As a belief, dowsing is an antique. The notion that a forked stick can find water or that a swinging pendulum can lead to cures for ailments or find lost treasure has been around for centuries.
Yet unlike a lot of antiques, it has not been shelved. For example, June Hiscott, a biomedical artist from Highland Park, said she has been dowsing for about 15 years and mainly uses it for health questions, such as what vitamin or mineral supplements she should be taking. Hiscott said she first learned about dowsing, or divining, from an old woman she knew who told her it was possible to dowse for minerals in the body.
“I tried it and it worked,” Hiscott said.
Realizing her ability to divine has changed her life, she said. “It’s made me feel more secure of myself,” Hiscott explained. “I feel I can sort of control situations.”
Dowsing, or searching for anything with the aid of a hand-held instrument such as a forked stick or a pendular bob on the end of a string, has been touted by New Agers. Locally, people pursuing the practice turn to the Northern Illinois Chapter of the American Society of Dowsers.
“People are looking for solace, for relief of materialism,” said Allen Heiss, president of the chapter. He calls such people “seekers.” “They want to know the answers to life and how to use our lost abilities.”
Peter A. Manti of Lake Zurich, a past president of the Northern Illinois Chapter and a real estate appraiser, said he has sensed renewed interest in divining as people realize “it’s pretty clear that so-called objective science has decided limits.”
People have divined for at least as long as they could record the practice. According Christopher Bird’s “The Divining Hand” (Whitford Press, $29.95), an encyclopedia of dowsing, the practice is referred to in the Bible and was used in ancient Rome, including by Julius Caesar.
The book cites international examples of historic dowsers, from Scandinavia to New Zealand, South Africa to North America.
Today, in many Western European countries, the sight of customers pulling out pendulums at the local market to see if lettuce has been sprayed with pesticides or to help pick a bottle of wine is not unusual, dowsers say. (A “yes” or “no” answer can be determined from the swing of a pendulum.)
But in this country, metaphysical methods are far less accepted–to the point of ridicule–and left to the realm of consciousness-raising New Agers.
So though we probably aren’t about to see the 1st Dowsing Church of Vernon Hills any time soon, there are those in Lake County who believe that this stuff is for real.
The Northern Illinois Chapter of the dowsing society attracts 40 to 50 dowsers to its monthly meetings in Des Plaines, about a dozen of them from Lake County.
Among them is Carole Dienethal, general manager of the Leaves of Earth metaphysical shop in Antioch. Dienethal said she has been an active diviner for the last 15 years, using dowsing to answer questions about upcoming events and occasionally to help locate lost items. Her preferred instrument is the pendulum. “I’ve got a feeling there are a lot more people (who dowse) than you can even know,” Dienethal said. “There are a lot of people who do it who don’t even come into metaphysical shops.”
Heiss, a former Chicagoan who now lives just over the Wisconsin border in Salem, said he became interested in dowsing after he retired from the photo lab he owned. He said his hobby has since taken him all over the world and has introduced him to scores of like-minded people.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would wind up as a dowser,” said Heiss, who claims to have located oil, gold, coins, water, lost items and even wild mushrooms by dowsing. “But once you believe and have any degree of success, nobody under the sun will get you to believe any differently.”
Dienethal agreed: “It’s like once you feel something, you can never `unfeel’ it. Nobody can talk you out of it.”
Throughout history, dowsers have tried to explain how the process works, whether through electrical or magnetic currents. Heiss, for one, said he believes all the universe’s answers are inside each of us; it’s just a matter of whether we are willing to turn down the volume of the left, logical, side of the brain that we’ve fostered over the centuries in order to hear what the right, intuitive side has to say.
“We have the ability to know the answers to everything,” he said, adding that intuition is the so-called “gut feeling” that logic usually overrides. “The rods, etcetera, are nothing more than instruments.”
Heiss has his own theory about how the subconscious twitches hand muscles, but he said that because dowsing continues to be successful for him, “I don’t care how it’s done.”
Others, such as Manti, believe a higher power is speaking through the instruments.
“I call it being one with the One,” Manti said, adding that he does not believe everyone has the talent to successfully divine. Recently, about a dozen people paid $15 each to attend a two-hour dowsing workshop presented by Heiss at the Leaves of Earth. “The very fact that you are here absolutely says you are seekers,” he told the group assembled in the shop’s back room. Participants were mostly from Lake and McHenry Counties and at least one drove up from Cook County.
Heiss showed them dowsing instruments, from “L-rods” made from coat hangers and disposable-pen casings to chrome-plated brass collapsible rods costing more than $1,000. Pendulums are often crystal or brass weights hanging from chains, but they can be as simple as a wad of bubble gum on a string, he said. He taught participants one way to hold the pendulum’s string (draped over two forefingers and secured with the thumb, elbow on the table) and how to determine the device’s “yes” and “no” response (concentrate on the words “yes” and then “no” and watch the different ways the pendulum swings).
Heiss’ “yes,” for example, is a clockwise circle and his “no” is a diagonal swing. Dienethal, who attended the workshop, said her “yes” is a counterclockwise circle and her “no” swings back and forth. Pendulums can be used over maps or plat surveys to pinpoint oil reserves, precious metals, lost people or remnants of lost civilizations, Heiss told participants. They can be swung over anatomical charts or vitamin lists to help determine health problems or deficiencies. They can determine the problem spot if a car breaks down. And they come in handy for everyday questions such as, “Should I take aspirin for this headache?” he said.
Divining for water using rods or forked branches along with pendulums can determine not only locations for wells but also how deep to dig, according to Heiss. Heiss said one of the most important things to ensure accuracy is to make sure the right questions are asked of the divining tool.
For example, rather than ask, “Where is water?” be more specific and ask, “Where is good, clean drinking water?” He also said the diviner should make sure his or her mind is in a neutral state and cleared of “wishful thinking.”
Well driller George Gaffke, who owns Henry Boysen Co. in Hainesville, said he never has used a diviner to locate water but has seen dowsers used by drillers in the central and southern parts of the state. “In some cases I’ve found them to be accurate–they’ve located water–and in other cases I’ve found them to be inaccurate,” Gaffke said.
Gaffke pointed out that in Illinois, especially northern Illinois, there is abundant groundwater. “You can drill a well just about anywhere and get a good source of water,” he said. To accurately locate wells, Gaffke explained, “you need historical data and practical experience,” part of the reason “why dowsing has never been scientifically proven.”
Another Lake County driller, who didn’t want to be identified, said the company he works for was once hired by a Barrington resident to dig in a spot located by a diviner as a good well site. The well came up dry at the depth the diviner specified, the driller said. “He was way off,” the driller said of the dowser’s accuracy, calling the incident “quite amusing.”
Norman Smith, a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, also said water witching is “utter nonsense.”
“Uncategorically . . . there is no physical basis for it, period,” Smith said. “I believe there are people who call themselves witchers who can find water. But anybody can do that because you always find water if you go deep enough.”
Smith, who said he was familiar only with dowsing for water and not the other aspects of divining, said most people who dowse for water do it only in regions they know well, and said perhaps they become so convinced they’ve located water their excitement unconsciously translates to muscular tension in the hands holding the divining rod, making “it look as though they’re just fighting the thing.”
“If there is some true physical basis for it, it shouldn’t matter who holds it,” Smith added.
Smith recommended a book, “Water Witching, U.S.A.” by Evon Vogt and Ray Hyman (University of Chicago Press, 1979), which he said “absolutely demolishes” the theory.
Betty Ravagni of Lake Villa, one of the participants in the workshop, knows there are many naysayers, but that doesn’t bother her. Describing herself as a “seeker,” she said she is new to dowsing and signed up for the class to learn more. “I’m trying to find some answers to health problems,” she said. “I’m also trying to look at positive aspects of life.”
Ravagni, wearing a newly acquired rose quartz pendulum around her neck, said she has always had an interest in metaphysics but just recently had begun to explore the field seriously. After about a week of occasional practice with different divining instruments, Ravagni said the pendulum worked best for her so far, particularly regarding questions of health, such as whether the vitamins she takes are the right ones for her.
“I have to learn to be more precise with my questions,” she said. “I think it takes a lot of practice. You have to be able to clear your mind.”
Ravagni is not apologetic about her new hobby, which, she acknowledged, some might find a little weird. “Everybody has different interests,” she said. “To me, there’s something out there for everyone, no matter how goofy it is.
“I figure God made the rocks, and he gave people the ability to use the dowsing rods; there’s got to be something to it,” she continued. “It’s just all part of the Earth. How bad could that be?”
