Excerpts From: MODERN DOWSING: The Dowser's Handbook By Raymond C. Willey (c) 1976 ISBN 0-89861-005-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-18220 Printed by: Cottonwood Press, Cottonwood, Arizona 86326 Edited 9-27-2001 BKS INDEX ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SECTION ONE: SELECTED EXCERPTED CHAPTERS FROM "MODERN DOWSING" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Page 3 "Modern Dowsing" : Introduction Page 6 Chapter 1 What Is Dowsing? Page 9 Chapter 2 A Capsule Picture Of Dowsing Page 13 Chapter 3 Tools Of Dowsing Page 18 Chapter 4 Holds And Movements Of Four Types Of Dowsing Tools Page 29 Chapter 7 Dowsing Methods - Dowsing Questions Page 38 Chapter 9 Using The Pendulum Page 44 Chapter 18 Wording The Question - Question Aids Excerpts from MODERN DOWSING The Dowser's Handbook By Raymond C. Willey (c) 1976 ISBN 0-89861-005-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-18220 Printed by: Cottonwood Press, Cottonwood, Arizona 86326 Editor's note: this book has been out of print / unavailable for over 20 years to my knowledge; parts of it (specifically those chapters that pertain to pendulum dowsing and information dowsing techniques) are being reproduced here to pass on the excellent presentation of the subject which the Author has written. If you can find a copy of this book, I recommend that you buy it. After reading these excerpted chapters, I believe you may also see the value of doing so. INTRODUCTION QUESTIONS "I've just found out that the dowsing rod works for me. Where can I learn how to use it?" "I've been fooling around with the dowsing pendulum for years, off and on. Now I am really curious to know what it is all about." "I read about the United States Marines in Viet Nam using bent wires made from coat hangers to locate where the enemy had dug tunnels in which they hid. These bent wires work for me. Can I find things with them?" "I've been locating water wells for my neighbors by dowsing over the ground for a long time. Now I hear that I should be able to map dowse. to find water by working over a map. What gives? Variations of these questions are coming to experienced dowsers all over the country. Exploits of dowsers, and discussion about the process. for and against, are receiving more space in newspapers and magazines than ever before. People who have found out, at some time, that they could get a dowsing response are now realizing that a magic world of discovery can be opened to them. They only have to learn newly-developed. sophisticated dowsing methods. A DOWSING EXPLOSION A true dowsing explosion is under way. The capability for dowsing has been present in our human race since before history started. The ways to use this dowsing faculty have been passed along by word of mouth to only a limited few. generation to generation. during all of this long stretch of time. The use of dowsing has been confined largely to the finding of water supplies. However. inevitably. a human capability of such far-reaching significance must receive deserved attention. The stage appears to be set now for a very wide-spread use of the process. a dowsing explosion. Modern communications, over the last twenty-five years, have broadcast amazing facts about dowsing. These facts cover both a completely new picture of where dowsing can be applied to help mankind and that literally millions of people have this capability. NATURE HAS BEEN GENEROUS WITH THE GIFT OF DOWSING A very large number of people have this ability to dowse, a much greater number than was formerly believed, Better than one person out of ten can get a dowsing response, when properly coached, on the first attempt. With younger people, this percentage runs higher. Over twenty million, in this country alone, can dowse. Every day more and more of this twenty million are discovering that they possess this fascinating gift. A lady of sixty-five years recently experienced the dowsing response for the first time, Within a short time she map-dowsed a location five hundred miles away and had the location verified. Teenagers, learning about dowsing from a talk and demonstration, soon were using dowsing to check out the answers to their math homework, finding out if the answers were correct or not. WHEN AND WHERE YOU WILL USE DOWSING Finding water is only one of many applications. Dowsing is a human searching capability, an unrecognized part of our human equipment, and we are still trying to find the limits for its use, Dowsing is called on to give the location of a wide variety of things in their natural conditions, is called on to find people and things that have been lost, and special dowsing methods are furnishing information that serves man's needs when no location is involved. The implications of this statement cannot be over-emphasized. The demand to know how to properly use this remarkable human capability is insistent and increasing. You can make -use of dowsing wherever you live or whatever your work or hobby is. This broad statement on the potential of dowsing is the most significant development arising from today's informed look at dowsing. There is still need for water, for minerals, for oil and gas supplies. Additional uses are being found. Many of these are casual, Is my friend, on whom I plan to call, now at home? Where is this misplaced paper? Emergencies bring opportunities. What has gone wrong with my washer? Where is the leak in my roof? Dowsing can help in making important personal decisions, I plan to move. 'Where is the house that will best meet my requirements? Many are thankful they can employ dowsing to select foods when they are in restaurants that will contain nothing to which they are allergic. In other ways dowsing can be used to maintain personal health, The limits of practical applications of dowsing depend only on our own ingenuity and on our ability to recognize situations where we should call on dowsing to help. In industry and among public utilities, pipes and conduits under concrete floors and pavements and in the field are found by dowsing even at the particular point where repairs are needed, There is a satisfaction that is impossible to-~describe in being able to call on dowsing to serve your need. You are realizing your full potential. You are controlling and intelligently using a mysterious power that has baffled the best minds of our modern technical age that have tried to explain what is happening. BOOKS ON DOWSING For over four hundred years, books and articles on dowsing have reached the public. Until the turn of the last century, books supporting dowsing were written defensively, slanted to prove that there was such a thing as dowsing, featuring accounts of what was being done by dowsing. Since then, the theme of books on dowsing- has still been to prove that dowsing is a fact, that it works, plus the addition of ideas or theories on how dowsing works. With one or two exceptions, very little space has been devoted to telling how to dowse, how to use the many dowsing devices, and what rules to follow as one undertakes a dowsing search. This text has been prepared to take care of a need for dowsing instructions. The text is written on the premise that dowsing does work, and will continue to work, for the millions who have yet to discover that they have dowsing ability. The theme of this text is 'How to Dowse', slanted to help these millions develop and apply their natural talent. Nothing can take the place of personal coaching by an experienced dowser, whether you are trying out a dowsing device for the first time or adding some new routine to what you already know. This text simulates such personal coaching. I will figuratively stand by your side and tell you what you need to know, going into more detail than has ever as yet been put together within one cover. These details are organized in progressive lessons. You don't need to worry about forgetting verbal instructions and ad"ice. What you need to know about dowsing is here permanently in print for you to constantly refer to. You will be coached on how to perform the simple, fundamental routines, and you will go on from there to the most modern, the most sophisticated techniques that are known. Even as you are actually performing these routines, either basic or modern, you will pause often to ask, Am I, myself, really doing such unbelievable things? LET'S BECOME A DOWSER The thousands of hours of practical work that I have been fortunate enough to spend, followed up by an equally lengthy and intensive study, coupled with a familiarity with what other dowsers are doing from around the world, furnish the material for this text. You can confidently plan- to move from the simple to the most involved routines without confusion. We will move along together, side by side, as I coach you, informally and conversationally, through all of the routines that you should master to become a competent dowser. I'll tip you off to the hazards that you should be on the watch for. Your progress towards becoming a professional dowser. or toward an efficient practitioner for your own satisfaction, can be rapid. CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS DOWSING? LET'S GET ORGANIZED As you and I sit down to talk about dowsing, we face up. right away, to the question. What is dowsing? lean say, at the Start, you won't find anything in dictionaries or encyclopedias which will prepare you for what is ahead in this text. Definitions and comments which appear in texts associated with orthodox scholarship, as of today, are very incomplete, relying on descriptions of the simplest routines, reciting something of the history and traditions of dowsing, often summing up such comments by stating all this is "folklore," thus evading any responsibility for what is printed. Such definitions are simply not up to date. You want to learn the picture of dowsing as it appears today. You want to train yourself to practice dowsing in a professional manner. You want to find out how dowsing can help you in both day to day and under special circumstances. Perhaps you are especially curious to learn how to accomplish dowsing, to discover what you, yourself, must do to be part of the dowsing explosion. DEFINITION Here is a definition that I have developed to cover all of my experiences in using the process and which seems to identify the process as a distinct function. It reads: Dowsing is the exercise of a human faculty which allows one to obtain information in some manner beyond the power and scope of the standard human senses. I must add the following qualification. You can alert the dowsing faculty only to serve a human need, personal or general. There must be a genuine need for each dowsing search. The heart of the definition is the phrase-allows one to obtain information. This phrase emphasizes the broad use of dowsing. We aren't just talking about making locations on the ground. We are talking about pertinent facts that have a bearing on the problem which the dowser is trying to solve, as well as the actual finding of locations. You know that there are other human faculties through which we, as humans, obtain information in some unknown manner. Examples are clairvoyance and intuition. The physical aspects of dowsing are distinct from those associated with the manifestations of clairvoyance or of making use of intuition. The fact that we, as humans. give evidence of possessing such a capability that appears under a variety of conditions provides an additional basis for accepting the reality of dowsing. INFORMATION FROM THIRTY-FIVE MILES AWAY We can relax from this concentration on a definition of dowsing and see how dowsing furnishes both locations and information. Recently I was asked to show where to drill for a well for an auditorium being built about thirty-five miles south of Schenectady. After going over the site I selected a place and predicted that water would be found about two hundred feet down. A new style rotary rig was used for the drilling. After the drill had gone down over three hundred feet, I was called on the phone and told that no water had appeared. After the phone call I determined, by Map Dowsing at my home in Schenectady. that the hole had been started about six inches from where 1 had made a location, and, by Information Dowsing, that the drill rig had been set up about one degree off from true vertical. Thus dowsing had supplied a location and a pertinent fact. Driving to the well site on the same day, I verified both findings. Dynamiting the well at the two hundred foot level was indicated. This was done. The thin wall of rock between the drilled hole and the water vein was broken and a good supply of water came into the well. A REMARKABLE GIFT You must face up to the fact that dowsing will put a strain on your ability to admit and accept what you can do and will soon be doing. At the same time you must be prepared to treat this faculty of dowsing with respect and always make use of it in a responsible manner. You will be alerting some sort of internal human mechanics that has not as yet received recognition in today's technical age. You can be confident that there are thousands of illustrations of what dowsing has done, equaling and exceeding in dramatic impact the one that I have just described to you. AN INHERITED FACULTY Actually the reality of dowsing, the carrying out of a routine in expectation of finding out both locations and pertinent facts, can be supported by other evidence than just the results from dowsing itself. Those of you who have the faculty may be able to learn that you have inherited it. It is known to often pass from grandfather to grandson, from mother to son, from father to daughter. As many women can dowse as men. A focused look at natural history shows that, in animal life, members of many species appear to know where to go and what to do to serve their needs from some source that cannot come through the use of their normal senses. Certain examples are common knowledge such as the migration of birds in the spring and fall and the return of fish in the ocean to spawn in a particular river. A study of daily animal living habits can reveal many more examples that are less outstanding. Dowsing can be considered as much an inheritance from an animal ancestry as the familiar features of physical structure and physiological functioning. As in animal life, this similar faculty is alerted to serve its needs. In human life the element of need must also be present if you plan to dowse to solve a problem. As you dowse. you can feel you are making use of a legitimate human functioning. You can feel that you are enjoying a legacy. a gift from nature. You can feel that you are employing your total abilities, expanding your full personality. You are bringing back into contemporary culture human skills that have been neglected and even disparaged by many intellectual leaders during current centuries. You can use these skills for your own needs and for good for your neighbor. THE START OF THE DOWSING EXPLOSION This dowsing explosion, of which you are now a part, was probably triggered by the publication, in 1950, of a book, "Henry Gross and His Dowsing Rod". written by the historical novelist, Kenneth Roberts. In this book, dowsers across the country were given a well-documented account of the possibilities of Map dowsing and were told how dowsing could supply information as well as locations as the end products of dowsing searches. For the first time, many dowsers learned that dowsing searches could be made for many things besides water sources. Dowsers, after reading the book, tried out these new' ways of using' dowsing and discovered that they were getting results. Non-dowsers and casual readers, some scholars and scientists read about what Henry Gross had done. There was a rush of public discussion, attempts at debunking and refuting on the part of self-elected critics. For the first time, Map Dowsing was a feature on a TV network. THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF DOWSERS, INC Within ten years, dowsers from all over the country had greatly increased their uses of dowsing through the inspiration and practical leads furnished by Kenneth Roberts as he reported on the continued activity of Henry Gross. A small number of these active dowsers and some friends of dowsing met, informally in a small New England village to swap experiences and ideas for three successive years. These meetings led to a further discussion of what steps could be taken to bring the whole story of dowsing and the good that could be expected from its proper use before the public. As a result of these informal meetings, in 1961, a non-profit corporation received a charter from the State of Vermont, and the American Society of Dowsers, Inc., was started. Within eleven years this Society has attracted members from around the world, put on permanent record the accomplishments of dowsers in nearly every field of man's activity, served as a forum for ideas about what makes dowsing work, and exerted a positive influence on the attitude of the public towards the reality and value of the process. A MORE FRIENDLY ATTITUDE FOR DOWSING You are now able to learn to dowse in a much more friendly and understanding climate than was ever before possible. Skeptics still abound. but you will find them now on the defensive. However, a careless or ill-prepared use of dowsing gives ammunition to the skeptic. Let this thought give you the determination to follow along closely with me as I present the details on how to dowse, as I list the precautions which you-must observe, and as I stress that you must be prepared to devote time and practice. You can confidently expect to be able to use dowsing with a professional skill and a responsible attitude. CHAPTER TWO A CAPSULE PICTURE OF DOWSING THE UNIT DOWSING SEARCH Picture the two of us, you who have found out that you can get a dowsing response, and myself, your coach, as part of a group at a picnic spot in the country. I take a forked stick, hold it erect with a band grasping each stick arm end, and walk slowly over the ground. Soon you seethe top of the fork move forward and down until it is about horizontal with the ground, extending out from my hands, and you see my hands tightly clinched around the fork arm ends, resisting the twisting that is taking place in the wood arms. For each wood fork arm must twist as much as the tip end moves, if I hold the wood arm ends solid. You have seen a unit dowsing search. 1 have asked for and found, by dowsing, a place on the surface of the ground directly above a random water vein. I found this place, not by using my normal senses, but through the working of the mysterious thing called dowsing. Demonstrating dowsing, on my pan, for the purpose of helping you to learn about dowsing, and your subsequent practice of dowsing, - both are related to your need to learn about dowsing and improve your skill, examples of a legitimate use of dowsing. You will get such a response literally thousands of times as you practice and use dowsing. You will also find out, that, many times, both in practice and in serious searches, you will have to perform several unit dowsing searches to get the final answer to the problem. Your success as a dowser will depend on your ability to perform this unit dowsing search consistently for each pan of the problem, Let us look closely and carefully at this unit dowsing search, this unit dowsing operation. You must be able to visualize what is going on so far as possible, not to form any theory, but to have a practical understanding of this unit dowsing search. DOWSING IS A SEARCHING TOOL Think of dowsing as a searching tool that we, as humans, can use. Dowsing searches out locations, objects and information. You are given a problem. a problem that can be solved by searching. As I started this chapter. I had this assumed problem, Where can I find a random water vein to use for a dowsing demonstration? I stated the problem in the form of a question, to be held in my mind as I walked over the ground. The question would be worded. Am I over a random water vein that can be used for demonstration purposes? Before I started my walk I grasped my dowsing device. the forked stick. in a standard manner. which we will take up in detail later. Thus prepared. I started to walk. The device responded. 1 felt the movement in my hands, wrists and arms, and also saw it. I stopped walking. I accepted the fact of movement as indicating that my question had been answered. "Yes. I am over the water vein that I have been seeking." My unit dowsing search is complete. THIS UNIT SEARCH IS MADE UP OF FOUR STEPS Some parts of this unit dowsing search you could see. Some of it you could hear as I told you the wording of my question. and reported to you the results of my search. But some parts of the unit dowsing search took place beyond your awareness and mine. beyond what we could see or hear. A description of what is happening, a description covering all that you must be able to picture mentally, must include both what you and I could see and hear and what is taking place beyond our awareness. We can divide that description into four steps. First step. The dowser. or one who comes to him, has a problem which can properly be solved by dowsing. The dowser goes over the problem carefully, making sure that he understands just what is to be found out. Then the dowser plans his searching program. He may be able to solve the problem with just one search. He may have to make many searches. The dowser must work out the wording of a suitable question for each unit search, each question so worded that it can only be answered by either Yes or No. Second Step. The dowser takes up a single question at a time, concentrates on it. and then grasps his dowsing device. Third Step. The device moves. indicating that the answer to the question has somehow become known to the dowser, but this answer is retained in the dowser's realm beyond awareness. Fourth Step. The movement of the device has been completed, and the dowser recognizes that the movement indicates either a Yes or No answer to the question which he had posed for this unit search. As we come to know more about dowsing device movements, we will find it simpler to say, for this step, that the dowser interprets the movement he has seen. This movement brings the answer from within the dowser, from his realm beyond awareness. into awareness. The unit dowsing search has been completed. I'll admit that the description of these steps leaves a lot unanswered. Although many competent and sincere scholars have offered ideas, almost everything connected with the actual human mechanics of do~sing 5. n my considered opinion. as yet unexplained. The study of theories is a subject in itself. Such a study can be carried on intelligently only by one who is completely informed about all of the ways to dowse and on all of the things that can be found by dowsing. You do not need to get involved in such a study to become a professional and competent practitioner of dowsing. You will find plenty to challenge your capacities as you undertake to master the skills that you must acquire just to perform dowsing. Remember that dowsing has been carried on success- fully for centuries by- folks who did not have access to the technical knowledge that we have today. Their work was not complicated by theorizing TYPICAL DOWSING SEARCHES Let's take a break and hear about some dowsing searches. A friend of mine. then living in the State of Oregon. wrote me this account. On a weekend. he and his wife drove into the nearby hills to take a hike in the forest. He misplaced his glasses just as they started out Dowsing found them. During the hike, he and his wife became separated in the woods. By dowsing, he made his way to where she was waiting far him. Toward the end of the hike. they realized they had left the trail and didn't know the direction to the place where they had left the car. Dowsing brought them out of the woods directly to their car. Each problem was solved by a unit search. Early in my active interest in dowsing. 1 was visiting at a dairy farm in Vermont. The owner remarked that one of his cows. expecting a calf, was missing when he brought the herd in from the night pasture that morning - She was still somewhere in the woods that were part of the pasture~ Could I rind the co~~? 1 accepted the problem. At the pasture gate. dowsing gave me a direction and distance. Pacing off the distance I found the place but no cow. Assuming that she had rested there for a while and then moved on. I tried and found another location. Walking there, still no cow. The pendulum then led me to a third location and still no results. Getting a fourth location, in the woods, as I paced toward it, I saw the cow with the new-born calf. This problem had called for several unit searches. This illustrates some other complications that can arise in searches which we will take up later. LET US MASTER WHAT WE CAN SEE There is much to learn. Logically, in taking up a new subject, we must first present the subject in Its simplest form. We can then progress to its more involved aspects. As we set out to learn how to dowse, we find an unusual situation. We are born with the ability to get a dowsing response. Our efforts must be spent in finding out how to properly use this ability. When we undertake to acquire any other physical skill, we have to start a course of training in making the simpler and preliminary moves in an easy sequence. The physical moves required by the skill do not come naturally, without effort and attention on our part. Think of learning to play the piano. You must slowly and patiently train the fingers to respond to the notes on the music sheet in systematic routines. As you are mastering this physical part of your training, you are also learning the technical points of music, scales. chords and musical composition. The time that it takes you to develop the necessary muscular co-ordination for the finger moves is much longer than the time that you need to learn the supplemental musical knowledge that must go along with your physical skill. YOU ARE BORN WITH THE DOWSING FACULTY in the case of dowsing, you have a completely different situation. You can get a dowsing response with no previous practice. Your added physical training consists of learning how to hold each device in a standard manner so that you get a consistency in the movements. You train yourself in these standard routines with all of the devices that will respond for you. You learn the four dowsing methods. You find out that you can search for a very wide range of objects and information. You are instructed on what precautions to take. All of this does not take very long as compared to acquiring other physical skills. In brief, the physical part of your dowsing training consists largely in standardizing what comes naturally. YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO USE THE DOWSING FACULTY The success of your dowsing searches depends in the highest degree on your preparation for each search, an adequate preparation focused completely on the wording of each search question. Practicing over water veins doesn't give you the chance to realize how important the wording of the question is. When you undertake a serious search for a water supply you will find that you have lumped the various detailed specifications of the water requirements into a single statement of need that will lead you to a satisfactory target. As you branch out into other fields of search, you discover you must be informed on the general facts about all of the conditions in that field of search that can affect the outcome, and son out the details that must be used in each search~question as you pose it. You must get background knowledge on the subject. You must expect to spend generous time getting a command of such general facts and background knowledge whenever you enter a new field of search. Perhaps your interest will turn to using dowsing to maintain your personal health. You will be posing questions involving details on diet, exercise and symptoms. A dowser from Tasmania became well known as a specialist in soil chemistry. Supplied with a sample of soil, he could determine if it was suitable to raise a particular crop or tree. He could determine soil deficiencies. If your interest and opportunity leads you to look for lost people, you will be called on to use maps, to cooperate with police departments, and adjust to highly emotional personal contacts. A certain amount of the needed background you will build up as you practice in any field. Most of it you will have to pick up outside of your actual dowsing experience. You can understand on reading this that any one dowser can't expect to be expert in every field. It is the actual experience among dowsers that many become highly competent in one or a very few field of search. CHAPTER THREE TOOLS OF DOWSING SELECT THE BEST DEVICE FOR YOU Most of you will find you can dowse after watching someone else, by taking up the device he had used and trying it out for yourself. Unless you were fortunate enough to later see and talk with other dowsers, or, from random sources, pick up added knowledge about dowsing, your acquaintance with dowsing has been limited to just that one device. I want to coach you, as we stand figuratively side by side, on all of the routines of dowsing and pass on to you the full story of all that you should expect to be able to do. As you practice, during this coaching, you may possibly find that some other device, other than the one you are using now, seems more comfortable as you use it - more suited to you. As you become familiar with the different methods, you will find, a particular device fits more easily into one method than another device, for quick action and less fatigue. You will want to be competent with at least two devices, perhaps more. You are going to learn that there are four basic different types of devices in general use. In addition, you will learn you can dowse without any of these devices, just using your arms, even your hands, or getting other body reactions. THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO PRESENT DOWSING INSTRUCTIONS Following one way, I could take up one device and show you all of the responses you could look for from it under all dowsing conditions. Following the other way, I could organize and present my instructions from the standpoint of learning dowsing itself as a process ln doing so I could coach you to understand how each type of device fits into the whole story of dowsing. I have planned this coaching to follow this second way. I will take up the four standard types of devices and show you the detailed routines of handing them. You will learn about four methods and how each type of device is used with each method. You will become familiar with what can be done by dowsing. You will thus be prepared to concentrate on the devices and applications that have the most appeal for you. BE PREPARED FOR ALL KINDS OF SEARCHES Regardless of device, dowsing is a searching process. We want to find out. when we call on dowsing, something that can't be known to us tinder the immediate circumstances by the use of our normal senses. Regardless of device. we must study how to pose the question for each unit search. The broad use of dowsing today gives promise that you may be called on to dowse anytime, anywhere. on short notice. The traditional story of dowsing, that of the rural dowser. looking for water in a meadow where he can go to the edge of the field and cut a forked stick, preserved the idea that the forked stick is the "divining rod". Today's dowser finds it convenient to be able to use a device he can carry with him. A small pendulum, or a forked stick shape with short arms, eight to ten inches long, made of light fiberglass. can be pulled from the pocket and you can start dowsing without delay, once you are fully practiced. INSTANT SEARCHES Once in my' early dowsing days. while still working in industry', I returned to my office from an errand in the factory and found things in confusion. My' supervisor had lost the cap from a fountain pen, the pen being a gift he treasured highly'. His desk and other likely places had been thoroughly' gone over for more than an hour. Half kidding, one of the gang asked me. Can't you find this cap by dowsing? It so happened I was carrying a small metal pendulum in my pocket. The pendulum indicated we should look inside the large bottom drawer on the desk. This drawer held records and letters in standard-sized manila folders with tabs. It had already been carefully looked at. The pendulum told us to look again near one of the tabs that stuck up. When we did we found the fountain pen cap nestled tightly' behind the tab. Eating while traveling presents a hazard to many people. Whether for yourself or a companion, you can determine, by dowsing. if the food you have ordered contains something that is allergic to the one who ordered it. After dowsing a few years. 1 was driving along a strange country road. I was looking for a farmhouse that could have been anywhere up to a few miles away. I might even have passed the farmhouse. Taking out the pendulum, I posed the question, using a series of distances. Am I more than x distance from the farmhouse? The response indicated 1800 yards. Watching the distance being recorded on the odometer, I was able to turn into the correct farmhouse drive. HOW WE WILL PROCEED We will take up first the description of the four standard types of devices and train you in ~ standardized routine for holding each device, telling you the movement you can look for from each as a dowsing response. Then we will examine the four dowsing methods, the separate and distinct conditions tinder which you make use of the process. A typical dowsing problem will be outlined. The problem will be solved by using each of the four standard types of devices in turn while three of the four methods are called on. The fourth method, Map Dowsing, will be taken up as a separate project, also applied to the problem. During all of this. added problems and dowsing applications will be introduced. DEVICES if any of you had the opportunity to travel around the world, looking up the local dowsers in the rural areas, you would be amazed at the great variety of dowsing instruments you would see. T~s is explainable. Dowsing survived by personal coaching, not just for generations, but for centuries, with very little exchange of ideas. You will soon become acquainted with the basic types. Many modifications, each of them using the principle of one of the basic types, can be found working successfully for practical dowsers. It would be impossible to trace their history, to discover who first got the notion to try out any particular gadget. To study a subject so that what is known can be passed on to others, you would find it necessary to group and classify the facts that you assemble. I've put all dowsing devices into four types. Thus we can intelligently talk about the basic behavior of each type; we can describe the movements of each when we get a dowsing response. When you do happen to see some highly individualistic gadget, you can quickly determine which of the four types it is related to. FOUR STANDARD TYPES OF DEVICES I. Angle Rods, usually in pairs 2. Pendulum 3 Straight Wand 4. Forked Stick Shape or "Y" Rod The best known of these four is the forked stick shape. Until recently, forks made of wood, cut from a tree or bush, were the only ones found in use. An exception would be when two straight branches were tied together at one end to make a fork shape. Some dowsers cut a fresh fork for each search. Others would cut a supply of forks and let them season, thus being able to use each fork for several searches. Wood with a pith center, such as found in fruit trees, was usually chosen. Pieces of whalebone, being flexible, were the earliest materials used as a substitute for wood forks. Within recent years. forked stick shapes have been fabricated from synthetic materials. principally from nylon and fiberglass. The straight wand was cut as a sapling or tree branch. Wands are now made from synthetic materials and from flexible metal rods. A pendulum to be used for dowsing can be made from any small weight suspended from a length of cord. Angle rods are a recent addition to dowsing, formed from lengths of small rods of metal. Combinations of metal rods and wood dowels are often used. You will find detailed descriptions of all of these four types as we continue our coaching program. You may cut your wood devices. You can make angle rod sets. In the appendix you will find the addresses of sources for devices made from synthetic materials and for manufactured devices using the wand principle. ANGLE RODS Make a set of two angle rods. Obtain two pieces of straight steel or brass rod, 24 inches long and 1~8 or 3, 16 inches in diameter. Hardware stores or welding shops will have such rods. Visit a plumbing shop and purchase two pieces of copper pipe with an inside diameter of 1/4 inch, and six inches long. These copper pieces should be straight, and one end of each must be cut off squarely. This square end must be made smooth, with no burr on either the inside or the outside edge. Take each straight rod and measure off five inches from one end. At that distance make a ninety degree, or right angle. bend. You now have an "L" shaped rod, the long end being 19 inches and the short end 5 inches. To use these rods insert the five inch end into the copper pipe. Each piece of copper pipe serves as a grip. You can make a pair of angle rods that can be used without grips from wire coat hangers. Take a coat hanger. cut out the hook and straighten the remaining wire. This wire will be about 34 inches long. Bend the wire into an "L" shape, with the short end about 8 inches long. the long portion being 26 inches long. You can use two such wires without grips. PENDULUM A pendulum is the easiest device to make. Pendulums used by experienced dowsers are made from a variety of materials and are of many sizes. A simple pendulum, made by yourself, is entirely satisfactory for practice. Make one with a light weight and a short cord to use in following the coming practice instructions. In the toy section of a store, try to find a rubber ball, about one inch in diameter, that has a length of rubber band material attached, at least eight inches long. If you can't find this combination, look for a rubber ball, not over two inches in diameter. For cord, use heavy cotton or linen thread. If you can find some nylon fish line. it is more durable. From whatever material you have, cut off a piece about 12 inches long. Tie and re-tie a knot in one end until you have a bunched knot about 3/36 of an inch in diameter. Pick up the rubber ball and, with a sharp, pointed knife, punch a hole, up to one-half inch deep, in the ball. If you have some glue handy, squeeze a little into this hole. Press the knotted end of the cord into the hole. The rubber will close around the knot, anchoring it, and when the glue is set, you will find the ball hangs free and true. You can get long use from such a pendulum. You can improvise a pendulum by tieing a length of thread to a metal nut or washer, or even a ring. You may already have something attached to a light chain which will serve. STRAIGHT WAND In a wood-lot or in the bushes at the edge of a field, select a straight branch or sapling up to four feet long with the larger end not over one-half inch in diameter and the smaller end at least one-quarter inch in diameter. This cut stick should be allowed to season for a few weeks if you plan to use it for a long time. Such a wand, when fresh, will give a dowsing response a few times before it loses flexibility. A shorter wand, of smaller diameter. is satisfactory for immediate use. In any case you need a wand which will not sag more than a few inches when held horizontally by the smaller end. If you can't conveniently cut a wood wand, you can always purchase an aerial for a car radio at any auto supply store. These usually come in three sections. Extend it the length of two sections, the larger ones, and you will have a responsive straight wand. When you become familiar with how the straight wand gives a dowsing response, you can look for chances to obtain rods of synthetic materials of various diameters which you can cut to any convenient length. FORKED STICK SHAPE For immediate practice purposes, I hope you can get into the country and look for a forked shape that you can cut from a growing tree or bush. If you have a choice, look for wild cherry, willow, or a domestic fruit tree such as apple or peach. Other woods can be used but the wood material loses its flexibility sooner. Select a fork with an inside angle of from 40 to 60 degrees, as symmetrical as possible, with arms of about the same diameter that will be about two feet long when cut and trimmed. The ends of the arms should be at least 3/16 of an inch in diameter. The straight section at the joint which would correspond to the bottom of the Y can be three or four inches long. Let these sticks to season, or dry out, for a few weeks before putting them to use and they can be re-used many times. When used fresh-cut, the arms soon lose their flexibility. To make full use of this coaching, you obviously need one of each of the four types of devices. You can make sets of angle rods and a pendulum. You can also make your plans to cut the wood wand and fork. In Chapter Six you will be told how you can get a dowsing response by using different parts of your body, eliminating all devices. You will find that being able to perform these routines is one of the most intriguing features of dowsing, showing us how closely the ability to dowse is intertwined with man's nature. This phase of dowsing has been given little attention by students. (Editors Note: I'll provide selected excerpts primarily to demonstrate pendulum dowsing techniques; interested researchers are urged to attempt to obtain a full copy of the book if possible.) CHAPTER FOUR HOLDS AND MOVEMENTS OF ANGLE RODS, PENDULUMS AND STRAIGHT WANDS START OUT WITH AMBITION AND CONFIDENCE I'll now undertake to show you how to use this gift of dowsing that nature has generously given to you. I can sense, on your part, a feeling of urgency, if not impatience. You want to know, as Soon as possible, what to do to carry out a search, putting your gift to work. This is a good attitude. Your desire to learn and accept the detail of your training must be strong. You must have confidence in dowsing and in your ability to master it. However, you must satisfy this desire by mastering one part of the process at a time until you finally have the complete package. During this training you will find yourself uncovering unknown facts. Your confidence will grow. You, yourself, will be conducting successful searches, searches that may appear simple to you, but which will contain as much mystery as any you find reported in the text. THE DOWSING RESPONSE ISA MOVEMENT OF THE DEVICE The routine that I am going to show you in this chapter, the descriptions on how to hold and manage each device, are uncomplicated and adequate. 1 want you to develop a standard way by which you grasp and position each device. 1 emphasize the word standard, for I want you to be able to grasp and position your device by habit. As you pick up your device and position it, you can put your attention~fully on the details of the search itself. Using the correct grasp and position, you have the assurance that when ~he movement appears, it will be a true dowsing response. It will not be the result of some unfortunate twist or casual motion on your part. WHAT MAKES THE DEVICE MOVE? This is a logical question to be brought up at this place in the text. but I cannot answer it nor tell you where to find the answer. The nature of dowsing, in terms of today's scientific knowledge, is a mystery. All of the separate features of dowsing must share that mystery. Until more is known, I'll ask you to provisionally consider this idea about the movement of devices. This idea will give your mind something to anchor on as we proceed with d~e coaching. and it may prove to be correct as more study is given to movements. Visualize the movement as arising from some sort of an unknown force acting on the device. in a manner similar to the way a magnet can attract iron objects and cause them to move. Your concern for the present is that the device does move and that an unknown force can he the cause of the movement. With some devices, the force exerted is very slight, the equivalent of an ounce or less in weight. With a strong forked stick shape, made of nylon rod, a force equivalent to many pounds weight is needed to produce the twist in the arms we see as the dowsing response. Let us examine the four types of devices. It may be determined the forked stick moves because the arms are flexible. The straight wand moves because it is flexible. The pendulum moves against the force of gravity. The angle rods move against the friction of the grips in which they are mounted, or as they are nested in the hand if no grips are used. DOWSING ABILITY DOESN'T DEPEND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE PULL This fact has a practical significance for you now as a training dowser. We find that more people can get a dowsing response on the first try when using the angle rods than with any other type of device. The pendulum runs a close second in this respect. The wood wand and the forked stick shape respond to fewer persons on the first try. It is well established that this variation in ability to use the different devices has no relation to one's ability to become a successful dowser. For it appears that the actual searching-out ability, the means whereby the dowser comes to know things, the means whereby the dowser is able to obtain information is a separate factor in the mechanics of dowsing. You can have this searching-out ability in a very high degree, and still be able to cause movement only with the angle rods or pendulum. You can make as successful a search with the angle rods and pendulum as with the straight wand and the forked stick shape. MORE ABOUT AN UNKNOWN DOWSING FORCE There is easily demonstrated evidence that the force which moves the dowsing device is independent of the searching-out ability of the dowser. 1 won't go into any discussion of theories, but will take time to briefly acquaint you with some facts about the behavior of dowsing devices, facts which are not well known to the casual dowser or to the public. These facts. so far as r have been able to find out, have been given little weight by most students of dowsing. When a person who has the dowsing faculty holds a device in a standard manner, the device will take on movement, will give the same movement which you see durng a true dowsing performance, but under conditions when no dowsing search is going on. This can happen under two sets of conditions. Every dowser can expect to get a dowsing movement from his device under one of these sets of conditions. Few dowsers have tried the other set of conditions, but very likely many can make the demonstration once they understand what is called for. In Chapter 19 you will read that you, a dowser, can hold a pendulum over your own palm, or over the palm of another person, and without posing any question, or taking any other action, will see the pendulum take on movement. You can only visualize that, somehow. the dowser, as he holds his pendulum, has somehow charged it so that the pendulum reacts to an emanation from the palm. You will read that the pendulum can be held closely to any portion of one's body and bring about the same resulting movement. Animals and some plant life will also produce a response from the pendulum. The free end of any straight wand, or the free end of any manufactured spring steel device (which will be described later) will give the same responses. The other set of conditions is not well known. It can be the cause for mistaken readings by dowsers who are not aware that they can influence a device and make it move. Only a limited number of dowsers have come to be aware that they can cause dowsing devices to move by internal direction, a phrase I must use because I know of no better way to describe what happens. I was told, early in my intensive application to dowsing, that this could be done. I was also told that many who could create this movement were reluctant to do so in public because there were supernatural implications in the demonstration. I tried out the routine and found I could make it work. Actually the demonstration is very simple. I hold the pendulum at the ready position (which you will soon learn) and direct it mentally to take on a counter-clockwise movement. The pendulum will immediately start to make that movement. I can, while the pendulum is still in motion, direct it to reverse the movement, to go clockwise. 'The pendulum will slow down, stop, and take up a clockwise movement. This movement can be changed by direction to a back and forth movement in a specified direction. In the same manner, the pendulum can be made to come to a complete stop. I can take a pendulum in each hand and direct first one and then the other to follow through its own series of movements. I feel the behavior of dowsing devices under these two conditions calls for serious consideration of the idea there is an unknown force acting as part of the dowsing phenomenon. You may, as a dowser wanting to become proficient with the four types of devices, read these facts about movements by internal direction from another viewpoint. Carrying on further experiments. I have found it is possible to bring about movement from any dowsing device by internal direction. This means that a dowser, undertaking a search on some matter where he is anxious to get a result. may unintentionally influence his device, making it move by internal direction without realizing it, and thus getting a false answer. You can easily avoid this pitfall. You will learn how to pose the proper question and to keep your attention objectively on your dowsing problem. THE COACHING SEQUENCE FOR ANGLE RODS I will assume you have a pair of angle rods either with or without grips. Perhaps you have both. These instructions for the angle rods. and later for other devices, will follow a fixed pattern. First I will tell you, in detail, how to make the hand grasp. Then I will describe to you how to hold the device in relation to your body. These two conditions will often be referred to from now on in the text as comprising the ready position, or that your device is at the ready. You must practice both the grasp and the positioning of the device until it becomes a very firm habit. You may find, in certain searches. that you will have to vary the position of the device somewhat from the standard way I describe in relation to the body. This variation won't be much--usually moving the device to one side or to the other where you would normally hold it out in front of the body. Once you have mastered the standard position, such variations won't prevent you from making successful searches. ANGLE RODS WITH GRIPS - THE GRASP You have the two angle rods and the two pieces of copper pipe, the grips. Insert the short ends of the rods into the grips, having the angle rest on the smooth end of each grip. Pick up a grip in each hand. the rods being on the upper ends of the grips. Take a firm but comfortable grasp on each grip, holding the grip upright. The long end of each rod is extending from the top of each grip. ANGLE RODS WITH GRIPS - THE HAND POSITION You are now holding the two rods casually in front of your body. Your hands must be moved into a positive relation to each other and to the body. To get this final position, keep your elbows tightly against the sides of the body. The forearms are extended out in front, and the hands are brought to within about eight inches of each other, each four inches from the centerline of the body. Now raise both hands, vertically, about five or Six inches, so that the forearm and the upper arm form a ninety degree angle. As you raise your hands, adjust your wrists so the extended rods remain essentially level. You will have trouble keeping the rods from making random movements as you come to this hand position. The rods, restrained by only light friction, show a tendency to keep up these random movements. To overcome this, and to complete the positioning, again adjust your wrists so that the free end of each angle rod is dipped. With an angle rod of 19 inches, dipping the end about one inch will allow you to gain control of the rods and avoid random movement as you stand still. By dipping the free end of the rod. the end inside of the grip comes to rest against the inside of the grip and the added friction is enough to steady the rod, to eliminate movement as you stand still. You can now hold the two rods still, parallel, and about eight inches apart. This is the standard position for the angle rods, the ready position you will assume as you undertake a dowsing search. A final instruction can be added. This will apply to both the angle rods and the pendulum. Very little strength is needed to hold either device. However, it is my experience that, to get a positive dowsing response from any device, it is necessary to have good muscle tone, a firming of the muscles of the arms and shoulders. With the wand and the forked stick shape, this muscle tone is part of the grasp, no extra effort is needed. When using the angle rods and the pendulum, you must over-emphasize the grasp. You can grasp the grips with enough firmness so that you feel the muscles taking hold right up to your shoulders. You must maintain that firmness as long as you hold the angle rods at the ready, until you get your dowsing response. This firmness is an integral and very necessary part of the ready. To review, you now have a firm grip, with arm and shoulder muscles in good tone, your hands are in front of your lower chest, about eight inches apart, and you have dipped the two angle rod ends so that they can be held steady and parallel. ANGLE RODS WITH GRIPS- THE DOWSING RESPONSE MOVEMENT The dowsing response movement of the angle rods, which conies under various conditions that we will take up later, is a swinging of the rod ends. The two rods may swing towards each other, or they may swing outward. The movement, to be a positive dowsing response, will continue until the rods move about ninety degrees or a quarter turn. Once the movement starts, maintain your grasp and hand positions. Let the rods come to rest by themselves. If you are walking, holding the rods in the ready position. you will note that the two rods start their movements at about the same moment, and continue to move together until the quarter turn is complete. With very little practice, you will come to recognize this dowsing response movement as different from the slight, unavoidable casual movements resulting from walking. When the dowsing movement is completed relax your arms and your grip. Take a short rest. Make a complete new re-positioning for your next search. You'll soon learn to do this by habit. In many dowsing situations, one unit search will follow another quickly. Until we describe the conditions for an actual searching problem, you can practice walking with the angle rods with the objective of training yourself to be able to hold them at the ready as steadily as possible. Practice at first when walking on a smooth floor, slowly. You will be able to develop an even pace. When walking with the angle rods and the pendulum. you will find yourself taking shorter steps than usual. This will help you to keep a feeling of balance which, in turn, will allow you to carry either device with a minimum of random movement. I would suggest a walking rate of two short steps a second, or a speed of about three feet a second. You will learn later that such a slow steady pace will be very helpful when you come to practice pin-pointing your location on the ground. ANGLE RODS WITHOUT GRIPS: THE GRASP You can use angle rods without grips. The positioning of the arms and hands will be the same as you learned to do with the grips and need not he repeated here. You must lightly nest the short end of the angle rod in the hand. You have a choice of two ways to do this. In either case you want to have enough control of the rod to keep it steady as you carry it. At the same time, you want to learn how to carry each rod with the minimum of actual restriction so that the tong end will respond and give the dowsing movement as easily as when you carried the end in a grip. In one way, without any grip, the long end of the rod will rest on the upper flat side of your first finger. Curl your fingers lightly around the short ends of the rods, giving you a control. The hands will be turned toward each other with the flat of the fists facing forward. Again I'll note the long end of each rod, where it starts at the right angle bend, lies on and extends over the flat side of the first finger, straight out from the fist. The wrists are adjusted to make the long ends dip about an inch, which was also noted when using grips. With but little practice you can train yourself to hold angle rods delicately, as if they were in grips. You can try another way. The short end of the angle rod wilt rest in the inside of the first finger joint, held so that the long part of the rod does not touch the side of the first finger. The long part of the rod should be at least one half inch above the side of the first finger. The lower end of the short part of the angle rod is caught between the third and fourth fingers. You can maintain control of the rod by maintaining a slight pressure with the back of the fourth finger against the rod and the third finger. This way sound complicated as you read it, but actually your hands are in a natural, comfortable position. Your knuckles are pointed forward, just as when you used the grips. The rods can only point forward. You use just enough pressure with the fourth finger so it the rod will not slide down to rest on the first finger. This slight pressure will not hinder a prompt dowsing response movement. I have found that I have a better control over the angle rods when I hold them this second way, resting in the first finger joint, than I do with most angle rods with grips, and that the dowsing response is as prompt and unhindered. When you use the angle rods without grips, you have to give special attention to maintaining firm muscle tone in your arms and shoulders. This will be in contrast to the relaxed, delicate control you have on the angle rods. Setting up such muscle tone must be a part of the habit routine you acquire as part of your standard grasp and positioning for every search and device. ANGLE RODS WITHOUT GRIPS - POSITIONING AND PRACTICE As I have already told you. the positions of the hands and arms is essentially the same, with or without grips. I did note that when you rest the rods on the fiat side of the first fingers, you have to turn your hands in so the rods extend out straight across the finger side. You will want to practice walking around, carrying the angle rods without grips, as described for you when using grips. While doing such practice walking, keep a watch out for a dowsing response for a angle swing of the rods. You might find yourself at a location where such a response should occur. Make a note of that location. You can use it for further practice. USING A SINGLE ANGLE ROD Once you are completely familiar with the feel of carrying the two an~le rods. and have been coached and gained experience in dowsing with the two rods together, you can practice dowsing with just one rod. When you are using the two rods together, you have a check that you are getting a dowsing response movement by seeing the two rods take on movement together. This helps you know you aren't just getting a random movement from walking. Using one angle rod alone, you must carry the rod very steadily and be able to satisfy yourself the movement Is an actual dowsing response. You can learn to do this. One of the most interesting aspects of modern dowsing is associated with the use of the single angle rod. At one period in the campaigns of the Viet Nam war, the United States Marines were conducting many search and destroy missions, operating under treacherous conditions along jungle trails. Where could a searching tool, such as dowsing, be better employed? Dowsing was used by the Marines. Angle rods were improvised from any wires on hand. Dowsers among the soldiers demonstrated dowsing would work. Others quickly discovered that they, too, could dowse. What were they searching for? Underground tunnels being used as hide-aways that the Marines might pass over and then suddenly find the enemy at their rear; buried mines and other jungle traps along the trail; ammunition caches; communication drops. As the combat soldier must carry his rifle in one hand, only the other one was free to hold an angle rod to dowse with as he walked along. So useful did the angle rods prove under actual combat conditions, training in dowsing was Set up in Marine Corps camps in this country as part of the final preparation for overseas service. An inventive civilian developed and manufactured a device which used the principle of the single angle rod. This device consists of a grip, similar to that of a pistol, comfortable to grasp. From the inside of this grip a collapsed rod is drawn out vertically. When fully extended this rod is bent at right angles, having a hinge at the place where it clears the grip. The extended rod is about twenty inches long. The portion inside the grip is mounted on ball bearings, making the device very responsive. When in use, the dowser holds the device by the grip, the end dipped, in the same manner you have learned to use any angle rod. it is understood that this device was used by the Marines before their campaigns were ended in Viet Nam. PENDULUM In contrast to the angle rods, you will find it is very easy to hold and position the pendulum, so much so that, as your coach, I will continually be warning you not to get careless in its use. You will find the pendulum has several movements, any of which may indicate a dowsing response. You must train yourself to read such movement accurately. Physical effort, when using the pendulum, is very slight. You may be tempted to keep on with a series of dowsing questions, getting your answers, long after you have reached a condition of staleness. Under such circumstances you could be getting incorrect answers. Why, I don't know. This is one of the mysteries of dowsing. If you ever have any reason to think you may be becoming stale, take a break, relax, lay down whatever device you are using. You will soon come to recognize when you are in the mood, now that you know the importance of this condition, and be alert for being stale. At times you just won't be able to buildup any feel of need, especially when you are given searching problems. Get the story of the problem and wait until you feel ready to start your search. HOW YOU HOLD THE PENDULUM You have a small pendulum, perhaps a rubber ball with a nylon cord, or some small item, such as a finger ring, suspended from a few (9) inches of thread. When practicing, you will find you get a quicker response with a short length of free hanging cord. The grasp is actually a pinch. The hand is held so that the fingers point downward, the back of the hand being flat. You pinch the end of the cord between the ends of the thumb and forefinger. The pinched cord should extend down from the center of the contact of the thumb and finger. In this position, the cord is free to move in any direction as the weight takes on movement. The cord must not rub against either the thumb or finger ends. For your practice, in order to develop a standard routine, I suggest you hold your hand out in front of your chest . your elbow will be bent in a comfortable position. Remember that the flat back of your hand is faced up. Your hand is in line with your forearm. In pinching the cord with your thumb and forefinger, you will want to exert much more pressure than is necessary to just hold the cord securely. This will set up the needed muscle tone in the arm and shoulder. Because the pendulum is light in weight, you may, through inattention, relax the strength of your pinch or relax the muscle tone of your arm and shoulder. Avoid this. There seems to be a connection between maintaining good muscle tone and getting dependable dowsing responses. WHAT THE PENDULUM CAN TELL YOU One of the pendulum routines you will learn about in a later chapter allows you to get a distance reading quickly, to find out how far away from where you stand you will find your target point. You can also get a distance reading between points that are involved in a dowsing search while Map Dowsing. I recently map-dowsed for a water source in an area I knew was in an open field. I wanted to know the distance from the corner of a house on the property to the nearest point on a good water vein. To find out that distance, I posed a series of questions, each question being a unit dowsing search. This is a common dowsing routine- The questions were worded in this manner, Is the target point more than one foot away from this house corner? More than five feet away from this corner? More than ten feet away? A continuing series of numbers was recited. For each question posed, the pendulum would swing to give me a Yes answer, as long as the target point was farther away than the distance in feet mentioned in that question. When I recited a distance in feet that was more than the distance to the target point, the pendulum took on another movement. The movement then changed to indicate a No answer. I knew the exact distance was between the two distance readings. You will soon learn how to find out distances in this way. PRECAUTIONS When I first started practicing this routine, I found myself getting wrong answers. Checking over the details of what I was doing, I discovered that often I let myself relax as I recited a series of numbers. It all seemed so easy to do that I let my guard down. I found out the hard way, working by myself, about this hazard, and about the other hazards l am mentioning in the text as we go along. I have verified these hazards during talks with other dowsers. I am well acquainted with the difficulties you will meet when you have to improve your dowsing skill only by trial and error, without adequate coaching. When you have become accustomed to holding your pendulum comfortably in front of your chest, and have had the experience of many dowsing responses, you will be able to get dowsing responses by reaching out the pendulum, perhaps at arm's length, or at one side of the body. When you sit at a table to Map Dowse, you will be moving your pendulum over various sections of the map. Keep your pinching firm, the cord hanging freely downward, and the back of your hand facing up, and your dowsing responses will come accurately. As you sit at a table when using the pendulum, you will be tempted to rest your elbow on the table. Doing so seems to weaken and slow the dowsing response. I recommend you don't rest your elbow, but keep it up, and your arm out from the shoulder. PENDULUM - A VARIETY OF MOVEMENTS You must give the movements of the pendulum more detailed attention than you give to those of the angle rods. With the angle rods, any movement indicates a dowsing response, and, with your question worded so that it can only be answered Yes or No, any movement, the angle rods either swinging in or out, will be taken by you to be a Yes answer. The pendulum has two basic movements. The pendulum can go in a circle, and it can swing back and forth. The circular movement may be clockwise or counter-clockwise. The back and forth movement may be in any direction. The cord must hang freely so that any of these movements can take place without the distortion which would-be caused by the cord rubbing against the finger or thumb ends. With a four inch length of cord hanging freely from the pinch, the circle formed by movement may be three or four inches in diameter. The length of the back and forth swing will be about the same length. From this variety of movements I will tell you later how to pick out the two movements which will be your own code, one movement to mean Yes and the other to mean No. ln addition, you can have another movement of your own to indicate when you are on target . You can find out a direction line by the direction of the pendulum swing. It is all very fascinating. You will also come to know the pendulum can be activated into movement under certain conditions when no dowsing search is involved. As a dowser, you can alert this unknown force. You can mystify your friends with curious demonstrations. WALKING WITH THE PENDULUM You must plan to practice holding the pendulum steadily while walking over the ground. carrying it in the standard manner. Think of what you would have to do to carry a cup full of water in one hand out in front of you, and you'll quickly pick up the trick of holding the pendulum steady as you walk. Walk first on even ground, then practice on rough ground. You will thus prepare yourself for actual dowsing searches. STRAIGHT WAND You now come to the dowsing device which is probably the most ancient of all as we peer back into time before history was written. You'll read later in this text that man first dowsed with his extended arm or arms. We can assume man first used only his arms, then discovered lie could use a straight wood wand. I'll assume you have provided yourself with a wood branch or sapling with the dimensions given in the preceding chapter or that you have an auto aerial. We will begin our practice. STRAIGHT WAND- HOW TO GRASP AND POSITION You grasp the small end of the wand with your two hands, either with an inter-locking grip or with one fist tight against the other. The grasp must be firm. Your arms and shoulders take on good muscle tone from this firm grasp. Place your hands about waist high and point the wand straight out in front of you. keeping it horizontal to the ground. If your wand is flexible enough to bend slightly from its own weight. tilt it up so the free end will be about level with the end you are grasping. Your hands can rest against your body, or they can be an inch or so away. Find out for yourself which way is the most comfortable, and always position your hands that way. I have found when I hold my hands a short distance from my body, I have more control of the wand when I walk. I can eliminate almost all random movement. STRAIGHT WAND- MOVEMENTS TO LOOK FOR You will see the movement start at the outer, free end of the wand. You keep your grasp firm. your hands in their fixed position. Movement of the wand is possible because the material of the wand is flexible. Until recently, when the dowser used a wooden straight wand, he looked for any movement of the free end of the wand as indicating a dowsing response. The long wood stick was often clumsy, and while dowsing response came dependably, it was slow. More attention has been given to the action of the wand as we have come to learn more about dowsing in all of its features. We find the free end of any straight, flexible rod material, wood. metal or synthetic, gives a dowsing response. With synthetic materials, smaller diameters and shorter wands give a satisfactory response. An experienced dowser can pick up a stem of a plant or a stock of hay, and demonstrate a response. It has been found the free end of the straight wand will give the same variety of movements which we observe the pendulum perform. The movements of the wand end are in a vertical plane, while the movements of the pendulum are in a horizontal plane. The free end of the straight wand can move in a circle clockwise or counter-clockwise. The free end of the straight wand can make a back and forth movement in any direction. When using a small diameter synthetic material wand, these movements are obtained nearly as quickly as with a pendulum. If you can easily obtain a dowsing response from both the pendulum and the wand, you'll find the pendulum more practical to use. If only the wand works for you, you can train yourself to do almost everything with it you would expect to do with a pendulum. For your first practice with the straight wand, I suggest you take the appearance of any consistent movement, as opposed to the random movements from walking, as the dowsing response. At present don't try to complicate your practice by trying to distinguish the many possible wand end movements. Use the two hand grasp, and practice walking over rough ground trying to hold the wand steady. STRAIGHT WAND- MANUFACTURED DEVICES USING ITS PRINCIPLE Some inventive dowsers who observed the variety of movements of the free end of the straight wand, have manufactured compact devices which are very responsive. They give the full variety of dowsing movements in the vertical plane. A typical device consists of a small metal pointer mounted on the end of a spring steel wire. The complete device can be described. It has a pistol style grip which you can hold comfortably; with a length of spring steel wire extending upward from the grip. The wire is straight for a few inches, then a portion of it is formed into a helix or cylindrical coil. up to one inch in diameter. The wire then continues straight for a few inches and the metal pointer is mounted on the end. The weight of the pointer is just enough to make the wire from the grip form an arc of ninety degrees so when the device is held with the wire vertical as it leaves the grip, the free end with the metal pointer is parallel to the ground. The metal pointer is thus extended away from the dowser, as he would normally hold it, the same as a free end of a straight wand. With a typical device. the overall horizontal length is about twelve inches. The dowser grasps the grip with one hand, holding the device comfortably in front of him, in about the same position his hand would be if he were holding the pendulum. The dowser can expect the same full variety of movements he would get from the pendulum. The instructions for using and interpreting these movements that apply to the pendulum can be applied to these manufactured spring steel devices. STRAIGHT WAND- HOLDING WITH ONE HAND The shorter, small diameter, flexible synthetic straight wands, thirty inches long or less, can be held in one hand. You can hold such a wand directly in front of you or somewhat to one side, in the same general position you would hold a single angle rod. Such a wand responds quickly, and will give you the same variety of movements you look for with the pendulum. A LOOK AHEAD TO WAYS YOU CAN USE THESE DEVICES Your long wands are most often found in use in the field locating water sources. Angle rods are used more often when trying to locate buried pipes. I'll give some examples which may surprise you for use of any of the devices which can be held in one hand. Picture yourself with a device in one hand. You stand beside your auto, the hood up, looking at your engine. You know you have ignition trouble. You hold a pointer in your other hand and start to pose a series of questions. Pointing at the spark plugs, one at a time, you ask, "is this spark plug performing satisfactorily?". Your device will give an answer, either yes or no. If a spark plug is defective, the dowsing response is one you interpret as no. You may have to ask a similar series of questions about the many wires and cables and other parts of the ignition system. This use of dowsing is being applied successfully by a few dowsers in widely separated parts of the country today. There is a big future for dowsing in this field. You can check radio tubes in this manner. Trouble-shooting can be done by dowsing on any equipment, providing you know enough about the equipment to pose the question correctly. Our grandfathers used dowsing to find water, an important need in their time. The miracle of dowsing can be brought into use to serve and solve the needs of our present culture. The opportunities are almost limitless. CHAPTER SEVEN DOWSING METHODS - DOWSING QUESTIONS LOOKING AHEAD TOWARD USING DOWSING We have just completed a lot of detailed instructions and supplementary information on how to hold four different types of dowsing devices, and I hope you are taking time to practice the holds and the hand positioning faithfully. The coaching that lies ahead is based on the assumption that you have mastered what is in the text up to this point, at least for the type of device or devices which you find best for you. I know you want to get down to real dowsing, down to real searching. As you come to the point of actual dowsing, it is most important you understand just what you are doing. Right from the beginning, you must be able to picture just what sort of a searching problem you are setting out on, and you must become aware that you can select a certain method or a combination of methods to use in each particular search. To clarify things at this point, I'll take a break from instructing. and we'll look over the four different dowsing methods you can call on in your searching. The subject of dowsing, from the standpoint of instruction, has never been approached before in as much detail as you are finding in this text or with the same degree of classification. You know the many devices can be put into four types, each with its own way of being held, and each with its own movements to look for. Before we take up any actual dowsing. we can go over the several ways you are going to use these devices~ We find these can be grouped into four methods. The dowsing explosion has resulted from the introduction of certain of these methods into general use within the last twenty or more years. You are going to be coached in the very latest knowledge about dowsing. IMPACT OF MAP DOWSING Very few events in our time have had a greater impact on the complacency of those who accept scientific doctrine as the be-all and know-all of knowledge than the well-documented accounts of the ability of Henry Gross to make practical locations on maps and sketches through a specialized use of his dowsing skill. The startling facts about this use of dowsing over maps as recorded by Kenneth Roberts in his book "Henry Gross And His Dowsing Rod", were duplicated by many other dowsers, soon after the book reached the public. Since then, thousands have become competent map dowsers. You will soon be among the hundreds of thousands who will be making locations over maps and using other equally fantastic methods. YOU CAN LEARN ALL OF THESE METHODS READILY While these thousands had to find out how to properly use Map Dowsing and other newly revealed methods largely through trial and error, experimenting each by himself, you will be able to begin in an orderly manner, knowing what you are doing as you go along. You will know the methods available and the right occasions to use each method, or how to combine two or more methods to solve a single problem. This classification of methods is based on conclusions after examining and analyzing thousands of searches, my own and those of others. I was able to establish four separate and distinct sets of conditions under which you use dowsing. each condition calling for its own technique. FOUR METHODS Based on these four conditions, I have given names to four dowsing methods. They are: 1. Field Dowsing Method. 2. Remote Dowsing Method. 3. Ma~ Dowsing Method. 4. Information Dowsing Method. One or more of these methods must be used by you, whatever you are searching for locations, objects or information. Since the way to use each device may vary somewhat with each method. you must completely understand the conditions where each method is used, and decide which you intend to use, as you grasp your device to start each unit search. For example, you may find that, at first, you must use Remote Dowsing, then go on to Information Dowsing, and end up doing Field Dowsing. You may start with Map Dowsing, switch to Information Dowsing, and then go back to Map Dowsing. For each unit search you must select the device that works best for you with this method. You may find you are changing from one device to another and back again. A QUICK LOOK AT THE FOUR DIFFERENT CONDITIONS The conditions where you will use field Dowsing are those where you are called on to make a location within a limited area, on the lawn, in the street, the meadow or wood-lot. Your location will be shown by a mark on the surface of the ground. Most people who have heard of dowsing have only heard about Field Dowsing, the traditional use. You also use Remote Dowsing in the field. In using Remote Dowsing you are not restricted to a limited area. for you work from a distance. You don't generally have to walk over the area. You get your dowsing response while standing at one place. Your target may be one foot away. It may be one mile away, or more. In Map Dowsing you perform your technique while looking at a map, a sketch. or a copy of a surveyor's drawing. This can be done while you are indoors, with the map on a table. The Information Dowsing method can be carried on anywhere. While Information Dowsing is usually a supplement to the other three dowsing methods, some searches can be carried on completely by properly planned Information techniques. COMMENTS ON THE FOUR METHODS As you read the detailed descriptions of the four methods, later in this chapter, you will note that Remote Dowsing and Map Dowsing are used to save the dowser's time and energy. Information Dowsing not only saves time, but can aid greatly to increase the scope of the dowsing process. We can never know to what extent the old-time dowsers made use of Remote Dowsing or Information Dowsing. It is possible that many of the old-time dowsers did work out routines that would today be put into one of these classifications and talked little about that part of their work. They were subject to enough ridicule from just walking around with a forked stick. Even today, many people, including those well educated and informed on other matters besides dowsing, refuse categorically to accept the facts of Remote Dowsing, Map Dowsing and Information bowsing, while grudgingly admitting the possibility of Field Dowsing. As you continue your practice in these methods, you will come to appreciate how puzzling such things must seem to an outsider. Each of you, as you train yourselves, step by step, in the routine of these methods, will develop confidence that you can and are performing what is to be described to you in the text. These methods will become a way of life for you, as casually accepted as any daily living routine which you have known from your childhood. Be prepared to do your part to help others have a sensible attitude toward all that dowsing can accomplish. FIELD DOWSING METHOD Just as I have figuratively stood by your side and coached you on how to grasp a device and position your hands, 1,11 now describe to you an imaginary problem, one which we will solve together, as we use first one method and then another. This imaginary problem will allow me to show you the different conditions which call for the use of all of the four methods under actual working circumstances. You will see how we change from one method to another as we go from one unit dowsing search to the next one. all planned to solve the problem with the least amount oftime and energy. A party comes to us. He owns a lot out in the country on which he wants to build a house. and there is no water system nearby. He must first make sure he will have water. To do so he must have a well drilled. This owner calls for us, and we ride out with him to his lot. He shows us where he expects to place the house and where his drainage will be installed. Only a portion of the lot is left in which a well can be located. Where should the well be drilled? We'll first find the location entirely by Field Dowsing. I'll outline for you what must be done. only enough at this point of the text so you will recognize Field Dowsing. and will be able to distinguish it from the other methods. You are standing on that portion of the lot where the well must be drilled. You pose the proper question, grasp your device and position your hands, and proceed to walk over the ground. While you will be walking somewhat at random, you will plan your walk so that you will cover all of that part of the lot thoroughly enough to pick up any satisfactory water vein which may be there. When you depend entirely on Field Dowsing, you don't know whether or not there is a good water vein to be found. You are walking over the ground, purely on speculation, at the request of the lot owner. You are using the routine of the traditional dowser. the rural dowser who kept the story of dowsing alive for so many generations. For the purpose of this imaginary problem, we'll assume you do get a response. find a good location. before you have had to walk over the entire area. We'll take up what to do then, in fact we'll go into the entire routine for each of the four types of devices, in a later chapter. Just now, I want to clearly identify Field Dowsing as being distinct from the other methods. Walking over a field, over any ground surface. even over the floor of a building, in anticipation of getting a dowsing response which indicates you are over your target, is Field Dowsing. You must not underrate Field Dowsing just because it is the old-time method. bringing to mind the rural dowser. You will find, to properly Field Dowse. you must exercise just as much ingenuity, skill and knowhow as you will need for the other methods which may seem to have more glamour and are receiving much publicity. In a location problem, you must be able to make the final determination accurately by Field Dowsing. You must pin-point your location. Other dowsing methods allow you to come to this final step quickly. The success of your entire searching routine will depend on how accurately you can use Field Dowsing. With this traditional routine you are able to say to the owner, Start drilling at this spot. REMOTE DOWSING METHOD Remote Dowsing is also carried on in the field. A unit search is over very quickly. The end result of such a unit search is not a spot or location but a direction. To go back to our imaginary problem, we have driven out to the lot with the owner, and are standing on the part of the land where he wants to drill a well. Your dowsing question is for a direction line towards your target. Your target, in this case, is the nearest spot on a satisfactory water vein within the portion of the lot reserved for the well. You stand on the edge of that area, your question firmly in your mind. You face along the lot line, not toward the area itself. You grasp your device, position your hands, fix your gaze straight ahead, and start to turn your body slowly. With your gaze starting along the lot line, you want to sweep, with your eyes, the entire ground surface of the area to be dowsed. At some time, as your body is turning, your device will give a response. You stop turning. Your unit search is over. You are facing in the direction of your target. You can now walk in that direction, using Field Dowsing, and quickly find your spot. Another method will tell you how to save some more time. Just remember now that Remote Dowsing is simply turning and looking. With the pendulum your routine is simpler still, as you will learn about later. MAP DOWSING METHOD You use Map Dowsing when the lot owner brings you a blueprint of the house lot made from a surveyor's drawing. We place this, a map, on a table. The owner shows us where the house will be and the drainage area, leaving the remainder for a well. You will learn how to use a Simulated Remote Dowsing and Simulated Field Dowsing over this map to find a target spot on the map. This spot will correspond to the actual location of the target on the ground. You will have no difficulty identifying Map Dowsing. You will also learn how to be able to take your dowsed map into the field and, without difficulty or delay, orient yourself and mark off the spot on the ground that you determined when working over the map. I make no mention of distance limitations on map dowsing. None are known. While your practice work may be on maps of places within a mile or less from where you are working, you can be told it is possible to map dowse a location on the opposite side of the globe from where you live if you have a legitimate problem to be solved in so doing. INFORMATION DOWSING METHOD The Information Dowsing Method has features equally troublesome to believe. Information Dowsing is a handy supplement to all of the other dowsing methods, It can also be used to carry on independent searches when no locations are involved. We'll apply Information Dowsing to the lot owner's problem, showing how it helps the dowser. To illustrate, we will go back to the description of Remote Dowsing You received a dowsing response,as, in your turning, you came to face directly toward your target point. You know that, in the direction so indicated, lies the nearest point on a satisfactory water vein from where you are standing. You know the direction. You immediately wish to know, How far away is this target point? If you know that distance, you can walk casually nearly all of the way. then stop, position your device at the ready, then, walking only a short distance, use Field Dowsing to locate the target point on the ground. You only need to Start the Field Dowsing routine when you are close to the target. By Information Dowsing, you can determine how far away your target is in a positive figure measurement. You use Information Dowsing while you stand at the edge of the lot, taking it up right after you have found out the direction line by Remote Dowsing. When you have marked off your target as a definite spot on the ground, you can call on Information Dowsing to find out the rate of flow in gallons per minute in the water vein and determine the distance down, or depth, of the vein. When you have learned Information Dowsing competently, and with confidence. as soon as the lot owner comes to you, you can use this routine to determine if there is a satisfactory water vein on the property. You can get Yes or No answers to a wide variety of legitimate dowsing questions that do not involve making a location. In many such ways Information Dowsing greatly increases the scope of the dowsing process. In all dowsing, and in Map Dowsing and Information Dowsing in particular, we see human capabilities at work which cannot be explained as yet in terms of any orthodox understanding of man's behavior. This situation does not prevent ourselves, as dowsers, from making practical uses of all of these methods. ONLY A PREVIEW These descriptions of the four dowsing methods have been kept brief because they are not instructions on how to apply the methods but rather they are descriptions only. They are identifications of the four methods, offered here to prepare you for the coming instructions. We will take up each of the four different types of devices as they are used in performing the four different methods in complete detail. You will see that some devices work easier and quicker than others. You will learn a variety of routines which can be used to perform Map Dowsing. We will continue to use our imaginary problem, a well on a house lot, to show these various devices as actually handled. At the same time, you will quickly learn how these practices on the house lot can be applied to a wide range of dowsing problems where a location is involved. You will also be building a picture of the possibilities of Information Dowsing, when the search is for facts, not locations. WORDING THE DOWSING QUESTION The importance of another feature of the dowsing process must be firmly in your mind before you undertake actual dowsing practice. Refer back to our discussion, in Chapter 2, of the four steps of the unit dowsing search. In the outline, the first step concludes with the statement, 'The dowser must work out the wording of a suitable question for each unit search.' To prepare such a question. the dowser receives all of the information possible from the party wishing his help, or if the problem is a personal one, the dowser carefully reviews all of the factors which make up the problem. The dowser must first decide if the problem is one which can be properly solved by dowsing. If he so decides, the dowser must then determine if he can answer the problem by wording a single question which can be answered by either Yes or No. If not, he must prepare a series of questions. Of course, each question is to followed by a unit dowsing search. THE WORDING IS CRITICAL More failures and disappointments in the use of dowsing have probably come from poorly worded questions than from any other cause. Wording the question is comparatively simple when you dowse for a water supply. The traditional dowser of the past did not pay much attention to this matter of wording. Practically all of his searching was done for water. He knew when someone asked him to find water, he must look for a location where a well could be dug which would give enough water for the needs of a household. He always carried a general standardized question in his mind, hardly realizing the question was a part of his routine. As we come to apply dowsing to searches for other objects, the wording of the question becomes the most critical part of the search. We must be specific about what we are seeking. We must know quite a lot about the particular object or type of object for which we plan a search, if we want to word the question correctly. As more people are finding they can dowse, many new dowsers will work in a field in which they already have an interest. They will still have to be very careful in the wording of their questions. Others may choose new areas of interest where they believe dowsing can prove useful. If any of you should choose this second course, you must expect to equip yourself with as broad a base of knowledge in each new area as possible. You can learn some of these facts from books, and others from those who have had experience in these fields. Today's sophisticated dowsing finds us searching for anything from oil, gas and ore deposits to lost airplanes - from a misplaced ring to something allergic in one's food. from soil chemistry to authenticating paintings by old masters to determine whether or not they are forgeries. Even searching for water today, where it is necessary to drill several hundred feet. requires the dowser to learn a lot about soil and rock conditions in the area in which he will be working. Don't be easily discouraged. You will find it takes many hours of practice to master the routines which are ahead of us in this text. You will have to spend time learning more about the particular field you are interested in. You will find it an exciting challenge to see if you can find the correct wordings for your dowsing questions. Doing this will add to your confidence. THE WORDING MUST VARY WITH EACH DOWSING METHOD Here are some typical examples of wordings for usual conditions, based on the four dowsing methods. You will notice I go into much detail. You will also appreciate that the question, in each case, expresses just what you are seeking. In Field Dowsing. your question while walking over the field at random will be. Am I over a satisfactory water vein? You will find that other questions are added as we go into more detail on Field Dowsing. In Remote Dowsing, you will ask. Am I looking in the direction from where I stand to the nearest point on a satisfactory water vein? In Map Dowsing, when using Simulated Field Dowsing, you ask, Is the pointer over a place on the map where a satisfactory water vein would be found on the ground at the actual house lot? In Map Dowsing, when using Simulated Remote Dowsing, you ask, "Have I covered the directional sweep from the point on the edge of the lot portion reserved for a well to the point which would be the nearest to a satisfactory water vein at the actual house lot? There will he variations of these wordings, according to the device and the method being used. You can see certain words in the question tie in with the method. You soon learn to shorten some of these phrases, once you become familiar with the routines. These phrases, and similar details, are part of every searching question. You must learn them all. The wording of any question posed for Information Dowsing is probably the most critical of all, as the location involved, if any, is only incidental to what you need to know, You must compose your question so it can only he answered Yes or No. Perhaps you want to learn the weather conditions for a day two weeks ahead. There are many factors which must be considered. There are the factors of the exact place, the time span, and the type of weather. A possible question would be, Will the weather be suitable for a picnic at ---(place) in the afternoon of ---(date)? Here the question is based on a need, a picnic, which carries its own specification for weather requirements, at a specific place and time. Such a question covers all you need to know. I have received a Yes answer to such a question which proved correct. There was a rain shower during the night before, but the weather cleared for the picnic. ADDED EXAMPLES OF DOWSING QUESTIONS As a working. professional dowser, you will probably use Information Dowsing most often to find out some numerical value such as distance or quantity. In our house-lot problem, you use information Dowsing first, to get the distance along the direction line which you found by Remote Dowsing. Here is a standard type of question series for numerical determinations. QUESTION ANSWER ls my target more than one foot from where I am standing? Yes More than two feet away? Yes More than five feet away? Yes More than ten feet away? Yes More than twenty feet away? No More than eleven feet away? Yes More than twelve feet away? Yes More than thirteen feet away? Yes More than fourteen feet away? No The key phrase of the question is more than. This allows a Yes or No answer that gives you a positive interpretation. From the above sequence you know your target point is within fourteen feet. Following the procedure we have roughly described for dowsing on the house lot, you would walk casually for about ten feet toward your target. Then you would pose the Field Dowsing question, position your device at the ready, and resume your walk along the direction line until you felt your dowsing response. Another question series could begin, Is the flow of water in this vein more than one gallon per minute?, etc. A very important question from the standpoint of the house lot owner, who pays the cost of drilling the well, Is the distance from the surface to the top of the water vein more than one foot?, etc. For problems which do not directly involve figures and where a location is only a part of the total problem, you must plan to put together a series of questions. Such a series may be devised to eliminate possible fields of search and narrow it to one field. You can then continue to pose questions which will apply only in this field. Perhaps you find a problem which is based upon a tale of events covering a period of time. These events are reported to you in good faith and believed by the giver to be true. You can compose questions which can be answered yes or no to investigate each event. This allows you the opportunity to learn for yourself if the story is factual or distorted or even just a legend. Often dowsers are enlisted to partake in treasure hunting. Dowsing has an appeal to the layman as an ideal tool with which to find long lost and buried treasure. Treasure has been found by dowsers, both on land and under water. Every part of the country has its quota of legends concerning buried treasure. If you are given a buried treasure problem based upon evens of a number of years past, formulate a series of questions such as the following: Question Answer Did a man by the name of_____ live about ------A.D.? Yes Did he live in the ---part of what is now_________ ? Yes Did he carry on a successful business there? Yes Did he make a trip to ________ in the year ____? Yes Did he carry treasure, money or jewels, on this trip? No If you make such a list, writing all the questions you can think of which will cover factual statements concerning the information given you, Information Dowsing can be used to determine authenticity. Write each question so it isn't necessary to attempt to remember it. Note each answer as information Dowsing supplies it. If and when you receive a No answer, assuming you have your questions in time sequence, you can consider the subject closed. A final question to be included in such a list or any list for a lost article, would be Has this treasure or article been found and removed? SELECTIVITY OF DOWSING As we are rapidly increasing your knowledge of dowsing and what it can do, one of its most dramatic features is its selectivity. This means dowsing supplies an answer to a specific question. in field dowsing the dowser obtains the response signifying a yes answer when he is over the target of that immediate unit search. This can be easily demonstrated. Picture the scene as a wide street in a modern city. There is a dowser and some observers. The dowser poses a question concerning the location of a water main. He positions his device at the 'ready' and walks across the street. When he is over the water main the dowsing response is noted. The dowser returns to the sidewalk. He next poses a question about the location of the storm sewer line. Using Field Dowsing he obtains a response over. a different location. He then seeks the sanitary sewer line, finding it in yet another location. The main gas line is the next target also located by dowsing response. The final question may be the location of buried conduit for telephone or other wires. These are also located. The dowser and the device were the same for each of these unit searches. Only the wording of the question was different. Importance of the wording of the question is clearly emphasized. You'll find many references to the matter of wording of the dowsing question. It will be referred to frequently. You will also have many opportunities to practice wording questions in the application of the four dowsing methods. I'll close this chapter with the following observation. The dowsing faculty you have was received as a gift from nature. The dowser must train himself to hold devices and to understand the different methods and interpretations of movements of the devices as a means of expanding this gift to practical usage. In so doing your gift is changed into personal skill. Practical application of this skill makes you aware of the necessity to word each search question properly. You must know enough about the subjects for which you search to compose specific and accurate questions. The dowser must use common sense as well as intelligence in preparation of search questions. Successful searches begin with correct questions. CHAPTER NINE USING THE PENDULUM PENDULUM - THE WORKHORSE OF DOWSING DEVICES As you practice with various dowsing devices and learn what others are doing, you will soon come to realize the pendulum is the workhorse in dowsing today. You will find some dowsers depending entirely on the pendulum for their various dowsing searches. Others use the pendulum along with the forked stick as a team. You will find it convenient to use the pendulum to check out answers you have been getting with some other device. You will find the pendulum gives responses quicker than most other devices. It can be carried easily with you for unexpected demands for a search. A pendulum can be used for a longer period of time without causing fatigue than other standard devices. On the other hand, you must take pains to avoid becoming careless in your use of the pendulum. Carelessness can show up in the way you word your questions, or in letting up on the firm pinch you must have on the cord. Errors can creep in if you let your guard down. The pendulum routine is so simple you must be correspondingly alert to follow an exact procedure when using it. PENDULUM IN FIELD DOWSING To take up the pendulum routines in a systematic manner, we'll follow through with the same problem of the lot owner who needs water which was the base of the angle rod coaching. In Field Dowsing you must carry the pendulum with the standard grasp as you walk. You will often find yourself walking over very rough ground. It is virtually impossible to eliminate all of the casual sway of the pendulum as you walk. Keep this casual sway to a minimum and you will have no difficulty recognizing the response when it appears. The length of a typical cord was given. earlier in the text. as being about seven inches. Grasp this so that four or five niches of free cord extends down from the tip of your grasp or pinch. A pendulum which is to be used often when walking in the field can have a longer length of cord below the pinch. The weight may be several ounces. Casual swaying is reduced. The longer the free cord and the heavier the weight, the slower the response when you arrive over a water vein. You must use a very slow rate of walking. The pendulum starts ro respond at the time it is being carried directly over the water vein. You must keep a close eye on it, to catch the start of a positive dowsing response movement, and stop immediately. If you carry the pendulum beyond the water vein before the response movement has become positive, the movement will stop. You can miss the vein if you carry the pendulum too fast. You should be aware of this hazard, even though we both realize you don't expect to do any random walking with the pendulum. Rely on Remote Dowsing and Information Dowsing to bring you close to the water vein before you Field Dowse with the pendulum. To keep the coaching consistent for all devices, we'll assume that you walk over the lot in parallel paths, trying to find a satisfactory water vein by Field Dowsing while you carry the pendulum at the ready. You have been told you must watch carefully for the dowsing response. What will the response be? I've told you each dowser must set up his own code from among the variety of movements the pendulum can make. This code usually is a continuation of the actual movement a novice dowser gets on his first try. In my own experience, not knowing all of the possibilities, I found the pendulum swinging in a circle when carried over the target in my early dowsing. It usually was a clockwise swing, but I accepted a swing in either direction as a Yes answer to my question, Am I over a water vein? This Yes movement can be different from the one you train yourself to expect on Yes and No answers when using Information Dowsing. With a four inch free cord length, the pendulum first makes just a small circle, perhaps under two inches in diameter. You must watch for the start of a circular movement, as distinguished from any slight random sway. You'll quickly learn to recognize the difference. The circle diameter will build up to four or more inches after the first few swings, leaving no doubt in your mind you are getting a dowsing response, if you stop walking and hold the pendulum over the target. Make a temporary mark on the ground under the pendulum. PENDULUM: PIN-POINTING THE CENTER-OF-FLOW The center-of-flow can be found easier and quicker with the pendulum than with any of the other devices. Pose the center-of-flow question. Back off about three feet from your temporary mark. Walk slowly forward with the pendulum again held at the ready. As Soon as the first slight significant movement appears, stop walking immediately. Continue to hold the pendulum at the ready, maintaining a firm pinch. The pendulum should swing in a circle of an increasing size. Make mark No. 1 under the pendulum. Approach this mark from the other direction, following the same routine. You can expect to find that Mark No. 2 agrees with Mark No. 1 on the first try. TWO SPECIAL PENDULUM ROUTINES When you have a moderate amount of practice in pin-pointing the center-of-flow with the pendulum by approaching the water vein from both sides. you can try both of these special routines. You'll find either one works accurately. These routines are both based on the fact your first temporary mark. found by Field Dowsing, is at or close to the edge of the water vein. To use either of these two special routines, start by standing on the temporary mark. When you use the first routine, you stand on that mark, facing to the side. You will be turned ninety degrees from the line of travel toward the vein you have just walked. Pose the center-of-flow question. Pinch the pendulum cord in the standard grasp and hold the pendulum at arm's length in front of you. Then, as you keep the center-of-flow question firmly in your mind, start to swing your hand, which I assume to be your right hand, slowly to the right. Swing it in the direction of the water vein. and slowly bring the pendulum to a point where it is over the center-of-flow without having to take any steps. When you get your dowsing response, stop the swing of your arm, sight to the ground, and make your mark under the pendulum. The second routine Is even simpler. Obtain something to use as a pointer, long enough so you can stand erect and reach over the area beyond the temporary mark where you expect to find the center-of-flow. Again you stand on your temporary mark, but in this routine you face toward the water vein. Pose the center-of-flow question with this change, Is the end of the pointer, which l am dragging along the ground, over the center-of-flow of this water vein? Position the pendulum comfortably at the ready in your right hand. Hold the pointer in your left hand. Reach forward and place the pointer end on the ground as far away from you as possible, presumably beyond the center-of-flow. Start moving the pointer slowly toward you, keeping it on the ground. At some point the pendulum will give you a dowsing response. Stop the pointer motion immediately. Make your center-of-flow mark where the pointer is touching the ground. MAKING ADDED LOCATIONS WITH THE PENDULUM Follow the same general routine we described for the angle rods to find added center-of-flow points on the ground so you can trace the pattern of the water vein. Locate added points about three feet apart. There is a choice of three ways to pin-point. You can walk, holding the pendulum. You can stand close to where you expect to get a response and swing your handout over the area as you hold the pendulum, or you can work with the pendulum and a pointer. I would suggest one item of procedure in all cases. Approach the area over which you are to dowse from one side and then from the other side. When you have made additional center-of-flow points on the ground in each direction to the limits of the lot portion reserved for the well, connect with a line scratched on the ground. Tell the lot owner he can select some one place on the line for his well. Before you do report to the lot owner, you should check your findings by Information Dowsing. We'll take that up when using the pendulum. PENDULUM USED FOR REMOTE DOWSING To use the pendulum in Remote Dowsing, you stand at the edge of the lot portion described in our imaginary problem. You do not have to rotate your body. Start by standing so that you face the lot. Ask the question, "Will the pendulum swing in a direction between where I stand and the nearest point on a satisfactory water vein, giving me a direction line and a Yes answer in one movement?"Position your pendulum at the ready. If there is a satisfactory water vein in the area being dowsed, your pendulum will at once take on a back and forth swing, giving you a direction line. Since you are standing at the edge of the area, you know the target is in front of you. (If you were standing at a random spot in the middle of a field and posed this question, and got a direction line, your next question would have to be, Is my target in front of me? This would involve Information Dowsing.) Mark this direction line on the ground. You should be able to sight the line accurately enough with your eye so it is not necessary to check the line by a repeat question. It should be understood by now this direction line needs to be only approximate. You know you can expect to find the distance to the target by Information Dowsing before you walk along the direction line to prepare for Field Dowsing and pin-pointing. PENDULUM USED FOR INFORMATION DOWSING Using the pendulum for Information Dowsing calls for a different training than needed for other devices, with a few exceptions which I will note. With most devices. you have only one movement as a dowsing response. That movement, when it appears, you understand to be a Yes. Lack of movement after a question as posed will indicate No. EACH DOWSER MUST ESTABLISH HIS OWN CODE The pendulum has a variety of movements. There can be a back and forth movement in any direction, The pendulum can take on a circular movement which, in turn, may be clockwise or counter-clockwise. Each dowser, as he prepares to learn how to use Information Dowsing, must decide for himself which movement is to mean Yes and which movement is to mean No. If you have received personal coaching in information Dowsing, very likely your coach has passed on to you his own code. This is entirely satisfactory. I will pass on to you my code. I heard, early in my dowsing, that such a code was necessary. I tried to keep it simple. I chose two back and forth swings. A swing toward and away from me, simulating nodding the head, I adopted for Yes. A swing at right angles to the Yes swing, across my chest and parallel to my body as I stood, simulated shaking my head, and I adopted this movement for No. You can decide to use these two movements. I have demonstrated them before groups, without giving them any particular emphasis during talks, and find newly discovered dowsers immediately making use of the code during the informal sessions after the talk. You can use these two pendulum movements for your code of Yes and No. First, make certain you picture each movement clearly in your mind. In each case you hold the pendulum in the standard position, comfortably in front of you, with a tight pinch. These two movements will take place when you are using Information Dowsing. Ask a single factual question so worded that the answer must be either Yes or No. You must have confidence you can perform Information Dowsing. This confidence may be gained by practice with Field Dowsing and Remote Dowsing. The single response, coming promptly after the question, completes the unit dowsing search. The pendulum is convenient to use when you ask a series of numerical questions. Let us assume the answer to your first question about distance is Yes. Your pendulum moves in the Yes swing. While the pendulum is still indicating Yes, pose a question about an increased distance. The pendulum continues to swing Yes. Allow time for three complete swings in each direction between questions. As you increase the distance figure in each question, at some point you will see and feel the pendulum change direction, indicating a No answer. Your questioning has been continuous. It is not necessary to reposition the pendulum between questions. Take time enough for each Yes answer to be repeated so you are satisfied. Develop a rhythm with this routine to help you concentrate on your series of questions. PENDULUM - THE COMPLETE HOUSE LOT ROUTINE We'll complete our imaginary house lot problem. making a well location using only the pendulum. A direction line was found with the pendulum by Remote Dowsing as soon as you arrived at the lot and could see where the lot portion lay in which the well must be located. By using Information Dowsing the distance from where you are standing at the edge of the lot to your target point on the water vein is obtained. Walk toward that point. and, as you near it, locate the water vein by Field Dowsing. Pin-point the center-of-flow. Dowse and mark the water vein pattern as it flows underground. The lot owner picks a spot on that pattern for his well. As a final check, you pose the question, "Is this spot satisfactory for a well?" Your answer should be yes if all dowsing to this point has been carried on accurately. It remains only to determine the depth of the water vein, and the rate of flow, or capacity, in terms of gallons per minute. As you stand on the ground, you start a series of numerical questions for depth. letting the pendulum continue its movement from one question to the next until you have your final reading. Repeat this routine for rate of flow. Give the lot owner your estimate as adjusted from these readings. OTHER CODES - VARIATIONS IN CODES Now that you have chosen and established by practice your own simple Yes and No code for the pendulum with Information Dowsing, I'll go over some of the other codes dowsers have chosen for themselves. I'll also tip you off to some exceptions which can creep into code practice and not destroy its value. Some dowsers use the combination of a back and forth swing for Yes and a circular swing for No. Probably a few use the swing movement for No and the circular movement for Yes. Another combination finds the circular, clockwise movement meaning Yes, and counter-clockwise movement meaning No. You should know that such combinations are in use and work satisfactorily for other dowsers. You will come to realize your own simple code, the one which we have just gone over, is the easiest of all the combinations. In review I'll note that when we talked about using the pendulum in Field Dowsing, we used a code in which the pendulum did not move for No, and moved in a circle for Yes, when the pendulum was held directly over the target. Remember that the code you use goes with the method you are using. When we take up Map Dowsing I'll show you another interesting variation from the standard code that is helpful. EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF INFORMATION DOWSING I had a personal application of Information Dowsing which might seem to a layman to be foretelling the future, but which gave an answer based on unknown present conditions which could possibly affect future situations. My car had the same battery for more than three years. Winter had come. The battery was giving good service. I had a 300 mile trip to make. I posed this question in an Information Dowsing routine with the pendulum, Will my battery be OK for this coming trip? The answer was Yes. The trip was made without trouble. Within ten days I was scheduled to make a 400 mile trip. Again I posed the question, Will the buttery be OK for this second trip? The answer was No. I had a new battery installed. While taking out the old battery, I discovered a small crack which could easily have enlarged on a road trip and allowed the battery fluid to leak out. While the question was based on the future, the conditions involved already existed. Some dowsers today are turning their attention to forecasting the time and place of earthquakes. The slow, continuous movements of different sections of the earth's crust, as they push against each other, build up tremendous pressures in certain known areas, or extended lines of contact, which are called faults. These pressures are ultimately relieved by a sudden re-adjustment of the positions of the pressing sections, which we feel on the earth's surface as earthquakes. Science recognizes these locations and is trying to find ways to record in advance indications of increasing pressure which might signal an earthquake. Dowsers with sufficient background in the field of geology can and do pose questions to be answered by Information Dowsing. Such knowledge is necessary for a proper wording of a dowsing question. You can see that between these two extremes, one's personal precautions against trouble, and the supreme general interest of knowing when to expect earthquakes, there is a very wide field where you may properly use Information Dowsing. PRECAUTIONS In contrast to using angle rods for Information Dowsing, the use of the pendulum is physically easy, and the response is quick and positive. With the angle rods, you must watch for both fatigue and staleness, especially in a series of numerical questions. With the pendulum the routines are so easy you must watch out for carelessness and casualness. The most likely error appears when you let up on your firm pinch of the cord as you are reciting a series of numerical questions. Without the firm pinch, you may have the experience of the pendulum continuing to swing in. a Yes movement, swinging on its own momentum, as you recite a figure calling for a No answer. The pendulum will continue to swing Yes until you find your numbers getting unreasonable, beyond any value that makes sense. Stop and start over. Ask first, Have I made an error in my dowsing routine. Then start again with your numerical questions. The general comments about the use of Information Dowsing taken up in the previous chapter apply equally to all dowsing devices. Treat your gift of Information Dowsing as a serious responsibility. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN WORDING THE QUESTION- QUESTION AIDS KEY TO SUCCESSFUL DOWSING- AN EXACT WORDING OF YOUR QUESTION As your dowsing coach, I have taken you over an extended trip in which you were introduced to a variety of descriptions, techniques and routines. I have aimed to acquaint you, by the printed word, with the detail of the standard ways to hold each device and to let you know each device works in all four methods of dowsing. Much of this I learned by trial and error, sometimes embarrassing error, over a long period, dating from the time I took up the challenge of dowsing, intrigued by Map Dowsing. I searched through many books for even hints on such details as this text contains with only minor helpful results. It was impressed on me how difficult it is for any one person, no matter how gifted with the dowsing faculty, to be able to become well informed and competent, using his gift to its full capacity. The formation of the American Society of Dowsers, Inc., brought together many dowsers from across the country. We were able to exchange ideas and pool our experiences for mutual benefit. As you read this text you are also reaping the benefit of this combined experience. You can apply yourself directly and immediately. to performing these routines. You can avoid blind experimenting and researching through literature for dowsing instructions that are, at best, limited. More than ever before, dowsers are now in agreement that the question you ask as you grasp your device must be worded correctly if you are to have a successful search. We start out as dowsers by discovering we are endowed by nature with this gift that allows us to obtain information by some mysterious means When dowsing was confined to seeking underground water veins, the few questions the dowser must ask were obvious and became standardized. You looked for water. You wanted good water, and in former days, you wanted water near enough to the surface of the ground so it could be found by digging a well. Now we know dowsing is a faculty which we can use to find many things, and obtain factual information about such things. This situation turns our attention directly to our object of search. Nothing can be assumed about this object. We can not take a single feature of this object of search for granted. We must spell out the exact specifications and conditions relating to our subject for each unit search we conduct in the course of solving our dowsing problem. We must tailor-make each question for such a unit search every time we grasp our device and hold it at the ready. We must know enough about the problem to be able to word these questions correctly for clarity and exclusiveness. TAKE TIME TO WORD YOUR QUESTION CAREFULLY All through the instructions we have just completed I have emphasized the necessity of making the physical parts of the routine standard. You have trained yourselves to always grasp a particular device in a certain manner, to position it in a certain way in relation to your body. When you have reached this point in your training you do not have to concentrate on these details when you undertake a search. You can give your full attention to the immediate problem. You can absorb all the facts and circumstances that led to the problem and plan the steps you must take to solve it. Your first step is to word a question for the first unit search that is proper and accurate, and similar questions for all of the other unit searches. LET US LOOK AT QUESTIONS Never forget the very critical relationship between the wording of your question and your chances for a successful search. You will find you can standardize many questions in fields of search for objects you are called on repeatedly to locate. To that extent you can simplify your preparations. In most searches, especially for objects outside your usual experience. you must carefully think out and prepare exact specialized questions for each part of your total problem. In a further chapter. we will go over an extensive organized list of the sort of things and information in the search for which dowsing has proven helpful. This information falls roughly into two groups. For one group you will find many series of questions can be standardized. Once you have prepared a series of questions that work out successfully in a search for any one such item, you can quickly adopt questions from this series for a second search. In the other group, every search may have enough of its own characteristics that you must start from the beginning and prepare a special list of questions. Experience within any such division of a particular kind of subject will, of course. help you in your preparations for the search just ahead of you. You must expect to suit your questions to the search at hand. THINGS IN THEIR NATURAL CONDITION- OR PERMANENTLY PLACED BY MAN Water, ore bodies, gems, oil and gas deposits, all quickly come to mind when we think of this group. In addition, dowsing today is called on to find buried pipes, conduits, tanks and other similar features of our culture. Looking for a water vein, we start out with specifications to cover the nature of the water. We need a minimum, dependable supply of good water. We want to find a supply near enough the surface to make it practical to dig a well. In other cases we look for a supply for a drilled well. We want to find first the general water vein location, then the center-of-flow. You have learned how to standardize such questions. Looking for ore beds, you will find yourself using many similar questions in successive searches. You will be asking for a particular ore. You will want to find both an accessible deposit, not too deep to be mined, and a body of ore containing the desired metal in a percentage content which can be profitably processed. You will want to know that the total amount of the deposit is large enough to justify the investment of developing the mine and installing the processing machinery. You will want to know if the ore outcrops anywhere, so you can obtain samples. You will want to dowse the contours of the deposit, its edges. All of these facts must be incorporated in your questions. You can see that using dowsing as a prospecting tool calls for a standardized approach in wording your questions. The materials you are looking for exist under fairly uniform and known conditions. These conditions are listed in textbooks on geology and mineralogy. The factors under which a deposit can be profitably developed are determined by the immediate economic situation and available technical knowledge. You must become familiar with enough of this background to word your dowsing questions properly. Yet even in prospecting for ore, you may run into conditions that have not as yet found their way into textbooks. Dowsing for ore has the advantage of giving you information about ore deposits the casual prospector or the professional mineralogist would overlook. Another dowser and myself, while conducting a formal prospecting program using Map Dowsing, located an extensive body of tungsten ore, outcropping in a number of places along a fault line of nearly one hundred miles. The tungsten was in a chemical condition that had never before been reported in any commercial deposit. Unfortunately, the percentage content was too low to be mined profitably in competition with sources from foreign lands where the labor costs were cheaper The point I wish to make is, if we had kept to questions based on conditions as found in textbooks for the occurrence of tungsten, we would never have found this ore deposit. Dowsing can find things and reveal facts not yet in textbooks. If you dowse just as a rock hound, for ore samples, semi~precious stones or gems, you must modify your questions to suit your objectives. You may find specimens separated from their source, pieces called 'float'. Dowsing can lead you to the sort of rock formation where you expect to find your immediate object of search. I prize the fact that I once found a piece of casual rock lying on the ground in a wood-lot that contained a slight amount of uranium. I went to this lot, nearly one hundred miles from my home, guided by a Map Dowsed location for uranium, any uranium. There was no known uranium deposit at all close to the spot. Perhaps you are looking for something man has put underground as a permanent fixture, such as pipes. You can develop standard questions for such searching. Working in this field, you have the advantage that something is usually known about such pipes. At the same time you run the risk of finding your target turns out to be unknown pipes. You must cover this possibility in your questions. Do not treat such searches lightly. Learn all of the information you can about your problem before starting on the search. You can usually dowse a single line pattern in such a search that will help you verify what you have found as a target, or disprove it. Make your questions as specific as possible. Do not be afraid to check questions by Information Dowsing as your searching is underway. MISCELLANEOUS THINGS YOU MAY BE SEEKING I will make no attempt to generalize on how to handle this wide range of dowsing problems. As a dowser, you may often be asked to locate lost or mislaid objects. You must be patient as you try to learn from the person who comes to you all of the facts last known about this object of search. You may try to find a person whose whereabouts is unknown. I word the questions to include not only a person lost in the woods, for example, but anyone whose present location is not known to someone who is legitimately interested in that person's welfare. When you try to find a person, you realize each case has its own special circumstances and background. There may be a crime involved. Find out all you can, and carefully plan a series of questions If there is little factual information available, the questions at first must be broad enough to cover all possibilities. Write down your questions and go over them with Information Dowsing. The answers should direct you to a specific line of inquiry. This will call for another list of questions. When you have narrowed down the various possibilities to an indication of what happened, you can ask for a present location of the person and whether he is still alive. These are just suggestions. Dowsing to locate people is not usually successful. It is a field in which only a few dowsers have proven to be well suited. It is a challenge to all dowsers to improve the record of such searches. 'REMNANCE' You may be led astray by a curious condition, sometimes called 'Remnance'. This word is used to identify a location a dowser has found where it is reasonable to believe the lost object or person has been for a while, but is there no longer. A dowser can get a positive reading for such a location, both on the map and in the field, and be disappointed. We do not know why this happens. Before ending your search for something or someone lost, believing you have a correct answer, set aside your dowsing and free your mind from the problem. After a brief rest period, ask if the person or object lost is still at that location. EVERY DOWSER SEEMS TO BE SUITED TO A FEW FIELDS As we collect more and more accounts of the work of contemporary dowsers, a pattern emerges showing us that a dowser may become competent in only a few fields. This probably is the result of his areas of interest. A dowser collects background and is able to pose the proper questions in the fields in which he is informed. He becomes informed because his own general training, background and inclination have already created a firm interest in these fields. The assumption that all dowsers seek water locations in not true. Once you have learned to dowse, you may find your interest centered in an activity you had never planned to work at. Your attention is drawn to this field because dowsing has given you a special angle to apply to it. We are all different in our regular, daily lives. It is not remarkable that we should, as dowsers, demonstrate these differences. Some dowsers turn to seeking lost people but would have no interest in prospecting. Many dowsers today seek the answers to personal and health problems. A few dowsers who have scholastic training have used their talent to good advantage in archeological research. Others call on dowsing to meet emergencies, to decide what to do next. When we look at the implications of the wording of the dowsing questions, we can only assume that no one person would be interested enough to acquire all the knowledge needed to enable him to pose proper questions in all fields of search. Add to that the ordinary differences in people and their interests, we can easily understand why dowsers can legitimately tend to be specialists. You should keep this in mind as you plan to apply your dowsing skill. Find out where your interest and opportunity lies. In the areas where these two factors meet, try to develop your dowsing skill to its limit. At the same time, do not hesitate to make searches outside these familiar fields. Approach these unusual subjects cautiously, knowing you are inexperienced in these areas. In this way you will broaden your knowledge of dowsing. DOWSING AIDS OR QUESTION SUBSTITUTES When I first started to study what was known and written about dowsing, I learned about the use of witnesses and samples. I often read about involved schemes where a dowser would make use of what I will call a chart, an arrangement with which a dowser would get a response from his device to indicate a location on a sheet of paper or a card, such a location carrying a distinct code of some sort. Other schemes called for a pendulum to swing back and forth a specific number of times. The dowser had a list of things he might be seeking. Each of these items had its own number of swings. The dowser counted the swings, consulted his list, and obtained the answer to the question he had posed. I experimented briefly with samples, and then tried to work without them. I found a clearly worded question would give me the same results without using any samples. I never did try to adopt any chart or list for my dowsing. The use of witnesses, samples and charts is part of the history of dowsing. They have been part of the routines of many highly successful dowsers, and are still in use. The part they play cannot be disregarded in any discussion of dowsing. Their use points up an interesting fact. If a dowser receives training in them in his early practice, he will find himself committed to the use of whatever one of these features he learned as a part of his dowsing. There are other unique conditions you may hear about. You may meet dowsers who can't dowse if they are wearing rubbers. Others won't try to dowse if they are barefooted. Some dowsers hesitate to go out and dowse in the rain. You may read some dowsers can only use a fork cut from a particular kind of tree. All such dowsers are sincere, and their skill is adequate when they dowse under the conditions they feel are correct. Coming into active dowsing somewhat later in life than many, I took the position it should work for me anywhere and at any time. I put this to a severe test not long ago. I made arrangements to meet a party one morning in the winter at a wood-lot where he had a dry drilled well, some thirty miles away. When I reached the wood-lot. it was fifteen degrees below zero, and there was two feet of snow on the ground. I can testify dowsing works when wearing heavy gloves and rubber overshoes. I found the well was not too far from a satisfactory water vein. The owner used dynamite and obtained a good water supply. The simpler you can keep your dowsing routines, the better chance you have to develop your total skill. If you start out believing dowsing can be performed simply, you will have no problem. Yet you should understand the place of these dowsing aids in the total picture. li will reinforce the need for wording your questions properly and correctly. WITNESSES AND SAMPLES Dowsers use witnesses and samples mostly when looking for things in nature, water, ore, oil or gas. A dowser may have a number of small glass tubes or vials that he fastens on the tip of his fork. Others hold such a tube in one of the hands that grasps the fork or holds the pendulum. If the dowser is looking for water, he will fill the tube with water. The water serves, for him, the same purpose as the asking of a dowsing question. If the dowser is prospecting, he will take a small sample of the kind of ore he is seeking and hold it in one of his hands as he grasps his device. Pendulums are sometimes made hollow, so samples may be placed inside them. Hazards can arise in the use of samples. A dowser may have an ore sample in which the important metal is nickel. He is prospecting for a nickel deposit. He may pass over a nickel deposit which has a different composition than that of the ore sample he is holding. The ore takes the place of a specific question, the question being, Am l over an ore deposit 'exactly like' the sample I am holding? I have heard dowsers for oil deposits say they have passed over possible discoveries because the oil in the ground was of a different composition from the oil sample that was being carried. The words, samples and witnesses, are found in dowsing literature, appearing at times to have the same meaning. A distinction is made by some writers. A sample is a small amount of the material, liquid or solid, for which the dowser is searching. A witness can be some article used by a person who is missing. This is given to the dowser to help him concentrate on his search. Witnesses and samples can be used with any dowsing method, Field Dowsing, Remote Dowsing, Map Dowsing and Information Dowsing. CHARTS I am using the sub-heading Charts to cover a wide variety of schemes that have been used by dowsers, and in many cases still are. Such charts usually are an aid for a dowser who uses the pendulum and limits himself to searching for one particular kind of object. There are true charts, made in circular design on a sheet of paper or cardboard. The circle can be twelve to fifteen inches in diameter. On its perimeter answers to personal problems may be placed so no two answers are directly opposite each other. Another circle may have answers about one's health arranged in the same manner. A person holds a pendulum over a center of the circle, asks the pendulum to respond, and the pendulum picks out the appropriate answer from the total selection, if one of them is correct. This is an indirect method of getting a question stated specifically. A modification of this sort of chart has short segments of colors, spaced bands, each of a different shade, with open spaces opposite each color, making up the circle. Such a chart can be used for different searches. A person can set up a code that will allow the analysis of water, giving different classifications of water, potable, mineralized, containing sulphur, contaminated. Each of these classifications is assigned a color. The dowser holds a sample of water and a pendulum over the center of the circle. He notes toward what color the pendulum swings. The dowser consults his list or code of colors and knows the condition of the water. Another dowser may assign a metal to each color. He holds a sample of ore and the pendulum over the center of the chart, asking for the most valuable metal in the sample. He notes toward which color the pendulum swings, consults his color code and has received his dowsing answer. Such charts can be worked by a dowser holding a short wand or steel spring device in one hand, and using a pointer to touch each color in turn with the other until he gets a response. If the dowser uses angle rods or the forked stick shape, he can get a helper to touch the various sections of the circle on the chart until the response comes to his device. There are lists made based on the number of swings of a pendulum used to analyze ore samples. I described the operation of counting the swings earlier under this heading. A typical list could start: one swing is for gold. two swings are for silver, three swings are for copper, etc. The dowser would hold the ore sample, asking for its content. Such lists can be used in a very limited application of dowsing. SOPHISTICATED CHARTS Now that we know that lists of this type can be used, we can apply the idea to a most modern, sophisticated approach to a dowsing problem. Perhaps you have a problem, a location problem, and you know only that your target is in the United States. Find an atlas or other source where all the states are listed. Take your pendulum and a pointer and ask, Is my target in this state? and proceed to touch each state until you get a dowsing response. In a road map atlas you will find the counties of each state listed. Turn to the county listings and repeat your routine, You will soon know in which county your target can be found. Turn to the map of the state, locate the county, and use whatever method of Map Dowsing you wish to pinpoint the target. Early in the prospecting program I carried on, as mentioned a short while back in the text, I made a list of metals with commercial value which might be found in ore form in the northeastern pan of the country. As I remember it, the list contained about fifteen metals. I would place a Geological Survey map on the table in front of me, the list of metals beside it. I held a pointer in my left hand, the pendulum in my right hand. I asked the standard question, "Is this metal to be found in commercial quantities on the map in front of me?" and started to touch each metal as written on the list. Whenever I got a Yes answer, I made a note of the name of the metal. When a map had been completely checked against the list, I Map Dowsed for the actual location of each ore indicated. At a later stage in my program, I Map Dowsed for outcropping, based on the locations I had already made. My memory today tells me I went out to the various areas indicated and found more than one hundred outcroppings, about ninety percent of the number shown by Map Dowsing. RESPECT ANY DOWSING ROUTINE PROVEN SUCCESSFUL Dowsing is just emerging from centuries of word-of-mouth instruction. During this period many highly successful dowsers lived out their lives without knowing what other dowsers were doing. The individual ingenuity such isolated dowsers displayed cannot be disregarded or discredited. Rather it is a legacy we can build on. Every dowsing practice that has been successful has included the same basic steps we recognize in this text. You are getting a condensed and organized story of hundreds of centuries of dowsing experience. You can start putting your knowledge and skill to work with the confidence that you are following in the footsteps of dowsers whose total of successful searches number in the millions.