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Dousing and other traditional knowledge
Posted by Rainhat • 9/05/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: dousing, folklore, tradition
My grandfather showed me how to douse for water with a willow twig when I was a kid. I found it quite fascinating. You take a Y-shaped branch and walk around with it, and when you walk over a vein of water, the "leg" of the Y bends down towards the ground. Did I actually find water? No clue, I never dug a hole to see if there was actually water there, but the branch did twist downward so hard I couldn't force it to point upwards even if I tried. Even more peculiar was that my brother couldn't get it to work. He would stand in the same spot with the branch, and nothing happened. But when my grandfather put his hand on my brother's shoulder (not touching the branch) the twig would immediately bend downward.
Did you ever try this? Do you know of any other cool folklore-ish remedies or techniques?
User Comments
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I actually tried that when I was a kid, and it never worked. Of course the possibility of finding fresh water in the middle of a Brooklyn gutter was pretty unlikely.-
lmao! I guess...
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I've seen it supposedly done, but it defied logic...
then again there could be something going on at the quantum-physical level that defies simple understanding, idk-
Yup, definitely weird. When I did it, I literally wrenched the bark off the twig trying to point it back up. It was like holding a really strong magnet.
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Dousing works on the ideomotor effect that ouija boards work on.
It takes very little subconscious movement to cause the stick to shift (or in the planchette on the ouija board to move).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_effect
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Another thing I remember him telling me once was that water running under your bed, like in a water pipe or a sewer or something, could give you a back ache. To counter that, you should put a piece of copper under your bed. I've never tried that, though.
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There are definitely people who can douse. I used one who I have known for years to choose the possible locations for my well. She was in her late 70's and not one site she chose has ever come up dry. That's amazing in this community because finding an adequate supply of freshwater is a serious concern here. Many properties lack a water supply and have to pay a lot to truck water in from high producing wells situated elsewhere.-
Hey, that's great! I'm really curious to actually dig a hole when I find a spot some time to see if there's really water there. Maybe if this music thing doesn't work out it could be my backup plan...
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Well I have never heard of this before,but sounds kool...
My poppy used to tell me icesickles would grow on underpasses when I was a kid. Even in the summertime... I was convinced of it until I was 9 or 10 -
It was only a few years back that I realized that snowflakes were actually shaped like paper snowflakes. I had always thought that it was a myth. lol
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Seriously...
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where i lived as a kid, we had wet snow, so it looked like big globs rather than tiny little ice sculptures. Last year, we had such large, dry flakes that I could actually see the formations with my naked eye. I told someone from western WA about it, and they too had thought it was a myth before. I had to show them the wikipedia article on the computer... so it wasn't just me
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Oh.. where r u from?
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currently I live in Spokane, WA. But I grew up in the Cascade Mountains and later western WA.
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Where in the Cascades? My dad has a farm in the foothills of the Cascades...and I have a sister in the Spokane area...Otis Orchards, I think.
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My father gave me a dousing rod when I was younger but I never figured out how to use it. He also taught us how to use a pendulum with a pencil, string and needle when we were the tender age of 5 or so... but dousing I never got. I guess it's because I never saw him actually do it. He just handed me the stick and told me to never burn it. -_- -
Wow, I thought that was sort of an urban legend... -
Interesting. I have seen this done in movies. Here there's an abundance of water. And we have frequent floods
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We just drilled a well and the drill company owner witched the site for drilling. It's a tricky area with many people drilling dry holes down to 400' or more with little water found. The driller said to drill where he felt two veins crossed and we hit water at 80 feet. I wasn't sure about his tactics but there was water where his stick went down. I do believe there is something to this water witching or dousing as you call it. -
My father is a dowser and, for all that I am a pragmatist and tend not to believe in such things, apparently I am too.
I wrote a blog entry about it some time back: sweetvioletsa.blogspot.com/2007/10/witching.html
Creeps me out!-
Cool, you father uses the L-shaped thingies.
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No, never tried it but I used to live on an Avenue named Douse. -
Yeah, it's weird stuff. There are many ways of doing it, too. One way is to have these L-shaped metal sticks with the shorter leg inside narrow metal tubes that you hold in your hands. Since you're only touching the tubes, not the L-shaped part, the L-shaped thingy can swing around freely. Supposedly, when you walk around and the L-shaped sticks cross, you're above water. I was always sceptical about this, though, since it's *really* easy to fake it by just angling the metal tubes a fraction of an inch in the right direction to intentionally make the sticks cross.
But I can't come up with any explanation for the Y-shaped willow branch thing. Sure, you can fake that too by twisting the branch the right way, but I also know that it definitely can work, since it bent down in my own hands.-
My dad doesn't use the tubes, just the L-shaped rods.
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Folks-- read abut the ideomotor effect. That's the principle that "moves" the dousing rod.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_effect
People who douse genuinely do believe that it works. But that's really because it's caused by the subconscious, like the movement on a ouija board.
In double-blind tests, dousing doesn't work at probabilities higher than mere chance.-
Sure, if you're walking around with a stick and it bends, it could be the ideomotor effect. But how about if the stick bends down and you're deliberately trying to bend it upwards, and it wont budge? I'm pretty sceptical about stuff, so I was trying to disprove that this actually works by making the stick not point down. Well, the bark came off in my hands, and stick still pointed down. So unless my subconscious mind somehow willed the stick to point downwards harder than my hands could bend it upwards, I must say I'm pretty convinced.
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I found the water in four different places in a house that was built long after I left home and got married...I had a 100%hit rate on that outing, according to my Dad.
I have no idea what my Dad's hit rate is, but I know that in his part of rural Oregon he gets called when any of the neighbours needs to sink a new well. He doesn't charge to witch a well, but since digging a dry hole is costly, I doubt people would keep calling him out to witch for them unless he was more successful than not. -
Besides, even if it is the ideomotor effect, that doesn't really prove that it doesn't work. Maybe it's the person holding the stick who finds the water, and the stick is just a tool to keep your hands busy or something. I don't know, I have no idea how this actually works, but I know people actually find water this way.
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Huh. I always knew of this as "divining" or "witching" a well. I didn't know it was called dousing. This summer, an old local fellow was doing a neighbour's well. I would have loved to have watched him, but didn't find out until he was just leaving. It would have been cool to see.
It is interesting that this practice is widely accepted, particularly in rural and farm communities, even though it seems to lack a complete scientific explanation. I certainly believe that some people have the ability to make this work.
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