Dowsing was Common and Worldwide at the Dawn of History
The history of dowsing goes back at least to the beginnings of written history and maybe further.
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Dowsing with a "wand." The arrows indicate two precise movements. The stick generally a freshly cut green "whip," waves up and down while dowsing. The action becomes violent over water. As it moves in the vertical pattern it also bends to the right or left to guide the dowser to the water find.
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Marco Polo brought back detailed information on it from the Orient. Herodotus writes of its use by the Persians, Scythians, and Medes. There is record of its use by the Etruscans, Hindus, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. A cave drawing at Tassili, Algeria may be the oldest record of a dowser, although there are some who have seen it who feel that it takes a lively imagination to see a man dowsing in the depiction. Others note that he is carrying the same kind of device pictured in ancient Chinese dowsing illustrations.
The prophet Hosea of biblical times condemned it. His people had adopted the ways of their pagan captors, including the art of divination. He stated, "They consult their piece of wood and their wand makes pronouncements to them."6 Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into the Latin vulgate in the fourth century referred to the divining "staff" of Hosea's time and says it was cut from Myrtle wood. Saint Cyril, in the ninth century made the same reference.7
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What is, perhaps, the oldest record of dowsing in written history happens to be about water witching. It predated the time of the prophecies of Hosea by about 1400 years. It is referred to as 'divination' and was done by the expert dowser, Emperor Ta Yu, the founder of the Hsia dynasty in China at about the year 2205 B.C. (Hosea prophesied from 745-739 B.C.) This is recorded in an inscription to be found on a Bas Relief in the Shantung province of China.8 The practice of divination was world-wide, and from this Chinese inscription, and Hosea's specific mention of the 'wand' (still a popular device used today), it is reasonable to conclude that water witching was one of the earliest divination practices of man.
It should also be noted that in all historical references to divination there is no indication that it was a part of any religious rite, but rather a tool of convenience to pierce the veil beyond which the five senses of man cannot go. However, the entire practice was specifically forbidden to both Jew and Christian under the condemnation that it was a pagan supernatural act. There is no doubt that it was so considered.
Because it is such a valuable tool for obtaining information from the unknown, modern man has almost refused to class it with other methods of divination such as interpreting the arrangement of a thrown pile of bones, sticks, arrows, or the arrangement of tea leaves in a cup. This may have been true
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in Hosea's time also since he mentioned specifically only two of the many ways of practicing the divination of their pagan captors.
Of course, the biblical passage most often quoted by dowsers is the one telling of Moses striking the rock in the Sinai desert to bring forth water. This has to be discredited as a dowsing act, for according to the story Moses was not searching for water. He had been divinely instructed to go to that particular rock and verbally command water to come out of it. In his anger over another matter he disobeyed and struck the rock with his staff as he made the command. According to the account he suffered rather severe punishment for this disobedience, which implies there was some important meaning in the use of the staff, which he should not have made. Understanding that the staff was used to find water in the pagan act of divination, was this wrong implication to the witnesses of that act the very same as dowsers make today? In any case, striking the rock in a command for water to burst forth is certainly not dowsing practice.
It must be added that although the staff historically was a tool of witchcraft, magic, and sorcery, it was also a symbol of leadership, and in its most lowly use an aid to the foot traveller as well as his weapon of defense. Moses was a foot traveller, a leader, and according to your particular belief a prophet or magician, but the Sinai incident was not dowsing.
Dowsing and Christianity
As unpleasant as it may be, the history of dowsing includes a strange association with Christianity,
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most of it with the early and medieval Church. From this can be seen the important background of opinion that persists to the present day. The Church equated dowsing with sorcery, yet it occasionally condoned it and used it.
Present day writers are inclined to condemn or ridicule medieval Christianity's attitude. As one writer put it, "A paranoid fantasy which brought to life the diabolical conspiracies and sorceries of its own disordered imagination."9 What they seem to forget is that the reality of dowsing includes a factor that, even today, we class as nothing less than something outside the normal experience and knowledge of man. Because this factor was (and is) used for harm at the will of the dowser, the Church labelled it "evil." This factor, we presently label "the supernormal" element. The New Testament makes specific reference to divination and tells of its positive prohibition. Today, pro-dowsing Christians insist that the "divination" condemned in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible has nothing to do with water witching or mineral dowsing. However, all Bible history research contradicts them. Dowsing is, and has been historically, a part of the divinatory arts. Some of the oldest references so state it. Whether we believe presently that this prohibition is correct, or a "paranoid fantasy," the beginnings of the controversy are ancient.
In fact, the early Church's proscription against divination was so strong, it is believed, as one writer
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put it, the dowsers went underground. There is, at least, no mention of dowsing for hundreds of years. Then, in the tenth century coins struck to commemorate the discovery of a silver mine in Germany depicted a dowser at work. So, at least in that area, dowsing had become such a useful tool in mining it was worthy of commemoration.10
It is believed that dowsing in Germany originated in the Harz mountain area, and oddly enough, Webster's Geographical Dictionary describes that area as "long a stronghold of paganism."
In about 1275 there appeared in Spain what was reputedly a compilation of the ancient oral traditions of the paganistic Hebrews.11 It was banned by the Church and its possession forbidden. It contained instructions for the ritual of preparing a dowsing rod it called "Solomon's Rod." It stated that by the use of the original rod, King Solomon became the most powerful and wealthy man in the world. (It must be remembered that King Solomon, at the a same time he confessed belief in "the one true God," was building temples to the pagan gods for their worship. If the above reference is true, Solomon's allegiance to paganism is more easily understood.) This book, the Cabbala (Cabala, or Kabbala) became the secret possession of only the alchemists, secret societies, and sorcerers.
In 1300 a Benedictine monk, Valentine, wrote about dowsing in a manner that indicated someone was experimenting with it seriously. He wrote of six
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kinds of rods used for locating different metals underground. Christopher Bird in The Divining Hand remarked that this seemed strange. However, we interviewed a dowser here in California, an intelligent, well-educated, professional man and expert dowser who had a number of rods he claimed he had "calibrated" for accuracy in determining mineral and vitamin deficiencies in the ill.
In 1362 a Papal Bull against the "use of a ring to obtain answers in the manner of the Devil" (pendulum dowsing) was issued by Pope John XXII. We note here that the Church of that time suffered the difficulty (seen in a lesser degree today) of positive rule over its far-flung 'empire.' While a positive dictum might be issued by The Pope, a Cardinal or even a priest in a distant nation or area might act in disagreement. So we find this contradiction of Church attitude toward dowsing.
In 1518 Martin Luther had taken a positive stand against dowsing, declaring that its use broke the first commandment. Today, the Roman Catholic Church takes somewhat the same stand as reflected in its works on Moral Theology, stating that for anything except searching for water, dowsing is "practicing superstition" which is a serious sin. The Catholic Information Service of the Knights of Columbus classifies dowsing as "rank superstition" and breaking the first commandment only if using the power as supernatural.12
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Twelve years after Martin Luther's condemnation of dowsing, a German physician and mining buff, Georgius Agricola, whose unlatinized name was Georg Bauer, wrote his first essay on mineralogy and mining lore, which by 1556 had become the greatest treatise on mining ever written. Because mining and dowsing were inseparable (at least in Germany), there was much in his work on the art of finding metals. There seems to be no evidence that the Church condemned him for his writing.
