthing exercise collapses into a single action. It’s the same mechanism as that of locating the water.

And then we might ask, is there any real difference between water and any other object a dowser may seek? We might extend this idea of reducing the complexity of the problem to any dowsing problem. And then we have to consider the so-called Earth energy lines, or whatever term is used for these lines or patterns that span the globe. This is too thorny an issue to consider here, but it does begin to seem that there is something of a  social construct underlying these, see the post of 19-06-2020 – The Beadon Cube controversy.

There is another conclusion to make; what about the observations of Miss Penrose, when she was observed to halt the flow of water, if not necessarily having diverted it? This does suggest a type of psychokinetic (PK) action at a distance. It would be nice to have more accounts from other dowsers. However, within the BSD journals, we do find quite a few instances of the apparent application of PK in various situations, from movement of the dowsing instrument to perhaps even affecting the weather. We know that Miss Penrose was an extremely psychically talented individual, and so we might draw the conclusion that, at least a few exceptional individuals, are able to actually to control the flow of underground water.  

Here is the second part of the exploits of Evelyn Penrose.

http://www.dowsing-research.net/blog_extracts/ BSD_No336_2020_p11.pdf

The digitised version of her autobiography – “Adventurer Unlimited” – can be found in the Books section of:

http://dowsing-research.net/

Finally, I wish you all the best for 2021 – Happy New Year!