Can Water Dowsing Be Taught?

Inspired by Russell Crowe's new film, our man tried his hand at dowsing.

In his new film, The Water Diviner, Russell Crowe plays a tough Australian bush farmer possessed of mystical powers, which he uses to divine that everything that subsequently goes wrong is the fault of the British.

Russell’s character travels to Turkey in 1919, hoping to learn the fate of his three sons who have failed to return from the Battle of Gallipoli, but his quest is thwarted by the hostility and snivelling incompetence of British officialdom, and his only reliable ally is his gift.

Divining is the ancient practice of holding rods or a forked branch, which supposedly react to the “energy” of things underground. Some claim that evidence of divining can be found in Neolithic cave paintings, but its popularity seems to have taken off in the 15th century as a method of finding metal deposits, and today in Britain there is a small but in-demand corps of professional diviners. Read more