Posted by Andy on December 08, 2013 at 12:23:04 user AndyG.
In Reply to: Titty's Dowsing posted by Mike Dennis on December 07, 2013 at 23:53:35:
I'm sure I've mentioned this before:
In the early 1980s I was student of Archaeology at Newcastle University. One day - perhaps the summer of 1983 - in a public lecture I heard Richard Bailey speak of his dowsing experiments, where his personal skepticism became altered by practical experiment.
His personal study at the time was on early church architecture, and how church buildings of around the sixth century were later built over to become more impressive structures, wiping out above-ground evidence of the earlier incarnation.
Using dowsers he built up some impressive data, and with rare grants to excavate church interiors he, in several cases, could confirm what dowsers had found previously - often dowsers with no knowledge of what /might/ be found.
The evidence was compelling and - best of all - rigorously tested. I was won over: and later found I can dowse myself. (Two Bic biros and a couple of pieces of bent wire work for me). Try it, if you haven't!
I - a big skeptic and scientific-rationalist - can buy into "some form" of altered magnetism/changing field strength, working on the brain and thence the muscles of the back to affect the arms in a relaxed pose, but I can't accept "dowsing at a distance" or over cards, as noted above.
But it's certainly an odd business.
Andy