Dowsing: Locating Hidden Objects

Dowsing: Psychic Art with Mainstream and Scientific Validity

May 3, 2007

Dowsing, an ancient art used to locate objects underground, has been expanded to find them under shallow water. Science has validated the effectiveness of this psychic ar

Tools of Dowsing

Dowsing is also called water witching and radiesthesia. The tools are forked sticks usually of willow, rowan, ash or hazel. Sometimes, metal, plastic, whale bone, wood or metal rods, coat hangers and aluminum and copper wires are used. In Europe, the pendulum, a weight suspended on string, is popular. Some dowsers use their hands, palms down, to find the objects.

Uses of Dowsing

Dowsing has been used to find water, petroleum, ore, corpses, weapons used in crimes, mines, tunnels and treasure hidden underground.

The Marines used dowsing successfully during the Viet Nam War to locate underground mines, mortars, booby traps and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army tunnels.The tool the Marines used was two pieces of coat hangar wire. The Army Corps of Engineers used seismic tunnel locators. They drilled holes into the ground, set charges in them and measured ground echoes from the blasts in order to locate tunnels. While the instruments could not map tunnels from the ground surface, they were around 50% accurate in finding them. US Marine dowsers were selected according to their potential ability to dowse and were trained in the art. The dowsers could map tunnels and were 95% accurate in finding them.

Dowsing Techniques

Chose whatever tool you feel works best for you. Hold it with both hands. Pendulums may be held in your receptive hand, the left if you’re right handed and vice versa. Walk slowly on the ground surface or ground under shallow water throwing energy of the need to find what is desired into the tool, until it vibrates or shakes or the pendulum swings. In the case of water in underground streams, pipes, cables or tunnels, if the tool is leaning and pointing toward a direction, follow it to map it.

Some dowsers store and clean their tools with silk. Others cleanse them with pure water or salt water or sprinkle them with either earth or sea salt or give them no special treatment.

Scientists’ Findings

Berthold Eric Schwarz MD, a psychiatrist with paranormal interests, studied Henry Gross who, by psychiatric evaluation, was a simple man who had faith in his abilities and actions which he used to help others because comprehensive and controversial work had been done on dowsers who claimed psychic powers. Gross, in addition to dowsing on ground, could do it on maps. Schwarz believed the man to be genuinely talented and hoped that his findings would lead to open-mindedness about ordinary people having the ability to dowse.

The French Abbe Alexis Mermer believed dowsing is a science. At the request of the Pope, he dowsed archeological sites and found dozens of missing people. Abbe Alex Bouly, also a dowser, coined the term “radiesthesia” hoping that this word would make the art scientifically acceptable ridding of its “occult” implications.

US gas, mineral, pipeline, water, cable and oil companies use dowsers to locate natural resources, cables, wires and pipes. Some companies believe they are more accurate than using scientific instruments and methods.

European doctors sometimes use a pendulum as a dowsing tool for diagnostic purposes. They pass it over the patient’s body to see where the problem is. If the bodily part is healthy, it swings clockwise; if not, it moves counterclockwise. The practice has been banned in the US by a Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.