page_title: Dowsing
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dowsing / History
context_page_description: Dowsing is a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, malign 'earth vibrations' and many other objects and materials without the use of a scientific apparatus. Dowsing is a pseudoscience. There is no scientific evidence that it's any more effective than random chance. Dowsers often achieve good results because random chance has a high probability of finding water in favourable terrain.
  Dowsing is also known as divining, doodlebugging or water finding, water witching or water dowsing.
  A Y-shaped twig or rod, or two L-shaped ones—individually called a dowsing rod, divining rod, "vining rod", or witching rod—are sometimes used during dowsing, although some dowsers use other equipment or no equipment at all.
  Dowsing remains popular among believers in Forteana or radiesthesia.
  The motion of dowsing rods is now generally attributed to the ideomotor response. The ideomotor phenomenon is a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously. In less complex terms, dowsing rods only move due to accidental or involuntary movements of the user.
context_section_description: Dowsing as practiced today may have originated in Germany during the 16th century, when it was used in attempts to find metals.
  As early as 1518, Martin Luther listed dowsing for metals as an act that broke the first commandment (i.e., as occultism). The 1550 edition of Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia contains a woodcut of a dowser with forked rod in hand walking over a cutaway image of a mining operation. The rod is labelled "Virgula Divina – Glück-Rüt" (Latin: Rod Divine; German: Luck-Rod), but there is no text accompanying the woodcut. By 1556, Georgius Agricola's treatment of mining and smelting of ore, De Re Metallica, included a detailed description of dowsing for metal ore.
  ...There are many great contentions between miners concerning the forked twig, for some say that it is of the greatest use in discovering veins, and others deny it. ... All alike grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that the clenched fingers should be held toward 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. ...
  In the sixteenth century, German deep mining technology was in enormous demand all over Europe. German miners were licensed to live and work in England; particularly in the Stannaries of Devon & Cornwall and in Cumbria. In other parts of England, the technique was used in the royal mines for calamine. By 1638 German miners were recorded using the technique in silver mines in Wales.
  The Middle Low German name for a forked stick (Y-rod) was schlag-ruthe
  (striking rod). This was translated in the 16th century Cornish dialect to duschen
  (duschan according to ) (Middle English, to strike or fall ).
  In 1691 the philosopher John Locke, who was born in the West Country, used the term deusing-rod for the old Latin name virgula divina. So, dowse is synonymous with strike, hence the phrases: to dowse/strike a light, to dowse/strike a sail.
  In the lead-mining area of the Mendip Hills in Somerset in the 17th century the natural philosopher Robert Boyle, inspired by the writings of Agricola, watched a  practitioner try to find "latent veins of metals". Boyle saw the hazel divining rod ("virgula divinatoria") stoop in the hands of the diviner, who protested that he was not applying any force to the twig; Boyle accepted the man's genuine belief but himself remained unconvinced.
  Although dowsing in search of water is considered an ancient practice by some, old texts about searching for water do not mention using the divining rod, and the first account of this practice was in 1568.Sir William F. Barrett wrote in his 1911 book Psychical Research that: 
  ...in a recent admirable Life of St. Teresa of Spain, the following incident is narrated: Teresa in 1568 was offered the site for a convent to which there was only one objection, there was no water supply; happily, a Friar Antonio came up with a twig in his hand, stopped at a certain spot and appeared to be making the sign of the cross; but Teresa says, "Really I cannot be sure if it were the sign he made, at any rate he made some movement with the twig and then he said, ' Dig just here ' ; they dug, and lo ! a plentiful fount of water gushed forth, excellent for 'drinking, copious for washing, and it never ran dry.' " As the writer of this Life remarks : " Teresa, not having heard of dowsing, has no explanation for this event," and regarded it as a miracle. This, I believe, is the first historical reference to dowsing for water.
  In 1662, dowsing was declared to be "superstitious, or rather satanic" by a Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, though he later noted that he wasn't sure that the devil was always responsible for the movement of the rod. In the South of France in the 17th century it was used in tracking criminals
caption: Dowsing for metal ore, from 1556 "De re metallica libri XII" book.
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