Thread: Water divining

Water Divining is a delusion, and must be recognised as such.

See http://www.skeptics.com.au/publicati...divining-test/

My daughter has this skill. We wanted to put a bore down and I gave her a couple of welding rods to see what she could come up with. We marked the spot that she choose with a couple of rocks and got the drillers in. I show the chap the spot that Alison had selected he than set off around the paddock with his own rods and ended up at the exact same spot. Good water about 60 meters down.

It's a fascinating skill!!!!I have heard the same ting about someone who can putting their hand on the shoulder of someone who can't and getting success.
Sceptical??? Well I can't answer that but the success stories abound ion number so their must be something in it.
Our driller found 550 gallons an hour three and a half meters from the house which meant a very cheap electrical installation for the pressure system. The bore has been working for 20 years with NO interruption to supply at all.
I do think our "evolution" as sophisticated beings has lost some spirituality along the way.

It's not a skill or a gift, it just confirms there's a lot of water under the ground.
When so called "successful water diviners" are put under rigorous testing their success rate comes down to pure chance.

In the most comprehensive testing of divining claims done by Dick Smith and Australian Skeptics, a Mr Randi put up $10,000 if diviners could find water, metal or gold above pure chance and none of them came even close to meeting their claims.

This is a quote from the website I quoted above.

Though diviners will continue to be hired by believers in such powers, and wells will be dug with great precision on spots located by forked-stick folks, these water supplies will not prove that dowsing works. They will only prove that there is a great deal of water down under the earth, and we do not need silly folks wiggling sticks to tell us that.

The maps for the underground watering system at the local golf club were found to be out of whack when they decided to lay new lines. They were hitting pipelines where they thought there were none. I was asked to find them, which I did, with a wire!

I once met a guy who used a forked stick. It didn't work for me until he grabbed my arm. It turned so quick it cut my hand.

I have the water divining ability and have found water every time, I use wire.

I manage to find water every time I turn the kitchen tap on.

Numerous studies since 1948 have found no reliability greater than chance.

Any dowsers are encouraged to put themselves forward for the US$1,000,000 prize available. https://au.news.yahoo.com/technology...you-a-million/

This is just a specific call - the JREF Foundation actually has a $1,000,000 prize waiting (since 1964) for anyone who can prove any one of dozens of paranormal powers.

Given that it's been waiting for proof for 50-odd years so far (including numerous dowsers), it sounds pretty safe - http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html )

That is an interesting subject!
Particularly since I don't believe it and write it off as 'another pseudoscience' - but I can do it. So could my father and all of my Australian family.
My theory is that we have the ability to sense something - maybe water, maybe geological variations of some sort that are sometimes connected with water underground - whatever it is. The hazeltwigs or fencing wire are just a way of amplifying minute muscle tension variations we are not aware of. The way they are typically held is inherently unstable and some muscle tension is required to stop them/it moving by gravitiy. Maybe because we can't feel the very fine involuntary movement we don;t correct for it and gravity makes the wires/sticks move out of balance.
As for rigorous testing, I know it doesn't work and don't believe it would ever work. The chances of being right under pressure will prevent any success anyway.
But I think it's a bizarre phenomenon that has been practiced and believed in for centuries or millenia.....
Interesting isn't it?

The best "proof" that I have seen occurred when a farmer asked me to divine an irrigation bore that I was going to drill. I wandered around the paddock, letting the wires lead me to a spot that they indicated was the best chance of large volume water. What I didn't know was that he had an old, local diviner in the day before to do the same thing. This guy had been doing it for 80 years. I stuck the wire in the ground and told him that this was the spot. Two 18" away was a cow paddy. He flipped it over to reveal that it had a white "X" painted on it. He tested me against the old bloke from the day before. Being 18" apart after wandering around a 200 acre paddock is pretty freaky!

I must add that I only use it to find large volume of bore water. I can't tell the quality.

I reckon jhovel is on the money. Maybe humans have instincts from ages ago which are not used now and we don't know they exist and wouldn't trust them in any case. The wire is like a placebo which offers an explanation for events which may be generated by natural forces within us which are set free when unshackled by restrictive beliefs. A lot of humans would have an instinct about where water may be under a landscape and the wire allows the instincts to overcome doubt and other beliefs. The inner person drives the wire to find the water, not vice versa. So "divining" works for some just like a placebo might fix a headache. Use it if it works! But as Dick Smith proved, human instinct doesn't know where someone has buried a drum of water.

Originally Posted by wireliner

The best "proof" that I have seen occurred when a farmer asked me to divine an irrigation bore that I was going to drill. I wandered around the paddock, letting the wires lead me to a spot that they indicated was the best chance of large volume water. What I didn't know was that he had an old, local diviner in the day before to do the same thing. This guy had been doing it for 80 years. I stuck the wire in the ground and told him that this was the spot. Two 18" away was a cow paddy. He flipped it over to reveal that it had a white "X" painted on it. He tested me against the old bloke from the day before. Being 18" apart after wandering around a 200 acre paddock is pretty freaky!.

Unfortunately that doesn't prove much or anything. Basic Hydrogeography will tell you that aquifers are not small spots under an paddock but very large (hundreds through to hundreds of thousands of acres) in size. That farmer could have struck water by drilling anywhere in his paddock. A more impressive skill would be the ability to find a dry spot under a paddock as these are much rarer but of course this has no practical application

There is no "mysterious inner force" but there is something called an "ideomotor reaction". This is where the diviner uses the surroundings including topography, unconscious clues dropped by the client or others and other hunches to unconsciously move the stick or wire. A water diviner will always looks good when he tells the farmer to drill in the gully and not on the hill Where the flow is 10 times less but it's not rocket science the the aquifer pressure would be lower at that point.

The thing is the diviner HONESTLY believes the water is moving the stick or wire but they are doing it unconsciously. The same reaction is observed with users of a ouija board. where users spell out messages from the dead they believe they are being sent.

From Wikipedia.

Paranormal and supernatural beliefs associated with Ouija have been harshly criticized by the scientific community, since they are characterized as pseudoscience. The action of the board can be parsimoniously explained by unconscious movements of those controlling the pointer, a psychophysiological phenomenon known as the ideomotor effect.^[3][4][5][6]

My point was that divining led both of us to nearly the same spot. A unconfined aquifer is generally "flat". That is, water 30m deep on the flat will be 60m deep on a 30m hill, 20m deep in a 10m gully. Water does move underground. It's called migration. What I divine is a spot where the water is moving the quickest. In the S.E of SA, quite often that can mean a cave or a large fracture. You stick a hole there and borehole entry is significantly higher than sticking a hole in a dense, less porous formation.

I am a fourth generation waterwell driller. I have drilled all over the S.E of SA. I know that I will hit water anywhere. It is the volume for irrigating where divining helps.

Just for interest sake, the deepest aquifer I have seen was in Tirrawarra #64. Flowed to surface in a Drill Stem Test set at 10,200ft. Not bad water either.

The picture is of 8 Mile Creek, SA. That is not surface water. It is the spot where underground water meets the surface and enters the sea.

Originally Posted by BobL

Unfortunately that doesn't prove much or anything. Basic Hydrogeography will tell you that aquifers are not small spots under an paddock but very large (hundreds through to hundreds of thousands of acres) in size. That farmer could have struck water by drilling anywhere in his paddock. A more impressive skill would be the ability to find a dry spot under a paddock as these are much rarer but of course this has no practical application

There is no "mysterious inner force" but there is something called an "ideomotor reaction". This is where the diviner uses the surroundings including topography, unconscious clues dropped by the client or others and other hunches to unconsciously move the stick or wire. A water diviner will always looks good when he tells the farmer to drill in the gully and not on the hill Where the flow is 10 times less but it's not rocket science the the aquifer pressure would be lower at that point.

The thing is the diviner HONESTLY believes the water is moving the stick or wire but they are doing it unconsciously. The same reaction is observed with users of a ouija board. where users spell out messages from the dead they believe they are being sent.

From Wikipedia.

Oh boy, here we go again...water divining. I grew up in the far west of NSW. Water was and still is a precious commodity. Water diviners were and still are well respected for their ability. There are many examples of success in the most unlikely places. Here is one:
A friend of mine purchased a property near Sofala NSW. He contacted a drilling company and they suggested drilling along the nearby dry creek bed. No water was found after several dry attempts. He gave up on the idea.
Upon visiting him, I was told the story. I asked him if I could have a "look." Taking two pieces of fencing wire I walked around the house, ranging further out each circuit, until the wires crossed. I then went around the house in the opposite direction. The wires crossed at the same spot.
Knowing how much money he had put into previous attempts, I suggested he try another diviner, a chap from Hill End I happened to know. Some months later he contacted the old bloke who said the spot was just near an old tyre lying in the paddock... My marker from my previous trip. All unknown to the old bloke.
The drillers were called back in. They were doubtful as the house was on top of a hill and their previous attempts had been futile in a much more likely spot. To add strength to their argument they agreed that if water was found there would be no charge. If not, it would be hourly rate, as they thought it was all a waste of time.
Good water at sixty two feet! We refer to the property as Free Wells.
Bob, your comment about the difficulty finding a dry spot is pretty silly. Many the well has been dug with a dusty bottom. I agree there are vast amounts of underground water, but often the depths are beyond practical drilling. The art is finding shallow wells.
Good water diviners don't shop for information. When I was a kid, there was a well respected chap in town (Wilcannia.) The only information he required was the address and which paddock. I used to often go with him to learn. Farmers prefer not to furnish too much info as they want to get value out of the divining not just confirmation.
As for the Dick Smith Fiasco..... Find water in plastic pipes a foot under the surface, laid the day before.... You'd have to be brain dead.
Here's the funny thing... Where my wires cross there is water. Where they stay straight there is none, or at least not a drillable depth. Ive been doing this for about forty years and haven't had a dry well. Often the flow is insufficient and the bore has been backfilled.
I can give you many other examples of confirmed two party divinings should you be interested.

Originally Posted by chambezio

I do think our "evolution" as sophisticated beings has lost some spirituality along the way.

I'm interested to know the connection between wire and water. I thought water diviners used sticks in days gone by.

TT