The lost art of Dowsing is one that many people have used for centuries to detect water in the ground. Dowsing was one of the ancient skilled trades of the frontier when settlers were making new homesteads in the wild. But the actual art itself was always seen as a sort of witchcraft based more in mysticism than science. And now scientists are hoping to make the transition toward scientific understanding of the art of dowsing.
Dowsing traditionally has two methods, either the use of one or two sticks or either wooden or steel design, or through the use of a pendulum that swings in the direction dowsers are subconsciously guided toward. With dowsers still being employed to discover wells and even making an appearance on the Discovery Channel show Survivorman (with some success) the art is making a comeback. So it is the perfect time for the British Society of Dowsers along with 200 of its members to make an appearance before Gloucester’s Royal Agricultural College in order to make the case for psychic dowsing.
Giovanni Orlando will be working alongside several dowsers in an attempt to determine if there is actually a biological function that indicates when different “hits” with dowsing occur. Since there is a fairly unknown communication going on between the environment and the brain of a dowser, studying this X factor may be the secret to discovering just what psychic talent is in a physical sense that can be measured and quantified and therefore finally officially proved. The study will be taking on an old question that will start with psychic abilities but perhaps build the foundation for the study of other paranormal phenomena.
But because dowsing generally requires in its most basic form a serious requirement for an event to take place, many dowsers are expressing apprehension at an attempt to study it in a lab. If the dowsing experiments don’t involve anything that really needs to be discovered, such as cancer in a worried patient or a well made by a new settlement or farm, then the experiment simply won’t work. Part of the research will require the scientists finding volunteers that genuinely need dowsing to discover different things before the experiments can proceed. And like most paranormal phenomena, dowsing rarely works the same way in a lab than it does when it is simply naturally needed in the world.
Still, if the experiments prove useful there may be a new foundation for the study of the paranormal. And imagine the technologies that could come out from a serious understanding of dowsing and other paranormal phenomena. One day a device may be created that accents a human’s natural ability to receive these mysterious dowsing signals. And it may give GPS systems a map of mystical ley lines that correlate with various paranormal happenings. And this could open up a whole new world for the field of paranormal study.