Message #23996

[Bianca]

             




History of dowsing

Dowsing has existed in various forms for thousands of years.[3] The original may have been for divination purposes — to divine the will of the gods, to foretell the future and divine guilt in trials. Dowsing as practiced today probably originated in Germany during the 15th century, when it was used to find metals. The technique spread to England with German miners who came to England to work in the coal mines. During the Middle Ages dowsing was associated with the Devil. In 1659 dowsing was declared Satanic by the Jesuit Gaspar Schott.[citation needed] In 1701 the Inquisition stopped using the dowsing rod in trials. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, U.S. Marines may have used dowsing to locate weapons and tunnels.[4] An extensive book on the history of dowsing was published by Christopher Bird in 1979 under the title of The Divining Hand.