In Defense of the Water Witches

[rashore]

Quote

In 2017, a couple in Stratford upon Avon, England requested that a technician from Severn Trent, the water company that serves their region, come out to replace the water line to their house from the main under the street. First, he had to locate the buried pipe, and the couple were surprised to see the technician walk over the street with a couple of bent rods.

Woe to the water witch in the age of social media. The couple, perplexed and amused to see this spectacle, announced it on their family WhatsApp group, where it seized the attention of their daughter Sally Le Page, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford. Le Page tweeted Severn Trent: “Why, @stwater, in 2017, are you using divining rods to ‘find’ the location of underwater pipes when there is zero evidence they work?”

http://thenightshirt.com/?p=4436

 

[docyabut2]

There was all the good or bad  witches of the mother earth beliefs that existed.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_views_of_divinity

[Grim Reaper 6]

5 hours ago, docyabut2 said:

There was all the good or bad  witches of the mother earth beliefs that existed.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_views_of_divinity

Sorry but a water Witch is a term for using metal rods or  wooden sticks that will located water. It a method that has been used for hundreds of years, I don't know how it works, but it does.

[Alchopwn]

15 hours ago, docyabut2 said:

There was all the good or bad  witches of the mother earth beliefs that existed.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_views_of_divinity

You have me puzzled.  How can we pass a moral judgement about dowsing water pipes?

Edited July 15, 2019 by Alchopwn

[+Desertrat56]

When I was a kid my uncle had put in pipes around his half acre yard to water stuff.  Things happened over many years and the spigots got buried.  He hired a man to use dowsing rods to find them.  We followed him around and those things do work.  He found all 3 spigots and my uncle dug them up and fixed them so he could water his trees.  I have used dowsing rods to show the kids that we have an energy field and I have used them to find water on my property.

[Oniomancer]

My father was a plumber and picked up dowsing as part of his job. He wasn't what I would call a superstitious person either.

[Emma_Acid]

On 15/07/2019 at 5:25 AM, Manwon Lender said:

Sorry but a water Witch is a term for using metal rods or  wooden sticks that will located water. It a method that has been used for hundreds of years, I don't know how it works, but it does.

It literally doesn't.

[+joc]

22 minutes ago, Emma_Acid said:

It literally doesn't.

  Water has a 'magnetic' pull to it.  It has something to do with the gravitational forces of the universe including our own moon.

I have been in the irrigation industry for over thirty years and I can find a pipe in the ground with almost 100% accuracy using two marking flags bent in the L shape.  

Also...want to know how ripe a watermelon is?  Take one straw out of a broom and lay it on top of the watermelon...it will turn all by itself.  
The more it turns, the riper the watermelon.  

 

 

[Essan]

The fact that those few people in the country specifically employed to locate water pipes, using dowsing (alongside other methods) suggests that there must be something in it  
How or why it works I have no idea.   But I have no idea how a mobile phone works either.   Are mobile phones superstitious nonsense?

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

Ok, I would like to give an *opinion* here. They do work - if a human works the rods. They won't work if a mechanical device works the rods. My theory is based on Luigi Galvani's experiment with frog legs. Yes, frog legs. To wit:

"The connection between electricity (movement of electrons) and biology was established early on, when Luigi Galvani, around 1780, wired a frog to a metal railing, hoping to see the effects of a lightning strike. He observed wild twitching of the frog's legs, with or without lightning. He had discovered (unknowingly) the generation of electrical current by Galvanic Cells (named after Galvani), and the electrical nature of nerve stimulation of muscles."

So therein may lie the solution to all this. Somehow the water flow generates an electrical current that, when properly channeled, stimulates the muscles in our arms. 

That's my story, but I'll be damned if I'm sticking to it should some smart ass that knows what the hell they're talking about says "fooie".  

Edited July 21, 2019 by Earl.Of.Trumps

[Buzz_Light_Year]

I've done it with bent coat hangers. I've found sewer and water pipes. It really gets strong when I walk in proximity to our water well and it also works when I walk under power lines.

I tried it just to see if there was anything to the dowsing and to my surprise it worked. Now as a disclaimer I knew where everything was before I started so it may or may not have impacted the results.

I'll have to try it again to see if I can find some underground pipes I don't know are there.

[Grim Reaper 6]

On 7/20/2019 at 8:08 PM, Emma_Acid said:

It literally doesn't.

Sorry, but your wrong.

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

On 7/22/2019 at 6:40 AM, Manwon Lender said:

Sorry, but your wrong.

Yes, I just can't believe that all the people that say "it works" are pranking.  I never tried it myself but I think it work just based on people who say so and I've heard many.

During the Y2K scare, a neighbor had a well company come in and dig a well "just in case" the water system failed.
My neighbor said the man found where to dig by using dowsing rods. it worked, first time. Too many stories like that to just brush under the carpet. There's got to be something to it.

[+Desertrat56]

9 minutes ago, Earl.Of.Trumps said:

Yes, I just can't believe that all the people that say "it works" are pranking.  I never tried it myself but I think it work just based on people who say so and I've heard many.

During the Y2K scare, a neighbor had a well company come in and dig a well "just in case" the water system failed.
My neighbor said the man found where to dig by using dowsing rods. it worked, first time. Too many stories like that to just brush under the carpet. There's got to be something to it.

There is.  I learned to use dowsing rods and I know they work.  People who don't believe it have never been around them or seen them in use.  Any one can learn to use them.

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

Many years ago, I saw a Discovery Channel show on Stonehenge, where these forces in dowsing are said to be strong. A team of investigators went there to look into, mainly other things, but took time out to try dowsing. One proponent tried it and he had success in a certain spot. He struggled, his face was strained. It showed that dowsing worked, IMO.

Next the team tried using a mechanical robot of some kind to emulate the dowsing process. Failure. This is exactly what lead me to believe that the electrical stimulation of nerves by Galvanic cells, may very well be at play here. 

Just an opinion

[glorybebe]

My dad used a rod to find water.  I wanted to see for myself.  I could feel pull and see the rod dip.  I had found another spot that we dug to see if water was there, also.  We found water.  I totally believe in it since I have done it

[Oniomancer]

On 7/21/2019 at 1:41 AM, Earl.Of.Trumps said:

Ok, I would like to give an *opinion* here. They do work - if a human works the rods. They won't work if a mechanical device works the rods. My theory is based on Luigi Galvani's experiment with frog legs. Yes, frog legs. To wit:

"The connection between electricity (movement of electrons) and biology was established early on, when Luigi Galvani, around 1780, wired a frog to a metal railing, hoping to see the effects of a lightning strike. He observed wild twitching of the frog's legs, with or without lightning. He had discovered (unknowingly) the generation of electrical current by Galvanic Cells (named after Galvani), and the electrical nature of nerve stimulation of muscles."

So therein may lie the solution to all this. Somehow the water flow generates an electrical current that, when properly channeled, stimulates the muscles in our arms. 

That's my story, but I'll be damned if I'm sticking to it should some smart ass that knows what the hell they're talking about says "fooie".  

When properly channeled, which is why I think James Randi's tests all failed. The parameters didn't match RL ground conditions.

Granted, there are are some places where you're over an aquifer and you're going to hit water no matter where you drill but there are others where they could end up drilling a dozen holes and hitting nothing before they called in a dowser.

[XenoFish]

On 7/15/2019 at 12:25 AM, Manwon Lender said:

Sorry but a water Witch is a term for using metal rods or  wooden sticks that will located water. It a method that has been used for hundreds of years, I don't know how it works, but it does.

It's nothing more than the ideomotor effect and luck.

[psyche101]

 

[Buzz_Light_Year]

12 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

 

Well I for one would state that the experiment is bogus. If the witcher is picking up magnetic fields by dowsing then water in a plastic bottle, above ground wouldn't generate much of a field.

JMO.

[Golden Duck]

1 hour ago, Buzz_Light_Year said:

Well I for one would state that the experiment is bogus. If the witcher is picking up magnetic fields by dowsing then water in a plastic bottle, above ground wouldn't generate much of a field.

JMO.

It looked like the bottles were about 2 litres in capacity.  A pipe with an internal diameter of 25mm would need more than four metres to hold that amount of water.

Is the field somehow dependent on dimensions rather than volume?

[Emma_Acid]

On 20/07/2019 at 12:50 PM, joc said:

  Water has a 'magnetic' pull to it.  It has something to do with the gravitational forces of the universe including our own moon.

I have been in the irrigation industry for over thirty years and I can find a pipe in the ground with almost 100% accuracy using two marking flags bent in the L shape.  

Also...want to know how ripe a watermelon is?  Take one straw out of a broom and lay it on top of the watermelon...it will turn all by itself.  
The more it turns, the riper the watermelon.  

 

 

This is just completely wrong.

Please explain exactly what this "magnetic" pull is. It can't be gravity, because the water doesn't have enough mass, it can't be magnetism because the "straw out of a broom" is not magnetic.

What is this mysterious property that water has that science has so far failed to discover?

If you can't describe it, it doesn't exist by the way. Just saying "oh it exists" is pure handwaving.

[Emma_Acid]

1 hour ago, Buzz_Light_Year said:

Well I for one would state that the experiment is bogus. If the witcher is picking up magnetic fields by dowsing then water in a plastic bottle, above ground wouldn't generate much of a field.

JMO.

What?

1. How is water creating a magnetic field?

2. How does it being "above ground" affect this "magnetism"?

[Emma_Acid]

On 22/07/2019 at 11:40 AM, Manwon Lender said:

Sorry, but your wrong.

Please link to peer reviewed, double blind experiments showing the validity of your claims, and describe exactly how water creates this effect.

I'll wait.

[Buzz_Light_Year]

4 hours ago, Emma_Acid said:

What?

1. How is water creating a magnetic field?

2. How does it being "above ground" affect this "magnetism"?

I bolded the word IF in my post because I don't know. Even though water itself may not create a magnetic field the fissures the water resides in may.

I watched an old man witch a graveyard on PBS that they were relocating and he placed red flags at the corners of each grave and he got them all right. Well got them all right for what they showed in the film.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a3199/1281661/

Quote

 

Now comes a massive set of data that suggests there may be some validity to dowsers' claims. The encouraging words are contained in a study financed by the German government and published in the Journal Of Scientific Exploration, http://www.jse.com/betz_toc.html, which is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published at Stanford University.

The project was conducted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit in the hope of finding cheaper and more reliable ways of locating drinking water supplies in Third World countries.

Researchers analyzed the successes and failures of dowsers in attempting to locate water at more than 2000 sites in arid regions of Sri Lanka, Zaire, Kenya, Namibia and Yemen over a 10-year period. To do this, researchers teamed geological experts with experienced dowsers and then set up a scientific study group to evaluate the results. Drill crews guided by dowsers didn't hit water every time, but their success rate was impressive. In Sri Lanka, for example, they drilled 691 holes and had an overall success rate of 96 percent.

"In hundreds of cases the dowsers were able to predict the depth of the water source and the yield of the well to within 10 percent or 20 percent," says Hans-Dieter Betz, a physicist at the University of Munich, who headed the research group.