“My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, And their staff informs them.” (Hos 4:12, NKJV)
Dowsing* is a common phenomenon in South Africa, especially amongst the farm community.The origin of dowsing lies in the distant past with the Persians, Greeks and Romans – they were of the first people to use a Y- or L-shaped twig or rod to locate water. Georgius Agricola provided the first written definition of the rod in 1556 in his book De re metallica. Originally the rod had been used to locate minerals under the soil. They suspected that the rod was moved through the power of ground water. It was however the Germans (in the sixteenth century) of the mining districts in Western Europe who popularised the rods – they could point out water and minerals.
When the church started opposing the use of rods, certain dowsers in Germany “sanctified” their rods according to church practice. Martin Luther did however consider the rods a transgression of the first commandment. Many churchgoers did not have a problem with the rods, but instead “Christianised” its use by cutting the rod on holy days, or placing the rod in bed with someone who had been baptised. The rod was then baptised and spoken over: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, I adjure thee that thou tell me, so pure and true as Mary the virgin was, how many fathoms is from here to the ore?” In fact, its use eventually spread to even pointing out criminals.
By the end of the seventeenth century the rod was widely known, possibly also in South Africa. It is accepted that the Dutch, British and German settlers introduced it to South Africa. Thus we know that in 1830 Graaff-Reinet had its own dowser. It is also known that many reverends in the history of our country also had this “gift”. In the fourties and fifties there was a reverende in Port Shepstone who became especially famous because of his “gift”. Reverend JL von Wielligh used a piece of grass and a map of the area to indicate where water was to be located. He used the same technique to indicate how the schools of sardines would move along the South Coast of Kwazulu-Natal during the months of June and July.
It is not only the rod that is used to point out where water may be, but also steel or copper wires, reeds, or a bottle filled with water. There are also people who apparently have “X-ray eyes” who can “see” water, an ability that made the boy Pieter van Jaarsveld very famous. Yet the rod remains the most popular. Some believe that a rod needs to be cut from a tree that grows close to water, like a willow tree. Other trees, like the Karee, are however also suited for usage in dowsing.
When the rod moves over water, the neck of the rod will move towards the ground. The dowser approaches from various directions until he finds the center of the ore. It is then marked and is then considered to be the correct place to look for water.
There are various other methods that are also used to find water, through for instance placing the rod on one’s hand, or head, and then waiting for it to fall in the direction in which the ore runs. Another method is to take two pieces of wire each approximately one metre in length, and bending them into the shape of an L. The place where the wires move over one another indicates the location of the ore. A coin is also placed in the fist and will lightly vibrate when it crosses a water ore. Others use the pendulum – a weight attached to a piece of string. The weight will then start moving when water is found. There are dowsers who are able to locate water without the help of any divination objects. As soon as they get near the water ore their bodies start shaking.
Dowsing is often referred to as “a gift from God”, linked to the gift of prophecy, but this is alas not the case. The question would then be why it works when one person is holding the rod, and not when it’s in the hands of another? Why do you have to hold onto the person with the “gift” before the rod will also move when in your hands? Why is this “gift” transferred from father to son? Often dowsing is linked to a quasi-spirituality, like if the person is for instance not to be bothered while looking for water, or that he can’t dowse when he is “normal”, but first needs to be “awoken to a more sensititive state”. These are all aspects of witchcraft.
Scientists have no explanation for the working of the rod (see for instance Martin Gardner’s book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science). The fact that dowsing is also often referred to as water witching indicates the historic association with witchcraft that many experts connote with the act. But one can rightly ask – why does the rod only work in the hands of those who have a “gift”, and not in the hands of others? If the rod moves based on certain magnetic forces in the earth, then it should work in the hands of anyone. It thus has nothing to do with any powers in the subterranean water or in the earth.
To use a pendulum, watch or piece of metal attached to some string and moving it over a map of an area, or even over the area itself, in order to find water, is nothing other than divination. In fact, the rod itself is merely a variation of the pendulum. Secular writers about the occult, like Vogt and Hyman, classify dowsing in the same category as occult practices such as the Ouija bord, table turning, seances and automatic writing.
Like clairvoyance, where the ability to see is transferred from one generation to the next, the ability to dowse takes the same form. This is because where a demon has been granted a place in a family, the family member with that “gift” may die, but the demon does not and is then transferred to the children and grandchildren. The ability to dowse is then transferred to the person’s children. The person who thus does not have this spirit of divination, does not have the ability to dowse. From this we can deduce that a spirit is involved in the act of dowsing, and that it is not the Spirit of God or a gift of God, but an evil spirit.
People who thus playfully hold onto the rod (perhaps as a joke), has opened a door for demonic working in their lives. Through this activity of dowsing a certain transferrance of spirit also takes place. The opening scripture from Hos. 4:12, refers to it as a staff, but according to Jamieson, Faussett and Brown’s Critical and Experimental Commentary it is best translated as “divining rod” (as the ISV and NETB for instance do).
The underlying spiritual reality of dowsing however conceals the existence and functioning of water spirits. Although it is a common religious given in most African beliefs, syncretic and Christian, it is a strange concept within a Western context. As this specific theme is not part of our current theme, and for the sake of coherency, we will not discuss this in detail at the moment, except perhaps to mention that we should be aware of the spiritual activities in the aquatic realm. Samuel Dikaniakina’s work The Dark Forces of the Acuatic World is an important publication in this regard.
(*The first part of today’s teaching is to a large extent drawn from DB Dicks’ original research, with thanks and acknowledgement.)
- Selah: Ask the Holy Spirit if you have granted the familiar spirit access through these activities?
- Read: Job 17-23
- Memorise: Job 19:25-26
