Dowsing

Early accounts of the divining rod

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) leaflet on water dowsing says the exact origin of the divining rod in Europe is not known. It places the first detailed description in Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica (1556), a work on German mines and mining methods, and says the device reached England during the reign of Elizabeth I (1558 to 1603) to locate mineral deposits before being adopted as a water finder across Europe. The leaflet is a 1988 government printing and names no author.

The Psi Encyclopedia, a reference work of the Society for Psychical Research, also dates Agricola's account of German miners using the rod to 1556. It says the English word dowsing first appeared in print through the philosopher John Locke in 1691, and that the older word divining carried supernatural implications that dowsing does not. This entry was read in summary only, so the dates should be checked against the primary texts.

Debate, condemnation and spread

According to the USGS leaflet, seventeenth-century champions of the rod explained it by empathy or by attraction and repulsion, while opponents condemned it as superstitious and some held that the stick was moved by satanic influence. Others believed the dowser's power came from God. The leaflet says use of the rod spread across Europe despite opposition from church and lay leaders, that settlers brought it to America from England and Germany, and that two articles condemning it appeared in the American Journal of Science in 1821 and 1826.

Claims of earlier use

The same leaflet says that cave paintings in north-western Africa, 6,000 to 8,000 years old, are believed to show a water dowser at work, and that divining rods were used by the Scythians, Persians and Medes. It also notes that most accounts by Greek and Roman naturalists do not mention a magic rod. The cave-painting reading is an interpretation by unnamed believers that was not checked here, and these statements do not show that modern practice continues an older tradition.

A government assessment in 1917 and radiesthesia in the 1930s

In 1917 the USGS published Arthur Jackson Ellis's The divining rod: a history of water witching, with a bibliography (Water Supply Paper 416). Its catalogue summary says the Survey had received many inquiries about the practice and concluded that further tests of witching for water, oil or other minerals would be a misuse of public funds. Only the catalogue summary was read, not the full report.

A French historical article records that at the beginning of the 1930s many French doctors and pharmacists practised dowsing, and that some belonged to the Association des amis de la radiesthésie, among them the pharmacist Gabriel Lesourd (1890 to 1976). Only the English abstract was available.

Dowsing, divining and water witching

The USGS leaflet uses water dowsing for the general practice of using a forked stick, rod, pendulum or similar device to locate underground water, minerals or other hidden or lost substances. It says dowsers are also called diviners or water witches. Carpenter's 1852 lecture uses the phrase divining-rod, and the Psi Encyclopedia describes divining as the older word with supernatural implications and dowsing as the more neutral one.

Radiesthesia

The French term radiesthésie appears in the name of the Association des amis de la radiesthésie, a 1930s society to which some French doctors and pharmacists belonged. The English abstract of the article that records this renders the practice of those members as dowsing. No source reviewed defines radiesthesia, so how far it differs from dowsing in other settings is not set out here.

Motor automatism and ideomotor action

A 2002 trial paper describes dowsing as a method of problem-solving that uses a motor automatism, amplified through a pendulum or similar device. The word ideo-motor appears in Carpenter's 1852 lecture, where it names a form of reflex action in which ideas, and not will, prompt muscular movement. These are researchers' terms for a proposed mechanism and not terms used within dowsing traditions.

The forked stick and other devices

The USGS describes the classic method as holding one fork of a Y-shaped stick in each hand, palms upward, with the butt end pointing skyward at about 45 degrees, while the dowser walks back and forth over the area. When the dowser passes over water, the butt end is supposed to rotate or be drawn downward. The leaflet lists other tools, including keys, wire coat hangers, pliers, wire rods, pendulums and elaborate boxes or electrical instruments, and says some dowsers claim to locate water over a map.

How dowsers describe the process

The leaflet says some dowsers believe water occurs in veins resembling those of the body, and that one prominent modern dowser described underground domes. It reports that if a driller finds no water, the failure may be blamed on interference from hills, a short circuit of current, incorrect drilling or damage to the veins. These are the dowsers' explanations as reported by the USGS, and the USGS disputes the vein model.

In a 2002 trial, six medically qualified homeopaths with a median of 22 years of dowsing experience, all of whom used pendulums clinically, were asked to identify which of two bottles held a homeopathic medicine. The trial paper says that in homeopathic practice dowsing is used as an aid to prescribing and to identify miasm or toxin load.

Settings and cost

The USGS leaflet says water dowsers practise mainly in rural or suburban communities where residents are unsure how to find the best and cheapest ground water, and that a well often cost more than a thousand dollars when it was written in 1988. The sources reviewed do not describe a typical consultation for personal-guidance or energy-assessment dowsing, its length or its fees.

Uses listed in a government leaflet

The USGS leaflet says water is only one of many substances dowsers claim to find. Divining rods have been used in attempts to locate gold, silver, lead, uranium, oil and coal, to find buried treasure, to re-establish lost landmarks and property boundaries, to detect criminals or hidden soldiers, to analyse personal character and to trace lost animals. It adds that a few dowsers claim the ability to diagnose disease and to treat it, or to determine the sex of an unborn child. These are claims reported by the USGS and not findings.

Use in health practice

French doctors and pharmacists were among those who practised dowsing in the early 1930s, according to a historical article. A 2002 trial paper describes dowsing within homeopathy as an aid to prescribing and as a tool to identify miasm or toxin load. The sources reviewed do not document other uses now promoted, such as spiritual guidance, assessment of an energy field or choice of a site for a home, so these are not described here.

The Munich barn experiments

In 1987 and 1988 university scientists in Munich ran a government-funded programme of nearly 10,000 tests with about 500 dowsers, funded at DM 400,000. In the double-blind series, a 10 cm copper pipe, empty or carrying water, was placed at random along a 10 m path in 10 cm steps, and operators tried to locate it from the floor above. The team reported 843 trials with 43 operators.

A disputed analysis

Betz and colleagues reported that 13 of 107 test series had chance probabilities below 5 per cent, and that the chance probability of the overall pattern was 0.07 per cent, calling the effect small but highly significant. Enright's reanalysis found no persuasive evidence for a reproducible skill and attributed the outcome to chance. In a 1999 exchange Betz said the individual hit rate was exceedingly small, and Enright said the six best runs could be chance, that the data were analysed in a way tailored to the result, and that about 400 preliminary candidates were set aside. Betz denied operators were selected by preliminary tests. The dispute was unresolved in the sources reviewed.

Field reports and a medicine-identification trial

The Psi Encyclopedia says Betz's field studies in arid regions reported success rates above 80 per cent in locating underground water, and that laboratory experiments generally gave chance-level results. The original field report was not opened, so these figures are unchecked. In the 2002 randomised double-blind trial, six dowsing homeopaths identified Bryonia 12c correctly in 48.1 per cent of 156 bottle pairs (95% confidence interval 40.2 to 56.0; P=0.689), which the authors called wholly negative.

Reviews and gaps

Searches of PubMed for dowsing, divining rod and radiesthesia, and of a general academic index for controlled tests, found no systematic review or meta-analysis of dowsing. No controlled trial of dowsing for personal guidance or energy assessment was located, and the sources reviewed do not cover them.

Ideomotor action

In a lecture to the Royal Institution on 12 March 1852, William B. Carpenter argued that ideas can prompt muscular movement independently of will, which he called the ideo-motor principle. He said movements of the divining-rod and the vibration of bodies suspended from the finger, which some attributed to an Od-force, depend on expectant attention, with the anticipation of a result involuntarily prompting the movements. The printed notice summarises a lecture and reports no experiment on dowsers.

In 1853 Michael Faraday used an indicator lever to study table-turning. A published edition of his letter to The Times says the indicator stayed steady when participants could see it and wavered when hidden, and that he concluded the cause was quasi involuntary muscular action. His letter concerns table-moving, not dowsing.

Later psychological and encyclopedic accounts

Daniel Wegner's 2004 summary of his theory lists water dowsing among phenomena in which actions occur without the felt experience of will, and proposes that conscious will is an inference about causation, not a direct reading of it. The Psi Encyclopedia says theories converge on the rod amplifying unconscious hand movement, but that what triggers the response is undetermined, and mentions experiments suggesting the instrument might respond independently of the dowser, which were not opened here.

Geology and apparent success

The USGS offers a natural explanation for reported success: in many areas water is hard to miss, because some water exists under the surface almost everywhere, and a claim of success in 8 cases out of 10 does not say how much water, of what quality or at what rate. It also says ground water does not commonly flow in veins, domes or underground rivers, and concluded that further tests were not justified.

A proposed physical sensing mechanism

A 1978 abstract reports that responses were evoked from 14 male dowsers by artificial alternating-current electromagnetic fields, ceasing when the kidney area or head was shielded, and proposes human magnetic sensors. The abstract is the only part read, and none of the sources reviewed reports an independent replication, so the proposal is not established here.

Consumer and cost concerns

The 1917 USGS paper, in the summary read, says some dowsers act in good faith but many deliberately defraud customers, and advises people not to spend money on the services of a water witch or on instruments sold for locating water or minerals. The 1988 leaflet notes that a well often cost more than a thousand dollars, which is why homeowners may turn to a dowser. Both are United States government sources, and neither is a study of current practice.

Health decisions

No source reviewed reports physical adverse effects from the act of dowsing. The 2002 trial found that dowsing homeopaths identified a remedy no better than chance, and its authors said the result added to doubts about whether dowsing in that context can yield objective information. The sources reviewed do not support using dowsing to diagnose illness or choose treatment, and anyone with symptoms is generally advised to seek assessment from a qualified health professional and not to delay or replace necessary care.

Training and regulation

No source reviewed describes a regulator, an accredited qualification or a protected title for dowsers in any jurisdiction, and no claim about training bodies was verified. Readers considering a paid service may wish to ask what the practitioner claims the method can find, what fee applies and what happens if no result is obtained, and may stop at any point. This information is educational and is not individualised advice.