Radiesthesia (dowsing)

Radiesthesia is working with a rod or pendulum – in English far more often called dowsing. The two words describe the same practice: dowsing is the everyday term, widely known as a way of searching for water and choosing well sites; radiesthesia is the more formal word that came into use from French. A dowsing result is the perception of the person dowsing, which the tool merely makes visible; it is not a physical measurement. We at the Kyborg Institute work with radiesthesia ourselves and consider this distinction the most important in the whole field: the instrument is the person.

What does the word mean?

The term is put together from Latin and Greek: radius for “ray” and aisthesis for “sensation” – roughly “the sensing of rays”. The coinage is mostly attributed to the French cleric Abbé Alexis Bouly, with attestations from around 1926; Abbé Louis Bayard is sometimes named as co-originator. Occasionally the name Abbé Mermet also appears – for that we found no confirmation in the reference works we checked. We therefore give both attributions and leave the question open.

Since when has the dowsing rod existed?

The first detailed printed description is found in “De Re Metallica” by Georgius Agricola (1556), a standard work on mining. Agricola describes the practice precisely: a forked twig, and a different wood for each metal – hazel for silver, ash for copper, pine for lead and tin, rods of iron and steel for gold. He also describes how the rod is held and what the dowsers say about its movement.

And then he objects. His argument is remarkably modern: attracting forces such as a magnet or rubbed amber do not twist anything, they draw it straight towards themselves. If the movement came from the vein of ore, the rod would have to incline towards the vein instead of twisting. From this he concludes:

“… it must necessarily follow that the manipulation is the cause of the twig’s twisting motion.” – Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, 1556 (English translation by Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover, 1912)

For us this passage is not an objection to be brushed aside, but evidence of how old the question is – and how old the answer “it lies with the person” is. We share that answer, but draw a different conclusion from it than Agricola did (see below).

What a dowsing result is – and what it is not

Three mutually independent voices say the same thing:

1. 1931, Rimini. The engineer Giovanni Paris argued at the Congresso Geo-Rabdico that what matters is the person, not the device. He went further still and wanted to do away with the rod, because too much of the magical clung to it. (We know the lecture from a reprint of 2014; it comes from the Italy of its day and contains turns of phrase that carry that period with them.)
2. 2009. The geobiologist Stéphane Cardinaux reports in his book Bioénergie that his research group spent years building apparatus meant to measure the invisible – and in the end had to concede that the only instrument able to capture it is the human body. (We have only the freely viewable preview pages, not the full text – so we report only this statement.)
3. Our own house. Harald Alke writes in the Horus Handbook (here translated from the German): “The modern dowser should be careful with measuring devices. … The most important instrument of our environmental research is our own body and our own mind.”

Everything else follows from this. A dowsing result can be repeatable for the same person, but it is not transferable like a measured value: two dowsers arrive at different results, and practice and the form of the day play a part. Whoever passes on a dowsing result as a number – for instance in Bovis units – is passing on a perception, not a measurement.

How do we work ourselves?

We dowse with a single-hand rod and a pendulum. A fine single-hand rod with a wooden handle and thin steel wire has proven itself. The value arises through one’s own perception; whoever does not know the method arrives at different values or at none at all. This is not a limitation we regret, but an honest description of what happens.

From our own house also comes a warning to our own guild. Harald Alke on dowsers who find something in every house (here translated from the German): “they really do always find something … the more sensitive, the more he will find. And the more he finds, the less comfortable you feel in your own house.” Those who search will find – and those who make a living from it will find more. We consider this the greatest danger of the field: not error, but unease that is created.

Disturbance zones and dowsing grids

In dowsing, places with particular qualities are described: watercourses, geological faults, and three grids named after the people who described them – the Hartmann grid, the Curry grid and the Benker cube system (after the dowser Anton Benker).

It should be said clearly what these concepts are: radiesthetic terms that order perceptions. They are not physically measured structures, and we do not attribute any effect on health to them, nor do we make them a reason for worry. Nobody should be afraid in their own bedroom because someone has walked through it with a rod. Anyone with health complaints should have them examined by a doctor; radiesthesia is no substitute for that.

In the literature of the field, further-reaching assertions are found that link such zones directly with illness. These are claimed by several associations and authors – we record that they are claimed, and we do not adopt them.

What does research show?

The Munich barn experiments. In the 1980s the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology funded an extensive study: in a barn, a movable water pipe was run beneath the floor while dowsers on the storey above were to indicate its position. Dozens of dowsers took part in hundreds of individual trials. The authors around Hans-Dieter Betz read a small part of the results as an indication of a gift in a few individuals.

The objection. The biologist J. T. Enright re-analysed the same data and concluded that the hits could be explained by chance; among other things, he criticised the selection of the best participants after the fact. Betz and colleagues replied in 1996 in the same journal. (We know this reply bibliographically; we have not checked its full text.)

Kassel 1990. In a publicly observed test with twenty dowsers and more than seven hundred individual trials, nobody reached the agreed hit rate.

Our conclusion, without detours: scientific proof of efficacy does not exist. For our own practice this changes nothing – we understand it as a training of perception, not as a measuring procedure, and precisely for that reason it does not contradict these findings. Whoever presents it as a measuring procedure must accept being measured against them.

Radiesthesia in other countries

Poland offers an example of regulation as a trade. The official classification of occupations lists the radiesteta under code 516901, and the Polish crafts association adopted examination standards for the journeyman and master examinations in 2013. A look at the examination standard shows what is actually examined: trade arithmetic, law, occupational safety, didactics, technology – not the accuracy of a dowsing result. What is recognised, then, is the trade with its rules, not an efficacy. We consider this a wise separation.

In Switzerland there is a professional society for radiesthesia and geobiology with its own journal; in Germany and Austria several associations exist side by side. Training paths vary, and there is no protected access to the profession in the German-speaking countries.

Distinction: radionics

To be distinguished from radiesthesia is radionics, which goes back to the American physician Albert Abrams and works with apparatus. The two fields overlap in people and in journals, but the practice is different: radiesthesia works with the perceptive capacity of the person, radionics with devices. Health-related applications of radionics are the subject of considerable legal and professional criticism.

Where radiesthesia appears in our work

For decades the institute has been both a subject of and a participant in this professional discussion. Two items are documented in the press archive: radiesthetic findings by three dowsers from 1993 and an article by the dowser Günter Hamm in the specialist journal “Radiästhesie – Radionik” (3/2014). Both are dowsing results, that is, perceptions of the persons concerned – not measurements and not proof of an effect.

Anyone who would like to train their own perception will find a starting point in energetic self-perception. Further related terms: Bovis units, life energy and feng shui.

Note: This entry describes a practice of perception and, at the marked points, renders a personal, worldview-based view. It makes no healing or efficacy claims and does not replace medical advice. If you have questions about your health, please consult a doctor or pharmacist.

By D. Harald Alke, Tobias O. R. Alke