Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2023 19:24:25 GMT -7
The idea of dowsing has been around for a long time and has evolved into a lot of different methods.
Some swear by it, others swear at it.
Introduction from Wikipedia:
Dowsing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the divination method. For other uses, see Dowsing (disambiguation).
A dowser, from an 18th-century French book about superstitions
Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites,[1] and many other objects and materials without the use of scientific apparatus. Dowsing is considered a pseudoscience, and there is no scientific evidence that it is any more effective than random chance.[2][3]
Dowsing is also known as divining (especially in reference to interpretation of results),[4] doodlebugging[5] (particularly in the United States, in searching for petroleum[6]) or (when searching specifically for water) water finding, water witching (in the United States) or water dowsing.
A Y- or L-shaped twig or rod, called a dowsing rod, divining rod (Latin: virgula divina or baculus divinatorius), a "vining rod" or witching rod is sometimes used during dowsing, although some dowsers use other equipment or no equipment at all.
Dowsing appears to have arisen in the context of Renaissance magic in Germany, and it remains popular among believers in Forteana or radiesthesia.[7]
In the 16th century, German deep mining technology was in enormous demand all over Europe. German miners were licensed to live and work in England;[23] particularly in the Stannaries (tin mines) of Devon and Cornwall and in Cumbria. In other parts of England, the technique was used in the royal mines for calamine. By 1638 German miners were recorded using the technique in silver mines in Wales
The motion of dowsing rods is nowadays generally attributed to the ideomotor effect.[8][9]
Contents
1 History
2 Equipment
2.1 Rods
2.2 Pendulum
2.3 Police and military devices
3 Scientific reception
3.1 Kassel study
3.2 Betz study
3.3 Suggested explanations
4 Notable dowsers
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links
Postulated mechanisms
Early attempts at an explanation of dowsing were based on the notion that the divining rod was physically affected by emanations from substances of interest. The following explanation is from William Pryce's 1778 Mineralogia Cornubiensis:
The corpuscles... that rise from the Minerals, entering the rod, determine it to bow down, in order to render it parallel to the vertical lines which the effluvia describe in their rise. In effect the Mineral particles seem to be emitted from the earth; now the Virgula [rod], being of a light porous wood, gives an easy passage to these particles, which are also very fine and subtle; the effluvia then driven forwards by those that follow them, and pressed at the same time by the atmosphere incumbent on them, are forced to enter the little interstices between the fibres of the wood, and by that effort they oblige it to incline, or dip down perpendicularly, to become parallel with the little columns which those vapours form in their rise.
A study towards the end of the 19th century concluded that the phenomenon was attributed to cryptesthesia, where the practitioner makes unconscious observations of the terrain and involuntarily influences the movement of the rod.[44] Early investigations by members of the Society for Psychical Research endorsed this view.[45]
Committed parapsychologist G. N. M. Tyrrell also believed that the action of the rod was caused by involuntary muscular movements and debunked the theory of external influences.[46]
Dowsing over maps, prior to visiting the site, was also believed to work, hence some kind of clairvoyance was proposed. This was believed to act on the nervous system, rather than on the muscles directly. These various mechanisms remain in contention among dowsers.[