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

Dowsers in Demand in California as Wells Run Dry

Water downers are in demand as well run dry in California.

The calls started in October, when the rain was supposed to come. Rob Thompson's phone kept ringing - a farmer in Fresno, a winemaker in Napa Valley, a rancher in Yreka.

All were looking for water. And they had heard Thompson could find it using an ancient method most call unorthodox, if not ridiculous. Thompson is a dowser, a person who believes they have the ability to locate water or precious metals deep underground using rods, sticks or a pendulum to guide them. Read more

Dowsing Competition Pits Believers against Skeptics

Dowsers who claim to be able to locate archaeological features from maps are invited to enter a specially devised competition. Most challenges issued by paranormal "skeptics" are rigged in favor of the skeptic, but this one seems as if it might be fair.

Mention the word dowsing and most people will think of a chap in muddy wellies trudging around a farm with a stick, looking for a good place to sink a borehole, or a fey type in a tie-dye T-shirt wafting about looking for mystical ley lines.

For centuries there have been believers in dowsing, a form of divination traditionally used to locate groundwater sources, and argument rages in the archaeological community about whether dowsers, armed with no more than a bit of bent copper wire and the power of faith, can also locate long-vanished Roman roads, Bronze Age barrows or prehistoric rock carvings.

However, even believers in the muddy wellies type of dowsing often have grave doubts about map dowsers, who claim to be able to locate such features just by holding a pendulum over a Google Earth satellite view taken from miles above a site. The debate has rumbled on through many archaeology forums, with believers and sceptics equally passionately engaged.

A website dedicated to prehistoric archaeology called the Megalithic Portal is now launching a competition to try and resolve the question, with would-be psychics and scoffers invited to join a hunt for archaeological remains from the comfort of their own armchairs. Read more

Develop Your Intuition: Pendulum Dowsing

Learn how to develop your intuition by dowsing with a pendulum. Dowsing is one of the easiest and most accessible ways to begin your path of intuitive development. This video covers the basics of dowsing with a pendulum.

Dowsing Rods: Can They Locate Buried Objects?

Can dowsing rods be used to locate buried objects? John Janks discusses empirical evidence and applications for charting the subsurface.

This paper is a summary of the empirical evidence we discovered while working on locating buried objects. Our object was to develop a scientifically based method for individuals to locate buried objects and aboveground tripwires. We used only a brass pair of rods, bent into the familiar “L” shape. The data consistently show repeatable patterns that depend upon the size and shape of the buried object. The objects used in the testing were made of metal, ceramic and plastic. Some objects were detected as far as 20 meters away, and above ground trip wires, some as thin as 1 mm in diameter were also located with relative ease. The patterns created by combinations of buried cord or wire attached to a circular or rectangle object were successfully charted using this method. When two buried were close enough to affect each other, we detected dowsing rod movement along the axis approximately 60+ meters. In an unanticipated discovery, we found a user remaining stationary could track the path of low flying aircraft. In all our experiments, the rod farthest from the source moved the most. We found that the presence or absence of water had no effect on the outcome. We believe that dowsing rods could be applicable to both military and humanitarian demining, and encourage active testing. While we did not have the tools or funding to study it, we believe that earth-born Telluric Currents are the most likely candidate for creating dowsing rod movement. Fourteen videos have been published on YouTube and their URLs are located in the appendix. Read more