How did you discover dowsing?

[Ian Pegler]

So how did you come across dowsing? Tell us your stories !

Here's mine...

I first saw a pair of dowsing rods in a Christmas Catalogue delivered through the post. I was about ten at the time. The catalogue was from Hamleys of Regent Street in London. Back in the 70's Hamleys of Regent Street actually sold dowsing rods as toys. I remember that these rods had red handles and I think they were made of brass. Ah but there were other items that caught my attention in that catalogue especially a pair of morse code tappers which came with a buzzer.

After some indecision I decided upon the morse code kit. This was partly because I had been told that "only one person in ten can dowse" - which was nonsense but it was actually close to what Scott Elliot said in his book - if only he hadn't said it.

I didn't actually take up dowsing until my 30's. In between these times as a teenager I became interested in stone circles and "Earth Mysteries" books generally and all things Celtic. These made just occasional tangential references to dowsing (such as John Sharkey's Celtic Mysteries) and especially one Guy Underwood.

I remember occasional references to dowsing on TV programmes but these were not really convincing to my mind - dowsing is not a spectator sport. I especially remember James Randi's Psychic Investigator series in which Michael Cook passed one of his tests only for Randi to poo-poo it the following week.

My first dowsing book was Dennis Wheatley's Principle's of Dowsing (now sadly out of print) which also made reference to Guy Underwood - perhaps that was what caught my attention. It was a bit of a disappointment to discover that Underwood was a barrister and not (as I had envisaged) some Cornish yokel. Truth was I knew nothing about dowsing until then, or the BSD.

Sometime after reading Wheatley's book I joined the BSD. I spent a lot of time searching for Underwood's book The Pattern of the Past. Having searched in Aberystwyth, Bristol, Hay-on-Wye and Glastonbury amongst other places I eventually found three copies in the Book Barn in Wells, under the Archaeology section. I spent a lot of time and effort making my own versions of Underwood's Oasis and Geodetic rods. I still use these now and then but later I discovered wood-turning and started making pendulums and L-rod handles.

These days I'm interested in archaeology and earth energies. I use a pair of John Baker's steel L-rods as my main weapon of choice.

So that's my story, what's yours?

Ian



Edited by I.P. 22.8.10 - added link to Michael Cook thread

[Satyr]

Hmmmm, I became interested in pendulums when investigating the wicca path and then later became interested in finding sacred sites so went looking for dowsing rods. However, its only with Geoff's interest and help that I really became really hooked on dowsing (I know I've told you before, but thanks again Geoff ). I now use a pendulum (and I have quite a few, I seem to collect them) and dowsing rods. I use my pendulum for healing and divining and various other things and generally use my rods for more outdoor stuff. I have also done map dowsing and found water in my garden.

[Lorraine]

Great idea for a thread! I'm sure there are lot of very interesting stories out there amongst the members.

I discovered dowsing some years ago - was always aware of and interested in the old forked twig scenario! It remained a vague interest until one night in the 1990s, experimenting at a friend's house with dowsing rods. I found one would move while the other did not, which confused me somewhat. My husband found he had a powerful connection - the rods swung wildly in his hands and he felt energy tingling up them! Sadly, he was freaked out and swore never to try again.

Few years on... when I began healing with reiki and really opening up to my spiritual side, I discovered I could use a pendulum to pick up blockages in the human energy system. I also found I could pick up 'good' and 'negative' energy (I now think of them as 'flowing' and 'stagnant') in the house, which I used to good effect to cleanse places. But... even when the pendulum spun like crazy in my hand, I had little real understanding of what it was telling me.

Fast forward to last year, when a lady asked me to do some earth work at her home. I work with drums, toning and singing bell to affect change, but her information on earth grids etc had me totally bamboozled, along with a sneaking suspicion that she knew more about what was going on than me! So I ended up on here, finding a world of information, much of which I have difficulty grasping because I am used to working intuitively and visually... it's fascinating stuff though! Btw, Grahame, how about beginners and intermediary courses up here in Scotland??? Not all of us can afford to go to those juicy courses down south...

Lorr

[Kevin]

I was taught to use l rods over forty years ago, all my family are/were plumbers/heating eng's and the first instance I can recall was when a mains water pipe could not be located, and one of the plumbers just said "I'll find it", and went off on his own, to return with a plan of the pipes route across from the main road into the building, nobody questioned him, and there was the stop cock exactlty where he said it was.
I pestered him about how He did this, and He started to show myself.
After that I was the one to call on when anything needed finding.
It was a sort of game, I loved it.
But just over three years ago an old gentleman asked if i knew a dowser, He wanted to try and position some long barrow stones that had been moved at the end of WW11, I said "I.m a dowser", and volunteered to help.

That is when I fell down a dirty great rabbit hole, I positioned where the stones had been, but also stood right slam on a very powerfull crossing point just as a huge pack of information was passing, and my empty head got filled up with that information.
I have been driven since to find the questions to answers that I seem to know, very bizzare.
kevin

[simonwheeler]

My great grandfather was a plumber, and son of a plumber. He founded a building company on the proceeds of (very successfully) dowsing for water across several countries- working for/with Lester Gatacre.so it's in the blood/genes for me!

However, I came to it via the interest in/experience of things spiritual in general. Yet although they are connected, I do not use my dowsing interests for, say, healing - which I do with hands and as a distant, or absent, healer….for animals and people. Neither do I use dowsing in my clairvoyance and medium work.

I use deviceless dowsing, rods, pendulum and the Cameron Aurameter- which I have extolled elsewhere in this forum. I would describe dowsing as a hobby - whereas the spirit stuff is just part of me. I know this sounds paradoxical, and I cannot really explain it.

I dowse for water, sometimes for energy and enjoy charting & mapping lines in and around “special places”- stone circles, churches or wherever I feel is “special”....Findhorn Bay beach being such a place. The Megalithic Portal site is one I visit and subscribe to….their update/news emails are good to read. This is one area where I feel I have so much to learn- and am taking it very slowly.

By the way, Lorraine, I went on one of Grahame’s intro. courses- in Glasgow. I have written about it on this forum somewhere, sometime ago. So there are things to go to up here! I think courses are not always “a good thing”- but with dowsing, sharing experiences with a cross-section of practitioners, led by a tutor who really knows his/her stuff- well, BSD are the business!!

[Paul Collett]

I first encountered dowsing in a novel for children in the early 1960's. I showed it to my Dad saying that I thought it rubbish. He replied that he had seen a farmer in Gloucestershire having a well drilled.Dad asked the farmer how he knew that there was water .The farmer explained that he had employed a water diviner and he showed Dad how it was done using a forked twig cut from the hedge.

A couple of years later , on a Scout camp , I invited myself along to a demonstration by a Scout leader on dowsing. I could get a reaction !

Years later , at work when the plumbers were looking for a leak in an underground pipe, I offered help.This was suuccessful .

In 2005 I found the BSD website, my wife encouraged me to attend a 'Dowsing for beginners' course (now foundation course) at Launde Abbey.
Seven excellent courses and many conferences later , here I am , a competent dowser with many dowsing friends and a wealth of great experiences .
Looking forward to the next course in June .

[Grahame]

Btw, Grahame, how about beginners and intermediary courses up here in Scotland???

Where were you last month when I ran a Foundation Course in Glasgow?
I'm also running EE1 'Earth Energies and Spirit of Place' on 23-24 May, same venue...

[Rory]

I was working as a Geologist underground in the Gold Mines of South Africa. We were occasionally rung up by local farmers to help them find water. An Italian Geologist called Paulo Sciacca took me on my first trip to a farm to do this and surprised me by going straight to the boot of his car and getting out some dowsing rods. When I asked what they were for, he just said - hey, we know there's water here - it's limestone, we just have to be accurate to find the small underground channels and for that we use these. We dowsed, then arranged for drilling, and we always found water. We used to practice after that on the lawns of the mine area. They all had underground pipes that fed the sprinkler systems. We found we could track the pipes and the lines they made across the area and these led to the hidden sprinklers.

Sometimes I think we (Dowsers Association and its members) could set up a dowsing patch somewhere in the UK with lots of pipes under the ground all going in different directions. We could then insert different things like Oil, Water, Silver in and along these pipes with strings pulling long tubes with these substances in them along and across the area. We could then practice dowsing for different things and try and find the line of pipe with the oil in or the line of the pipe with the tube containing silver in. It would be like a Dowsing test centre where you could set up the tubes in different pipes each time.

[Lorraine]

Btw, Grahame, how about beginners and intermediary courses up here in Scotland???

Where were you last month when I ran a Foundation Course in Glasgow?
I'm also running EE1 'Earth Energies and Spirit of Place' on 23-24 May, same venue....

Ah. Well in my defence... I was very ill over Feb and early March and wouldn't have had the money anyway.

I'll try to scrape together enough for the May course. Ty, Grahame.

[B.J.C.Courtney]

I was about 7 when I discovered Dowsing. My dad was a Staff Sergent in the Army and in and around 1957 we were stationed in KL in Malaysia. I was left to wander in and around the camp compound and one day at the back of the camp medical centre was a huge army dump, part of which went back to when the Japanese originally built the camp. Well, there was a large number of parked-up trucks and men sort of milling around. I noticed an officer with what I now know as dowsing fork rods. I asked what he was doing and was told he was tuning in the forks to pick up hidden metal. He used the wooden forks to find mines placed by the Chinese bandits. That was my first contact with dowsing.

Bryan






Edited by I.P. 29.4.09 - corrected spelling

[CaisterGirl]

I knew about dowsing but it wasn't until I moved to Devon in 1999 that I became more interested. About five years ago I did a couple of courses with Alan Neal in Holne in Dartmoor and at the Bogan House museum in Totnes and we also visited a couple of sites, one in Holne including the lovely church there, and I think Compton Castle. I couldn't "do" dowsing at first but have gradually learned to switch off the logical brain and just go with it. I was born and bred in Casiter-on-Sea in Norfolk and was very interested by the Mary/Michael line "ending up" in Hopton-on-Sea and even more interested in where it comes back in again, it is thought, in Hemsby in Norfolk, a spit from where my older siblings were born and brought up. I have some lovely iron dowsing rods made by Hamish Miller and I find them easy to use. My interest has only really been reignited in the last week after a visit to Tintagel, where someone mentioned Hopton and I thought, "I know Hopton!" and "I know Hemsby, too". I am interested in all things esoteric, had some "weird" experiences in my time as a critical care nurse, which I sadly no longer do. I am a qualified (but lapsed) NFSH healer and complementary therapist and have almost finished my second year of a crystal and gem therapy diploma - we do lots of dowsing in the course. I am currently looking at holy wells in Devon and also want to see if there are any near Caister/Hemsby/Martham. Thre are in Norwich, Dereham and of course Walsingham, - but no luck closer to the areas I've mentioned. Well, not yet, anyway. :-)

[Yvette]

Hi, I realised that the lenghty intro I wrote under ' introduce yourself' probably should be here!
I am Yvette and the door of spirituality was opened to my by my father who is from West Africa. He introduced me to dowsing. I used a crystal pendulums as a youngster and then developed an interest in ancient sites and their energies.
In the last few years, I discerned energies within my home that were having an impact upon my health.
I turned to the Procters for their assistance and am very grateful for the healing they gave to the negative lines, but equally pleased that I had a confirmation of my feelings, particularly when the lines became negative again from external influences.
I then was lucky to have help with healing from Arthur Hamblin who introduced me to the world of deviceless dowsing which I find fascinating.
Only this week, I have been in communication with Geoff Stuttaford who kindly healed the workplace where I moved to in October where the energies from ancient burial grounds were causing havoc!
I have been on courses with Vicky Sweetlove and David Furlong and wish to continue my study
of dowsing and earth energies. I do hope at some point I will contribute to the forum when I have something to say :-)

[arthur hamlin]

Thank you Yvette. May you find the yellow brick road of dowsing a pleasure and comfort to travel on.
I hardly wish to say anything as this can be quite an ego trip if not careful.
From a disbeliever to a totally committed everyday dowsing person is such a wonderful experience in this O SO MATERIALISTIC WORLD WE LIVE IN.
From two Water Board men coming on my building site over 30 years ago with wire rods in their hands and my Mother saying have a go at automatic writing to now has been a real eye opener for me. Thank heavens for these markers in our lives I say.
Although the whole body can be brought into play I find its accuracy with answers that count - a very difficult thing to achieve when there are several of us working together in areas beyond healing and finding water.
I feel one of the most important ingredients is `challenge`.
Not only have I continuously challenged myself over long periods of time but have sought to challenge the source that works through me.
The source I feel needs to be treated as a physical person standing next to you in order to build up the confidence and repartee.
I have often thought that if we were to do a hand stand in the middle of the road which brought results we would see some wonderful sights!
I believe that being deviceless opens you up to so much more including such things as shaking the hand of the unseen even though strangely enough you may feel nothing.
I better stop but wish much success to our dowsing fraternity in the months to come.
Arthur

[Fresco]

I found about dowsing when I first studied 'Remote Viewing'. The 2 are kinda related and dowsing can be used in conjunction with RV.

I'm getting about 80% success rate (in pendulum Dowsing), are you guys getting the same percentage???

[ocd]

Hi
There was an article in a Sunday supplement when I was a teenager, I think you had to dowse over pictures of people and discover which one was keeping a specific secret or object?
I can't remember the exact details, but my mum showed me how to dowse it with a pendulum.
Then she showed me how to dowse the energy centre of the room and the lines coming off from it.
I then did sod all dowsing for years afterwards, until one day I moved into a highly geopathically and energy stressed house.
That kick started me.

ocd