Dowsing: Faith & Reason (Divining Rods, Radiasthesia, WaterWitching) - Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World

After discussing the history and concept of dowsing with Dr. Paul Smith, Jimmy Akin, Dom Bettinelli, and Dr. Smith talk about what the Christian faith has to say about it, what science studies have shown, and what we should make of it.
mysterious.fm/247
Further Resources:
• Christopher Bird’s book The Divining Hand: The 500-Year Old Mystery of Dowsing: amzn.to/3IoB3tt
• Etzel Cardenas’s book Parapsychology: A 21st Century Handbook (contains chapter “Applied Psi” co-authored by Paul Smith): amzn.to/3IoBbsX
• Kathe Bachler’s book Earth Radiation: amzn.to/3IiHIoS
• Online at Archive.org: archive.org/de...
• Abbe Alexis Mermet’s book Principles and Practice of Radiesthesia (pdf): iapsop.com/ssoc...
• Star Gate Archives, vol. 1: amzn.to/3INfuEj
• Jewish Encyclopedia on Teraphim: www.jewishency...
• LDS Church on divining rods: www.churchofje...
• Ideomotor Effect: en.wikipedia.o...
• Michael Faraday’s ideomotor experiment: • Michael Faraday's supe...
• Archaeology and Dowsing article: ahotcupofjoe.n...
• Fr. Alexis Boule (French): fr.wikipedia.o...
• Abbe Alexis Mermet (French): fr.wikipedia.o...
• American Society of Dowsers: dowsers.org/
• Paul’s DVD course at LearnDowsing.com: learndowsing.com/

[@tonyl3762]

I'm lazy and have limited time and energy. I'll stick with the supernatural intercession of St Anthony over any weak natural ability I may or may not have, lol. Interesting episode though!

[@jcrestonm]

I listened to the first half of this last week and over the weekend my wife was having trouble finding her shoe. I did the thing your guest did, put my hands together and tried to dowse my way to the shoe. I immediately found it next to the place she was looking. I couldn't believe it.

[@alanbrott3159]

So funny the first episode of this dowsing series I wasn’t sure I’d be into it. In fact I almost quit watching. But by the end of that episode I was excited for this one. So very interesting seeing the Church’s stance on dowsing. I used to live in a rural area of Oklahoma. If you needed to “call before you dig” they sent a guy out who would dowse for your underground utilities to mark them out for you. He used the rods that have a sleeve over them you hold. He was extremely accurate every time. I guess they couldn’t afford one of those scanners for the underground utilities in that town. (It was very small).

[@alanbrott3159]

@Gerard Nordskoven now that is intensely intriguing to me that the scanners can be wrong but the dowsing was very accurate. I had never considered that. This was back in 09 so I figured the scanners would be quite more expensive back then than they are now. Therefore assuming it was simply a fiscal issue. I would never had considered that the tech would be less accurate than a skilled person and their dowsing tools.

[@jendoe9436]

Whenever I hear "dowsing," I think of the scene in Coraline where she's waving a forked branch around saying, "Magic dowsing rod, magic dowsing rod, show me... the well!" and then her neighbor freaking her out 😆 He even called her a "water witch" after she calmed down (a bit). It's pretty interesting hearing that the Church doesn't immediately find stuff like this inherently demonic. Part of my family are farmers and country folk, so there's little things and signs they read and gauge what's going to happen. My favorite is the idea of throwing a dead snake over a fence line and if it last three days on there, it will rain. God created the world and all of creation, and we are barely beginning to scratch the service of every mystery. It wouldn't surprise me if things like dowsing become more well known and understood like electricity. Strange things happen more than people think. Especially if this channel going over mysteries is anything to go by.

[@daveylocker8]

Wow, what a great interview! You guys covered so much that I have wondered about for years. The expansive Catholic Church portion was quite enlightening. I had only heard about the 16th century pope that had banned dowsing all together, then retracted a portion later. Jimmy, you are a skilled researcher. Thank you for your hard work!! I’ve been cautious about letting Catholics know that I am a dowser in the past, and refused to do it around them, even though they were interested. As I felt they would influence false answers.

[@JimmyAkin]

Glad you found it helpful!

[@MrKweezy2]

It amazes me how many "experts" come on podcasts and shows like this and come up with "theres a study that proves this phenomenon, i'd have to go back and read it to give you the real numbers" Did you not realize you were going to be interviewed about the validity of your craft, did you not prepare at all... Id have those studies and results ready in front of me if not memorized.

[@TrixRN]

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow series was outstanding. Highly recommend it. Thanks Jimmy for a very interesting topic. God bless🙏❤️

[@jesseholthaus8357]

I can see the Church forbidding priests to use dowsing for finding missing people because it could sidetrack them from their primary ministry. I could see a scenario where now if someone’s wife left them they can go to their priest to help locate them. It introduces both a distraction from their ministry and a danger of entering into too much drama.

[@DOSHIELD]

Interesting way you mixed in usual Mysterious World writing and mention of references with the interview format. I’m glad Dr Paul Smith was content with participating in this format because it resulted in a well produced revelation and conversation. Great work, Jimmy, Dom and team.

[@AuroraB-74]

So interesting! I always thought this was non-sense, but never really studied it much. Now I'm thinking of it differently.

[@nicholasjagneaux]

--> The French name for a dowser is "Sourcier". In French, "une source" is a spring. --> My Belgian father-in-law used a sourcier when trying to decide which piece of property to buy to build a new home on. The dowser identified that one of the tracts had an underground spring, so my father-in-law bought it. Sure enough, the water was there, and my in-laws were able to use the water for their garden and animals that they raised.

[@ma-mo]

I found these episodes fascinating. I come from a family of water well drillers, so I was aware of the concept. But I always thought its compatibility with the Christian faith was, at best, questionable. Once, recently, a man came to my door asking if he could dowse on our property. Our home is 150 years old, and this gentleman believed one of his ancestors was buried on the property. I gave permission, and the man located the spot where he believed his relative was interred, even saying his rods had correctly registered the sex of the deceased. I wondered afterward if I should have refused to let him dowse on my property, worried that it might have some occult connection. These episodes have set my mind at ease. Thanks!

[@jendoe9436]

Hope it doesn't sound weird, but did he or your family ever send anyone out there to re-inter the deceased? Or at least mark their grave? Not trying to be weird or anything, I just have an immense sadness when I think of unmarked graves and forgotten bodies around areas 😅 If anything, at least your case might have given the man some closure on his family history. Maybe the relative was believed to have been buried somewhere else. Or there was a story they ran away from the family. Or they weren't remembered at all either because of faulty records, memory, or some break in the family earlier.

[@ma-mo]

​​​@@jendoe9436 the man returned months later, wanting to send a probe down to gather some "samples" (he said) to do a DNA test. This strained credulity a bit: what are the chances his little pipe would get down to exactly the right level and hit on some still existent bone fragment or something like that? But I agreed and he took his samples. It's been several years and I've not heard from him since.

[@antpassalacqua]

waited with bated breath for this one

[@carolinecorreia4375]

Missed opportunity to include a Princess Bride scene!

[@monicakelley7901]

Thank you, Jimmy. I was having trouble figuring out how dowsing was spiritually dangerous as others have said. I appreciate your approach and depth of these explorations.

[@Aethelhart]

Re: The prohibition on priests dowsing to find missing people. Another reason I could see a prohibition on dowsing to find missing people is the potential scandal and suspicion it may incur on the priest. Imagine a priest dowses to find a missing person and he succeeds to find the target dead. For someone who is skeptical of dowsing they could say that he was able to find the body, not by dowsing, but because he put it there.

[@peterv7258]

It seems likely to me that the verses from Hosea are just referring to idols, which are described often as being made from wood, and that in fact the calling the idol in this context a stick may be a form of diminishing the item as a sarcastic dig.

[@lisajohnson5516]

Love Orson Scott Card's works, he's my favorite author! Definitely recommend listening to the audio over just reading them; there's a Whole cast of extraordinary voice actors who bring the tales to life.

[@cookclan]

Dr. Michael S. Heiser (February 14, 1963 - February 20, 2023)

[@JimmyAkin]

Yes. So sad. I'd been following his illness and noted his passing on Twitter. A week or two before his passing, I sent him a note to let him know I was praying for him and his family.

[@jonathanbohl]

Thanks! My granduncle dowses. He wonts found my grandpa's wallet which he had plowed into a snowbank. He hasn't always been successful finding things though. We are still looking for a lost wedding ring on my grandma's farm.

[@inquisitor4635]

Excellent interview. I remember the cryptic mental gymnastic phrase regarding "Knowns and unknowns" was uttered by the death ghoul Donald Rumsfeld and not the death ghoul John Ashcroft.

[@madamxilant17]

As a joke, I actually used my arms to dowse to find a person in a foreign country and it worked. Lead me straight to them in a place I could not obvious see from the road. I had never dowsed before/after that event. But 10 years later in traffic, back in the USA, after not seeing the person for years, my arms alerted me that they were near and I located them in a car several cars ahead. The connect was not broken. I don't think the power is in the stick, but in the person. Like a witches wand, the wand does not have the power, it just directs it.

[@ShaunCKennedyAuthor]

I would love to hear Jimmy's thoughts on the I Ching.

[@murrayrisling4276]

Not to prohibit(seemingly not pronouncing for or against the laity from dowsing) I don't think is the same as giving approval. I think Hosea 4:12 that you mentioned is pretty clear, add to that common sense which says if finding water, lost objects, dead people, etc etc with a stick is not happening by chance or reason(like a metal being moved by a magnetic force) then a supernatural force is probably at work. Most things I think of which involve the movement of pendulums or other objects are part of occultic practices. Just because one is not aware of or does not consciously invoke the dark side does not mean that such is not involved. Can anyone give me a better explanation?

[@tafazzi-on-discord]

Jimmy has videos on "it's always demons" and thomas aquinas' opinion on the occult. Psychic powers are well attested historically and scientifically, you don't need to appeal to any spiritual being outside of a human to account for why dousing works.

[@TheJeh1]

If you go to the Wikipedia page, it lists numerous studies that were done, and with the exception of maybe 1 or 2, they are overwhelmingly negative on dowsing as a real phenomenon. I wish Jimmy would have gone into them more instead of relying on Dr. Smith.

[@ironymatt]

My recollection is that it was Michelangelo who said he sculpted by removing the superfluous material to reveal the already completed work (paraphrasing)

[@MFV77]

Something along the lines of simply removing what didn’t belong…

[@Flyingcar100]

So could you go to the store and use dowsing to find which boxes of baseball cards have good cards in them?

[@NightOWLLIVE]

Theoretically I’d say so but I don’t see anyone claiming they won the lottery by dowsing. I fully believe in dowsing for water and pipes cause I’ve seen and done it but dowsing for the lottery or a good card seems to me like it doesn’t work.

[@jmj.thomas]

Why does Wikipedia say the Catholic Church "banned the practice completely". See article 'Dowsing' and 'Early divination and religion' section. Was the Church only banning it in the sense that divinization/seeking hidden knowledge is already banned? Is Wikipedia just wrong here?

[@NGAOPC]

A factor I believe we have now, impacting us in many ways, is that many are subconsciously in a secular mode, taking the artificial virtual world, however “intelligent” and seemingly sentient - for a “real” implicit world, one composed by technology where we had previously only imagined in religion or “pseudoscience; an implicit “intertwingled” (from Morville’s 2008 book “Ambient Findability”), world, a Noosphere now let go of (that being one model of a matrix that tech innovators could use divorced from religious origins in Eduard Le Roy and Teilhard), the less seriously many take human consciousness and freewill, let alone a soul, Psi or the paranormal. As Damien Walter said regarding “Neuromancer”(although not in a mode suggesting my connection to a Psi or faith informed anthropology), “Now the Millennial's and Zoomers, who will likely never read Neuromancer, also have no memory of reality without virtual escapism. I believe much of the angst and confusion of our times is a consequence of our great escape into virtuality”.

[@craigaxle1096]

Very long sentences, my friend. I almost forgot to breathe 😀👍

[@cw-on-yt]

Whoops, Jimmy: Not _John Ashcroft,_ but _Donald Rumsfeld._ (At 1:52)

[@Aethelhart]

Despite being a devout Catholic, I've been told I'm a bit of a morman myself, that is, *more man* than you'll ever know.

[@raywest7222]

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the tale of the three wise men when they followed the star of Bethlehem to Christ's birth was something akin to dowsing. Where the light of the holy spirit led them to the lords birth place.

[@myrrhsolace5875]

Isn’t there a technique with L rods where the “handle” part of the rod is enclosed in a tube, so that it rotates freely within the tube ? Doesn’t the use of such rods eliminate the possibility that the ideomotor effect is at work, since any hand motion only affects the exterior cylinder, not the L rods?

[@ironymatt]

Hope Jimmy can clarify, it sounds like a valid point

[@aprilblake2784]

being in the tube so that the hands are not directly on the rods, allows them to move more freely, no friction of the hands to stop the movement. However, it doesn't prevent intentional movement. The slightest tilt in any direction will cause the rods to move. So, it does not stop ideomotor movement either and does not require any outside foce to move them.

[@ganashyamsidari9020]

It's bad to have trees or other sticks but it's okay to have the olive tree and palm trees.

[@andrewpearson1903]

In the "Way of the Pilgrim," an old man explains a vision that the protagonist had (of a church many miles away burning down as it happened) is just part of humans' natural spiritual capabilities: a gift that was compromised by the Fall, still exists in some people, and can even be regained by Christian practice. Nature is big and strange, and the human being is the biggest and strangest thing in it; and all of it was made by God.

[@papuciowy1465]

Father Jacques Verlinde writes that radiesthesia, an 'innocent' form of the occult, can be a real spiritualist séance.

[@michaelfercik3691]

I reverse engineered the physics used in physical on-ground dowsing. There are two types of dowsing, which are physical dowsing and non physical pure mental dowsing, with physical dowsing using pure physics and non physical dowsing using mind invissioning. Two words used for dowsing are dowse-physical and douse-non physical. Dowsing is 100% accurate and dousing being 50/50% because it is actually making a guess. I am a professional dowser (dowsing savant), and I will not mess around with dousing. For a couple of thousand years dowsing was controlled by the governments because of the governments owning and controlling the natural resources and monetary systems. The citizens who dowsed and were caught doing so were prosecuted as witches with being put to death. Unfortunately devil worshipers use physical and measphicial dowsing for religious practices. The non-government dowsers were referred to water witchers and their dowsing referred to as water witching. The government dowsers were usually priests or bishops and such represented the government's churches were called diviners and their dowsing rods were called divining rods. I am a diving dowser with witchcraft and Lucifer being my personal enemy. Please, if you read my book do not mix it with water witching or devil worshiping or evil deeds such as stealing, because my book was written for the betterment of mankind under the good will of God. Read the book: The Art of Dowsing - Separating Science from Superstition ($14.95), by Michael Fercik. No ideometer effect involved, only pure physics are involved.

[@myrrhsolace5875]

I don’t recall any of the scriptural prohibitions against divination linking the prohibition to whether one is explicitly calling on spirits. There are plenty of Tarot card readers, crystal gazers, and other occultists who would deny that they are calling on spirits. I doubt that malicious spirits wait to be called on before they show up. I suspect they’re more like, “Oh look- so-and-so wants to do something preternatural. Let’s give him the powers he wants. He’ll be in our influence before he ever realizes he’s not the one with the superpowers.”

[@tigerjin6086]

Whether evil spirits interfere is not a reason to ban a practice nor one given in Sacred Scripture. Living a pious life attracts all kinds of evil spirits.

[@bethanyann1060]

Thank you.

[@tafazzi-on-discord]

Exorcists concour that the way demons get into your life is by an invitation. The church forbids *false* means of divination

[@lordwife]

First! Lol

[@ganashyamsidari9020]

Moses lifted up his staff that had a golden snake and they were healed.

[@ganashyamsidari9020]

I'm a water witch and proud 😎

[@mattstockemer]

If nothing else, let me be another comment recommending Ender's Shadow!

[@scipioafricanus2]

all faith and no reason