With a little practice, nearly everyone can learn to dowse.  It is a visual way to recognize our response to psychic vibrations. Dowsing is best known as a means of finding underground sources of water.  But the art can also including finding oil, minerals, hidden objects, pipes and archaeological sites.  It was even used in the Vietnam War by engineers to locate booby traps and underground bunkers.  It has saved lives.

The origins of dowsing are not known for certain.  Although written records indicate that it was first used by German miners in the 15th century, many believe that its roots go back much further.  Certainly the ancients must have been aware of earth energies, and many dowsers notice that their pendulums and rods, when used at prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge, go wild.  Prehistoric hill drawings such as the Long Man of Wilmington show men carrying two rods in either hand -- a possible indication of a belief in dowsing skills.  A cave painting found in the northern Sahara shows a man holding a forked stick, as do the carvings of the Peruvians, Egyptians and Chinese.

Learning to dowse is an extension of your skills of psychometry.  Instead of tuning in to an object you'll tune into a place.  The same psychic skills that taught you to replay memories from objects can help you find a hidden object.

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Dowsing Rods
1.  To make dowsing rods, cut a coat hanger with a pair of pliers.  Bend them at right angles and place the short ends into a plastic sleeve -- the casing of a ballpoint pen or two old cotton reels (spools) are excellent. Make sure that the metal rods can swing freely, and away you go.

2.  To use the rods, you first have to decide what it is you want to find. It's the power of the imagination that directs psychic energy.  Visualize what you want to find: water, cables, minerals or a historic site.  For this experiment, ask a friend to hide or bury something in your garden -- visualize this object before you start.  Imagine it as clearly as you can in your third eye center at the middle of your forehead.  Visualize what it looks like, its texture and weight.  Some dowsers carry a sample of the target object, such as a bottle of water or a piece of a mineral or metal.

3.  Hold your dowsing rods gently in both hands and keep your elbows bent and tucked in at the ribs -- you'll look a little like John Wayne with his pistols.  Systematically walk around your garden until the rods noticeably move.  There are several different types of dowsing reaction.  The locator wires may swing together or apart or both may swing in the same direction. A few dowsers experience a pull upwards or downwards.  The rods' reactions are different for every individual.  Place a peg in the spot.

4.  Walk over the ground again and see if the rods' reactions are consistent.  If they are, dig the ground at your marker and you should find the "lost" item.

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Dowsing Large Areas

If you're dowsing a large area such as a field it would take hours to walk systematically all over it, so a dowsing shorthand is used. First you need to decide what to find.  If you decide to look for an underground stream, pipe or cable, the method is the same, only you'll need more pegs.  Again visualize what it is you want to find -- water, for example.

Stand at the field's gate facing the center of the field.  Say aloud, "Is water in this direction?" then face slightly to the left and do the same, and again to the right.  So long as there's only one underground source, you should get only one reaction with your rods.

Walk in the direction indicated, stop after a few yards and try again. Follow the rods' instructions and this will lead you to the water course.

If you've walked over the course, the rods will guide you to retrace your steps. The rods will react every time you cross the water's underground course. Mark the point each time with a peg until you have either a straight or meandering line.  You have now located and marked the underground stream, but you don't yet know how far below the surface it lies.

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Locating Depth

A simple method to locate depth was devised by the French Bishop of Grenoble, who dowsed in the 18th century.  The so-called "Bishop's Rule" is as follows:  Take a few steps backwards from your marker peg and ask the rods, "Is the water at this depth?"  Keep stepping back in stages and asking until you get a clear reaction from the rods.  The distance from your reaction point to the marker is the same as the number of feet that the water lies below the ground.

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Dowsing Earth Energies

The academic archaeologist Tom C. Lethbridge, who came to fame in the 1950s, has been called the "Einstein of radiesthesia" (pendulum dowsing).  His interest focused on the standing stones, like Stonehenge, which can be found all over the world.  He noticed that his pendulum reacted vigorously at these places.  He believed that the stones somehow amplified the Earth's energies and Lethbridge spent much of his life theorizing and studying these strange powers.

Half a century earlier, in 1921, Alfred Watkins noticed that, as well as the criss-cross tracks and footpaths of the English countryside, there was a network on lines connecting up old churches, standing stones, hilltops, and ancient mounds.  These were far from random.  His books, The Old Straight Track (1924), proposed that Neolithic man had built these roadways to connect all their religious sites.  Watkins called them "ley lines" after the Saxon word "ley" meaning "cleared glade".

Dowsers like Lethbridge noticed that Watkin's ley lines were full of psychokinetic energy caused perhaps by underground streams running under the sites but argued by many to be a field force of magnetic energy.  The further discoveries, that the monuments had astrological significance and aligned with the stars -- discovered which are at least being taken seriously by historians have attracted dowsers to investigate them.  And you can too.

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~author unknown