Divining rod

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A divining rod (also known as dowsing rod) is an apparatus used in dowsing. There are many types of divining rods:

two brass "L" shaped wire rods (commonly made of brazing or welding rod) that are to be held one in each hand. When something is found they cross over one another making an "X" over the found object. Brass is used to prevent interference due to the Earth's magnetic field.

A forked (or "Y" shaped) willow branch. The two ends on the forked side are to be held one in each hand with the third pointing straight ahead. Often the branches are grasped palms down. The pointing end turns up or down when water is found. This method is sometimes known as 'Willow Witching'. Hazel tree branches were also used for this purpose; these were called virgula divina. ^[1]

Divining rods are used in dowsing, a type of divination that claims to be able to find underground water, oil, and other mineral resources by means not traditionally accepted by science. As per the french term "sourcier", a person that dowses for water is a sorcer. Expert dowsers are allegedly capable of dowsing exact debt measurements of water veins, electromagnetism, currents and telluric phenomenons. They are also capable of detecting other materials such as measuring blood toxicity, white cells, sugar levels, human illness and health. Expert dowsers are not limited to any specific time and space. Some have the ability to dowse any material at any given time from any location.

[edit] Virgula divina

Virgula divina, or Baculus divinatorius, was a form of divining rod created from the forked branch of a hazel tree, used in the discovery of underground mines, springs, etc. The claimed method of using this Y-shaped branch involved the following: the user walks very slowly over the places where he suspsects mines or springs may be; effluvia would then exhale from the metals or the water, impregnating the branch's wood, making it dip or incline. Such motion was supposed to indicate a discovery.

Convinced by numerous experiments alleged on its behalf, authors searched for the natural cause. The corpuscles, they said, rising from springs or minerals, entering the rod, force it to bow down, in order to render it parallel to the vertical lines that the effluvia created as they rose. In effect, the mineral or water particles were supposed to be emitted by means of subterraneous heat, or of the fermentations in the interior thereof. The virgula, being of a light, porous wood, gave an easy passage to those particles. The effluvia, driven forwards by those that follow them, and driven backwards by the atmosphere incumbent on them, are forced to enter the tiny regions between the fibres of the wood, and by that effort oblige it to incline, or dip down perpendicularity, to become parallel with the little columns which those vapors form in their rise.

An epigram by Samuel Sheppard, from Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick (1651) runs thus:

Virgula divina.

"Some Sorcerers do boast they have a Rod,

Gather'd with Vowes and Sacrifice,

And (borne about) will strangely nod

To hidden Treasure where it lies;

Mankind is (sure) that Rod divine,

For to the Wealthiest (ever) they incline."