All Wet? Dowsers search for water, respect for their ancient art

Tuesday, May 29, 2001 | 8:49 a.m.

People who don't believe in the supernatural probably don't believe in dowsing also known as the ancient art of water witching, divining, rhabdomancy and doodlebugging.

But those who do believe in the powers of unknown forces may believe it is possible to dowse for almost anything under the sun.

"Dowsing is limited only by your imagination," says Thurman "Hoot" Gibson, president of the Las Vegas Desert Dowsers. "Anytime you start off a question, Can you dowse ...,' there's a 95 percent chance that, yeah, you probably could."

Desert Dowsers has about 60 members. The organization meets the last Thursday of every month at the Riviera Vegas Mobile Home Park.

Some members are preparing to join hundreds of other dowsers from around the nation at the 41st annual American Society of Dowsers Convention, June 11-18 at Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, Vt.

At the convention dowsers will attend such workshops as Intermediate Dowsing for Balance and Well-Being, Pinpointing Treasures, Map Dowsing and Integrated Energy Therapy (using dowsing for self-healing).

The centuries-old belief that underground streams of water may be found by dowsing with a "Y"-shaped branch of a tree has been expanded in the 21st century to include using dowsing instruments to hunt for everything from healthy foods to a lost child.

"We use dowsing to make choices in life," Gibson said. "Maybe we are going somewhere and there are two or three different ways to get there. Dowsing tells us the way to go to avoid a car wreck or some other danger."

"We always dowse the weather on our field trips," said Edward Schultz, who created the local dowsers' club, a branch of the American Society of Dowsers, in 1984. "We ask, 'Will it rain? Will it be cold?' "

"Water departments have been known to use a dowser," Joe Alexander, treasurer of Desert Dowsers, said. "Also, people who dig may use dowsing to locate buried (utility) lines."

Like using a Ouija board, dowsing questions must be answered with a yes or no.

"A friend of mine calls me every New Year's to ask who will win a football game," Schultz said. "I've never been wrong."

Could dowsing be used for criminal intent, such as dowsing for a bank to rob?

"Dowsing must be used for need, not greed," Alexander said.

That rules out dowsing for Megabucks, but what about dowsing for a casino where your odds of winning a small amount are greatest?

"I imagine some people dowse for casinos," Gibson said, "but there probably is not a high degree of accuracy. Too many thought forms interfere (with dowsing). Casinos are full of people coming and going, so there would be too much interference (of the thought waves). Besides, if you take a dowsing rod into a casino, security is going to latch onto you."

Still, Alexander claims he once dowsed a winning slot machine at the Reserve and ended up with $40.

Mysterious forces

Dowsers say they don't really know how dowsing works.

"There are a lot of things you can't explain in life," Gibson said. "It just works. If you try to analyze it too much, you may lose the ability to dowse."

The premise, he said, is that everything emits energy fields that can be detected by dowsing instruments. The best dowsers, according to Gibson, don't even need instruments. They can use their fingers or their minds.

"Did you ever have a gut feeling?" Alexander said. "That's how some people dowse."

But for the less gifted there are four basic dowsing tools: the "Y" rod, the "L" rod, the pendulum and the bobber, which is made of a flexible wire or twig 1 to 3 feet long that points downward at an angle of about 45 degrees.

"The instruments are merely amplifiers (of the unseen energy)," Schultz said.

All of the instruments do the same basic thing, Gibson said, which is to answer yes or no to a question posed by the dowser.

Gibson said until recent years well witchers used "Y" rods made from the branches of trees, primarily willow trees.

"For years it was thought that you had to have a willow stick to find water," he said.

Now the popular "Y" rods are as likely to be made of plastic as wood.

How does the instrument answer yes or no?

"It's different for different people," Gibson said. "For me, if I use a pendulum, when it rotates clockwise it means yes and counterclockwise is no. For others it may be the opposite. There is no wrong way."

The classic "Y" rod is held tightly in both hands and when it responds it rotates.

For some, it can be a painful experience. Alexander said he quit using "Y" rods after a rod almost left his hands bloody.

"We can locate areas of noxious energy," Gibson said. "That's one term for it. It's also call geopathic stress."

Schultz, a diabetic who says he uses dowsing to choose food at buffets that won't harm his health, claims noxious energy is responsible for all sorts of problems.

"I once had a tree in my backyard that was half dead," Schultz said. "I moved the noxious energy across the street and it killed all of the oleander over there. I had to move it back because it was hurting somebody."

How do you get rid of noxious energy? By a wave of the hand, Schultz said, or with blue tape.

"You put blue tape across noxious energy and it destroys it," he said.

Dowsing for skeptics

While the world is full of skeptics, there may be none more skeptical than James Randi, who founded the James Randi Education Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1996.

The organization has a standing offer of $1 million to anyone who can prove dowsing, or any other supernatural activity, actually works.

"By far, the largest number of claimants for the prize are dowsers," Randi said during a recent telephone interview.

Randi said the goal of his foundation is to "promote critical thinking" about "paranormal and supernatural" ideas.

A professional magician, Randi has been a gadfly to faith healers, psychics and others claiming to have supernatural abilities. He has written several books, including "The Truth About Uri Geller," "The Faith Healers," "Flim-Flam!," and "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural."

Randi says most dowsers are sincere in their beliefs.

"I have only found two dowsers who cheated (on tests)," he said. "I spotted them right away.

"But most dowsers impress me because of their absolute devotion to their belief. These are honest folks who believe devoutly that they have the power."

However, Randi said, dowsers usually don't want to hear anything negative about their practice. "Some get angry at me and the foundation."

Randi said most dowsers use rationalizations to dispel any arguments against them. "Many will never take a test because they say if they do they will lose their power."

One of the more common claims by dowsers, he said, is that they can locate rivers of water underground.

"There are no streams of water flowing underground," he said. "There are large deposits of water that may seep through sandstone and move at the rate of 200 feet per year. There is no naturally flowing water underground except in caves. These people have delusions about underground rivers."

Randi said the basic premise of dowsing is a strong, subconscious, psychological phenomenon called an "ideomotor effect."

He explained that the effect is "an involuntary body movement evoked by an idea or thought process." Dowsers believe so strongly in what they do, Randi said, that they are actually moving their dowsing instruments themselves.

"They are doing it themselves and don't know it," he said. "We have film showing they actually do twist their wrists, but they don't believe it. They don't see the movement."

Randi said dowsers come from all walks of life.

"It's an equal-opportunity delusion. We have diviners who have Ph.D.s in physics. These are not dopey people at all."

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