Two eminent American diviner/dowsers share their experience and insights into the subject and along the way de-mystify the mythology and mystery.
     Co-author Terry Ross has been dowsing since he was a child. He was a foundation member of the American Society of Dowsers (ASD) and has served that organisation in many capacities including president.
     He gives lectures and workshops on dowsing and locates water supplies worldwide for clients in both private companies and government departments.
     Richard Wright is also an experienced dowser and has served with Terry Ross in the ASD. He is currently the editor of the premier dowsing journal The American Dowser.
     It is a rare treat to have a book co-authored by these gentlemen who are dedicated to furthering the wider acceptance of dowsing.
     Dowsing has a long, recently recorded history and is also known as divining, water-witching, radiesthesia, or bioenergetics.
     Dowsing as we know it today probably originated in Europe in the middle ages, where it was used to find all sorts of materials. Not only water was sought, but also metals and gems.
     Incredibly the Inquisition used divining rods in its trials until the practice was labelled ‘satanic’. Today dowsers generally used L or Y-shaped rods made of a variety of materials.
     This book has the frank aim to take the supernatural out of dowsing and encourage beginners to accept that dowsing is a natural skill that can be taught and developed through continual practice and intelligent application.
     The style is friendly and down-to-earth. Each term is clearly and succinctly explained.
     The teaching material is broadly based on the annual dowsing schools conducted by the American Society of Dowsers in the late 1980s. The material is very accessible, even to the complete beginner.
     It is divided into Introduction and three sections with five appendices. The Introduction outlines the nature of dowsing and, in particular, the step-by-step processes involved in learning the skill.
     Part One addresses Practical Dowsing. The reader will find a complete description and explanation of the basic tools such as the Y-rod, the L-rod and one tool with which I am personally familiar – the pendulum. The authors emphasise the need to have a very good idea of the element for which you are searching.
     Visualisation is very important in the intuitive process. Consider the difference between “the rod says…” and “I see…” The beginner is urged to see the process happening internally rather than assume the instrument being used has its own powers. This is the basic section for beginning students.
     Part Two notes that the potential pre-history of dowsing may go back as far as 5,000 BCE to cave paintings in the Sahara. It appears to have been a more natural activity with the most gifted becoming designated dowsers. It was possibly part of the early cultures’ shamanistic activities. Over the centuries, superstition and myth attached itself to divining, and certainly a condemnation by the Christian clerics in the Middle Ages drove the skill into hiding.
     An excellent chapter deals with the need to have a clear paradigm for dowsing. The activity is creative, intuitive and requires imagination. None of these things are open to view from the outside. This has led to skepticism from many mainstream scientists. Science, after all, deals primarily in the measurable and verifiable evidence of an event. Dowsing has none except the result.
     The authors are rational fellows and take pains to explain how the process of dowsing needs to have standards. As with all activities of a non-local/intuitive nature, the skill is internalised and hard to quantify. Some experiments in measurement of dowsing and practitioners are outlined in this section.
     An overview of the ASD since its inception in the 1950s shows that it still upholds its main tenets of honesty, reliability and responsibility.
     In Part Three the authors deal with more advanced concepts in dowsing, which include over-the-horizon and remote dowsing as well as map dowsing.
     It talks about using unique materials for tools or none at all, if the practitioner’s intuition has become honed with practice.
     This section also outlines and discusses the seven stages of dowsing which is a linear progression and will come to the new practitioner in a developmental way.
     I was surprised and pleased to see information on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life integrated into this section. It is definitely pertinent if the beginner intends to attune to the natural and subtle worlds of nature.
     There is also some teaching on the subtle bodies which can be further investigated in basic Theosophical works.
     There is also a chapter on dowsing and healing. The authors consider this to be an advanced form of dowsing and not to be undertaken lightly. I certainly know that many alternative health practitioners do use pendulums on a regular basis, both for diagnosis and for choice of remedy.
     The authors quite rightly declare that if a person claims that they are a ‘healer’, then they probably are not.
     I found this book fascinating in its approach to dowsing. It has a remarkably straightforward and no-nonsense style and tone.
     Although some of the concepts may be considered ‘out there’ by the more conservative among us, the authors make it plain and acceptable.
     There will be more books like this in the future as people realise that what used to be supernatural is becoming natural again. We can all do it!
     Everything you need to know to get started in dowsing is in this book. Have a go and see what you find…
     Now, I feel far better prepared to take on a significant daily challenge in my life.
     As many of you know, I own a web-based book shop. One of the perils of having more than 100,000 books in stock is finding the precise title, publisher and author version of any single book ordered by a customer.
     In some uncanny manner, customers always seem to find a book that has gone mildly or wildly astray in our warehouse.
     I’m going to re-read specific sections in this book and create a method for finding them when the poor things find themselves in just the wrong place. I mean it.
     Now, where did I put my glasses...?