The Maidenhead Advertiser has an archive piece from a bygone era on the local water diviner and his dowsing rod . . .
WHEN water levels were running low, our predecessors simply called on the services of Joseph Mullins. He was a famous water diviner of his day who discovered hidden springs some 65ft to 70ft below the ground in a field at White Waltham, using a hazel twig divining rod. Mr Mullins was a member of the firm of John Mullins and Sons, water contractors and engineers, of Swindon. The Advertiser described him as a stoutly built young man of fair complexion, ‘the very opposite to a wizard in appearance’. His father, John, who was born in 1838, established a reputation as a discoverer of water and obviously passed his skills on to his son. The Advertiser said: "The experiments conducted at White Waltham had nothing to do with witchcraft any more than mesmerism or hypnotism could be termed witchcraft. They were experiments with the divining rod and the performer could give no explanation of the apparently almost supernatural feats he accomplished." Mr Mullins used common hazel twigs. He said he often met with sceptics but no ‘trickery’ was involved. He took a V-shaped hazel twig from his bag and broke one of the forks, leaving the broken piece loosely attached to the twig. He grasped the broken piece firmly in his left hand, allowing the fork to pass between his fingers close to his palm. Then he walked briskly across a field holding the twig about three feet from the ground. Suddenly the twig began to revolve upwards, quite forcibly or slowly, depending on whether the indications of water were good or bad. Mr Mullins told astonished onlookers that sometimes the movement of the twig was so violent, it scraped the skin off his fingers. There was no doubt the twig was moving of its own free will. The Advertiser reported: "Everyone was quite satisfied that the movement was entirely in the twig itself and that Mr Mullins had not done it with his fingers."
Dowsing is a form of ideomotor effect. The operator is not aware of the unconscious movements that cause the rod to move but they are there. Michael Farady’s famous experiment with table turning demonstrated that.
However, the ideomotor effect which can be reliably elicited in hypnosis (I use it a LOT with folks), does not fully explain the way in which some individuals are able to find lost persons objects not their own or water or oil or other materials through the use of L-rods or Y-rods. As a boy, I watched my grandfather use divining rods searching for a lost dogtag which he found. I was told his grandfather was quite gifted at using the rods and that he had several rods prepared for different materials (particularly water), a folk practice that you can still see in use in certain parts of the Ozark hills where my family originally hails from.
Now, there are ways to shroud ideomotor effects in mystery and to hedge them for "magickal" effect – I’ve used a few of them when teaching influence at the university. To be sure, many so-called dowsers are less than truthful about what they are doing or how their results come about but if a number are frauds it does not follow that all must inherently be frauds . . . however, it does follow that one should be justifiably skeptical and critical while examining the evidence. As Sherlock Holmes would support, when we have first examined and discounted the obvious and probably we then turn to the less obvious and impossible. Of course, Holmes and his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have had different views on what is meant by critical approach to such matters.
All the best,
Brian
SPEED HYPNOSIS – Nov. 18-19, 2006
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw]Certified Hypnotherapist
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com
