The man who brought us The Secret Life of Plants has compiled a
350-page epic of dowsing: the search - "with the aid of a hand-held
instrument such as a forked stick or a perpendicular bob on the end
of a string" - for virtually anything hidden. The search for water
and minerals by dowsing has a history thousands of years old. In
the fifth century B.C., Herodotus wrote about the use of divining
rods; a 17th-century French baron is said to have discovered
countless mines by dowsing, many of them still being worked a
hundred years later; the beliefs of a Spanish sect revolved around
seeing "things hidden in the inward bowels of the earth." More
recently, dowsing has been turned to other uses: an auto mechanic
spots engine problems by dowsing, physicians dowse for ailments in
their patients, rescuers search for downed aircraft and lost
people. Despite the longevity of the practice, no one has
discovered how it works, a mystery which has put dowsing at odds
with the more rational world of science. Bird quotes one dowser as
saying: "Geologists and geophysicists in the major oil companies
are my worst enemies. All their professionalism and book-learning
is threatened by my approach." Dowsers also have been suspected,
through time, of cooperating with "infernal forces." Along with the
anecdotes, the book abounds with theories of dowsing's logic, from
"invisible corpuscular bodies" to electromagnetism to celestial
bodies - all of which are given due consideration. It's an
unselective, and sooner-or-later monotonous omnium gatherum - best
dipped into, maybe, by dowsing. (Kirkus Reviews)
"To dowse," says the author of this definitive study of the
divining art, "is to search with the aid of a handheld instrument
such as a forked stick or a pendular bob on the end of a string -
for anything: subterranean water flowing in a narrow underground
fissure, a pool of oil or a vein of mineral ore, a buried sewer
pipe or electrical cable, an airplane downed in a mountain
wilderness, a disabled ship helplessly adrift in a gale, a lost
wallet or dog, a missing person, perhaps a buried treasure."
Co-author of The Secret Life of Plants, Christopher Bird has filled
this book with exciting, documented stories, most of them
illustrated with photographs and diagrams. It provides a complete
history of the art of dowsing around the world and discusses in
detail the various existing theories attempting to explain this
extraordinary phenomenon.
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