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An Insight Into Dowsing

By: Sophie Chamberlain

Dowsing, sometimes associated with the word, radioesthesia, is the use of aspecial instrument to identify or nd an object or condition in physical matter

Dowsing is generally associated with nding oil, water or precious metals, but

sometimes an object that is missing !o this end, "arious Dowsing

instruments are used # on either a map, a picture or an actual physical

location Dowsing is probably a "ery ancient practice !here is e"idence that

Dowsing goes bac$ as far as ancient %gypt and ancient China Dowsing was

reportedly used to nd coal during the &iddle Ages

!he most popular tools for Dowsing are the 'wishing rods,( which are oftenmade out of metal these days but sometimes out of wood, as was common in

the past# and the pendulum

Dowsing, in the fast, generally used, wood )opular woods that were used for

Dowsing were ha*el branches, generally for$ed, along with beech, alder and

apple +owadays, as before, the Dowsing rods, when used, are held in an #

shape with disco"ery being made when the rods cross each other )endulums

used for Dowsing are simply generally string weighted with some type of

crystal or other type of weight

Sir -illiam Barrett, a physics professor at the .oyal College of Science in

Dublin at the end of the century, was e/tremely s$eptical of Dowsing until he

became familiar with a dowser named 0ohn &ullins, who was hired by the

-aterford Bacon 1actory to locate underground streams of water !he small

for$ed stic$ he used for Dowsing almost immediately bore more fruit than the

wor$ of "arious professional geologists who had failed to identify the water

source ater on, Barrett would be one of the main founders of the British

Society for )sychical .esearch and publish the results of his research onDowsing in the Society2s )roceedings

Classic research on Dowsing was conducted and reported by Dr Solco -

!romp, a Dutch professor of geology, who was the director of the

Bioclimatological Center in ondon 3is chief boo$ related to

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parapsychological research was )sychical )hysics, a wor$ spea$ing of the

in4uence of "arious types of electrical and magnetic eld on li"ing organisms

It included the e5ects of these types of elds on dowsers, which he himself

tested in the laboratory !o this end, used a gal"anometer with a wooden ring

and a coil of wire to create a magnetic eld 3e found that, although dowsers

could not really determine the intensity of the eld, they could detectchanges in it 3e also found that Dowsing in the eld, using a pendulum for

6uic$er results, could successfully enable to dowser to detect di5erent types

of magnetic anomalies

!heories of Dowsing "ary, but it is often supposed that the Dowsing

instrument con"eys to the psyche of the dowser a subtle energy detected

around the object in 6uestion So a eld of energy, perhaps still un$nown to

modern science, is postulated to be the cause of the phenomenon 1or those

interested, there is still an American and a British Society of Dowsers !heiraddresses are: !he British Society of Dowsers, Sycamore College, !amley

ane, 3astingleigh, Ashford, 7ent, !+89 93-, %ngland and !he American

Society of Dowsers, Inc, Dan"ille, ermont, ;9