CHAPTER VIII
THE DOWSING OR DIVINING ROD
No serious inquirer into the mysteries of occultism should neglect to study the peculiar human faculty locally known as Dowsing. Science has hitherto turned a cold shoulder to the skilled wielders of the divining rod, and at first sight perhaps few subjects appear to be so little worthy of investigation. To begin with it is a matter of common geological knowledge that the mode of distribution of underground water is very different from that imagined by the professional dowser. The latter will locate a spring in a certain spot and give you scrupulous details as to its depth and the amount of water it will yield. He may go on to tell you that a few feet distant is another spring, of a totally different depth, and that between the two no water will be found. The assertions are ridiculed by the practical geologist, whose point of view is admirably expressed in the following letter. The writer is the Rev. Osmond Fisher, M.A. (author of "Physics of the Earth's Crust").
"Harlton Rectory, Cambridge,
"February 4th, 1896.
"It appears to me that the assumption which underlies the belief in the divining rod is erroneous. It is only under exceptional circumstances, as among crystalline rocks, or where the strata are much disturbed, that underground water runs in channels like water in a pipe, so that a person can say, 'I am now standing over a spring,' whereas a few paces off he was not over one. What is called a spring, such as is reached in a well, is usually a widely extended water-saturated stratum. Ordinarily where water can be reached by a well, there are few spots [in the neighbourhood] where a well would not find it.
"The question which is really worthy of investigation in this and similar cases seems to be how such an idea ever originated and to what it owes its vitality."
From the geologist's point of view, then, the so-called "diviner" is the merest charlatan, who, so far as the finding of water or mineral veins is concerned, would be equally successful were he to substitute the dice-box or the coin for his more usual implement the hazel wand. It is, he argues, a matter of guessing—and nothing more. The question becomes complicated when we remember that among the ardent devotees of the "rod" are to be numbered country squires, M.P.'s, doctors, clergymen, and farmers, who would have nothing to gain by pretending to a power which they did not possess.
The Society for Psychical Research has devoted a considerable amount of attention to the subject. So far back as 1884 a paper on "The Divining Rod," prepared by Mr E. R. Pease, was read at a general meeting of the Society. The following is an abstract:—
"The Divining Rod is a V-shaped twig, commonly of hazelwood, but sometimes of steel watchspring, whalebone and other substances. It first came into use about three centuries ago, and during the seventeenth century it was the subject of much controversy and of numerous experiments by the learned men of the time. Many theories were proposed to explain its action, but none of them would now be regarded as plausible, and various test experiments which were made uniformly failed. In 1701, the Inquisition condemned the use of the rod, and after this date the popularity of divining greatly diminished. In the seventeenth century it was used to discover murderers and thieves, buried treasures, lost boundaries, and other hidden objects, as well as metals and water springs. At present it appears to be chiefly used in the West of England for the discovery of water springs, and in America for oil wells and mines. Mr E. Vaughan Jenkins, of Cheltenham, has made and presented to the Society for Psychical Research a very valuable collection of evidence of its use in England for locating wells. He has communicated with various well-known 'diviners,' and has received direct from landowners, architects, builders, commercial firms and others, careful records of the successful choosing of well sites by diviners in places where professional geologists or local experts were hopeless of success. It seems also that diviners travel about the country and 'dowse' in localities new and strange to them.... The divining rod is always held in a position of extreme tension, and at the same time of unstable equilibrium. Slight muscular contractions produce violent and startling effects. It would seem therefore that the action of the rod may be caused by unconscious movements of the diviner's hands, due possibly to a sensation of chill on reaching water-bearing spots, or perhaps merely to an unwritten practical science of the surface signs of hidden water."
Mr Pease eventually came to the conclusion that "the evidence for the success of dowsing as a practical art is very strong—and there seems to be an unexplained residuum when all possible deductions have been made." Fifty years ago Dr Mayo, F.R.S., came to a similar conclusion after exhaustive experiments with the divining rod, both in England and abroad, and in 1883, Dr R. Raymond, the distinguished secretary of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, summed up the result of his investigations in the following opinion:—"That there is a residuum of scientific value, after making all necessary deductions for exaggeration, self-deception and fraud" in the use of the divining rod for finding springs and deposits of ore.