Topic: Here's a bit of fun.

[ACE]

Reading another thread on A4A I came across a mention of dowsing. I am a pretty dab hand at it, although I have not done it for a while. When the garden makeovers were all the rage it was one of our methods for placing a point of interest in the garden we were doing. I would find a ley line in the garden to place whatever it was we were installing. I know it's a load of mumbo jumbo, but it sold the customer the idea, You can sell some people a bucket of nuclear waste if you tie a dream catcher to it. Anyway usually it was the right place to site whatever we were doing.

On our allotments they were not too sure about our ritual dancing with the Morris dancers, but it was a bit of fun. Next year on april 1st I shall 'find' a ley line and whatever I plant there will have a little bit of extra fertiliser underneath (when nobody is looking). It will be great fun to watch some of the unbelievers creeping about with their bent coathangers. Of course this could work without the helping hand who knows what mystery is at work, If I was you I would give it a go.

[galina]

Are you trying to sabotage dowsing, making fun of it, or encouraging other people to take it up?   Not sure how to interpret your post         

[squeezyjohn]

On the couple of times I've given it a go with those metal dowsing rods you can get I have found either running water or metal underground without knowing it was there before.  I don't know what the science behind it could be but the rods definitely crossed over in the place there was something underneath ... I don't believe it's magic - I believe it's one of those things science would have got to the bottom of if they chucked enough money at it.

[ACE]

I really used them to find drains, cables and water pipes under any garden we were digging up as sometimes I had to go deep with a digger. I don't understand the reasons behind it, a couple of bent bits of wire work for me but I have a friend who used willow sticks which can be wrenched out of his hands on a strong signal. I do also find ley lines which are all over the place, the wires judder a bit over them instead of a slow parting or crossing you get with  water or metal There must be some magnetic force in play somewhere.

[Silverleaf]

I'm very sceptical about the whole thing - no scientific test has shown that dowsing is any better than random chance.

I'd love it to be true though, it would be a fantastic skill to have if it was real.

[Obelixx]

As Squeezy said, there'll be no scientific proof unless someone throws loads of money at it.   

There are many so called Old Wives tales and remedies that have been poo-pooed by science until someone realised they worked - chewing willow bark for pain relief (aspirin); fish being brain food (Omega 3); honey for calming coughs, carrots for improving eyesight (Carotene) - and now pharmaceutical companies are pouring millions into researching more for commercial gain.

When they work out dowsing is so much cheaper and simpler than hauling in ground penetrating X-ray and sonar machines they'll throw some money at working out how it works and use it in difficult terrain for mineral or water profit..

[squeezyjohn]

I remember watching a dowser in a council hard hat and fluorescent jacket finding the places for the guys with the pneumatic drills to dig in Cambridge market square when I was a student ... they seemed to be using it in a practical way like any other workman.  I don't think it can be rubbish.

[galina]

I'm very sceptical about the whole thing - no scientific test has shown that dowsing is any better than random chance.

I'd love it to be true though, it would be a fantastic skill to have if it was real.

It is real.  We were lucky to have Adult Education dowsing classes nearby and some of the results surprised me.  For example as a group we went to a village green that once had houses built on it.  We could dowse where the walls were, the doors, how large the houses were, rooms etc etc.  Every wall was dowsed inside and out and our results marked with a little flour on the grass.  The flour outlines showed up like an architect's floor plan.  That group project was very impressive. 

You have to be precise though in what you ask for.  I tried to help a friend find her purse with credit cards etc and came up with 'car'.  She turned her car upside down and nothing.  Only after she had cancelled her credit card, she found it in her daughter's toy car.  I should have been mentally more specific what I asked of the pendulum.  A similar one was when OH could not find his passport.  This was at about 3am and he had to go to the airport for a business trip a few hours later.  In desperation, he went off to his work to search there and I grabbed the rods for a slow tour round the house.  Suddenly they crossed.  But there was nothing.  Seconds later the phone went and he told me that he had just found it.  Clearly I was more mentally attuned to whether he would find it at his work than to what I was doing.  My mind had wandered off my dowsing goal.  So yes, dowsing is working, even working well, but for me not always in the way I intend because I find it quite difficult to be single-minded and not let other issues intrude. 

Silverleaf, do give it a try, empty your mind, be very sure what you ask for, visualise it, and go for it.  We never really dowsed for hidden springs on the course, but learned that if you only specify 'water', you could get a shallow, dirty puddle.  Experienced  well dowsers will ask whether it is clean water or dirty, how deep and even how many gallons per hour in preparation for digging a well.  If you use a pendulum, ask first what is 'yes' and what is 'no' by way of calibration.  Not everybody is the same, it could be clockwise for yes and anticlockwise for no, or the opposite.

 

[squeezyjohn]

I'm very sceptical about the whole thing - no scientific test has shown that dowsing is any better than random chance.

I'd love it to be true though, it would be a fantastic skill to have if it was real.

It is real.  We were lucky to have Adult Education dowsing classes nearby and some of the results surprised me.  For example as a group we went to a village green that once had houses built on it.  We could dowse where the walls were, the doors, how large the houses were, rooms etc etc.  Every wall was dowsed inside and out and our results marked with a little flour on the grass.  The flour outlines showed up like an architect's floor plan.  That group project was very impressive. 

You have to be precise though in what you ask for.  I tried to help a friend find her purse with credit cards etc and came up with 'car'.  She turned her car upside down and nothing.  Only after she had cancelled her credit card, she found it in her daughter's toy car.  I should have been mentally more specific what I asked of the pendulum.  A similar one was when OH could not find his passport.  This was at about 3am and he had to go to the airport for a business trip a few hours later.  In desperation, he went off to his work to search there and I grabbed the rods for a slow tour round the house.  Suddenly they crossed.  But there was nothing.  Seconds later the phone went and he told me that he had just found it.  Clearly I was more mentally attuned to whether he would find it at his work than to what I was doing.  My mind had wandered off my dowsing goal.  So yes, dowsing is working, even working well, but for me not always in the way I intend because I find it quite difficult to be single-minded and not let other issues intrude. 

Silverleaf, do give it a try, empty your mind, be very sure what you ask for, visualise it, and go for it.  We never really dowsed for hidden springs on the course, but learned that if you only specify 'water', you could get a shallow, dirty puddle.  Experienced  well dowsers will ask whether it is clean water or dirty, how deep and even how many gallons per hour in preparation for digging a well.  If you use a pendulum, ask first what is 'yes' and what is 'no' by way of calibration.  Not everybody is the same, it could be clockwise for yes and anticlockwise for no, or the opposite.

 

I'm not sure I believe in it to that degree!  When I was trying it with the rods ... I wasn't thinking anything apart from "this dowsing thing is a load of old mumbo-jumbo - it'll never work"  and I still found running water and metal!  I have come to believe that there must be something electromagnetic going on there and that kind of makes sense ...

... but asking a pendulum whether a credit card is in the car or whether water is dirty or not??? ... you might as well believe that there's a big man with a beard who lives in the sky and controls everything we do! 

[Silverleaf]

I don't believe in anything that doesn't have a proper scientific explanation. Gods, fairies, dowsing, homeopathy, ghosts, reiki, psychic powers, chi, fortune telling, detoxing, alien abductions, you name it - if it's supernatural (or natural but with no supporting evidence), I don't believe it.

As far as I'm concerned, if something's real then sooner or later there will be scientific evidence for it, and then I'll be perfectly happy to believe it.

But the evidence so far after thousands of years of dowsing being practiced points to dowsing working no better than random chance. On the balance of that I conclude there's nothing in it, but if someone can prove that it works then I'll be pleased to admit I was wrong. No-one's ever won that $1 million from the James Randi Foundation though, have they?

I don't think a good experiment would be expensive at all. I bet you could get everything you need from B&Q for a hundred quid.

[ACE]

I don't think a good experiment would be expensive at all. I bet you could get everything you need from B&Q for a hundred quid.

Even cheaper on a Wednesday with the pensioners discount card. But I am not worried about a scientific explanation, if it works, it works. Good enough for me. Now don't let the cat out of the bag and tell everyone, but some of us dowsers have married aliens from another planet, Mine has the ability to know what I am going to do before I even think about telling her. She has adapted her cry of NANOO, NANOO down to a definate 'no you can't'.

[ancellsfarmer]

Do you ever subconciously think of some chance aquaintance or lapsed friend only to receive a telephone call within hours?
I dont believe in magic, the hereafter, fairies, luck or occult but have experienced such calls. Only last week I drove past a potential customers house. I had quoted for part of the new build they were involved in ,May 2014. All quiet since.
The quote was fine but all funds already committed. I wondered if they were heading towards this winter ,devoid of the missing heat.
 Returning to the office after a rest day, I found a message taken 12 hours after my journey, from the party involved, wishing now to proceed.
 How can this happen ?

[Silverleaf]

Not anywhere near as often as I think of someone and then they don't call!

I think it's a kind of bias - we evolved to quickly spot patterns because it helped our ancient ancestors to survive. As a consequence we assume things are related when they aren't, and remember coincidences as happening much more frequently than they actually do.

[Digeroo]

The national trust used to have someone who went to Lodge Park once a year.  They used the coat hanger method.  There is a water pipe buried across the lawn no visible signs and 95% of people found it.  Many were sceptics.  Some watched others and said it was impossible but even blindfolded it worked.

All you need is two pieces of bend metal and two pieces of plastic tubing.