How did you discover dowsing?

Ask a dowsing question, tell us your gossip, chat etc. here!
Happymama
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Sat May 21, 2011 8:48 pm

I have no idea!

Post by Happymama »

I have no idea how I discovered dowsing but I have used Tarot for years for divination with a lot of success. I just suddenly recently had the urge to pick up some dowsing rods so went online and ordered some and an amethyst pendulum.

I've been called, I guess.

I seem to have connected with my pendulum, N-S for No and E-W for yes in my right hand, will see if it's the same in my neurologically weak left side tomorrow.

I'd also like to know if the stream at the end of our Dene is still there where it was on the 1860 map of the area. I guess I'll be out in the middle of the night, then! The neighbours all think I'm a fruitloop anyway!
Ian Pegler
Expert
Expert
Posts: 2824
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2004 12:04 pm
Location: Borth, Mid Wales

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by Ian Pegler »

Happymama wrote:I have no idea how I discovered dowsing but I have used Tarot for years for divination with a lot of success.
Welcome to the forum Happy Mama.

Thought you'd like to know that the BSD shop have copies of the recently released Wildwood Tarot for sale (not online though).

Enjoy the forum.

Ian
Doug Bates
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:35 pm

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by Doug Bates »

Everyone has interesting stories about their introductions to dowsing.
This is a longish story, I hope you'll enjoy.

For me the discovery was wonderfully serendipitous. I knew nothing about dowsing or divining for the first 32 years of my life... I and my family had been through some very hard times in Sussex when we fell foul of the ERM Crisis and subsequent property crash in 1990/91. There were no safety nets or bailouts then... We lost everything and were left with a huge debt to repay. I took a job with a tied cottage, outside the geological field, in Estate Maintenance in Scotland, and worked hard there for 4 years as the Jack of all trades (Farming, Forestry, Gardening, Building Maintenance and improvement) working very long hours. Whilst there my wife spotted a book on the librarian's desk at Turriff local library, which just happened to be on loan from Edinburgh, that she thought would interest me, and brought it home. It was a hard-back first edition of Christopher Bird's classic 'The Divining Hand'...
I read it, of course. I devoured that book, studied every chapter, made notes. There have been a few truly defining moments or turning points in my life, and reading Christopher Bird's book was one of them. It was truly fascinating.

Working on the estate, an opportunity soon arose to try out the basic field techniques. The stabling facilities for 24 horses found they were suddenly without water. There was a problem with the old half-inch gravity-fed supply pipeline that ran about a mile on an unknown course through woods and fields from a hillside cistern. I did all the routine checks from which it was only possible to deduce that the pipe was broken and leaking to ground at some point, but there was no visible evidence anywhere at the surface. I figured the break had to be somewhere in a 30-acre field that had just been ploughed, and wasted three days tankering water for the horses and digging trenches across the apparent logical pipe route trying to locate the pipe, but to no avail. By the fourth day, a Sunday, I was aching and exhausted and at my conventional wits end. I resolved to have faith and try the dowsing techniques I had been reading about. I'm not a religious man at all, but guided also by the historic and religious references I felt I ought to give due respect. I stood there in that field and uttered a simple prayer asking permission to use the divining art that day, and if it was appropriate, for me to be able to use it in future but only ever as a force for good, ruling out all possibility of occult influence. I felt at peace and it felt right to continue. I cut a forked stick from the nearest hedge and started on a traverse of the field, curiously confident, as though I had done all this before... It reminded me of my days running geomagnetic and IP surveys over mineral prospects in South Africa. Within a couple of minutes the stick twisted in my hands like a live thing and pointed emphatically at the ground. Wow! I was impressed! I put my hat on the ground to mark the spot, walked beyond it about 50 metres and turned for the opposite traverse. About half a pace from my hat the stick suddenly twisted again, wham! Excited, I ran across to the edge of the field and gathered some long sticks to use as markers. In another 15 minutes I had a line marked clear across the field in an unexpected orientation, but I trusted I had found the pipeline, and remembered what I'd read about locating a leak or break by walking along the line of a pipe. I did just that and within another couple of minutes had a clear spot indicated for the position of the leak.
With mixed emotions of anticipation and trepidation I took up my spade again and bent to my work excavating a 2ft square pit. I could scarcely believe my eyes when about 18 inches down water started welling up in the hole, then right in the middle, my spade struck a small diameter black alkathene pipe. Clearing the mud from the bottom, I revealed a brass joint that had been pulled apart presumably by the pressure or impact of the plough on the pipeline. I soon fixed it and restored the water supply to the stables. I had found the exact location of the problem and fixed it with very little effort inside two hours, which stood in stark contrast to the fruitless search of the preceding 3 days. The full significance of this event took a while to sink in, but after that there was no stopping me.
I practiced dowsing almost every day during the course of my work on the estate, found all the old lead pipes and replaced them with MDPE, found a couple of missing septic tanks, several blocked drains, located a shallow underground stream for the local sand and gravel quarry, tracked and repaired three other leaks, tested my dowsing measuring skills on local wells and boreholes, and finally located a good fracture intersection for my first water borehole. That borehole was subsequently completed successfully for about 1000 gall/hr providing a reliable new water supply for the whole estate.

I realised that most of the remarkable dowsers documented in 'The Divining Hand' were not scientists and were not particularly disciplined, but I nevertheless recognised the huge potential of dowsing as a tool to be harnessed in the Geological Exploration arena. I combed out all the gems of wisdom and technique that made sense to a geologist's way of thinking and discarded the rest.
I was particularly taken with the concept and power of map-dowsing and, as an exploration geologist very accustomed to working with maps of all kinds, I quite quickly developed my own unique style. I joined the BSD and contacted the well known water diviner, Michael Cranfield (RIP), in Dollar, Clackmannanshire. Michael was a true gentleman and was very helpful to me. We kept up a regular correspondence and he sent envelopes full of maps of farms and sites he had already surveyed for me to practice dowsing, and spent a lot of time checking my results against his and commenting on them. In the winter of 1993 / 94 I had become ill with an acute infection after dental surgery, and was disabled with induced arthritis to the extent that I was unable to work much for 6 months. I spent hundreds of hours dowsing and reading, practising, checking results against known and measurable facts. I was also working as an artist doing pen and ink drawings by commission to make ends meet, and working on an invention for the construction and DIY trade. That led indirectly to my second borehole client....
Sangs (Banff) Ltd was a small soft drinks company situated on the summit of a headland at the back of Macduff Industrial Estate. They had drilled 8 times unsuccessfully in hard vertical slate bedrock at a cost of over £50,000, trying to secure a water supply to enable expansion of their soft drinks business, and they had given up the idea until I came along and found a prime vertical fault intersection, plotted to an accuracy of one foot both ways (X marked the spot). I confidently measured the productive depth range of the two intersecting fractures from 150-200ft and estimated the sustainable yield at 2,600 gall/hr. The directors were naturally sceptical especially since my location was just a few yards away from two of the failed boreholes. In this instance I was fortunately able to provide convincing supporting evidence by spending two days mapping the geology exposed around the rocky shores at Macduff, by which means I discovered that there was indeed a major vertical geological fault passing beneath the site. This was a classic make-or-break, all the eggs in one basket, first-strike opportunity. Drilling intersected the first productive fracture at 150-165ft and the second at 186-195ft, and proved a 30 day test yield of 3000 gall/hr and a sustainable yield of 2600 gall/hr, which was all the water they needed. Further drilling on secondary source structures in later years brought in additional supplies of 1200 and 900 gallons per hour, not half as good as my first prime location. The business was able to expand to over 4 times the production level they had in 1995, and was sold in 2008 for £10,000,000. That spectacular success in the most difficult of circumstances gave me supreme confidence in the reality of dowsing as a phenomenon and in the degree of accuracy that can be achieved, that was and still is fascinating to me as a geologist, knowing that this ability goes far beyond the capability of any conventional geophysics.
From that moment on I have never looked back, and now 17 years down the long and winding road, I have surveyed locations for more than 2500 successful boreholes in UK, America, Canada, Australia and in various parts of Africa, and I've been fortunate to have had great opportunities to be involved in pioneering dowsing work in the oil exploration and mineral exploration sectors. What a wonderful world this is!
erasmus49
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2011 12:36 pm
Location: manchester

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by erasmus49 »

I used to sell cards,incense and jewellry at 'psyhcic 'fairs.One day this guy called 'sylvanus' sold me a silver pendulum,i was cycnical even then.a few months later and i was fruitpicking and labouring near cheltenham.we were working on rebuilding a local colledge when the gaffer gave me a horrible job.he explained that they needed to find the power cables for a stretch of streetlights and would I kindly spend the day digging boreholes as the cables wern't where they should be and using a digger would be dangerous.off i went,then half an hour later tried the silver pendulum.BINGO.!!!So i dug a few holes to find the cables then sat on my backside for a few hours,then dug a load of feint holes to show i'd been busy,the boss never knew!A few years later a friends daughter went missing and i dowsed for her,but thats another story, a sad one but i learnt a lot about missing people and dowsing.
moggymiaow
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 10:35 am

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by moggymiaow »

I started dowsing with a pendulum. I had read that there were energy lines running through stone circles. I decided to see what I could pick up. I drew some maps of what I thought I had found. The I found on the net someone who had drawn lines on the long Meg stone circles and my map was almost identical. It made me thing that perhaps I could actually do this, We moved to this property in NZ with a random collection of water pipes. I needed to find them, so I turned to dowsing and found I was darned accurate.
dogtired
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:02 pm

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by dogtired »

A few years ago I attended a weekend course with Hamish Miller and Barry Brailsford.It was one of those most enlightning times when one knows that a connection has been made...I've dowsed and been downloading ever since....so thanks to those brilliant blokes wherever they are.
Michael C
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun May 13, 2012 1:12 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by Michael C »

My grandfather who was a plumber in the rural eastern province of Småland in Sweden one day told me to hold his skewer balancing in two fingers, with my thumb closing over the fingertips. Next he wanted me, struggling with this heavy item in my hand as I was only 7 or 8 years old, to slowly walk in the direction he pointed out at me. After a few steps, the tip of the skewer landed on the ground and I felt somewhat disappointed because I couldn't carry the weight my grandfather asked me for. But granddad were all sunshine and opened a bottle of beer for himself and a soda for me, since I've just found my first sewer with the help of a skewer! ( :mrgreen: )

Next he showed me how to use a Y-shaped twig and how to hold it, and then we ran out of soda. Since then I carry this knowledge with me, and has just recently started to explore it further.
B.J.C.Courtney
Beginner
Beginner
Posts: 90
Joined: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:40 pm
Location: North Somerset England.

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by B.J.C.Courtney »

When I was a young child back in late nineteen Fifties my Dad who was a long term serving Non Commissioned Offer in the British Army, the REME Regiment was stationed in Kulalumpur Malaya, the site of the camp was built on a Second World War Japanese Supply station, a huge compound was fenced off by the camps residential compound, anyways my band of little friends aged between 4 years old and 6 years old use to wander around the camp, playing and exploring what parts we were allowed to visit, one day I had grazed my knee and took myself of to the camps small medical station, on being told off and cleaned and my graze treated I found parked outside was several Army Royal Engineers trucks, by the side of one a radio van was this Officer using wooden Y Rod to do what I was told was dowsing, he was searching for a hidden underground water drain that had wild dogs nesting inside, we had a problem there of a wolf like pack of dogs raiding the camp at night, they were looking for the nest and sadly were going to block all entry points to the nest, one the dogs that previously been shot was suspected of having rabies, thus the need to contain any possible risk, that what I was told by my dad, we left soon after as my dad had decided to leave the army after serving 26 years.
That is how I first witnessed and discovered dowsing.
Bryan a some what Dsylexic travler in time and space.
Mick

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by Mick »

I discovered dowsing years ago when I lived in Aberdeenshire. I got a dowser to find a well for me. He used a forked hazel stick. It was entertaining watching him dowse, he would do a little dance while he was fighting with the stick which would the hit him in the chest with real force. For some reason it worked back to front with him, but it worked really well. I asked to have a go with the stick, and he reluctantly let me try it but with strict instructions not the break it. It did nothing for me whatsoever. I could not do it then but I can do it now, so it must be something that can be acquired. I think I know how I acquired it but am not going to say right now as you will probably think I have totally lost it.
ddefries
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Jul 11, 2014 12:43 am

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by ddefries »

Hi,
Was introduced to dowsing when my father handed me a pendulum and said something along the lines of "see what you can do with that"... I was seven!!
Been dowsing on and off ever since...
Sometimes with great success, but less well when there is any kind of personal interest in the mix.
User avatar
Gareth
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Sep 11, 2012 4:01 pm
Location: Chesham

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by Gareth »

I discovered the concept as a kid in the eighties, when I read about Tom Lethbridge in The Unexplained magazine.

Some years ago, I tried (unsuccessfully) to dowse the lottery numbers, but I haven't had much actual practice until recently.

What I want to do, is dowse the positions of unmarked graves in two abandoned cemetery sites, one of which could soon be destroyed by HS2. I've gone around one of them with dowsing rods, which seemed to produce some results, but I'm not confident in my ability with that form of dowsing. I'd like to find out more about pendulum dowsing, and then see if that gives me a better picture.
Alicea
Newbie
Newbie
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 8:17 pm

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by Alicea »

When I was about 10 my Dad gave me a forked twig from the privet hedge and told me to walk down the side of our house. I was amazed when the twig reacted to the water pipe leading from the kitchen. Dad was a very good dowser but after that initial introduction to dowsing I lost interest and it wasn't until I was in my twenties and came across a book by T C Lethbridge, ESP - Beyond Time and Distance - (which in the language of the hippies) 'blew my mind' that I started dowsing with a pendulum. I just played around with dowsing for years but then started to seriously study astrology and used a pendulum to ascertain birth times. Now I'm tracing my family tree and intend to use a pendulum to try and demolish a few 'brick walls'. Wish me luck!
simonwheeler
Copper Supporter
Copper Supporter
Proficient
Proficient
Posts: 1001
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2004 7:22 pm
Location: Wigtown, Scotland
Contact:

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by simonwheeler »

Good luck, Alicea. :lol:

(We're pretty obliging on this Forum!!)
Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out. LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

www.simongordonwheeler.co.uk

Simon
User avatar
SparkTalker
Beginner
Beginner
Posts: 45
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2016 9:23 pm
Location: South Staffordshire

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by SparkTalker »

I remember sending off for a catalogue from an occult supply shop, I was still in my teens at the time. In among all of the potions and paraphenalia I noticed mention of a "Lethbridge Pendulum".

I didn't have a clue what a Lethbridge Pendulum was, and further searching of the catalogue revealed a book by T.C. Lethbridge (it might have been The Power of the Pendulum). So I posted off my order for the book and awaited its arrival...

What can I say. After reading it I was hooked on T.C.L. and his table of rates!

Bit by bit over the years I've managed to locate all of his later books, and still keep an eye out for his earlier self-published archaeological works.

In case anyone reading this is wondering, I did also send off for the Lethbridge Pendulum from the same source as the book. I never really took to it as it was made from plastic and had a nylon cord. I decided to make my own using a wooden finial from an old clock as the weight, a length of old wooden dowelling as the winder for the pendulum, and fourty inches of cotton twine for the cord.

Fourty plus years later and I still have the same Lethbridge Pendulum...
"Responses are limited, you must ask the right questions."
DavinDevon
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2019 9:09 am

Re: How did you discover dowsing?

Post by DavinDevon »

I was working on a property searching for a water pipe digging a trench across a manicured lawn which didn't impress the rather stern wife of my client, I was on the phone to my dad who said " just dowse for it your grandad would have" so I went and got some fencing wire bent it making two rods, I went across the lawn a few times and hey presto marked the ground dug down right onto the pipe. I have since used it regularly for work and also use pendulum for distance dowsing, finding a wedding ring in a Pembroke house from my house in Devon.
Post Reply