In this country where water wars are being fought between tribes over vanishing water holes due to fast diminishing forests, farmers are asking help from the most unlikely sources—witches.

Nanay Selda Timora is a bent 72-year-old herbal practitioner. Throwing suspicious glances over several farmers hunched over her, she holds two guava sticks measuring three feet each, probing the dry earth. Hal-dragging her gaunt frame, she walks and probes for almost an hour across the rocky and arid soil that used to grow cabbages. In an instant, her hands tremble, her arms quiver and she shrieks saying, “Here, dig here!” The farmers dig for almost two hours and suddenly water spurts from the dry caked earth.

Nanay Selda, the water witch, has done it again.

How? It is no secret. Water witching has existed for hundreds of years all over the world.


The ‘Force’ is with Her

Nanay Selda is no necromancer, as water witches, water diviners or dowsers are ordinary people gifted with the art of finding water.

Fr. Herve Gardeu, a French Canadian missionary priest in Davao who popularized water witching in the city in the early 80s says, “Dowsing is the action of a person--called the dowser--using a rod, stick or other device--called a dowsing rod or stick or divining--to locate such things as underground water.”

“There’s nothing mysterious here, some have the gift, some don’t, some have learned it like Nanay Selda,” says Fr. Gardeu who does not only run a parish of 5,000 people but also looks for the water of the Davao Development Foundation through water witching.

Nanay Selda says she is guided by a “force” when she extends her arms using the guava branches. Her arms contort as the Y-shaped points of the guava twitch upon locating water.

Scientists Attempt to Explain

Various theories have been given as to what causes the rods to move: electromagnetic or other subtle geological forces, suggestion from others or from geophysical observations, ESP and other paranormal explanations.

Of more interest than why the rods move, however, is the issue of whether dowsing works. Obviously, many people believe it does. Dowsing and other forms of divination have been around for thousands of years. There are large societies of dowsers in America and Europe and dowsers practice their art every day in all parts of the world. There have even been scientists in recent years that have offered proof that dowsing works. There must be something to it, then, or so it seems.

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