After reading my last week’s column on well diggers, several people responded to say they had known someone who mastered this craft. One or two had even witnessed the procedure called “water witching” (also known as dowsing) to locate a source of water and then seen a good well dug on that site. The impression I got from talking with a number of readers was that most people my age or older who grew up in rural Texas or small towns had either seen water witching performed or heard about it from family members who had. It was widely practiced in the first half of the last century.
A friend who had three books on the subject of dowsing loaned them to me, with the admonition, “You are responsible for remembering where you got these books, because I won’t remember who I gave them to.”
If he thinks my memory is better than his, he is sadly mistaken.
Let’s acknowledge right away there is no accepted scientific rationale behind dowsing, nor any scientific evidence that it is effective. Yet it remains popular.
Dowsing as practiced today seems to have originated in Germany during the 15th century, when it was used in attempts to find metals. As American settlers moved westward into drier climates in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they sought out dowsers to help locate water wells.
A Y-shaped twig or rod, called a witching rodis often used during dowsing, although some use two pieces of wire about the thickness of old coat hangers. Some prefer branches from particular trees, freshly cut. Most commonly used in this area are branches from willow or peach trees.
The two ends on the forked side are held one in each hand with the third (the stem of the "Y") pointing straight ahead. Often the branches are grasped palms down. The dowser then walks slowly over the places where he suspects the target (for example, minerals or water) may be, and the dowsing rod supposedly dips, inclines or twitches when a discovery is made.
This method is sometimes known as "willow witching," and I have seen it done, followed by the digging of a good well. One of my readers reported that her family lived in West Texas and always brought in a water witcher when they needed a new well.
As you would expect, dowsing has been widely discussed on the fringes of the scientific world in an effort to determine whether the dipping or twitching of the branch or rod results from a force in the ground or a muscular contraction by the dowser.
Dr. Jan Merta carried out a series of experiments in the 1970s which seem to have proved that muscular movement makes the rod/branch move.
If you can find a copy of The Diviner’s Handbook, the author tells you how anyone can develop the skill of dowsing. Given the shortage of water in Texas these days, skilled dowsers should be able to make a fortune.