Aboriginal peoples are generally much more spiritually in touch. They don’t even question such things.
Dowsing
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So English speaking countries connected to the UK.
Anywhere else ?? Seems it would be a globally useful and applicable skillset.
Why do you say 'for certain' ? Have you seen it used there?
I am afraid it is much more spread out than that. Just hop over to the other germanic language speakers on the continent and look there.
I’ve seen Australian indigenous folk doing it without an amplification device but only on TV.
No, it’s very old TeeDee, long before we got there. It’s not something that needs ‘proving’. That’s a Western concept akin to a blind man asking you to prove the jumper you’re wearing is red when he cannot see or have any concept of red.
I don’t agree with this. If it works, then it could easily be proved. Really if someone is claiming that it is real, then the burden of proof is indeed on them.
In your analogy, it could still be proved under laboratory conditions that the jumper is red, regardless of someone’s lack of sight. The claim of dowsers is that the rods can reliably find water, yet in laboratory (or even just statistical test) conditions this cannot be proved.
I am working on an idea to explain dowsing. I doubt that it is right in that there are many others more knowledgeable and better equipped than I who have failed to discover a mechanism.
I am pretty certain that the rods move as a result of micro movements in my wrists. This does not explain why they move under specific circumstances.
I am certain that the effect is biological rather than mystical.
If I hold the rods in front of me I can get them to cross and uncross by thinking.
I do not think of this a telepathy in any form.
I once dowsed the local church yard as the sun was setting and as the sun flashed between each big grave marker the rods swung.
At Tredegar House, Newport, I discovered a straight line running across the front lawn. The property manager was unimpressed, saying that it was just a private water main put in by the penultimate Lord Tredegar. I had no idea that such a pipe existed.
If I immobilise my elbows by holding them tight to my body then the rods don’t move in any predictable way.
I dowsed my garden shortly after we arrived here nearly fifty tears ago. I got a very wobbly but definitely linear result. The line ran diagonally across a very rough patch. While I was staring at the ground my wife was laughing out loud. She called out to look UP! The power line to the village hall next door followed the line that the rods indicated.
I am only interested in physical dowsing rather than any predictive or remote use of the activity.
I am pretty certain that the rods move as a result of micro movements in my wrists. This does not explain why they move under specific circumstances.
I am certain that the effect is biological rather than mystical.
If I hold the rods in front of me I can get them to cross and uncross by thinking.
I do not think of this a telepathy in any form.
I once dowsed the local church yard as the sun was setting and as the sun flashed between each big grave marker the rods swung.
At Tredegar House, Newport, I discovered a straight line running across the front lawn. The property manager was unimpressed, saying that it was just a private water main put in by the penultimate Lord Tredegar. I had no idea that such a pipe existed.
If I immobilise my elbows by holding them tight to my body then the rods don’t move in any predictable way.
I dowsed my garden shortly after we arrived here nearly fifty tears ago. I got a very wobbly but definitely linear result. The line ran diagonally across a very rough patch. While I was staring at the ground my wife was laughing out loud. She called out to look UP! The power line to the village hall next door followed the line that the rods indicated.
I am only interested in physical dowsing rather than any predictive or remote use of the activity.
https://web.randi.org/uploads/3/7/3/7/37377621/jref13edmod_dowsing_teacher_print.pdf
The above is quite handy. Regarding arms firmly by your sides this does offer some explanation.
I think if there is any merit to it, I could see it being to do with running water creating an electromagnetic field or something.
It’s a tricky one, because both of these things can be true at once:
1. There is no evidence that it works when tested under scientific conditions, even with a big cash prize available
2. People whose opinions I respect say they’ve seen it work, and I know they are not deliberately telling fibs
There are so many variables that could make people’s experiences with it unintentionally biased/unscientific.
Just because there isn’t evidence yet, doesn’t mean there won’t be, so I remain an open sceptic, but it’s important that we apply rigorous standards when it comes to making these sorts of claims and therefore don’t think anyone can say for sure that ‘it works’.
Is it possible that the rods themselves are mechanically useless other than due to the ideomotor effect discussed in the above link? Humans do have the proteins responsible for magnetoreception (cryptochromes) in living creatures, though it’s thought we don’t have any way for our brains to interpret these signals. If there are people who are indeed even minutely sensitive to magnetic fields, could this then in combination with the ideomotor effect create the effect some see?
The scientific part of my brain makes it an exciting experiment to think about, even though my current stance is that I don’t believe it to be a true phenomenon.
I know someone who can pass his hand over an electric wire and tell you if it's live or not.....and I have neverknown him be wrong.
I know he's been doing it since he was a child.
He has no intention of being held up as some kind of guru or freak or nature though, so if you don't know him, you don't know, iimmc ?
I know someone else who literally shudders walking over running water.
Bridges over flowing rivers are a huge thing for her.
Again, no interest in being guru/freak/witchcraft.
I confess I have never actually looked a Randi's site, or the test he has set out.
I know it works, so I don't need that validation, but I wonder since I do know that it does work; is his test actually do-able or is it set up to fail ?
Is it a fair thesis ?
M
I know he's been doing it since he was a child.
He has no intention of being held up as some kind of guru or freak or nature though, so if you don't know him, you don't know, iimmc ?
I know someone else who literally shudders walking over running water.
Bridges over flowing rivers are a huge thing for her.
Again, no interest in being guru/freak/witchcraft.
I confess I have never actually looked a Randi's site, or the test he has set out.
I know it works, so I don't need that validation, but I wonder since I do know that it does work; is his test actually do-able or is it set up to fail ?
Is it a fair thesis ?
M
There is nothing special about dowsing. Once the potential dowser relaxes and just holds the rods in front of themselves walking about, the rods will swing quite soon.
I am certain that everyone here can get the rods to move, if not in their garden then along a drive or pavement.
My son taught a whole Scout troup to dowse in about an hour - he was twelve years old. They all dowsed a field with rods and pendulums by patrols and while the correlation between results wasn’t nearer to 100% it was way above random with some groupings being unanimous.
The only person that I know who couldn’t get it to work was an old style, superstitious vicar. I think he clamped his arms and mind tight and did not want to be able to do it.
I am certain that everyone here can get the rods to move, if not in their garden then along a drive or pavement.
My son taught a whole Scout troup to dowse in about an hour - he was twelve years old. They all dowsed a field with rods and pendulums by patrols and while the correlation between results wasn’t nearer to 100% it was way above random with some groupings being unanimous.
The only person that I know who couldn’t get it to work was an old style, superstitious vicar. I think he clamped his arms and mind tight and did not want to be able to do it.
Respectfully ( because i have respect for you ) I'm not quite sure the point is you're making ( or trying to make ) is there?
My question is - regardless of any science ( or lack there of ) - can it be shown to be used the world over in similar conditions and requirements? To me that would be a good indicator of application and potentially remove some westernised bias.
China seems the sort of place that isn't slow on the uptake and would in areas have a good use of dowsing.
But as Chris has suggested - the burden of proof is upon the claimant.
I’m not even curious for proof, I’m not seeking it personally and perfectly happy to accept it’s a technique that clearly has some merit as it is spread the world over, way before we or others travelled to other continents. I’d rather see it disproved than proved. It worried the Catholics so much it was banned, and many of the old spiritual skills got a burning witches approach, labelled occult or work of the devil. Much has been lost due to the controlling by organised religion.
Also, material proof of spiritual values and effect we find mysterious is rather a Western desire. Most of the older cultures are perfectly accepting of these spiritual values, the native Americans won’t even bother to communicate them to the Westerner. It’s Hermetic principles at work, not casting pearls before swine as it were. And it’s where we get the meaning of hermetic seal, the lips are closed tight.
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Provable yes, but explain the colour red to the blind man, he has never seen a colour. Or the harmony of music to a deaf person who has never even heard a noise. It’s provable but not communicable. Matters of faith etc are also notoriously “unphotogenic” as Jacques Vallée said of flying saucers, and many have said similar of dowsing, telepathy, psychokinesis etc. It’s not in the material realm and can’t be explained in a materialistic way.
Now, I think that physical dowsing is purely biological.
On the other hand I don’t think that the initial stimulus is electromagnetic, other than the fact that all sensation involves an electric neural network.
I conjecture that we are picking up a different stimulus.
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