Dowsing

[thalassa]

Re: Dowsing

My great-grandfather had a 100% success rate as a dowser. His farm had two wells, his brother's farm had three wells, and between his three other neighbors, 5 more wells. 10 for 10. Not a big sample size, but pretty good for a dirt farmer that worked for the CCC during the Great Depression...which is apparently where he learned this random skill, by watching some buddy of his.

Now, my great-grandfather has been gone a while, and the land has been sold to car dealerships and the like...so the farms had to be surveyed and have some geological studies and things done (mine subsidence is a problem where I'm from)...and it ends up, there's some sort of thing with the water table, that the areas where their wells are is higher than the rest of the general area.

I don't believe in dowsing, and neither did my great-grandfather. But I've been told "ya gotta be using a willow branch". Most importantly--"ya gotta know how to read the landscape."



ETA: I fully recognize the inadmissability of anecdotal evidence as scientific. Also, I work for the gov't...but not as a dowser (as a scientist)

[Roknrol]

Re: Dowsing

I don't believe in it either man, but that's irrelevant. If people wanna do dowsing, if that is what makes them happy, then let them have it without going on about how wrong they are. If you're bugged by taxes being spent on it or whatever, go write to the government about it. The people in this thread don't work for the government (to my knowledge). Their belief in whatever is a non-issue.

Science vs faith is flogging a dead horse because neither side is ever going to convince the other. EVER. So pack it in for fuck sake. I'm getting tired of seeing the same old shit.

Aww, well if you're sick of it I guess I'd better stop, huh?

Christ.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Dowsing

Does mean, then, that God/the divine is more reliable than science - i.e.: if my daughter has appendicitis, are the odds of recovery better when I take her to a shaman, or to a surgeon?

I wasn't going to post this because I thought the thread had died, but here's another little anecdotal story about how science (in this case medicine) sometimes reverts to strange methods to get results.

My daughter DID have appendicitis before she was two. And despite visiting the doctor, and two hospitals (the last being a large University Teaching one) she almost died. My mother in law, who wasn't and never had been a nurse, said it was appendicitis straight away because the baby's 'breath smelled of apples.'
She told the GP (twice) and he shook his head. Not scientific. It's gastero-enteritis, he said.
She told the first hospital and got much the same response. They did tests. Loads of them including a barium enema (which apparently could have killed the baby) and a lumbar puncture. They took x-rays. Still didn't know what it was.
They transferred my daughter (constantly screaming in pain) to the second hospital. More tests. More xrays. My mother-in-law kept telling me, 'It's her bloody appendix, I'm telling you.'
Finally, a middle-aged Indian doctor arrived. He bent over my daughter and sniffed. 'Appendicitis,' he pronounced. 'Her breath smells of apples,' he added, to my mother-in-law.

In fact, by that time, it was a burst appendix. My daughter was in hospital for weeks. But her breath never smelled like apples ever again.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Dowsing

Yes, I can believe that.

It's a good warning to remember.

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Dowsing

Yes, I can believe that.

It's a good warning to remember.

I just thought it was so strange that you mentioned appendicitis of all things!

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Dowsing

Synchronicity?

[Tylluan Penry]

Re: Dowsing

Synchronicity?

Yup!
That's what I thought too.