You Think Dowsing Controversies Are New???

[gollum]

Dowsing has been around for a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.

I was reading through a book I have had for years. It's a little thing called "De Re Metallica". It was written in 1556 by Georgius Agricola. It is the definitive source on information on Medieval Mining Techniques. It was originally written in Latin, but was translated in 1912 by Herbert Hoover (yes, that Herbert Hoover) and his wife. He compiled information from mining engineers and mine owners from all over Europe. The translated version is 614 pages. This is probably the first book to discuss dowsing.

When you read this, you will see some things that sound VERY familiar. Arguments from the skeptics of time are the same as the arguments of today's skeptics. Excuses for why dowsing doesn't work when tested were the same then as they are now. Sort of makes one wonder why they dowsers haven't been able to conclusively prove dowsing works sometime in the last 450 years!

Here are the scans of the four pages concerning dowsing.

 

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[gollum]

``

 

[EDDE]

he said METALLICA duh hu..

 

[gollum]

``

 

[Sandsted]

I think there are documents from earlier than that that speak of dowsing. As your book shows dowsing was a huge part in mining it was considered one of the MANDITORY tools of the trade.

 

[gollum]

Actually, if you read the story, it states that dowsing back then, was just as controversial as it is now! Some miners wouldn't explore without one, and many said it was all B.S. Just like now.

That's why I will restate my musing from the original post:

"Sort of makes one wonder why they dowsers haven't been able to conclusively prove dowsing works sometime in the last 450 years!"

Mike

 

[ClonedSIM]

"Sort of makes one wonder why they dowsers haven't been able to conclusively prove dowsing works sometime in the last 450 years!"

Mike

Excellent question. Too bad we'll never get an answer here. Just runaround.

 

[EDDE]

bad news swr i tried that as a kid it dont work

 

[joe]

bad news swr i tried that as a kid it dont work

I THINK THEY SHOULD STOP SHOWING IN DISCOVERY CHANNEL ABOUT PHYSIC WITNESS SOLVING CRIME?
I THINK NOT ALL PEOPLE CAPABLE TO DOWSE,IT WAS A GOD GIVEN ABILITY.........
MOST SKEPTIC DONT BELIEVE ON IT BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE HIGHER THAN ANY GOD ON EARTH.
(THAT IS WHY NATURE IS SHOWING THERE FORCE RIGHT NOW,CYCLONE/HURRICANE,TSUNAMI,EARTHQUAKES,
VOLCANIC ERUPTION,WHAT WOULD BE NEXT )

 

[Goldminer]

I will continue to reprint this until SWR and people like him stop insulting those who are dowsers, and those who truly want to learn. I don't believe dowsing works, I KNOW it works, and I have proven this in scientific tests conducted by Stanford Research Int.

Dowsing is a way of being conscious of sensory inputs which are not directly connected to the instinctive brain functions. For example man's sensitivity to magnetism. The organ we assume to be responsible for this sensitivity is the pineal gland . We know that the pineal is contained within the skull, but the pineal lies outside the brain, and has no direct contact with the brain nor does it have direct nerve connections. So the pineal must communicate with the lower brain through subconscious urges, and not rational thought. In the case of dowsing, clearly the subconscious brain (not mind) is, in some way, able to alter muscle tension in the shoulders and arms, by way of the ideomotor effect, causing the crossing of angle rods, and the swinging or rotation of the pendulum.
Yet the same channels must also be used by other subconscious stimuli for them to be felt. Anyone who has used dowsing tools may find that the same techniques work well for psychic explorations, such as dating artifacts and map dowsing. But, although the manner of bringing the raw impulse through to conscious perception may be the same, this does not mean that the origins are the same. Dowsing may be linked to the magnetic sensitivity of the pineal, but psychic sensations may emanate from quite different organs.
Becker and Marino, who state that not all information gathered by the usual senses is 'processed at the conscious level, and there is no physiological principle that would preclude the subliminal detection of EMFs [electromagnetic fields] by the nervous system.'
No one knows how dowsing works, they only know it does. There are two popular theories to explain dowsing: the first suggests that dowsing works as a result of natural phenomena. Buried metal, minerals and underground water causes either a magnetic field or a disturbance in the earth’s own magnetic field. It is thought that the dowsing rod is a tool for showing the reaction of the magnetic field in the ground to the natural magnetic field of the body.
This theory was investigated scientifically in Logan, Utah, USA, around 30 years ago. Intrigued by a dowser pinpointing the bodies of two boys who drowned in a local river, Duane G. Chadwick, professor at the Utah State University Water Research Laboratory undertook several experiments to see if there was some scientific basis for dowsing. Chadwick and his colleague, Larry Jensen started from the known observations of geologists that underground water can cause anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field. They figured that dowsers could show sensitivity to these anomalies by involuntary muscular movement in the wrists, and dowsing rods would certainly amplify any small muscular reaction by up to 300 times.

In the first of a series of experiments, on the Campus, they set about testing the idea that dowsing reactions might coincide with the spots where some changes occurred in the Earth's magnetic field. Chadwick and Jensen laid out a straight track, free of obstructions and, using a caesium vapor magnetometer, checked for variations in the earth’s magnetic field at one-foot intervals. Chadwick then buried a length of wire, in a neutral area, to distort the magnetic field. Twenty-five people were recruited to walk the test course. Few of them were dowsers; most were students or university staff. They were given a pair of L- rods made out of clothes-hanger wire, and told to hold them out roughly horizontal. If they felt any kind of reaction, they were to stop and put down a small block of wood. The results were amazing in that twenty-three of the participants had a dowsing reaction within three feet of the buried wire. Chadwick was convinced the outcome was far greater than chance.

In another experiment in North Logan City Park, Chadwick and Jensen marked out a test course with no obvious or known features. This time, the test was double blind - nothing was deliberately buried and no one knew what was out there. 150 participants with dowsing rods were asked to drop a wooden block whenever they experienced a dowsing reaction and again almost everyone did. They dropped an average of 11.3 blocks each and the location of each block was documented. Then Chadwick and Jensen went over the course with two magnetometers mounted, at different heights, on a wooden sled. The difference between the magnetometer readings showed the variation in the magnetic field along the track walked by the dowsers. The researchers then graphed the magnetometer readings against the positions of the wooden blocks, which showed again that the dowsing reactions occurred unmistakably at peaks in the magnetic field.

The Second theory is that dowsing works through the arts of the paranormal; an explanation used to account for the ability of some dowsers to find objects which are thought not to produce or influence magnetic fields. As far as field dowsing is concerned, the paranormal theory is probably in error since it has been shown that virtually everything, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, reacts to magnetic fields. However, map dowsing is something else. How does a person dowse a map to successfully locate a target hundreds or thousands of miles away? There are many unanswered questions along the same lines, which are commonly put down to psychic ability or intuition. Mankind does not know everything. Much science fact today was the science fiction and mysticism of the past and dowsing has undoubtedly survived from primitive times when the ability to find water, for instance, could have meant the difference between life and death.

To my mind there are actually two types of dowsing. Field dowsing based on magnetic effects and map dowsing or distance dowsing based on intuition or psychic ability. The two types of dowsing are quite different and both types can be learned and improved on with perseverance and practice
.
This is a small spattering of information that I have found while researching ‘consciousness’ and it’s relationship to PSI. The research and laboratory work in this field has been undertaken by colleges, universities, scientific, and government professionals all over the world for over 100 years. In every avenue of this research (of which dowsing is a part), the field work and lab work has shown consistently that PSI phenomena has performed better than random chance. (Some far better)
Some of the above was taken from Electromagnetism and life, Robert O. Becker and Andrew A. Marino, State University of New York Press, 1982

HEY SWR, GET A LIFE !!
Bill

 

[dowser 501]

Hey Bill, I am here to back you up.For 10 years at least I have been pushing magnetic force as being the force behind dowsing. All the Carls and SWRs and sandsteds in the world have been ridiculing me all that time.
I have spent the past 10 years experimenting, and have a hell of a lot of proof. Keep up the good work. Max

 

[ClonedSIM]

Blame yourselves! Everyone has the option to learn Dowsing and prove it to them selves if they don't want to accept someone's word. That is the way I did it. Dell

Blame ourselves for what, Dell? Do you honestly want me to take a set of rods, go out and practice and then fail to locate anything? And then let's say I came back here and reported that dowsing doesn't work? Would you take my word for it? Of course not! Don't even say you would accept that! So why should we believe you when you say it does work?
That's the funny thing about these challenges, Dell. It's a one-way street. No one can convince you that dowsing doesn't work, but you can convince others that it does. All it would take is a demonstration.

 

[Sandsted]

Af, no one can prove anything to you. "...and then fail to locate anything?" You didn't try yet you know the out come? You have a conclusion on a matter you haven't yet studied. Or rather an outcome on an expeirament you won't perform.

And in dowsing, even if you did try (which you have told us you won't), if you expect not to get results, guess what YOU WON'T. This is a mistake many dowsers make, even experienced ones. You can't let your assumptions affect your results. There is a expierament you can do, take a penny, put it on a map. Dowse for water and tell yourself that that penny is a great source of water, you will get a reaction over it because of it. Tell yourself that it isn't, you won't get a reaction. This is something that you have to be really careful about.

But, why am I telling you, you won't even attempt to learn to dowse.

 

[Carl-NC]

IMO, skeptics should at least try dowsing, before arguing against it. I have. When someone said, "Hey, dowsing works! You should give it a try," I did just that... I gave it a try. OK, it seemed to work... until I looked a little closer.

Then I was told, "Oh, maybe you're doing it wrong. Try this method..." OK again, I gave a try. But still, when I looked closely, it wasn't doing what I was told it was doing.

Then someone said, "Hey, try this LLAD* device! It's not dowsing, and it works!" Allllllright, I got me the LLAD device, but... uh oh... it worked and failed exactly the same as dowsing.

"Oh, well, then you should try this other LLAD device. It really, really works!" So I tried another LLAD device. And then another, and another, and another. But they were all the same.

So, I've actually tried what people suggested. I've messed around with dowsing, and I've felt the "pull". But I went a step further than dowsers, and proved to myself that it's a mind trick.

I've bought the LLAD devices, somewhere to the tune of $10,000 out of my pocket. Now unlike some people, I bought them knowing full well that they probably wouldn't do a darn thing, so I wasn't disappointed that they didn't do a darn thing. And, I could afford to lose the money. A friend of mine who sunk $30,000 in LLADs could not afford it.

So, skeptics, give dowsing a try. Really. It doesn't cost anything to do so. If it seems to work on visible targets, start cranking down on the test protocol and see what happens. It's fun science.

- Carl

* Looks Like A Duck

 

[Rich NY]

Carl,
That's pretty bizarre behavior.
If I was going to play golf, and purchased a set of clubs, I would make sure I learned how to play golf before I purchased another set. If somebody told me this set or that set would make me a better player it would not matter. If I couldn't play with the first set I would not feel a need for any other sets.

 

[digman]

Carl,
Why do you keep telling us that dowsing doesn't work for you, even after spending so much money, and all the rest?
Do you do that in order to protect us for spending such an amount of money?
Do you have any kind of benefit, if we stop dowsing?
Why on every dowsing post send, you keep insisting that you have unsuccessfully tried dowsing?
If it doesn't work for you, why bother?
And, please stop insisting to the ''SKEPTICS'' what to do or try. They are SKEPTCS, they know.
Digman.

P.S. Dowsing works OK for me. And I didn't pay a fortune for it. Very very very cheap, almost nothing. Take my word for it. I only hunt for gold and silver. Pitty I can't post you pics....

 

[dowser 501]

Good lord Carl, you were nearly there and failed to complete the mental connection to a target. You were always a little soft on dowsers in your critisism as you always had nagging doubts as to why you failed.
At least with those black boxes,with your training you can at least open them up and find out why they didnt work. You cant open up your head.
No offence meant.

 

[Carl-NC]

Interesting revelation! In all these years, this is the first time in any of these forums that I have seen Carl, admit that he could "FEEL" the Rod(s)? pull to a visible target. That must have been a shock against his "Belief " system.

No, I've mentioned this before. I admit I was surprised the first time I felt the pull--I was a teenager, working for an irrigation company*. But in hindsight, it's not the least bit surprising.

Publicly, Carl, has always argued that the Rod(s) or L-L do absolutly nothing. He's waved a 10 oz Gold bar in front of Rod(s) and vice versa, and there has never been any reaction, or so he has claimed until now.

Knowing how dowsing works, I've become pretty immune to the suggestive ideas that trigger the ideomotor. So, practically every time** I try a LLADD, it does nothing.

Actually, mental Dowsing is a function of the sub-conscious mind...

Yes, it's called "intuition".

Instead, Carl, has chose to copy and amend a contrived, self serving test which can only be passed with extreme luck.

Or, if dowsing really worked.

Actually Carl, "Feeling" a pull, is a "Physical" effect. With certain tools, the effect can be "FELT" toward the strength of "Fields" of buried, non-visible targets, even while blindfolded. That's a fact!

If that were true, then the "fields" and the "physical" reaction should not vanish when the test goes double-blind.

- Carl

*I've also mentioned the story of the phenomenal failure of a dowser to locate an irrigation pipe which, for me, was the seed of doubt toward dowsing.

**I could relate an interesting result I got when doing some tests with another fellow a couple of weeks ago, but I won't.

 

[Carl-NC]

Carl,
That's pretty bizarre behavior.
If I was going to play golf, and purchased a set of clubs, I would make sure I learned how to play golf before I purchased another set. If somebody told me this set or that set would make me a better player it would not matter. If I couldn't play with the first set I would not feel a need for any other sets.

Would seem that way. But I don't buy them hoping that they will locate treasure. I know better than that. What I've been doing, is writing reports on them, showing other THer's what they really are. The reports are on my web site.

I could criticize dowsing and the LooksLikeADuck devices without having tried dowsing or the LLAD devices, but I think that would be disingenuous of me. Especially with the LLAD devices. By obtaining lots of these things, dissecting them, and testing them, I can legitimately say that they are junk, and maybe save a few people the agony of wasted time & money.

And it's kinda fun, opening them up, and seeing what kind of garbage has been stuffed inside. Even more fun to see what alibis the folks responsible come up with.

- Carl

 

[Carl-NC]

Carl,
Why do you keep telling us that dowsing doesn't work for you, even after spending so much money, and all the rest?
Do you do that in order to protect us for spending such an amount of money?
Do you have any kind of benefit, if we stop dowsing?
Why on every dowsing post send, you keep insisting that you have unsuccessfully tried dowsing?
If it doesn't work for you, why bother?
And, please stop insisting to the ''SKEPTICS'' what to do or try. They are SKEPTCS, they know.
Digman.

P.S. Dowsing works OK for me. And I didn't pay a fortune for it. Very very very cheap, almost nothing. Take my word for it. I only hunt for gold and silver. Pitty I can't post you pics....

I've told folks over & over... if dowsing works for you, then use it!