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    Dowsing for Beginners: How to Find Water, Wealth & Lost Objects
    Dowsing for Beginners: How to Find Water, Wealth & Lost Objects
    Dowsing for Beginners: How to Find Water, Wealth & Lost Objects
    Ebook214 pages2 hours

    Dowsing for Beginners: How to Find Water, Wealth & Lost Objects

    By Richard Webster

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    About this ebook

    "Extremely informative, factual, and one of the best 'how-to' books I have ever read. A must!"—Uri Geller

    You can easily locate water, coins, artifacts, lost objects—even missing people—when you follow the simple instructions in this divination book.

    With expert guidance from Richard Webster, discover how to improve your life in many practical ways by dowsing. Begin by learning how to use the tools of dowsing: angle rods, divining rods, pendulums, wands, and even your own hands and body. Clear, detailed instructions on map dowsing show you how to dowse for anything at all, anywhere in the world.

    Using the tools and techniques presented here, you can locate valuable hidden items, identify and treat ailments for improved health, tune in to your pet's needs, develop your intuition—the applications of dowsing are nearly limitless!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLlewellyn Worldwide
    Release dateAug 8, 2012
    ISBN9780738718262
    Dowsing for Beginners: How to Find Water, Wealth & Lost Objects
    Author

    Richard Webster

    Richard Webster (New Zealand) is the bestselling author of more than one hundred books. Richard has appeared on several radio and television programs in the US and abroad, including guest spots on WMAQ-TV (Chicago), KTLA-TV (Los Angeles), and KSTW-TV (Seattle). He travels regularly, lecturing and conducting workshops on a variety of metaphysical subjects. His bestselling titles include Spirit Guides & Angel Guardians and Creative Visualization for Beginners. Learn more at Psychic.co.nz.

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    • 1/5
      This book is helpful if you are interested in a very particular form of dowsing -- namely, that of finding water. It provides a huge history / back section on water divining and another huge history on using rods. However, It greatly fails in providing any information of value on using a pendulum and the section is rushed in like an after thought, complete with the author's very annoying personal opinions vs. just general information about different types. Great if you're into water dowsing with rods, I would suggest all others look elsewhere.

    Book preview

    Dowsing for Beginners - Richard Webster

    About the Author

    Richard Webster was born in New Zealand in 1946, where he still resides, though he travels widely every year lecturing and conducting workshops on psychic subjects around the world. He has written many books, mainly on psychic subjects, and also writes monthly magazine columns.

    Richard is married with three children. His family is very supportive of Richard’s occupation, but his oldest son, after watching his father’s career, has decided to become an accountant.

    Llewellyn Publications

    Woodbury, Minnesota

    Copyright Information

    Dowsing for Beginners © 1996 by Richard Webster.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

    As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

    Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

    First e-book edition © 2012

    E-book ISBN: 9780738718262

    Cover design: Adrienne Zimiga

    Cover images: © John Glover/Alamy

    Book design, layout, and editing: Laura Gudbaur

    Interior illustrations: Carla Shale

    Photos: Richard Webster and Jeff Martin

    Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

    Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

    Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

    Llewellyn Publications

    Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

    2143 Wooddale Drive

    Woodbury, MN 55125

    www.llewellyn.com

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    For my fellow members of the New Zealand Society of Dowsing and Radionics (Inc.)

    Acknowledgements

    I am grateful to many people who have helped me over the years with my interest in dowsing. In particular I’d like to thank Jack Camp, Brian and Jan Flora, Albino Gola, Carl Herron, Docc and Caroline Hilford, Walter Lemm, Jim and Melania Magus, Jeff Martin and Ron Martin.

    Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter One: The Tools

    Chapter Two: Using the Tools

    Chapter Three: More Advanced Dowsing

    Chapter Four: Map Dowsing

    Chapter Five: The Amazing Pendulum

    Chapter Six: Hand and Body Dowsing

    Chapter Seven: How Does It Work?

    Chapter Eight: Dowsing for Self-Improvement

    Chapter nine: Agricultural Dowsing

    Chapter Ten: Medical Dowsing

    Chapter Eleven: Archaeological Dowsing

    Chapter Twelve: Psychic Dowsing

    Chapter Thirteen: Controversial Rays

    Chapter Fourteen: Gallery of Dowsers

    Conclusion

    Endnotes

    Suggested Reading

    Introduction

    One of the fascinating things about dowsing is that virtually everyone can do it, provided they are prepared to suspend disbelief.

    I have proven this numerous times in my own classes. Many people experience a dowsing response right away, and are enthralled with their success. Some, however, fail to get any response. I ask these people to pretend that they can dowse. To their amazement, they find that by imagining they can do it, they really can. Their expressions of surprise and disbelief are a joy to behold.

    Consequently, I know that you can become a successful dowser. Naturally, it will take time and practice, but if you are prepared to keep an open mind as you work your way through this book, I am confident that you will become a very good dowser.

    My introduction to dowsing came as a small boy. We were spending the summer vacation in a cottage at a small seaside village. One day during lunch, we heard a noise outside. We looked out the window and saw a man with a forked stick walking onto our property. A small crowd of people followed him. We raced outside to join the others, having no idea what the man was doing. Our next-door neighbor approached the man and asked him what he wanted.

    Water. Water, he said in a croaky voice. Our neighbor disappeared and returned moments later with a glass of water.

    This broke the spell. The man suddenly realized the attention he had created and hurriedly left. The group continued to talk about the strange man and his wooden rod. While this was going on, my father returned from a fishing trip and asked what was happening.

    He was dowsing! my father said to everyone. He had to explain what it was and everyone drifted away, embarrassed that they had not known what the man was doing.

    This man started something, though. During the next few weeks we saw many of the other holiday-makers experimenting at water-divining. My father met the man who had started it all, and we all tried divining with his makeshift rod. All four of us children found it easy to do, and, because it was so easy, we left it to the adults while we got on with our games.

    It took me another fifteen years before I became in­terested in the pendulum and started dowsing seriously.

    Dowsing can be described as divining for something that is desired. Most people consider dowsing to be a search for water, and this is how the whole field began thousands of years ago. However, you can divine for anything you want, be it oil, gold, lead, or even ancient ruins. You can find missing people or lost objects. You can determine if something is safe to eat or drink. I have seen people dangling a pendulum over fruit in the supermarket, but I feel that this is taking it a little too far! I have even met a few people who dowse for the winners of horse races.¹

    Dowsing has a very ancient history. There are pictographs in the Tassili-n-Ajjer caves in south-east Libya that show a group of people watching a diviner with a forked stick. It has been estimated that these drawings could be 8,000 years old.

    In the fifth century b.c., Herodotus described how the Scythians dowsed with willow rods. There is a tradition that suggests that the Queen of Sheba included dowsers in her entourage whenever she traveled to see Solomon. Their task was to dowse for water and gold.

    Divining rods are mentioned several times in the Old Testament. In the Book of Numbers (XX:8– 11), Moses is said to have struck a rock twice with his rod, and the rock produced enough water to satisfy Moses’ people and their cattle. Rods were considered acceptable in the Old Testament only if they were used for the Lord’s work.² They can be related today to the bishop’s staff and the sorcerer’s magic wand.

    The Catholic church disapproved of any form of divination, so for many years dowsing was considered to be the work of the devil. Martin Luther also regarded dowsing as a mortal sin, and even included it in his list of activities that broke the first commandment. This is rather strange, as Martin Luther was the son of a miner, and must have been well aware that dowsing rods were used constantly in mines.

    Figure A: Woodcut from Cosmographia Universalis, by Sebastian Münster (1544)

    In the sixteenth century, dowsing rods were regularly used in German mines. In 1546, Georgius Agricola published De Re Metallica (On Metals), a book on mining, which explained in detail the necessity of the divining rod in finding and exploring mines.³ This book was encyclopedic in scope and became the standard textbook on mining for at least a century afterwards. Its importance was such that copies were chained in churches, just like Bibles, and the priests would read from it to the illiterate miners.

    Georgius Agricola was the doctor at a mining camp in northern Bohemia. He became fascinated with mining and mining lore, and his famous book recounts all he learned. There is an engraving in this book that shows two prospectors dowsing, while a third is cutting a branch from a tree to make a rod. These German dowsers later brought their skill to England to help the locals divine for tin in Devon and Cornwall. Queen Elizabeth I actively encouraged these miners to come to England to locate and exploit the country’s mineral resources.

    The first person to write about dowsing in English was Robert Boyle, often called the Father of Chemistry. Although he had been unsuccessful in his own attempts to dowse, he remained open-minded on the subject. In an essay published in 1661 he wrote:

    A forked hazel twig is held by its horns, one in each hand, the holder walking with it over places where mineral lodes may be suspected, and it is said that the fork by dipping down will discover the place where the ore is to be found. Many eminent authors, amongst others our distinguished countryman Gabriel Plat, ascribe much to this detecting wand, far from credulous or ignorant, have as eye-witnesses spoken of its value. When visiting the lead-mines of Somersetshire I saw its use, and one gentleman who employed it declared that it moved without his will, and I saw it bend so strongly as to break in his hand. It will only succeed in some men’s hands, and those who have seen it may much more readily believe than those who have not.⁴

    In the late sixteenth century, a girl, Martine de Bertereau, was born who grew up to become the first famous dowser. She was married to a leading mining expert, Baron de Beausoleil et d’Auffenbach. She gained her interest in dowsing from him, and became an expert at divining minerals as well as water. Her discovery of the Château-Thierry mineral springs in 1629 was just one of many achievements that led her to become a mining advisor to the French government.⁵

    She was hundreds of years ahead of her time. Fluent in three languages and possessing an extremely adventurous nature and a constant wanderlust, she must have been stimulating company. She traveled extensively, even across the Atlantic to Bolivia, where she examined the gold mines high up in the Andes.

    Unfortunately, her interest in dowsing was construed by many as being associated with witchcraft, and she and her husband were arrested in 1627. The baron was able to successfully defend the charges, but their dowsing equipment, mineral samples, maps, reports, and a large sum of money were not returned. The couple moved to Germany. They appeared to prosper again until 1640 when the baroness published a book called La Restitution de Pluton. In this book she described her dowsing instruments. This provided her enemies with the ammunition they needed. The baron and baroness were imprisoned in different prisons, and both died there.⁶

    Figure B: 16th century German woodcut

    The first English book on dowsing was A Discovery of Subterraneall Treasure, by Gabriel Plattes, which was published in 1639. It did not take long for the skeptics to become involved. Just seven years later Sir Thomas Browne classified dowsing as an illusion in Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

    Despite the regular use of rods in mining, up until the end of the seventeenth century dowsers were constantly at risk of being charged with witchcraft. Gradually, this changed, partly due to the abilities of a young French dowser named Jacques Aymar. For ten years the French press was full of stories of his amazing feats. He had already achieved a considerable local reputation with his ability at tracking down villains. However, it was not until 1692, when he was twenty-nine, that he achieved European fame. That year he successfully located one of the murderers of a wine merchant and his wife.

    The murder was a particularly brutal one, and the gendarmes found no clues at all in the wine cellar where the murders took place. In desperation, the king’s procurator summoned Aymar, as he was renowned for his ability at finding criminals.

    Aymar used his forked stick in the cellar and told the police the exact location of the murders. Then he took to the streets, followed by a crowd of interested onlookers. Unfortunately, his path led him to one of the city gates which had been locked for the night, so the chase had to be postponed until the next day.

    The following morning, Aymar and three gendarmes followed a river until they came to a small gardener’s cottage. Inside was an empty wine bottle. His dowsing rod reacted strongly to it, and also to the table and three of the chairs. Aymar confidently told the gendarmes that they were after three men, and they had stopped here long enough to consume the bottle of wine. This finding was confirmed by the gardener’s two small children.

    Aymar and the gendarmes continued their chase. The dowsing rod took them all the way to a prison in the town of Beaucaire. Thirteen recently-arrested prisoners were lined up, and Aymar’s rod reacted in front of one them, a hunchback who had been jailed just one hour earlier. Aymar told the gendarmes that this man had played a minor role in the murders.

    The man denied any knowledge of the crime, but later broke down and confessed after being recognized by people on the return trip to Lyon. This man was actually a servant of the two men who had

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