Message #136661

[Bianca]

The Bishop's Rule



In 1870 Dr. Pierre Thouvenel began to investigate a young French peasant herdsman, Barthelemey Bléton who was exhibiting a new phenomenon in the act of dowsing. Bléton had been tested repeatedly by the Bishop of Grenoble for his oddity. He would consistently obtain a dowsing rod reaction at a distance from the located water vein and the same on each side of the vein. The Bishop discovered that this distance from center of vein location to the far reaction point was the same as the found depth of the vein, and could thus be used as a means of ascertaining the depth before touching a shovel to the earth. Ever since, this method of ascertaining water depth has been known as "The Bishop's Rule." It might be added that dowsing to Bléton was a painful affair for the act caused him to suffer convulsions. In spite of this he was tested repeatedly by skeptical priests and "scientists." Even so, he repeated the act successfully every time except when he was so intimidated, frightened and confused by the accusations and ill will of his 'accusers' that he could not even begin to perform. It was said of him that he was "uncommonly timorous," so the whole affair must have been traumatic to him. His method of dowsing was without a device, but to illustrate accurately to the investigators he used an unusual method with a stick. This was laid across the index fingers of his outstretched hands and it revolved rapidly when over water. Even though it was impossible to imitate this device reaction manually, his accusers would believe nothing less than that he was a 'fake.' Other dowsers found that they,

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too, could get this depth measurement reaction, so the method has survived to modern times. We will examine it further in the chapter on Modern Dowsing.