The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [116]
Divining lore—sometimes called rhabdomancy (from the Greek rhabdos, “rod,” and manteia, “divination”)—declared that, handled correctly, the rod would move as truly as a magnetic needle pulled to the north. At the moment of discovery, the rod’s operator (or rhabdomancer) would feel its power: sudden acceleration or retardation of the pulse, a sensation of heat or cold prickling along the skin. At the same time, the rod would bend, pointing toward what was sought.
The wood of choice was traditionally cut from the hazel tree, with its reddish bark, heart-shaped leaves, gold-colored hazelnuts, and mystic history. In Celtic lore, nine hazel trees guard the entrance to the Otherworld, and their nuts serve as containers for wisdom itself. A good divining rod was cut with a branched fork at one end, so that it could be held two-handed. Diviners held one hand curled around each prong of the fork, leaving the attached branch to extend downward like a flexible wand. But most people preferred a simpler term for a simpler version of the rod, a single stick known as a magic wand.
Despite his willingness to entertain the notion of telepathy, Barrett def initely did not believe in magic, and he considered rhabdomancy to be nonsense. In the case of water dowsing, in particular, he suspected that good diviners merely possessed a sharp eye for changes of vegetation and other observable signs of underlying wetness.
Barrett began his study by gathering records from the history of divining, finding to his satisfaction that most discoveries were easily discredited. But—as it turned out so often in psychical research—a handful of reports stubbornly held up, despite his best efforts to see and expose fraud.
There was, for instance, an 1889 case from the operators of a business in Ireland, the Waterford Bacon Factory. At that time, the factory managers had been working with geologists to drill a new well. Numerous holes had been sunk, one to a depth of 1,000 feet, and all had been dry. In frustration, despite the outrage of the consulting scientists, the managers decided to consult a dowser.
The man arrived on a sunny afternoon, forked rod in hand. He ambled around the site, his head cocked a little, as if he were listening, until suddenly the twig twisted so sharply that it snapped in two. Not only did the dowser insist water lay below, he provided a depth range between 80 and 100 feet. The Irish Geological Society had assigned a representative to observe this tomfoolery; he gloomily reported back that when the new borehole was sunk, as directed, water bubbled up. The resulting well yielded up to 5,000 gallons an hour.
The good examples, and they were rare, were all like that. There were reputable observers, witnesses who swore that the whole exercise had been a gamble, that they’d expected no more than a good show, right until the moment that the rod leapt to life in its owner’s hands, like a thing possessed.
Barrett picked apart most divining claims without ceremony He dismissed the reputed motion of the diving rod as an involuntary muscle spasm; the dowser’s arms would get tired holding a stick aloft indefinitely. He still suspected most water discoveries involved knowledge of the area, visible evidence of water. Further, the record keeping was so poor, he complained, that it was impossible to compare the overall success of dowsers to that of geologists engaged in the same pursuit.
And yet