Unconventional Water Detection -Dowsing?

Question

How does dowsing work? It's easy to learn ?What's the methodology or technique?

Answer 1

My great grandmother was in high demand in rural Clermont County , Ohio as a dowser... never failed to find an underwater spring. On another note? When my husband and I had our home built...the utility company could not locate the water source...the man that cleared our land was a dowser...had no problem finding it...just used a marking flag he grabbed from the yard marker. Was amazing to watch.

Answer 2

There are various methods commonly in use -- using a forked tree branch is one. The dowser will grasp one fork of the branch in each hand and walk around and wait until he "feels" a twist or downward pull on the branch which indicates "the spot". Another method is to use metal rods, one in each hand, each with a 90 deg bend. The dowser holds the rods loosely in each fist, allowing them to swing freely. He walks around until the rods cross each other, and that is supposed to be the spot.

How does dowsing work? Well, the quick and accurate answer to that is that it doesn't. It's purely ideomotor effect at work. The ideomotor effect fully explains the why the rods will cross or why someone might "feel" more of a pull. Even so, water dowsers are often quite successful simply for the fact that water "exists almost everywhere underground" (see groundwater link), in expansive aquifers of saturated gravel and crushed rock. In most places it would actually be hard to find a spot where digging a well will not result in water.

While the nature of groundwater (existing as expansive aquifers) is undeniable scientific fact having been borne out by extensive geological investigations, it's funny that the dowsing True Believers continue to insist that water instead exists in sparse underground "streams". Yet nothing could be further from the truth, and such true believers have no scientific evidence to back up their very contrary assertions.

See the links below for more information.

Answer 3

Guess what.  Dowsing does work.  

People that do not understand it, can not do it, or have not  tried it  often think that it is bogus. NOT everyone CAN do it.

Contrary to what some people think, water does NOT exist everywhere underground. FLOWING water does not exist everywhere underground, but that is what dowsers usually FIND.

SPRINGS.  Reliable water sources.  

Dowsing has also been used to find water mains, mineral veins, mineral deposits, and oil.

You need an 18"    ' y'--shaped  fork from a tree, a flexible part of a branch.  Willow branches hazel brush  and apple tree branches work the best, although some people use steel rods, brass rods, and other devices.  

Hold the two parts of the fork with the stem pointing away from you, palms of the hands UP.  Put pressure on the ends of the fork with your thumbs.   When you walk over a water spring, the torsion from the branch can be a powerful twist and even at times strip the bark right off of the stick.

If you can't do it the first time, try again.  If you can't do it, don't feel bad, not everyone can.

  Experienced dowsers can, even better yet,  tell you how DEEP the water well has to be dug or drilled to obtain water from the spring source they find.

An amateur  dowser predicted  a spring 14'  deep. Bedrock  surface  was 3 feet deep in the dirt.

  The water well driller was called in and  drilled the well through the rock, laughing all the way to 187' deep and charged  $5,000.00 to do so.  

Guess what,  next day they found water in the hole  in the rock all right---14 feet from the top of the hole.

The well has never run dry.

Answer 4

My grandpa showed me this when I was small. We use coat hangers and bent them into the shape of "L". Held them out like the others said and sure enough it worked.

Every time we would walk over the water main in yards they would cross.

I hears its a bunch of BS but it always worked then and a few years ago when i tried it again.

Answer 5

It works, like the Ouija board, by using the ideomotor effect.  If you hear a true believer explain how it works you're in for laugh.  Some hang things over maps, as if the piece of paper the map is printed on has some sort of psychic tie with the ground it represents.  Some will use the exact same tools when dowsing for any number of materials.  That would mean that every spot where the rods indicated a hit would contain gold, oil, water, diamonds, dead bodies, etc.

Answer 6

I was taught by a well digger. He uses two L shaped brass wielding rods. You just hold your hands about shoulder width apart with your hands balancing the rods loosely pointing forward.  Think about what your looking for like a pipe, water,  underground power line, what ever.  When you cross over it the roods pull together and cross the other hands.  That should be the spot.  Haven't got a clue how it works, but it works.

Some under ground utility locator's use this method and are more accurate than the electric gizmo's.  

Here's a site to check out----

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en...

Answer 7

I saw a great show about Dowsing on PBS.I forget the name but Alan Alda was the host.He put a few dowsers to a test.What struck me was the Dowsers confidence.They went in convinced they'd succeed.The host seemed to be on their side too.When they all failed,they were genuinely surprised.They actually believed dowsing worked.It struck me,unlike Mediums and Psychics,they seemed honest.It was very interesting.

Answer 8

DOWSING

Dowsing is the action of a person called the dowser using a rod, stick or other device called a dowsing rod, dowsing stick, doodlebug (when used to locate oil) or divining rod to locate such things as underground water, hidden metal, buried treasure, oil, lost persons or golf balls, etc. Since dowsing is not based upon any known scientific or empirical laws or forces of nature, it should be considered a type of divination.

Map dowsers use a dowsing device, usually a pendulum, over maps to locate oil, minerals, persons, water, etc. However, the prototype of a dowser is the field dowser who walks around an area using a forked stick to locate underground water. When above water, the rod points downward. (Some dowsers use two rods. The rods cross when above water.) Various theories have been given as to what causes the rods to move: electromagnetic or other subtle geological forces, suggestion from others or from geophysical observations, ESP and other paranormal explanations, etc.

Dowsing and other forms of divination have been around for thousands of years. There are large societies of dowsers in American and Europe and dowsers practice their art every day in all parts of the world. There have even been scientists in recent years who have offered proof that dowsing works.

The testimonials of dowsers and those who observe them provide the main evidence for dowsing. The evidence is simple: dowsers find what they are dowsing for and they do this many times. Scientific thinking includes being constantly vigilant against self-deception and being careful not to rely upon insight or intuition in place of rigorous and precise empirical testing of theoretical and causal claims.

Controlled study of dowsers, has shown that dowsers that dowser believe in what they do - but much of it is by chance.

Dowsing is a searching tool that has been used for thousands of years by those who have tried, with the help of a Y shaped rod, to locate underground water, ore bodies, oil and other important resources. Dowsing is subjective by nature. Its success depends on the qualities developed by the dowsers themselves, who sense, via a mind-body link, the presence of underground structures.

Scientists have tried to understand the physical basis of dowsing; what factors link the movement of the rod in the dowser's hand to underground structures. No one has yet successfully explained the dowsing signal and for now it remains by chance - or another psychic tool.

For more information on learning dowsing I would highly recommend my mother-in-law.  She is a Master Dowser, located in Virginia.  She gives classes and can refer you to someone in your area if you cannot attend one of her classes.

Contact:

Bess Cutter

ASD Executive Vice President

800 Dryden St.Virginia Beach, VA, 23462

757-335-2100

[e-mail]

You may also want to check out the American Society of Dowsers at:  

http://dowsers.org/