Quote by Albert Einstein
"I know very well that many scientists consider dowsing as they do astrology, as a type of ancient superstition. According to my conviction this is, however, unjustified. The dowsing rod is a simple instrument which shows the reaction of the human nervous system to certain factors which are unknown to us at this time."
DOWSING THE ANCIENT ART
The earliest reference to dowsing as it is practised to day came from the German speaking lands of northern Europe in the fifteenth century. By the sixteenth century miners in several parts of Germany were using dowsing to locate veins of mineral ore. Georg Bauer also known as Geogius Agricola (1494 ? 1555) described how dowsers search for ore in his famous work De Re Metallca. He wrote: All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that their clenched fingers should be held towards 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.
As demand for ore increased mines opened up across Europe. Prospectors travelled far in the search for new deposits and metal ore, amongst these prospectors were dowers.
In England, Elizabeth I encouraged German prospectors and mining experts to develop the resources of her land. Together with their expertise in smelting and metal working they also brought their art of searching for metal ores with a forked twig.
One part of England that benefited from German mining expertise was in the county of Somerset. By the mid seventeenth century miners in the local Mendip Hills where using the rod to help them find veins of lead and zinc ore and the practice came to the attention of Robert Boyle (1627 ? 1691), one of the founding fathers of modern science. Boyle was intrigued and reported: One Gentleman, who lives near the lead mines in Somersetshire, leading me over those parts of the mines where he know that Matalline Veins did run, made be take note of the stooping of the Wand when passed over a Vein of Oar, and protested that the motion of his hand did not at all contribute to the indications of the wand, but that sometimes when he held it very fast, it would bent so strongly as to break in his hand. And to convince me that he believed him self, he did upon the promises made by the stooping Wand put him self to the great charge of digging in untried places for Mine (but with what success he has not yet informed me). Among the miners themselves I found that some made use of the Wand and others laughed at it.
The term dowsing may have come from the miners in the Medip Hills. In 1692 John Locke (1632 ? 1704) the famed Somerset Philosopher, referred to the alleged ability of the ?deusing-rod to discover mines of gold and silver. Evidently the Philosopher had heard the local miners use their own word for the twig known to the Germans as the wishing rod or Wunschelrute
The German dowsers also introduced dowsing to another county in south west England, Cornwall where local miners developed dowsing into an advanced prospecting technique. William Pryce, of Redruth, the great authority on Cornish mining practice, included an account of contemporary mine dowsing in his 1778 work Mineraogia Cornubiensis. It was written by his friend William Cookworthy, of Plymouth, a pioneering industrialist. Cookworthy reported that local miners made their dowsing rods from a single forked twig of hazel or other wood between two and a half and three feet long. Alternatively, they used 'two separate shoots tied together, with some vegetable substance as packthread'. Then he went on to make one of the most penetrating observations on dowsing that has ever been written, , A man ought to hold the rod with the same indifference and inattention to, or reasoning about it or its effects, as he holds a fishing rod or a walking stick.' For, according to Cookworthy, the rod , constantly answers in the hands of peasants, women and children, who hold it simply without puzzling their minds with doubts or reasoning?s.
William Cookworthy advised young dowsers to gain experience over known lodes, such as those visible near the sea shore. Then he instructed the novice dowser:
Walk steadily and slowly on with it (the rod); and a person that hath been accustomed to carry it will meet a single repulsion and attraction, every three, four, or five yards, which must not be heeded, it being only from the water that is between every bed of Killas (slate), Grouan (soft granite) or other strata. When the holder approaches a Lode so near its semidiameter, the rod feels loose in the hands and is very sensibly repelled toward the face. If it is thrown back so far as to touch the hat, it must be brought forward to its usual elevation, when it will continue to be repelled till the foremost foot is over the edge of the Lode. But as soon as the foremost foot is beyond its limits, the attraction from the hindmost foot, which is still on the Lode, or else the repulsion on the other side, or both, throw the rod back toward the face. The distance from the point where the attraction begun, and where it ended, is the breadth of the Lode.
Cookworthy said that a good dowser could in this way discover all the features of concealed lodes: their changes in breadth, where they pinched out, and where they were displaced by crosscutting fractures. He noted that dowsing was particularly useful for tracing lodes that were, "alive to grass" in other words that contained workable ore right up to the surface. He also recommended the technique for finding what geologists would now call fracture zones - belts of rock shattered by past Earth movements. Although they were not necessarily mineralised, miners found it much easier to drive their tunnels through these zones than through solid rocks.
Clearly, Cornish dowsers had developed their art into quite an elaborate technique by the eighteenth century. But did it really work? William Pryce certainly thought so, for he quoted numerous dowsing successes in the county. For instance, after the Reverend Henry Hawkins Tremayne had found some stream tin in a pond at Heligan, miners speculated that a lode might be found nearby -. A dowser then located what he thought was a lode below ground, and the miners sank a shaft there. A lode was indeed found though unfortunately it did not contain enough tin to make mining profitable. In two other instances, Fryce reported, miners sank shafts on dowsing evidence, one at St. Germains, another between Penzance and Newlyn. In both cases, lodes containing mundick - an old mining term for iron sulphides - were found. Again, Pryce related, William Cookworthy managed to trace the course of a concealed lode near St. Austell. At one point Cookworthy declared that the lode had been squeezed to nothing; this was later confirmed to be correct by the local miners. On another occasion, Cookworthy traced a lode from point inland to the cliff at St. Austell Down. There he found by dowsing that the lode 'had a horse in it', in other words, it had been split in two. Miners subsequently confirmed that this was indeed the case.
Pryce reported another dowsing feat. A certain Captain Riheira had deserted the King of Spain's service in the reign of Queen Anne and had been rewarded with the post of Captain Commandant of the Plymouth garrison. Ribeira was a keen dowser and had by this means discovered a deposit of copper ore near Okehampton, in Devon. Later, a mine w as started there, which operated for some years.
Pryce and Cookworthy's detailed description of Cornish mine dowsing in the eighteenth century shows how highly the leading English mineralogists of the day regarded the technique. This respect was echoed throughout Europe. In the German mines, for instance, dowsers this time enjoyed a standing that has never since been equalled. Officially their status was higher than that of surveyors, and mine dowsers were expected to possess a professional diploma in dowsing.
Mineral lode dowsing was equally valued in other parts of the world where Europeans had settled. In the fabulously rich silver mines of the High Andes in South America, for instance, the Spanish mining authorities were using the technique to help locate the abundant lodes of silver ore that had made the region around Potosi the largest source of silver in the Western world. Alonzo Barha, the Potosi priest and mining expert, described a peculiar T-shaped rod of his own design which dowser then used in the Potosi mines.
How had mine dowsers achieved this surprising status? One reason, clearly, was a record of success good enough to impress hardnosed mine owners as well as technical experts like William Pryce. But success alone would not have been enough in an age when scientific thought was developing rapidly and causes were being sought for all phenomena. It seems'likely that an equally important reason for dowsing's high standing was that it could he explained in terms of contemporary scientific ideas. Thus, before quoting Cookworthv's description of practical dowsing, Pryce gave a lengthy exposition of dowsing theory.
In fact, from the sixteenth century onwards, the bending of a forked twig over a hidden mineral vein had spawned theories in the same way as any other natural phenomenon. From the start, some sceptics had maintained that the dowsers moved the rod themselves and that this had nothing to do with the presence mineral veins. Nevertheless, this would hardly explain the successes the technique.
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