Just FYI, dowsers never, or very rarely, claim a "pull from an unknown source. " I’ve never seen a single one that said it. You’d have to go a long way to find one.
The usual claim made by dowsers is :
Their subconscious mind detects the water
Their hands twitch slightly when they detect water
The dowsing rod magnifies the twitch to make it more visible
I have literally never found a dowser who denies that he is moving the rod himself.
cites:
Dowsing is a way of using your body’s own reflexes to help you interpret the world around you … What we learn to do in dowsing is take careful note of certain reflex responses – a small movement of the wrist muscles, for example – and work out what those responses mean according to the context in which those responses occurred. http://www-sop.inria.fr/agos-sophia/sis/dowsing/dowsdean.html
1.7. Why do the rods move?
The movement of the dowsing rods is clearly initiated by muscular action.
(that’s what a cite looks like, Czarcasm.)
No, science is not limited to things that are consistently repeatable. In fact, almost everything scientists study behave in somewhat random fashion. Lab rats don’t all do the same thing under the same circumstances. People respond differently to drugs and medical procedures. Even elementary particles don’t behave predictably.
That’s why scientists have developed statistics. Using this tool, scientists can determine whether a new drug is better than a placebo, even if it doesn’t cure 100% of the patients 100% of the time. Or if dowsing rods improve someone’s chance of finding a buried item.
This site says that “Divining depends on being able to sync your energy effectively with your target”, “Divining Rods can be used to trace the flow of “Chi” though any space. This can refer to your home, garden, office or any other spaces. A single rod is used to trace the path of chi. For good feng shui, the chi must flow evenly though the pace. The Divining rod shows you the chi path so you can make adjustments to the organization of your space to direct the chi flow”, “Divining Rods can be used to find missing items such as keys or your wallet. I believe this works because everything has an energy field and our common use of items trains our subconscious minds to identify with these fields. The divining rods can be used as a sort of antenna to help us find items”, and “Divining rods can also be used to provide information that is not revealed visually, such as the genders of unborn children and even physical maladies.”.
This site tell you that you can communicate with the dead using divining rods.
This site claims they work because of Auric Fields".
In what way does this contradict my cite? This site tell you that you can communicate with the dead using divining rods.
[/quote]
Not written by a dowser, and asks: "So just who is moving the rods? Many believe that the movement is caused by subconscious muscle movement of the person holding the rods, similar to the belief that the moving planchette of a Ouija board is nothing more than subconscious movement of the participants. "
They suggest other possibilities too, but they directly state that the rods might be moved by the dowser.
I never said they contradicted your cite-In fact, I never referred to your cite at all in that post. I was merely showing some of the many explanations of what they supposedly do and how they supposedly do it.
He’s pretty good at spotting where utility lines usually and/or where they cannot be due to local laws. Would you be at all mystified or amazed if he had done the same thing without the hocus-pocus and said that he was able to do this through years of training and observation?
Not as far as you might think.
“There is no muscular action when the rod dips,” says every good dowser, “except as I resist the pull of the stick.” –Henry Gross and his Dowsing Rod, by Kenneth Roberts, page 9
When certain sensitive individuals hold between their fingers a flexible Y-shaped branch, with no intention of bending it, twisting it or moving it, the branch will, under certain conditions, turn downward. It bends in the hands of the individual who is holding it-- and even seems to turn by itself-- with extreme force and independent of the will of the operator…the rod twists down with almost irresistible force… – ibid., page 12
…the movements of the stick are so violent that at times the stick breaks. The portions gripped by the dowser do not move; only the remainder of the stick has turned…–ibid, page 19
I don’t doubt these observations, but they are explained by simple physics and levers.
Peter Morris, meet Henry Gross and Kenneth Roberts. His books are full of dowsers saying they “feel a pull,” yet they didn’t move the rod, consciously or otherwise.
Which doesn’t explain long-distance and map dowsing at all.
"The results so far have been, in Carrís words “disappointing.” The ranking of the targets by remote viewing versus random chance has been “borderline” at best. Carr is convinced remote viewing is real, but is not sure why his viewers havenít been able to do better in the Randi Challenge. “It may be because the pool is too large,” says Carr. It has been found that when remote viewers work targets from a “pool” of targets, they often tend to gravitate toward another target in the pool that interests them more. So youíll get a viewer providing good data about the wrong target. There is also what Carr calls “The Skeptic Effect.” He feels that Randiís staunch hard line skepticism may in fact effect the outcome of the test. "
If you doubted the veracity of the report given by **Czarcasm’s **cite, perhaps you should have clicked through the link it gives to its source, which contains this direct from the psychic in question:
*Somebody claims that they once heard a psychic use this excuse. The writer may have misheard, misunderstood, or simply lied. Basically, it’s hearsay evidence.
*
Try and understand this basic point. There are some so called skeptics who are willing to lie to discredit their opponents. They make up all kinds of stories.
So, a skeptic claims to have heard a psychic saying this thing. He or she could be lying. Such things are not unusual. This is not proof that the psychic said any such thing.
So the reporter for a mainstream news source was making up stories when he quoted the psychic verbatim? If that’s the case, what could possibly serve as a cite? To personally present you with a paranormal-claimer?
Back to the original post then…So, are you claiming that there was One, Single 3 inch clay tile in that entire field? And your dowser went right to it?
So, essentially, we need the original negatives of a statement, on film, recorded by a notary public and witnessed by a circuit court judge, a Cardinal, and a state senator, and the authenticity of the film stock must be verified by the revived zombies of Isaac Newton and Eastman Kodak before you will even consider believing it.