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My grandpa went bonkers after a heat stroke, and went on the quest for gold. He got sucked into dowsing, a craft which he evidently was no good at. Over the years, the question has cropped up in the family what to do with his "Spanish Needles", which have value as family history as well as market value given their metallic composition. Heck, I could add a 555-based timer gizmo to the thing, call it an "LRL", and ebay the combo for ten thousand bucks. But I'm not desperate enough to do a thing like that to someone.
The following is a copy of family email correspondence.
*********************************************
My intro to dowsing was from Grandpa, looking for gold in the aptly named Superstition Mountains. Even as a little kid, I could see that the only reason he believed it worked is because he had a carefully constructed alibi system to explain why nothing the rods did proved to be useful. It was the same delusional way of thinking I'd already had demo'd by preachers.
The irony of it is that I discovered my own dowsing ability by accident as a teenager, and a few years ago decided to explore the matter further. Scientifically. With some interesting results.
I don't believe that Grandpa could dowse worth a darn. Had he been able to do so, he wouldn't have needed the alibi system. Thus it is with most dowsers, just as it is with most casino gamblers. Every gambler leaves the house a winner by their own account, and yet somehow the house still earns a profit. It's a miracle!
Having investigated the matter scientifically, I can state with some confidence the following.
1. The rods (or whatever other dowsing apparatus) themselves detect nothing: the action is between the ears and is conveyed subconsciously to the hands that control the apparatus.
2. The question of "successful" dowsing is a matter of how the information leading to success gets between the ears. In the case of non-blinded dowsing, this can be explained by ordinary mental processing of available information.
3. Most dowsing is done unblinded, and dowsing hobbyists usually practice on known targets. Duh!
4. People who claim they can dowse successfully an unknown target deprived of any clues, when put to the test, they fail. The funny thing is that subconsciously they almost always know they will fail if their claim is tested, and have a thousand alibis why they can't or won't be put to the test even if the reward for success is AR's million dollars.
5. When I look for evidence that dowsing has led to buried treasure other than by sheer luck or by subconscious processing of research and environmental information, there is nothing. I am good friends with a successful professional treasure hunter and shipwreck salvor who uses everything at his disposal to locate the goodies, and he has also done scientific research into dowsing and related methods under government contract. After a long lifetime of this, he finally added it all up: dowsing is useless for locating treasures which are otherwise unknown.
6. Dowsing was at one time a routine method used by utility companies and excavators for locating buried public utilities. Utility crews didn't use coathangers because the guys were tin hat freaks, they used them because they discovered they worked well enough to be useful. They're used less nowadays because of my TW-6 and other electronic gizmos, plus fear of lawsuits over locates by dowsing gone bad. The utility crews have lots of experience and dowse with eyes open, and this accounts for some of their success. But there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of locates done where what was seen by eye was of no help. The information came from somewhere.
7. My personal interest is in blinded dowsing, where I am deprived inasmuch as possible from environmental or informational clues. If that kind of information is available, I do better with it non-blindfolded, thank you. Very good at it, I've pissed off a few dowsers on Internet forums by cold reading their BS. What made dowsing interesting to me is my experiences with successful blinded dowsing. Lee may remember the experiments we did in our early teens.
************ and that pile of info is what leads me to the following *******
1. Those who claim what does not belong to them, go home empty-handed. I call 'em "claimants". Blinded dowsing is not a self-power. I have done blinded dowsing successfully, but the power that made it possible was not something I control. All I can do, is to make myself available to it. Sometimes that power comes through in unmistakable fashion, sometimes there ain't nuthin' there, and sometimes stuff happens that seems to have been calculated to make a fool of me. .........At least 95% of people confronted with a power of this sort would not admit to themselves that what was happening was not under their control, so pride requires them to develop an alibi system. At that point, the human power of pride can overcome any other-power, and successful dowsing becomes as impossible as beating the casino at its own game, for the same reasons.
2. That "other-power" has nothing to do with interaction between a target and dowsing apparatus, even at the quantum-mechanical level. The tipoff is that the apparatus itself is designed to maximize ideomotor response while minimizing other influences. I researched the quantum-mechanical angle and came to the conclusion that the quantum-mechanical thing may exist at the level of neurology, but does not exist in the grossly thermodynamic world of the hands and L-rods (or whatever dowsing apparatus).
3. When it comes to the matter of discovering otherwise unknown gold deposits, three things are needed. Knowledge, luck, and something with which to extract gold if the stuff happens to be present. The old-fashioned way is to look at the terrain and assay the drainage with a gold pan. I design metal detectors that can find the larger stuff that hasn't made it into drainage channels yet, or even after it has done so. A gold deposit that hasn't been discovered yet through ordinary means (inclusive of unblinded dowsing) is not going to be discovered through blinded dowsing. Therein lurks a tale of map-dowsing that I participated in, that made me look like a hero at first and the more the story unfolded the more it all came unravelled. I'd been conned. The guy who conned me later became an LRL manufacturer.
4. Treasures which someone knows where they are, can sometimes be successfully dowsed. Treasures which someone no longer living knew where it was, can sometimes be successfully dowsed. ......MAYBE. The key word here is "treasures". Locating buried utilities as part of an ordinary day job, dowsing seems to be a useful tool. Locating a treasure in hopes of getting rich, if you take dowsing out of the equation it all comes out about the same other than the waste of time and money on misunderstandings of how dowsing works.
5. For every "lost mine" in USA folklore, there have been ten thousand dowsers and several times that many actually doing the legwork. So, who found the "lost mine" and how? .... As a kid, I got my first education on this in the Superstition Mountains...... "Duchman's lost gold mine", arguably the most famous "lost gold mine" in USA legend, but here it is 2013 and no gold mines at all much less that of the "Duchman". The Superstitions are not gold-bearing geology, but their spectacular topography makes for good stories.
6. Whatever or whoever it is that transfers information from living and maybe from dead humans, to presently living human beings, seems to be an ethical force which does not respond to greed, only to necessity. I don't know what this is, I don't know how to control it, I am certain that Christian bishops and preachers know less than nothing about it, and I suspect that Jesus did know something about it.
7. In 1976 I was willingly dragged into a gold mining adventure in Sonora, Mexico. My contribution to the adventure was a good truck, time on my hands, a smidgin of ability to converse in Spanish, and most of all gullibility. In Sonora, I turned the driver's seat over to a Mexican who having never driven my truck before, knew how to navigate it over dirt roads and jeep trails better than I did. The guy was a genius at driving an unknown vehicle over unfamiliar terrain. .......We happened to successfully traverse a several mile section of unpaved road that the local marijuaneros driving a 4WD truck and carrying weapons tried to make impassible by using their truck to turn the road into mud so slick that it was almost impossible even to walk on without slipping and falling. Oxisol, to you soil scientists. When we arrived at their checkpoint nonetheless (and quite to their surprise!) they told our driver (in Spanish), "Yourve got a heckuva good truck!" My driver replied "It ain't the truck, it's the monkey behind the steering wheel." Fortunately the marijuaneros figured out that we were on business but it didn't involve them, and they let us pass, so surprised that we made it through that they forgot to demand a bribe. ..........The moral to this story, extrapolated from the truck to dowsing rods, is that it ain't the rods, it's the monkey behind the wheel.
8. In my opinion, when it comes to blinded dowsing, the link goes cold if nobody presently living knows the location of the item sought. The "lost gold mine" phenomenon seems to confirm this, as do recent discoveries (through technological means) of valuable shipwrecks that dowsing methods failed to locate.
9. That leaves open the question how blinded dowsing works if someone presently living does know the location of the item sought, but the dowser has not been told that information.
This is the situation that prevails in utility infrastructure dowsing, the only field in which effectively blinded dowsing has earned a reputation for everyday usefulness. (Water witching is done without any blinding and its success relies on knowledge of terrain and past history of successful well drilling.)
--Dave J.
The following is a copy of family email correspondence.
*********************************************
My intro to dowsing was from Grandpa, looking for gold in the aptly named Superstition Mountains. Even as a little kid, I could see that the only reason he believed it worked is because he had a carefully constructed alibi system to explain why nothing the rods did proved to be useful. It was the same delusional way of thinking I'd already had demo'd by preachers.
The irony of it is that I discovered my own dowsing ability by accident as a teenager, and a few years ago decided to explore the matter further. Scientifically. With some interesting results.
I don't believe that Grandpa could dowse worth a darn. Had he been able to do so, he wouldn't have needed the alibi system. Thus it is with most dowsers, just as it is with most casino gamblers. Every gambler leaves the house a winner by their own account, and yet somehow the house still earns a profit. It's a miracle!
Having investigated the matter scientifically, I can state with some confidence the following.
1. The rods (or whatever other dowsing apparatus) themselves detect nothing: the action is between the ears and is conveyed subconsciously to the hands that control the apparatus.
2. The question of "successful" dowsing is a matter of how the information leading to success gets between the ears. In the case of non-blinded dowsing, this can be explained by ordinary mental processing of available information.
3. Most dowsing is done unblinded, and dowsing hobbyists usually practice on known targets. Duh!
4. People who claim they can dowse successfully an unknown target deprived of any clues, when put to the test, they fail. The funny thing is that subconsciously they almost always know they will fail if their claim is tested, and have a thousand alibis why they can't or won't be put to the test even if the reward for success is AR's million dollars.
5. When I look for evidence that dowsing has led to buried treasure other than by sheer luck or by subconscious processing of research and environmental information, there is nothing. I am good friends with a successful professional treasure hunter and shipwreck salvor who uses everything at his disposal to locate the goodies, and he has also done scientific research into dowsing and related methods under government contract. After a long lifetime of this, he finally added it all up: dowsing is useless for locating treasures which are otherwise unknown.
6. Dowsing was at one time a routine method used by utility companies and excavators for locating buried public utilities. Utility crews didn't use coathangers because the guys were tin hat freaks, they used them because they discovered they worked well enough to be useful. They're used less nowadays because of my TW-6 and other electronic gizmos, plus fear of lawsuits over locates by dowsing gone bad. The utility crews have lots of experience and dowse with eyes open, and this accounts for some of their success. But there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of locates done where what was seen by eye was of no help. The information came from somewhere.
7. My personal interest is in blinded dowsing, where I am deprived inasmuch as possible from environmental or informational clues. If that kind of information is available, I do better with it non-blindfolded, thank you. Very good at it, I've pissed off a few dowsers on Internet forums by cold reading their BS. What made dowsing interesting to me is my experiences with successful blinded dowsing. Lee may remember the experiments we did in our early teens.
************ and that pile of info is what leads me to the following *******
1. Those who claim what does not belong to them, go home empty-handed. I call 'em "claimants". Blinded dowsing is not a self-power. I have done blinded dowsing successfully, but the power that made it possible was not something I control. All I can do, is to make myself available to it. Sometimes that power comes through in unmistakable fashion, sometimes there ain't nuthin' there, and sometimes stuff happens that seems to have been calculated to make a fool of me. .........At least 95% of people confronted with a power of this sort would not admit to themselves that what was happening was not under their control, so pride requires them to develop an alibi system. At that point, the human power of pride can overcome any other-power, and successful dowsing becomes as impossible as beating the casino at its own game, for the same reasons.
2. That "other-power" has nothing to do with interaction between a target and dowsing apparatus, even at the quantum-mechanical level. The tipoff is that the apparatus itself is designed to maximize ideomotor response while minimizing other influences. I researched the quantum-mechanical angle and came to the conclusion that the quantum-mechanical thing may exist at the level of neurology, but does not exist in the grossly thermodynamic world of the hands and L-rods (or whatever dowsing apparatus).
3. When it comes to the matter of discovering otherwise unknown gold deposits, three things are needed. Knowledge, luck, and something with which to extract gold if the stuff happens to be present. The old-fashioned way is to look at the terrain and assay the drainage with a gold pan. I design metal detectors that can find the larger stuff that hasn't made it into drainage channels yet, or even after it has done so. A gold deposit that hasn't been discovered yet through ordinary means (inclusive of unblinded dowsing) is not going to be discovered through blinded dowsing. Therein lurks a tale of map-dowsing that I participated in, that made me look like a hero at first and the more the story unfolded the more it all came unravelled. I'd been conned. The guy who conned me later became an LRL manufacturer.
4. Treasures which someone knows where they are, can sometimes be successfully dowsed. Treasures which someone no longer living knew where it was, can sometimes be successfully dowsed. ......MAYBE. The key word here is "treasures". Locating buried utilities as part of an ordinary day job, dowsing seems to be a useful tool. Locating a treasure in hopes of getting rich, if you take dowsing out of the equation it all comes out about the same other than the waste of time and money on misunderstandings of how dowsing works.
5. For every "lost mine" in USA folklore, there have been ten thousand dowsers and several times that many actually doing the legwork. So, who found the "lost mine" and how? .... As a kid, I got my first education on this in the Superstition Mountains...... "Duchman's lost gold mine", arguably the most famous "lost gold mine" in USA legend, but here it is 2013 and no gold mines at all much less that of the "Duchman". The Superstitions are not gold-bearing geology, but their spectacular topography makes for good stories.
6. Whatever or whoever it is that transfers information from living and maybe from dead humans, to presently living human beings, seems to be an ethical force which does not respond to greed, only to necessity. I don't know what this is, I don't know how to control it, I am certain that Christian bishops and preachers know less than nothing about it, and I suspect that Jesus did know something about it.
7. In 1976 I was willingly dragged into a gold mining adventure in Sonora, Mexico. My contribution to the adventure was a good truck, time on my hands, a smidgin of ability to converse in Spanish, and most of all gullibility. In Sonora, I turned the driver's seat over to a Mexican who having never driven my truck before, knew how to navigate it over dirt roads and jeep trails better than I did. The guy was a genius at driving an unknown vehicle over unfamiliar terrain. .......We happened to successfully traverse a several mile section of unpaved road that the local marijuaneros driving a 4WD truck and carrying weapons tried to make impassible by using their truck to turn the road into mud so slick that it was almost impossible even to walk on without slipping and falling. Oxisol, to you soil scientists. When we arrived at their checkpoint nonetheless (and quite to their surprise!) they told our driver (in Spanish), "Yourve got a heckuva good truck!" My driver replied "It ain't the truck, it's the monkey behind the steering wheel." Fortunately the marijuaneros figured out that we were on business but it didn't involve them, and they let us pass, so surprised that we made it through that they forgot to demand a bribe. ..........The moral to this story, extrapolated from the truck to dowsing rods, is that it ain't the rods, it's the monkey behind the wheel.
8. In my opinion, when it comes to blinded dowsing, the link goes cold if nobody presently living knows the location of the item sought. The "lost gold mine" phenomenon seems to confirm this, as do recent discoveries (through technological means) of valuable shipwrecks that dowsing methods failed to locate.
9. That leaves open the question how blinded dowsing works if someone presently living does know the location of the item sought, but the dowser has not been told that information.
This is the situation that prevails in utility infrastructure dowsing, the only field in which effectively blinded dowsing has earned a reputation for everyday usefulness. (Water witching is done without any blinding and its success relies on knowledge of terrain and past history of successful well drilling.)
--Dave J.
