Dowsing

[gatley]

Ok, but please add tarot cards, astrology, palm reading and reading tea leaves as this may ultimately explain bee behaviour if we add them all together.

 

[For want of a better word]

Ok, but please add tarot cards, astrology, palm reading and reading tea leaves as this may ultimately explain bee behaviour if we add them all together.

and the bee whistle??​

 

[oliver90owner]

what no Honey for Elvis?

Don't be silly. They would only come back with cheese, wouldn't they?

RAB

 

[oliver90owner]

Tom,

I was never that sure. I carried my rods (bent coat hangers pieces through a couple of pen barrels) along a hospital corridor and when the rods crossed I was close to a covered manhole cover and a loo either side of the corridor. Too sensitive if anything!

Lots of what we called 'London' bonds in water (not sure if the same or a different term is in use these days) - that makes water such an atypical substance (freeze point should be far lower, minimum density at 4 degrees Celsius [so ice floats] and other properties).

When water is flowing, in particular, these bonds will be continually breaking and forming, causing this field effect, I presume. Certainly water carries a charge when flowing from a tap (the 'bending water trick' using a 'static electrically charged' rod.

So find where you known a drain or sewer is running and try it out.

Regards, RAB

 

[BBG]

Tom,

I was never that sure. I carried my rods (bent coat hangers pieces through a couple of pen barrels) along a hospital corridor and when the rods crossed I was close to a covered manhole cover and a loo either side of the corridor. Too sensitive if anything!

Lots of what we called 'London' bonds in water (not sure if the same or a different term is in use these days) - that makes water such an atypical substance (freeze point should be far lower, minimum density at 4 degrees Celsius [so ice floats] and other properties).

When water is flowing, in particular, these bonds will be continually breaking and forming, causing this field effect, I presume. Certainly water carries a charge when flowing from a tap (the 'bending water trick' using a 'static electrically charged' rod.

So find where you known a drain or sewer is running and try it out.

Regards, RAB

Yes, very much agree - works every time - have never tried to perfect it but confident to find pipes underground and water. Must try again now interest roused.

Worm Slayer - Wikipaedia - not always a good, confident factual source - more reliable should be sought.

Six-Footer - was your grandfather 'Donovan the Diviner' who was brought in by the Isles of Scilly Council to discover water there?

BTW the metal detector we have finds everything except what we're looking for - going cheap soon but with a 10% of any hordes agreement.

 

[Tom Bick]

Rab I suppose I can try it down the towpath a known watercourse close by.

The test I will be happy with is for say min three people unknowing of each persons findings on a field and then compare.

 

[David P]

Which kinda brings me to my question on it all really.
How do you dowse for lay lines as opposed to water or do we just have to hope that Severn Trent water have put all their pipes on lay lines.
How do you know that your hives are situated on a mystical crossing of lay lines as opposed to the local sewer.



David

 

[Brosville]

I really don't think it matters too much whether it's ley lines, geopathic stress lines or whatever construction people have chosen to put upon this natural phenomenon - it's essentially "choosing the best spots to keep bees" - if you want to look for a source of water, then you do so - if you're seeking hive sites, then you do that......
My guesstimate is that we are innately sensitive to such things, and the divining rods/pendula are merely amplifying and making visible something that exists in our subconscious minds anyway...

 

[SER]

I am a total skeptic to all this but open to the offer of a trial.

I'm naturally a skeptical person with all things like this and like to have a scientific explanation to everything, but I have had first hand experience of dowsing working.

We were having a well drilled and the drilling company first sent an old guy with a rod, he paced the field and marked a spot, then approached it from different directions and finally announced that the best spot was here and the water was at x metres depth. The well was drilled at that spot and hit water at x metres spot on!

I don't know how it works but it seems to.

I also know that some of the biggest multinational engineering companies will send in dowsers long before the geophysics and site investigation guys and stake alot of money on their findings.

 

[David P]

I really don't think it matters too much whether it's ley lines, geopathic stress lines or whatever construction people have chosen to put upon this natural phenomenon - it's essentially "choosing the best spots to keep bees" - if you want to look for a source of water, then you do so - if you're seeking hive sites, then you do that......
My guesstimate is that we are innately sensitive to such things, and the divining rods/pendula are merely amplifying and making visible something that exists in our subconscious minds anyway...

and thats my problem with it all, dont get me wrong I would love this to work, but something that finds whatever it is youre looking for is a little bit fairytale for me. Go out into a field with your coathangers intent on finding beehive sites all the time having to hope your not thirsty or you may end up subconciously looking for water. Though maybe with a bit of luck you might end up thinking about the credit card bill and end up finding gold.

Maybe Hazel twigs for water, oak twigs for oil and red cedar twigs for beehive sites or maybe theres a market for poly divineing rods.

 

[WormSlayer]

Dont get me wrong BBG, I would be the last person to try and argue wikipedia was a terribly accurate repository of knowledge but I have never seen any evidence to suggest dowsing works.

James Randi has for many years offered a million dollar prize to anyone who can demonstrate such abilities, and it remains unclaimed.

Relevant youtube clip

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMtuWymUzz4[/ame]

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

I'm quite prepared to believe that dowsing works, but am failing to grasp the next step as to why it should be good for bees?

 

[Blue Spinnaker]

We were having a well drilled and the drilling company first sent an old guy with a rod, he paced the field and marked a spot, then approached it from different directions and finally announced that the best spot was here and the water was at x metres depth. The well was drilled at that spot and hit water at x metres spot on!


My great grandfather did the same thing to sink a bore hole to supply water to the farm (still not on the mains now). No-one believed the water would be where the dowser said it would - I think it took some faith to drill. The source has provided water for 10 houses and farms for 120 years and whenever there's an underground pipe leak it's the only way to find it.

Maybe we just don't understand it yet?

 

[Brosville]

"Maybe we just don't understand it yet?" - resounding clang as nail hit firmly on head! - there are many things that people who claim to be "backed by science" busily decry, merely because they and their tools can't work out how something works, they'll immediately claim that it can't, which is actually in itself misunderstanding the basic tenets of science itself....
What they should say is "as far as we can see, with present equipment, we are unable to find out how it works" - which is very different to the religious fundamentalism of a flat "it can't"

 

[gatley]

Why hasnt anyone won the one million dollar prize? Believers just report it when it works by coincidence and cant repeat it in a test. Like miracle healings, sightings of ghosts, bending spoons and flying saucers. Id love to believe in water witching, it sounds fantastic, but why hasnt someone proved it works?

 

[Brosville]

I've no idea, but it certainly in itself doesn't prove that it doesn't work - as many people have attested, it appears to work well, and even big corporations save money by using dowsers.
I think what we're seeing here is "I won't believe the evidence of my own eyes because I can't understand "how" it works"

 

[gatley]

There is no evidence it works, if the evidence is there then we can say it works but we dont know how.
Scientists are happy to believe things work if it is tested, but nobody has shown dowsing works. There are many things in the natural world that scientists know works but they cant explain it. Take mass for example, we know everything has mass but scientists at the LHC in CERN still cannot explain what mass is. We now know that the univerese is expanding but cant explain why. Uri Geller bent spoons in the seventies and a professor of physics at the university of london, where I used to work, brought him in to test it, and he couldnt do it, it was a trick. But the prof wanted to test it himself. There are some very open monded scientists out there who want to believe in many things, but until we know things work then theres no point trying to explain them. To say it works you just cant explain it opens up a plethora of false beliefs and mystic talents that do not occur.

 

[Brosville]

"but until we know things work then theres no point trying to explain them" - is saying precisely what I pointed out is wrong - you're saying "because I can't work out how, therefore it can't", which is intrinsically wrong and unscientific....

You should be saying "as far as our present knowledge and research tools take us, we cannot work out how", which is very different!

 

[MandF]

What they should say is "as far as we can see, with present equipment, we are unable to find out how it works" - which is very different to the religious fundamentalism of a flat "it can't"

That is EXACTLY what science says!

What Randi is saying is that dowsing is not even repeatable/reliable, never mind mankind/science not understanding how it might work.

I dont know why, if dowsing works, why people dont just get up off their butts (pun intended) and earn themselves a million dollars?!

Logic would tell us that if someone cannot reliably dowse in a controlled environment, then the anecdotal evidence suggests they are just lucky or forget to mention all the times it doesnt work.

Dowsing doesnt even require any faith system, so I cannot see why dowsers wouldnt want to prove it works in a scientific/controlled way? One can only conclude that dowsers dont prove it scientifically or earn a quick/easy $1m bucks is because they cannot!?

 

[Brosville]

"What Randi is saying is that dowsing is not even repeatable/reliable, never mind mankind/science not understanding how it might work"

What Randi is effectively saying is that noone wants to play ball with a retired magician and be ridiculed for their pains (so he is taking that as "scientific proof that it doesn't" - which makes him as big a humbug as he claims others to be)- it proves absolutely nothing at all - on the other hand there are wells all round there world that were found by dowsing - which is strong "anecdotal evidence" that it does work....