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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dowsing | 2/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:18:56.970197+00:00 | kb-cron |
...There are many great contentions between miners concerning the forked twig, for some say that it is of the greatest use in discovering veins, and others deny it. ... All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that the clenched fingers should be held toward the sky in order that the twig should be raised at that end where the two branches meet. Then they wander hither and thither at random through mountainous regions. It is said that the moment they place their feet on a vein the twig immediately turns and twists, and so by its action discloses the vein; when they move their feet again and go away from that spot the twig becomes once more immobile. ... 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, 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 Middle Low German name for a forked stick (Y-rod) was Schlag-Ruthe ('striking rod'). This was translated in the sixteenth century Cornish dialect to duschen (duschan according to William Barrett) (Middle English, 'to strike, fall'). By the seventeenth century the English term dowsing was coming into common use. In the lead-mining area of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England in the 17th century the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, inspired by the writings of Agricola, watched a practitioner try to find "latent veins of metals". Boyle saw the hazel divining rod (virgula divinatoria) stoop in the hands of the diviner, who protested that he was not applying any force to the twig; Boyle accepted the man's genuine belief but himself remained unconvinced. Towards the end of the century, in 1691 the philosopher John Locke, who was born in the English West Country, used the term deusing-rod for the Old Latin name virgula divina. So, dowse is synonymous with strike, hence the phrases: to dowse/strike a light, to dowse/strike a sail. Dowsing was conducted in South Dakota in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help homesteaders, farmers and ranchers locate water wells on their property. The military have occasionally resorted to dowsing techniques. In the First World War Gallipoli campaign, sapper Stephen Kelly, of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, Australian Expeditionary Force, became well known for finding water for the British troops. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, some United States Marines used dowsing when locating weapons and tunnels. As late as in 1986, when 31 soldiers were taken by an avalanche during an operation in the NATO drill Anchor Express in Vassdalen, Norway, the Norwegian army attempted to locate soldiers buried in the avalanche using dowsing as a search method. Dowsing is still used by some farmers and water engineers in Britain; however, many of the country's utilities have distanced themselves from the practice.
=== 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 cryptaesthesia, where the practitioner makes unconscious observations of the terrain and involuntarily influences the movement of the rod. Early investigations by members of the Society for Psychical Research endorsed this view. 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. 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.
=== Fraudulent security devices ===
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a number of dowsing-like devices were marketed for modern police and military use, primarily as explosive detectors, such as the ADE 651, Sniffex, and the GT200. In consequence of these frauds, in 1999 the United States National Institute of Justice issued advice against buying equipment based on dowsing.
== Equipment == The device used by a dowser is typically referred to as a dowsing or divining rod, even though it may not be rod-shaped.
=== Dowsing twig ===