Ley Lines: Their Nature and Properties - A Dowser's Investigation

Dowsing is best known as ‘water divining’ or ‘water witching’: the location of underground sources of water by a little- understood sensory process that is better developed in some individuals than in others. In some parts of rural Britain this activity is a normal part of life when drought conditions prevail. The earliest written reference to dowsing in the West is probably in Agricola’s De Re Metallica (1556), where, in fact, it's described as being used as a means of prospecting for mineral lodes. Today, the Russians use dowsing (or the ‘Bio-Physical Method’, as they call it) for geological purposes and find it at least as effective as more traditional methods.

But the term ‘dowsing’ covers a wide spectrum of subtle human sensibilities. We can perhaps accept without too much difficulty that it could be possible for a person standing on a particular site to be able to respond to minute changes in the electromagnetic (EM) environment caused by the presence of moving water or mineral deposits underground. Slight muscular responses are amplified in the motions of various types of dowsing devices — pendulums, spring rods, angle rods and so on — that are in a state of tension or delicate balance. Dowsing, however, is applied to other forms of information-gathering that are perhaps best described as ‘divination’.

By studying a map or a photograph some dowsers can locate water, oil, lost objects and even murder victims at a distance. I know of one instance where a dowser was able accurately to pinpoint the sunken wreck of a ship on a map at the request of a salvage company that had failed to locate it after a fortnight using sonar and electronic detection systems! This form of remote sensing must employ some type of Extra Sensory Perception that is not necessarily involved in on-site dowsing.