OT Water Devining

[david thorpe]

Just had an interesting experience here in France. I moved recently to a place with a hectare of garden/ ground. A young man came round from the water people to read my water meter.

I didn't know where it was but the previous owner had pointed out roughly where it was to me, so I took the man there. We looked for 5 minutes but could find nothing, We then went to another area of the garden about 75 metres away. where I vaguely thought it might be but I was feeling fairly silly by this time. After another five minutes I'd found nothing and the water man was looking elsewhere. I went to see if he'd had any luck.

He had a pair of metal rods about 50cm long with a right angle bend in them in his hands and told me he'd found a water course but not yet the meter hatch. I followed him for about 50 metres as the rods dictated and then into some rough ground where the rods suddenly swung round to cross each other. With a bit of scrabbling round with a spade, there was the meter under a small concrete hatch at the confluence of several pipes.

I asked is he did this regularly and he said yes, if there was a problem finding the water meter, as if you knew where the course of the water was, obviously the meter would be along there somewhere.

He also said that it worked most easily in calm and quiet conditions.

I'd often heard of water devining but thought of it as a kind of 'alternative' thing, never of it being used in this matter of fact 'tool for the job' way.

David

[mrcheerful]

I used to have a pair of rods like you describe when I was a child. It was quite easy to accurately find water and metal using them, so as a cheap, easy water finder there is no reason not to issue them to anyone doing the sort of job you describe.

mrcheerful

[Tim S]

"Tomorrow's World" had a skit on this in the late 70's or early 80's.

You can make them out of a couple of coat hangers and two BIC pen cases.

Seemed weird but some people swore it worked. Interesting that a water co believes in it.

Timbo

[Stefek Zaba]

Yebbut it's French - where graphology is allegedly taken seriously in screening job applicants :-(

Dowsing rods are in a family of 'unconcious intuition amplifiers' - physical devices in which the user can induce a very visible movement with only the slightest bit of muscle movement, of which they themselves may be genuinely unaware. Whether it's natural sources or pipework, there are undulations, changes in underfoot feel, and similar environmental cues, which one can learn to pick up; if the accompanying model you're taught by someone already practised in the art is in terms of ley lines, fluctuations in The Force, or whatever, then you'll certainly twitch your rods or whatever as you imitate.

Stefek

[david thorpe]

I've never heard of graphology being used here but I expect someone somewhere has.. It seems a pretty normal society when your news is not filtered through the British press!

I was just interested in the fact that what he did worked, ie there were no plans to go by and I couldn't find the water.

When I held the things over the spot they turned too, so it obviously isn't something personal. I must have turned them purposely, I suppose, though I couldn't physically turn the things when I tried to, nothing to grip.

David

[OldScrawn]

I don't believe in it either. It's just that I have seen someone do it too.

[Huge]

I was asked for a handwriting sample when interviewing at a British Investment Bank. When I asked why and they replied it was for graphological analysis, I said I assumed they didn't inspect entrails because it was messy and smelly, but had they considered casting yarrow stalks? The HR person was not amused, and insisted on a handwriting sample, which I provided in block capitals.

For some odd reason, I didn't get the job.

Not that I cared, since they were subsequently taken over by an American bank and they all lost theirs.

[Owain]

"Huge" wrote | >I've never heard of graphology being used here but I expect someone | >somewhere has.. | I was asked for a handwriting sample when interviewing at a British | Investment Bank. When I asked why and they replied it was for | graphological analysis, I said I assumed they didn't inspect | entrails because it was messy and smelly, but had they considered | casting yarrow stalks?

Unless the job specifically requires calligraphic skills, handwriting analysis should be illegal now, under disability discrimimation laws.

Owain

[Huge]

This was some years ago, but as you may have gathered, I wouldn't want to work for any organisation that selects it's staff on the basis of magic.

[david thorpe]

Having had a small business myself, I'd suggest that magic is as good a way as any. Both magic and interviews amount to guesswork in the end. One of my best employees was a young woman who lied about her experience her qualifications and her education. She confessed to me when she'd worked for me for a while and had become almost indispensable. If I'd have checked her out I wouldn't have employed her....

David

[Syd hancock]

No idea about that but dowsing is pretty common in France. It's not seen as unusual or odd. My next-door neighbour can do it. Just down the lane is a farmer who also runs a business as a contractor driving a JCB. He carries a pair of rods to check for water pipes or electric cables before digging ditches. It works for him and he can't afford to get it wrong so what is there not to believe?

There ae plenty of people in the UK countryside who do it too, even if they don't tell the townies :-)

Could be. No reason why it should be any more mysterious than any other phenomenon - such as cancer clusters related to an invisible odorless radio-active gas radon - and who'd believe that if it weren't accepted fact based on observation?

Although of course there are some people with a strange superstition that "if I don't understand how it works then obviously it never happens". Personally I prefer the scientific approach of observed evidence over the mumbo-jumbo of 'belief'.

I know that Elouan is as interested in 'how' it works as he is in the laser-level that he uses to check the fall of drainage pipes i.e. not in the least as long as it does the job :-)

Not many "New Agers" amongst Breton farmers/JCB drivers :-)

There used to be a very successful diviner in Cornwall called Donovan Wilkins who operated a bore-hole drilling business with his son on a 'no water - no fee' basis. He found the underground spring, often many metres below ground and the son drilled down to it. They charged a good fee and usually collected since it worked for him. As he used to say "them that can't or won't must pay them that can and will".

Syd

[Holly]

I'm in the same boat! I really can't see how it could possibly work. But....water divining is quite common in Ireland and here in France, and I suspect probably in more rural areas of England too. When we bought our last house in Ireland, the previous owner told us of two places where a diviner had told him there would be water. Our well drilling company brought in someone else, who found the first of these two sources in exactly the same spot and the other one within metres of the first man. No, it definitely wasn't the same man! We ended up drilling near to the second place because the first place was too near the proposed septic tank, and came up with a great supply of water. This in itself proves nothing, I know. I understand that if you drill far enough down you will find water anywhere in that area. Another interesting point was that the second man said that the source in the first spot, although giving him a stronger reaction/signal (my words, not his) was running in one direction and not likely to be as reliable as the second spot which he reckoned was deeper but running the "right" way.

I know someone else who appears to be able to do it. We have had great fun with the children on various occasions trying the biro and coathanger method, with absolutely no reaction at all, even when we know there is water underground. So I dunno, I remain to be convinced but then again I think there might be something in it.....

Holly

[usenet]

In controlled tests (properly controlled) it doesn't work any better than someone with a good knowledge of the area can do without those 'divining rods'.

[BillP]

I used to be a total sceptic about this. I have a builder mate who I would have thought was even more so than me. He said it works. He told me that once, his lads had to locate an existing soakaway he used divining rods and found it for them. He showed me his method. I tried it on several occasions for a laugh at barbeques and the rods crossed, but without digging up patios I couldn't prove anything.

However on one occasion someone wanted to locate a cast iron manhole cover under some block paving. Didn't know where it was and didn't want to dig the whole lot up to find it. I thought what the hell, give it a go. I tried the divining rods and got a definite indication in one spot. We took up a couple of blocks and were right on it.

Make of that what you will.

[usenet]

Absolutely nothing unless you compare your results (in a proper double blind test) with someone else just 'guessing'.

[Rob Morley]

Even if someone thinks they're just guessing they could be influenced by forces that aren't understood.

[usenet]

You are trying hard aren't you! Apply Occams razor.

[Tony Williams]

I don't know whether I believe in water divining or not, but......

My pal has a well, about 3 ft dia and 20-odd ft deep. A couple of summers ago the well had dried up enough for us to shine a torch down to the bottom, right down to the bedrock. Whoever had sited that well, (about 150 years ago), had exactly hit the junction of three little underground streams.

I still can't see how they knew where to drill.

[Rob Morley]

I prefer my Philishave.

[tony sayer]

Yes of course. Well lets see. We're in 2004. So go back lets say 200 years or thereabouts, and a modern mobile phone would have seemed akin to witchcraft.

A couple of hundred years from now perhaps we'll understand witchcraft;))