For some years it was hypothesized that some underground emanation or occult force moved the branch, but modern researchers tend to favour the idea that the operator responds to the hidden water in such a way that his own nervous energy moves the branch. Some theorists have compared this effect with table-turning or the raps often reported within Spiritualism. This does not preclude the possibility that some electro-magnetic impulse stimulates the dowser's muscles through the nervous system, although there is no evidence of such an impulse.

Modern dowsers have developed considerable sensitivity and skill and will venture to estimate both the depth and possible yield of underground water. In addition to branches, dowsers employ many other forms of indicators---rods made of whalebone or wire, twisted coat-hangers, rods with cavities for a sample of the material sought for, and especially small pendulums. Since international agreements now outlaw whale hunting, plastic indicators are being substituted for whalebone.

The study and detection of human response to water, minerals, and other underground materials. Dowsing, or "water witching," is usually distinguished from the related subject of radiesthesia by its focus on nonliving materials such as water, metals, minerals, or buried objects. Both dowsing and radiesthesia operators employ a divining-rod, pendulum, or similar device as an indicator of unconscious human sensitivity to hidden materials. Radiesthesia extends such detection to medical diagnosis and treatment, discovery of missing persons, telepathy, clairvoyance, and related paranormal phenomena. In Europe (particularly in France), however, the two terms are used synonymously.

Some dowsers even search for hidden materials over a scale map of a district, using a small suspended pendulum instead of a rod, and map dowsing has become synonymous with teleradiesthesia; (i.e., the tracing of materials or persons using a representation of an area instead of visiting the actual area). Some kind of psychic or other paranormal link is suggested between a district and its representation on a map.

Although dowsing and radiesthesia remain controversial, there seems to be considerable successes in water witching and the discovery of buried minerals. Water diviners have been widely employed by governments and businesses. One skilled dowser, Major C. A. Pogson, was official water diviner to the government of India between October 1925 and February 1930. During this period Pogson travelled thousands of miles locating sites for wells and bores and was a consultant on all matters relating to underground water.

The oldest organization in the field is the British Society of Dowsers, founded in the 1930s. There is also an American Society of Dowsers, which can be contacted at P.O. Box 24, Brained St., Danville, Vermont.

Meaning: searching for underground water or minerals by using a dowsing rod

Sources of information:
Barrett, William, and Theodore Besterman. The Divining Rod: An Experimental and Psychological Investigation. London, 1926. Reprint, New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1968.
Benedikt, M. Ruten-und Pendel-lehre. Vienna; Leipzig, 1917.
Besterman, Theodore. Water Divining: New Facts & Theories. London: Methuen, 1938.
Bird, Christopher. The Diving Hand. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979.
Cameron, Verne L. Aquavideo; Locating Underground Water. Santa Barbara, Calif.: El Cariso, 1970.
——. Map Dowsing. Santa Barbara, Calif.: El Cariso, 1971.
——. Oil Locating. Santa Barbara, Calif.: El Cariso, 1971.
Carrié, Abbé. L'hydroscopographie et métalloscopographie, ou l'art de découvrir les sources et les gisement metallifers au moyen de l'électro-magnétisme. Saintes, France, 1863.
Chambers, Howard V. Dowsing, Water Witches & Divining Rods for the Millions. Los Angeles: Sherbourne Press, 1969.
Chevreul, M. E. De la Baguette divinatoire, du pendule dit explorateur, et des tables tournantes. Paris, 1854.
De France, Henry. The Elements of Dowsing. London, 1948.
De Morogues, Baron. Observations sur le fluide organoelectrique. Paris, 1854.
De Vallemont, Abbe. La physique occulte, ou Traité de la baguette divinatoire. Paris, 1693.
Ellis, Arthur J. The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching, with a Bibliography. Washington, 1917.
Klinckowstroem, Graf von. Virgula divina. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Wünschelrute. Berlin, 1910.
Maby, J. Cecil, and T. B. Franklin. The Physics of the Divining Rod. London, 1939.
Mager, Henri. Water Diviners and Their Methods. London, 1931.
Maury, Marguerite. How to Dowse: Experimental and Practical Radiasthesia. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1953.
Mermet, Abbe. Principles & Practice of Radiesthesie. London, 1967.
Nicolas, Jean. La verge de Jacob, ou l'art de trouver les trésors les sources, les limites, les métaux, les mines, les minéraux et autres cachées, par l'usage du baton fourché. Lyons, France, 1693. Translated as Jacob's Rod. London: Thomas Welton, 1875.
Nielsen, Greg, and J. Polansky. Pendulum Power. New York: Warner, 1977.
Roberts, Kenneth. Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1952.
Stark, Erwin E. A History of Dowsing and Energy Relationships. North Hollywood, Calif.: BAC, 1978.
Tromp, S. W. Psychical Physics: A Scientific Analysis of Dowsing, Radiesthesia & Kindred Divining Phenomena. New York: Elsevier, 1949.
Underwood, Peter. The Complete Book of Dowsing & Divining. London, 1980.
Vogt, Evon Z., and Ray Hyman. Water Witching, U.S.A. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
Wayland, Bruce and Shirley Wayland. Steps to Dowsing Power. Life Force Press, 1976.
Weaver, Herbert. Diving, the Primary Sense: Unfamiliar Radiation in Nature, Art and Science. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
Willey, Raymond C. Modern Dowsing. Cottonwood, AZ: Esoteric Publications, 1976.
Wyman, Walker D. Witching for Water, Oil, Pipes, and Precious Minerals. River Falls: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977.

1942: George Casely on his farm using a hazel twig to attempt to find water on the land around his Devon farm.

Willow or hazel branches were prefered by many dowsers but any twig or suitable branch will do. 

Otto Edler von Graeve in 1913

 

Dowsing, scientifically known as radioesthesia in some quarters, is the interaction of the mind of the dowser and the energy of the object of interest. Most dowsing is used to find water and minerals. It has been used to find lost objects, even people. The ability to find people, artifacts, or substances by use of maps, pictures, or physically being in a place are currently the most popular applications of dowsing.

 Dowsing, sometimes called divining, doodlebugging (in the US), or (when searching specifically for water) water finding or water witching, is a practice that attempts to locate hidden water wells, buried metals or ores, gemstones, or other objects as well as currents of earth radiation without the use of scientific apparatus. A Y- or L-shaped twig or rod is sometimes used during dowsing, although some dowsers use other equipment or no equipment at all. Dowsing has been in use since ancient times and is still widely practiced although the scientific evidence for its efficacy is disputed.

 The method of dowsers seldom varies. They grasp the ends of a forked twig (peach, apple, maple traditionally work best, though some modernists say a bent metal coat hanger works just as well) with palms upward. As they begin their search for water, they carry the butt of the stick pointed upward. When they near water, they can feel the pull as the butt end begins to dip downward. When the dowsers are over the water, the twig has been bent straight down, having turned through an arc of 180 degrees. A stick of brittle wood will break under the grip of a dowser as the butt moves downward. Pliable twigs will twist themselves downward despite an effort to hold them straight.

 Few manifestations of so-called psychic ability have been more hotly debated than that of dowsing. On the one hand is the pronouncement of the scientific community which declares that locating water by means of a forked stick is utter nonsense, and on the other side of the argument are those men and women who go ahead and locate water with their forked maple twigs, completely impervious to the ridicule visited upon them by the skeptics. They could not care less whether or not a laboratory technician believes that water cannot be found in such a manner. All they know is that it works and that they have been finding water in just that way for years.

 

Novelist Kenneth Roberts stated in his book, Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod (1951): “Not all the derision of all the geologists in the world can in any way alter the unfailing accuracy of the dowsing rod in Henry Gross’s hands. Not all the cries of ‘hokum,’ ‘fanciful delusion,’ ‘hoax,’ ‘pseudoscience’ can destroy or even lessen the value of Henry’s dowsing.…”

 In 1953, UNESCO sponsored a committee of prominent European scientists in their study of radioesthiesa. Their carefully considered consensus was that “there can be no doubt that it is a fact.” The Academie des Sciences of Paris has commented that “it is impossible to deny the existence of the power, although its nature cannot be determined.” Five Nobel Prize winners have endorsed dowsing, and so has the Institute of Technical Physics of the Dutch National Research Council.