3.1. Dowsing Rods

I already got familiar with this instrument in the first grades of primary school, when I was not yet able to understand what that was and what it served for. A friend of mine brought to school a freshly broken-off ash tree branch and said that his uncle taught him to find groundwater by means of this branch and that digging a well in this way would be successful. We all became great explorers, but to our surprise and disappointment the branch would not shiver nor spin in our hands. We doubted our friend, thinking that he tricked us, making a fool of us. However, he showed us his hands bleeding from strong gripping of the branch to resist its movements. The first of us managed to move the branch in his hands by jumping from one foot to the other, holding the branch horizontally and moving along the ground, when the dowsing rod began to twist downwards towards the ground. Although we jumped as monkeys, our dowsing rods stayed still, as it did not occur to any of us to ask the question whether there was water there or not. We only wanted the rods to listen to us and begin to spin. We were carefree and childish. We more or less felt to be adults and we were proud of that. Nevertheless, this event made a strong impression upon me and I was asking myself how come that this friend of mine was talented as a god’s messenger. This lasted up until secondary school, when in classical grammar school I learned about old cultures and the teacher told us how the old Babylonians and Egyptians knew instruments with which they determined spiritual components, also describing dowsing rods.

I immediately understood that as a boy I made a mistake because I did not pay attention to asking questions and was not aware that I must blindly, without thinking, follow what happens during the measurement. I was surprised at how well the dowsing rod reacted and gave answers to my questions. Once, we actually played a game with dowsing rods: we measured and examined why the dowsing rod showed one place to a friend and another to me, or why a different result was obtained when the measurement was repeated. This humiliated us and we decided that it was better and more interesting to go to athletics classes, to bathe in the sea, play football or miss our classes.