Dowsing: Ancient History
Written by Lloyd Youngblood
ASD Trustee
The Ancient art of dowsing has been
practiced throughout millennia, although the names used to identify it
may have changed in different cultures and eras, the techniques have
not.
In this vein, in 1949, a party of
French explorers (while searching for evidence of lost civilizations
in the Atlas Mts. of North Africa) stumbled upon a massive system of
caverns known as the Tassili Caves, wherein many of the walls were
covered with marvelous pre-historic paintings. Among the many
fascinating wall murals, not only did they locate an art gallery
devoted exclusively to the depictions of spacecraft and ET's, they
also found a remarkable huge wall painting of a dowser, holding a
forked branch in his hand searching for water, surrounded by a group
of admiring tribesmen. These wall murals were carbon dated and
found to be a least 8000 years old.
During several research journeys to
Egypt and the Middle East, I have photographed etchings on 4000 year
old temple walls of pharaohs holding devices in their hands resembling
dowsing tools. Cairo Museum is holding ceramic pendulums which
have been removed from thousand-year old tombs.
In China, there is an etching of
Chinese Emperor Yu who ruled China 2500 years ago, and in his hands he
holds a rather bulky turn-pronged device that resembles a dowsing
device.
Many passages in the Bible allude
to dowsing, relating in considerable detail how both Moses and his
son, Aaron, used a dowsing device referred to as "the Rod"
to locate and bring forth water. In the Old Testament, the
Prophet Eziekiel reports that King Nubucadnezzar of Babylon, uncertain
as to which city he should attack. Jerusalem the capital of Judah or
or Rebath of the Ammonites (today's modern-day Amman, Jordan) directed
his dowsers or deviners to select the best target and they chose
Jerusalem, leading to its seizure and the long "Babylonian
captivity of the Jews".
The Jews learned the ancient art
from their captors and in the Old Testament Prophet Hozea wrote:
"They now consult their pieces of wood then the wand makes
pronouncements from them!"
The historical records of Greece
refer to dowsing and the art was widely practiced on the Island of
Crete, as early as 400 BC. Researchers have uncovered evidence
that the Pytheon Oracle of Delphi used a pendulum to answer the
questions posed by her clients, kings, queens, nobility and military
commanders who traveled great distances to confer with her.
In this regard, E.S. Cumbie in his
fine book entitled, "The Psychometric Pendulum and the Pendulum
Board" has this to say about dowsing and the ancient priesthood.
"In ancient times, the priesthood felt that the layman did not
have the belief, knowledge or training to contact the cosmic mind for
enlightenment. So the poor people were forced to rely upon the
priests to gain the guidance they sought from a higher source and the
priests used dowsing devices to make this contact."
For example, in Ezra 3:63 of the
Old Testament, it is written: "The governor told the people
not to partake of the most holy food until the priest contacted Urin
& Thummin". In Samuel 28:6 it says, "When Saul
inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer either in dreams by the
prophets or by Urim & Thymmin". Cumbie is convinced
that the words Urim & Thumin referred to dowsing devices which
could have supplied crucial information and sometimes refused to do so
because the priestly dowser held the wrong attitudes or phrased their
questions in an incorrect manner.
The blind Greek poet Homer refers
to dowsing as Rhabdomancy, which means Devining Rod in Greek.
That same word is still used today in the Italian language to denote
dowsing. In his monumental work "The Oddesy" Homer
also called the dowsing rod the Caduceus, which was passed from Apollo
(or Hermes) to Asclepious, the ancient Greek God of healing.
This mystical, legendary staff with its entwined serpents has become
the universal symbol of healing, used by medical societies around the
planet.
Back in the 1400's, dowsing as we
think of it today, was called "Virgula Devine" in Latin
which meant dowsing with the rod shape. In Germany, during
this period of time, dowsing devices were used extensively by miners
seeking mineral ore, who referred to the forked stick as "Deuter"
- an umbrella word in German - meaning "to show", "to
indicate", "to point out", "to auger",
"to strike".
According to Christopher Bird,
author of the classic book, "The Divining Hand", no one is
absolutely certain of the origin of the verb to dowse". But
it seemingly made its first official appearance in 1650 in an essay
written by the famous English Philosopher John Locke whose noble
writings inspired the framers of our own Declaration of Independence
and The Constitution of the United States. In his essay, Locke
wrote that by the use of the dowsing rod, one could devise or discover
water and precious minerals (such as gold & silver and mineral
ore) Locke has appropriated his phrase from the long dead
English west country language of Cornwall - where in Cornish Dewsys
meant "Goddess", and "Rhod" meant tree branch, and
from which he "coined" the phrase - Dowsing Rod.
In the 1700's and 1800's in
England, Germany and France various books on mining and engineering
referred extensively to dowsing, including the "1747 Mining
Dictionary" and again in Bordlase's 1758 "Natural History of
Cornwall", and also "The 1831 Quarterly Mining Review".
Because the ancient art was widely used by miners in Germany for
hundreds of years to locate water and ore deposits, today in that
country libraries and museums of natural history, science, mining and
engineering, private collections of art and sculptures have displays
of woodcarvings, paintings and drawings, porcelain creations, coins,
etc ... featuring dowsers holding forked sticks.
Interestingly, London, England's
1912 edition of "Mining Magazine" published the first
translation of a Latin Opus into English. It was called "On
Metals" in praise of dowsing which had been first published 356
years earlier. The translators were a professional American
mining engineer and his wife. The engineer later gained fame and
won notoriety as the 31st President of the U.S. -- Herbert Clark
Hoover. As Chris Bird notes, "God knows, had President
Hoover been an expert dowser himself, he might have predicted, and
therefore, prevented the great stock market crash of 1929."
Collectively, in some of the
world's finest libraries (e.g. The Library of Congress, The Widener
Library of Harvard, The Sterling Library of Yale) you can find
approximately 3,500 specialized books on the ancient art and the list
grows steadily all the time.
First the question -- what is
dowsing? Well, for those of your who are unfamiliar with the
term, let me say that you won't find anything of value in current
dictionaries or encyclopedias. Those comments, prepared by
orthodox scholars, are incomplete and inaccurate, giving only a few
descriptions, generally summarizing all with the cryptic comment, that
dowsing is simply "folklore".
But as Christopher Bird points out
in his "The Divining Hand", ... "throughout history,
men and women characterized as diviners, dowsers, soothsayers, seers,
mystics, mediums, clairvoyants, shaman, witch doctors, wizards &
etc., have developed and practiced arts regarded as divine or demonic
(depending on the viewpoint) and are able to answer questions that
logical reason could not provide. in essence, these people
through self training, diligent practice and a profound knowledge of
how the universe really functioned, simply "knew things" via
the faculty of what has been called the "hidden senses" or
E.S.P.
Engineer Raymond C. Willey's (one
of the founders of ASD back in 1961) 1970 book "Modern
Dowsing" gives on the the best definitions I have encountered.
Willey says: "Dowsing is the exercise of a human faculty,
which allows one to obtain information in a manner beyond the scope
and power of the standard human physical senses of sight, sound,
touch, etc."
Author Chris Bird says that
"to dowse" is to search for anything. This is
generally down with the aid of a hand held instrument, such as a
forked stick, a pendulum bob on a string, L-shaped metal rods or a
wooden or metal wand.
The next question is simply:
How does dowsing work? Countless theories abound, even today,
yet, I am not absolutely certain that any one, or even a combination
of such theories, discloses the whole story.
I am persuaded that Moses and the
ancient priesthood clearly understood the mechanism by which it
worked, however, they never released such critical data to the masses.
Therefore, recognizing that to have done so, would have meant a loss
of power and prestige for them. The premier consideration is
simply this - dowsing works - and with proper understanding, training,
time, patience, study and regular practice (especially in the
beginning stages) it will work for the most important person in the
world - you!
When inventor Thomas A. Edison, was
once asked, "What is electricity?" He replied:
"I don't know either - but its there - so lets use it".
