Soooo...you played with them, huh?
BURN THE WITCH!!!
Posted on 09/17/2012 11:50:46 AM PDT by Renfield
“I’ve been considered nuts, speaking to two bits of wire and expecting an answer from them,” admitted local historian Walter Elliot as he published his new book on dowsing, called Divining Archaeology, “but I do get an answer from them! I’ve found so much stuff now, they cannae say I’m nuts.”
The amateur archaeologist, who lives in Selkirk, has used divining rods to locate underground objects for more than 50 years, at first hunting for buried field drains and fence posts while working as a fencing contractor.
“If you were unlucky enough to burst a drain while digging a fencepost, water would flood up and you had to bail it,” he remembered. “There would be a lot of bad language, and you lost half a day’s hard work. The divining rods were practical tools, which were able to detect soil disturbances. I just used a couple o’ bits o’ L-shaped fencing wire.
“I’ve always known about divining,” he added. “I was brought up in Ettrick and all the farms up there used divining rods, usually Y-shaped hazel twigs. When you held them over a drain, they pointed back towards your chest. It was just accepted. They didnae ken how it worked: it just worked.
“My grandfather, he had the Y-shaped hazel twigs, which he held very gently in his pinkies, and he had a cushion on his chest, because it came back with such a force it could have broken his ribs. It was phenomenal how fast that thing whipped back, as soon as he went over a drain.”
While Walter was assisting the excavation of the Roman fort of Trimontium, it dawned on him that, “a Roman defensive ditch was only an over-sized drain,” and “a pattern of former postholes could indicate a house.”
“I began to find houses, people, everything more or less – like where there was a male or female in a grave. People think you can only look for water – but you can look for everything. Divining is like x-raying the ground.”
Demonstrating to TheSouthern how he uses his divining rods, Mr Elliot explained: “When I’m looking for things, I just say, for example: ‘Where is the nearest drain?’. And the rods point that way. I’ll go over there, and the rods will cross when I walk over it.
“I can tell what is under here, by asking: ‘Is it a water pipe?’. The wires cross, so yes it is. ‘Is it iron? Is it copper? Is it plastic? The wires crossed again, so it’s plastic.”
Seeing the reporter’s amazement, he added: “I’m no’ kidding. I’m no’ just pulling your leg. I’m holding the rods very lightly and carefully. I just go the way the rods are pointing, and there it is. It’s impressive.
“The difficulty is telling what the object is, and what year it belongs to. It’s a matter of persuading folk that this is one way you can find archaeological stuff, and pinpoint them, without great expense. But archaeologists, being scientists, just simply don’t want to know. I’ve found loads of archeology in the Borders, if only I can get somebody to come to dig it and prove it.” Asked how he convinces people to believe him, he responded: “I don’t bother. It’s no’ a case of belief. It’s a case of: it happens. As I fencer I couldnae have cared less, I just knew it happened. And everybody did. It was just something you did. There’s no scientific explanation that I’ve been able to find. And it’s no’ a case of me trying to twiddle anything. Archaeologists, being scientists, simply don’t want to believe something they can’t explain.”
Does he think he perhaps sees external signs, like humps and bumps, and he subconsciously moves the rods?
“Most of the finds in the book, there’s nothing you can see on the ground whatsoever,” he responds. “The only explanation I can give is that, when you have a drain or a post, water comes into it and gets held there because the soil is less dense than the surrounding soil. It’s a change in soil density. I’m finding things they can’t see with aerial photography or geophysics.”
Asked what motivated him to write such a controversial book, Mr Elliot replied: “I’m getting on – I’m 77, I’ll be 78 next month, and I dinnae have much time left. I want to get it all on paper, so that somebody else can run with it. I’ve got a lot of information in my head. If you’ve got information, you’ve got to spread it about, and let others get the benefit of it. I don’t mind being wrong. But I know I’m right.”
Scottish Borders Council’s archaeologist Dr Chris Bowles cautiously supported some of Walter’s claims.
He said: “We’re excavating a bishop’s palace near Ancrum in October, and the guy who told us it was there was a diviner. We tested his claims with geophysics, and it was broadely similar to the plans he got with divining rods. That’s why I say there could be something in it: I’m 50/50 on it. The jury’s definitely out.
“If it works, it detects differences of water retention in the soil. Anything buried in the soil is going to retain water differently, like walls or ditches. The biggest issue is how diviners interpret these findings, because there’s so much buried under the ground: geological features like natural fissures can retain water, and all of that can look like archaeology. It’s great diviners are finding this stuff, but we need to test their claims physically. The problem is archaeology is expensive, so you can’t test every single one.”
Walter Elliot is giving a talk about his new book at the Selkirkshire Antiquarian Society in Selkirk Parish Church Hall at 7.30pm on Wednesday, September 19.
I have seen it done. We were consulting with an Engineer for the local utility company about how to route power into a location, and I mentioned we had to find some underground conduits. This guy whips out these two telescoping rods that had handles, and proceeds to walk around over the site. I start laughing cause I thought he was nuts.
He points out a spot and says the line crosses the road right here, and there is some sort of junction box underground at this point. I tell him that is highly unlikely because it is too far away from where it should be. I think he is full of sh*t, but we hook up our electronic cable tracer to some exposed wires and inject a signal into them.
As we walk along with the hand held tracer, we encounter a tone at exactly the spot he had marked in the dirt with his foot. When we dug it all up, it was just as he had said.
I asked him how it works, and he gave me some nonsense about magnetic fields and such. (I do Electronic Engineering) I concluded he didn't know how it works and was just making stuff up to cover up for the fact that he didn't know what he was talking about.
I don't know what to think about it. It looks like total crap to me, but he did accurately place that underground conduit and junction box. I am willing to entertain the notion that there may be some as yet unexplained reason why this stuff might work. I would like to see some experiments conducted.
What I saw was such an unlikely occurrence that I am willing to give the idea the benefit of the doubt.
There are plenty more scriptures warning about divination.
“My God-fearing Christian grandmother...” may not have thought through the implications of what she was doing to their logical end.
There is no scientific evidence backing any physical mechanics for dowsing—none, zero, zilch. That leaves one—and only one option—it is accomplished via some supernatural force.
Divination (as it is used in the Biblical passage I quoted)
means to obtain knowledge from a spirit. Dowsing fits that definition perfectly, since the knowledge is not obtained from a physical source, but rather a spiritual source.
Again, since the knowledge is NOT coming from a physical source, where do you think the knowledge is coming from; who do you think is controlling the dowsing rods; what supernatural force causes the dowsing rods to bend?
Do you plan to quote "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" as well?
God, obviously, has the final say when it comes to the meaning of scripture. But, I doubt he intended us to ignore it altogether, since he gave it to us for a reason.
Think about what you just said.
There has got to be a huge (as in HUGE) market for equipment that locates water underground. Anyone that put a device on the market that could do that would make a fortune.
Yet, you just said no such commercial device exists.
What that tells me is that the dowsing "technology" doesn't work. Because if it did, someone would have put it in a box and started selling it commercially for big-bucks.
Fascinating!
The agenda sounds more like a spiritual new-age conference than a scientific one.
No, I said "He did not have equipment for that." Some locators, such as this fellow, handle only certain kinds of underground lines, not all kinds. Hence, he did carry equipment for all kinds of lines.
There is modern technology for water location. Yes, it's superior to dowsing, but dowsing does work, too.
I don't believe that there is anything supernatural about it. It is likely to have something to do with a person's body electrical current. For example, I have never been able to wear a pocket watch. I have had many but in just a few days they stop. Also, on certain days I cannot approach any small radio like a boombox or such. At about 5' they will begin to lose their signal. At 2' it's lights out, nothing but static.
One more thing, and it really ticks me off, no wristwatch that I have ever owned will keep the correct date. I cannot begin to count how many 'date' watches that I have owned from Timex to Seiko. None will work, none!
Thinking through what? These dirt poor folks were just trying to find fresh water. She had been taught and could do it.
See my post #69.
Off topic, or maybe not, acupuncture works.
I’ve had it done for lower back pain that drugs didn’t even touch. It is a respected field of medicine in East Asia. Yet to this day, I am unaware of any science-based explanation as to why or how it works.
Yoga works, too. I have seen yogi do some amazing things. Things that I would never be able to do in my lifetime, certainly.
So what you are saying is that God heard their prayers and showed the drillers that the witching was from a bad spirit? Some here say it is from the Scriptures, others say it is from Satan, others say it doesn't work anyway. I live 26' above a great water table so it doesn't concern me.
I have seen dowsing in action and it does appear to work. Can I gurantee that the operators weren't charletans? No, I can't. But I can say that in order for the map dowser in particular to fake his findings he whould have needed to be very familiar with the site he was dowsing, more familiar than a survey crew that had spent weeks on that site.
I'm also not saying that the dowsing "gift" is always from Satan. But such gifts need to be considered with caution.
If Dowsing works, then...yea, that's the choice.
For the sake of argument, I'll grant your point: dowsing works. Now show me the scientific evidence for WHY it works. The balls in your court.
I'm not asking for testimonials that it works. That doesn't explain why it works. And besides, I've already granted you that point--it works.
And please don't insult your or my intelligence by talking about mysterious forces science hasn't figured out how to measure. Scientists have determined how to measure such things as the size of a single atom, or detect elements that exist for only the smallest fraction of a second. If there was some electromagnetic field associated with dowsing, it certainly would have been detected by now.
I could produce pages of links to studies showing there is no scientific evidence for dowsing. But, I'm giving you your chance to prove me wrong. Produce a study detailing the science behind dowsing. Link me to a book on Amazon called "The Scientific Behind Downsing." Produce some scientific evidence for why dowsing work...something...anything!
That's all I'm asking. Explain the scientific why.
And, if you can't produce the scientific why (the physics behind why it works), then explain why it works without physics; without science; without a natural reason.
Because, if it works without any natural, physical, scientific mechanism, then the mechanism must not be scientific, physical, or natural. There is a word for things that work that way: supernatural.
So does fortune telling and communication with the dead...until they attempt to perform under controlled, scientific conditions. Then (for some strange reason) the skill disappears.
And, dowsing is no different.
Below is a link to the Simthsonian Institution that contains of video of dowsers attempting to reproduce their skill under controlled conditions. And, they totally fail. Like fortune tellers and people that "talk to the dead," when push comes to shove, when facing an actual controlled test, their skill disappears.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2009/02/debunking-dowsing/
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