Dowsing works

Dowsing is an ancient art that has been used for thousands of years throughout the world – the Ancient Egyptians were dowsers and it may date back even earlier. It’s a method of divination, a tool that can be used to find the answer to literally anything, providing you use intent and ask the right question – and that’s the key to successful dowsing.

Many different explanations have been offered about why or how dowsing works, though no one answer seems to be widely held as the truth. This doesn’t detract from the success of dowsing, though, as despite its mystery, when you see or experience dowsing in action it’s not hard to see that it does work. Perhaps it’s just as simple as switching off your rational mind (which we’ve come to over-rely on today) and trusting in the response you receive.

Over time and in different lands a vast range of tools have been used by dowsers, as they still are today. Everyone seems to have their favourite, from pendulums made of crystal, metal and wood, to dowsing rods (also called L-rods), V-rods, forked sticks, bobbers, aurameters, pieces of fencing wire – or pretty much anything that can be bent into an L shape or that can be swung with a weight on one end. But despite the tool or the use, the basic premise is the same: to seek a truth.

That truth might be the location of a lost item or person, to locate something or someone on a map, to dowse for health-related issues and dis-ease, or to locate underground water, minerals or cables. It might be the answer to a question or the solution to a problem. Dowsing really can be used for almost anything.

Dowsing has been used by the army to detect land mines and ammunition dumps, and by electricians to locate underground wires. It’s also used by geomancers who seek to locate geopathic stress, earth energies and earth grid crossing points, or energetically ‘sweet spots’. Dowers have been found to be so accurate that they are employed by UNESCO and mining companies worldwide to discover minerals and water. In fact, last year (2017) it was reported that almost all water companies in the UK (10 out of 12) use dowsers to locate pipes or leaks.¹

And the beauty of dowsing is that anybody can do it. Like anything, it does take practice and while learning there will be times you get it wrong. But stick with it, and have fun with it. If you don’t have a pendulum or dowsing rods, start by tying a weight (such as a ring) to a piece of string, or try making your own dowsing rods out of a coat hanger (learn how here).

As noted earlier, dowsing is only truly effective when the dowser sets their intent clearly, removes any reliance on a certain outcome, and asks the right question. Once I was looking for a child’s lost shoe in a room that had been upturned completely. When I asked to ‘please find X’s shoe’, my rod led me around in circles. Frustrated, I looked down, thinking I’d need to ditch the rod and give up, but then realised the child – who was wearing one of the shoes – was standing next to me and had been walking next to me the whole time and my rod had been following that shoe! When I adjusted my question to ‘please take me to X’s missing shoe’, the rod led me directly to the place it was hidden.

Lesson learnt: don’t be lazy with my questioning, phrase carefully! Ultimately, your dowsing will only ever be as good as the question you present.

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