Dowsing, also known as divining, is the practice of finding water, minerals, caves, missing items or people, and locating illnesses in the body using tools such as pendulums and maps or two L shaped or forked sticks. One method of dowsing involves holding the sticks in front of you while you walk and noting when the sticks cross or pull toward the ground and another, which has a bit less obvious scientific reasoning, involves holding a pendulum over a map.Records of knowledge of the art of dowsing go back 8,000 years. The earliest record of dowsing comes from cave paintings dating back 8,000 years found in the Tassali Caves in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa.
A large wall painting in one of the caves depicts a man holding a forked stick looking for water while others watch. In Egypt 4,000 year old wall etchings depict Pharaohs dowsing and a 2,500 year old etching in China depicts a ruler dowsing as well. References are made to dowsing in scores of ancient literature including the Bible. By the middle ages German miners relied heavily on dowsing skills to locate their caches. The 31st president of the USA, Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer and a known, as well as a publicly admitted, dowser.
Today while many scoff a the idea of dowsing having any scientific basis, many members of both the British and American Societies of Dowsers are earning impressive amounts of money from major companies for their help in locating minerals, water, underground wires and pipelines, and even missing persons. The United States Government spent 35 million dollars researching and training "remote viewers" over a twenty year period during the Viet Nam era. In Russia and several other countries, dowsing is widely respected and taught as any other vocational skill. The principles by which dowsing works are just beginning to be understood on a scientific level, however.
While scientific minds have not been widely convinced that the art is anything more than superstition or "witchery", increasing understanding of earth energies is building evidence of a scientific basis for forms of the art. Modern scientific instruments have been able to uncover many forms of earth energies that were previously undetectable. For example, some of these subtle earth energies form Curry lines which are a grid of energy lines traversing the planet. These lines can become disturbed at points where other energies create interference. Ley lines are another form of energy pattern which have been found to change shape and form in the areas of water.
Animals have been found to react to these energies, and humans do as well, even if only on purely subconscious levels. Recent studies show that these energies react upon people living in areas where earth energies have become polluted by making them physically ill or mentally uneasy. Even rocks and minerals have been found to vibrate at frequencies undetectable to our conscious senses.While the means by which using a pendulum and a map to find minerals remotely remains a bit esoteric to our present understanding, the means by which using dowsing rods and other such equipment to find minerals has become a matter of learning to detect how one's body reacts to the different elements which are being sought. Many have thought that it is only a rare few which are able to develop this skill, but teachers of dowsing maintain that just about anyone can learn to dowse. It is the same as any other skill or craft and the level of proficiency achieved will vary with a person's natural knack for the skill.
It is interesting that in an age that scientific equipment is becoming so technologically advanced that many are stepping back in time and learning to perfect the art of finding their treasures the way that humans have done since prehistoric times. But isn't it reassuring to know that if you can't afford a great metal detector, you can always learn to be one?.
.©2006, Sally Taylor: Sal is an avid gem and treasure hunter, explorer, writer, and Internet Marketer. She is the owner of http://www.rockhoundstation1.com and author of a controversial Internet Marketing Beginner's Guide to Business Building: http://rockhoundstation1.net/ps/sally.
By: Sally Taylor
