My mom and dad were here last weekend visiting, and we talked about the whole dowsing thing. I straightened out and clipped a couple of coathangers so we could try it here. As usual, when my dad stepped over a buried water line in our backyard, the two wires held loosely in his hand crossed. When I did it, and when my mom did it, they parted.
When Julie tried it, nothing happened. When Matthew tried it, it worked more powerfully than I've ever seen it -- the wires began to move apart (not together) as he got within three feet of the underground water source. It's like he's extra-sensitive. We tried it again and again with him, and got the same results. When Lucas tried it, he got the same results as his mother: none.
Here's what's really interesting about our experiments. I took one of the bent wires into my left hand, and asked Lucas, with whom the experiment didn't work, to take the other in his right hand. We joined our two free hands and walked toward the water source. Both our wires turned to the left simultaneously once we stood over the water. IOW, my left-hand wire turned to the left, as it always does ... and his right-hand wire followed the pattern of my left one. I know he wasn't making this happen, as I kept my eye on him, and he was looking straight ahead at his grandparents the whole time he walked, so he couldn't have notice when my wire began to move. I was watching the wires, and they began to move in unison.
What this all means, I dunno. But there you are. Julie and I made a short YouTube clip of me demonstrating how this works. It's below, after the jump, if you want to see it. I didn't realize till I uploaded the clip that it was stupid to have used white coathangers with me wearing a white t-shirt. Still, I think you can see it well enough.
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Raphael,
You fundamentalist types are too much...finding a demon under every rock!
(j/k...dowsing freaks me out too!)
I think there is an important difference between what Rod is doing and "divination."
In divination, one would typically "charge" the instrument with intent, incantation, prayer, etc. Rod and family are just putting a wire in their hands and seeing where it goes. There certainly are dowsers who divine, and dowsers who attempt to locate, for instance, ghosts, discarnate spirits, energy residues of emotional trauma, and the like, and dowsers who do their work remotely. Rod and family will have to draw their own line. But from where I draw mine, they aren't practicing divination.
Rod Dreher: If I were to be convinced that there is a spiritual component to it, I would definitely not mess with this.
This is exactly the point at which the scientifically curious should begin messing with this. As Einstein said, "God does not play dice with the universe." This is either a phenomenon or it is not. I don't think you are a charlatan. Therefore there must be a rational explanation for this. It's not deviltry; it just awaits explanation.
It is not as if you could eschew the Benedict option and hole up for a decade or two with five barley loaves and two fishes, :-)
This theory would make sense given that Rod and Matthew both have a form of sensory integration disorder, which Rod has referred to in other posts. Both are someone overly sensitive to tastes, smells, environmental stimuli, etc., which is a disadvantage in many aspects of life but clearly can come in handy for locating underground water sources.
An interesting point. I mentioned earlier in this thread that Matthew was *really* sensitive with the wires; they began moving several feet from the water source, much earlier than anybody else's. That kid is painfully sensitive. Julie said that today they were at the vet's office for the first time (found a stray dog), and Matthew begged her to leave, describing a pulsating sound he kept hearing that was making him woozy.
Know what it was? The fluorescent lights. He could *hear* them. I think I know now why he has to hear Gregorian chants or the same Bach guitar piece every night, rather loud, to get to sleep. Ambient noise is overwhelming to him. I bet there's a connection between that and his ultrasensitivity to the dowsing stuff.
I think the dowsing thing is totally legit and probably does have to do with some heightened sensitivity.
Since someone mentioned seizure dogs and dogs that can "predict" earthquakes, etc., I'll tell you a story about a bird dog we once had. We had just brought her home as a puppy and she preceded to dig a 30 foot trench, complete with a shart right turn that went right along with our underground DSL/cable lines. They were buried 3 feet deep, but she had to have been able to "hear" them to have known where to dig. She made the right turn at the exact spot the wires turned. And, she didn't ever unearth the wires... they were still underground by about 6 inches.
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