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 20th 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.