WATER-DIVINER'S CRAFT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 29

WATER-DIVINER'S CRAFT

MAY BE EXPLAINED BY RADIO-ACTIVITY

REMARKABLE EXPERIMENTS More than a quarter of a century ago Dr. Gustave Le Bon proved by experiment for the first time that the radio-activity of uranium or radium is simply the presentation, in a high degree, of a phenomenon possessed, to some extent, by all substances in Nature as a result of the dissociation of their atoms. Dr. Le Bon’s theory of the destructibility of matter at first denounced as heretical, has, long since, been accepted; and it is many years since Professor J. J. Thompson demonstrated the existence of radioactivity in most substances, including water, says an English exchange. To the lay mind it seems that one minor result of these scientific discoveries might well be the recognition of divining as something more than a kind of unreliable magic, and indeed, vei‘y many people believe that the genuine water diviner’s ait is due to acute sensitiveness to the “emanations” given off by water. Yet, oddly enough, although water-divining is granted this, so to speak, unofficial status, gold-divining is still taboo and that despite many successful tests.

Mr. Frederick Stone recently gave au intei'esting demonstration of golddivining at Plymouth when he located a gold nugget and several pieces of quartz which had been secretly buried in rough ground behind Plymouth Museum. Mi-. Stone walked over the ground carrying an ordinary steel clockspring stretched between his hands. Whenever he came near to one of the buried objects the spring twisted and turned. The quartz, which contained very little gold, was easily divined, and Mr. Stone was even able to detect the presence of copper in one piece. His powers of divining are apparently due to abnoi-mal reaction to electrical influences-—a condition which, for twenty years, made him an invalid. “Insulation” by means of boots with thick rubber soles, and a vulcanite pad under one foot, cured his ill-health, and nowadays, save for a certain lassitude after divining, his health is untroubled by this sensitiveness.

Mr. Stone’s powers of gold-divining have a reixiarkable parallel in South Afi-iea in the exploits of Mr. Elleuberger, a retired bank manage!’, of Rhodesia, whose skill as a waterdiviner has been proved in actual practice and also in numerous tests which lie undertook at the request, and to the ultimate confusion, of sceptics. Divining became Mr. Ellenberger’s hobby some thirty years ago. He had suffered, for many years, from frequent attacks of palpitation of tile heart which caused him acute distress, and had consulted numerous doctors who were unable to cure him; Finally he realised that the palpitations were due to extreme sensitiveness to wliat he describes as “emanations of subterranean water and bodies of minerals.” Lost Gold Reef Found While Mr. Ellenberger has no doubt of his capacity for water-divining he disclaims faith in his powers q.s a golddiviner, which he considers as not yet proven despite the astonishing results he has already obtained in a number of tests in Rhodesia. He was persuaded to carry out the first of these by a friend who, as manager of a mine in which a “break” in the reef had occurred, was threatened with the loss of his job should it pi'ove impossible to find the lost reef. Appealed to by this friend, who had been notified by his directors of the visit of a consulting engineer, who was to examine, report on, and probably close down the mine, Mr. Ellenberger, .much against his own inclinations, made a surface investigation of the site with his divining-rod, and eventually located the interi-upted reef across a river on the property, over 20 feet from where the break had occurred. The mine manager had three days’ grace in which to prove the mine before the engineer’s arrival. He took on all the labour he could find, and thanks to intensive work, not only found some rich pockets of gold, two days later, but, on the third das', struck the lost reef in the position indicated by Mr. Ellenberger—the life of the mine being thus prolonged by over two years.

Perhaps the most interesting test ever carried out by Mr. Ellenbei’ger was in a mine near Gwelo at which a number of mine officials assisted. In this test Mr. Ellenberger, from one of the surface galleries of the mine, was able to “feel” and locate the exact position of a gold watch held by a mine official against the x’oof of the deepest galleries, hundreds of feet below. An even more difficult test followed. The mine official and Mr. Ellenberger were each provided with time-keepers. The mine official held up the gold watch to the roof of the gallery for a few seconds and then removed it, repeating this performance a number of times at random. His time-keeper noted, with a stop-watch, the exact time during which the watch was held against the gallery roof, while Mr. Ellenberger’s time-keeper recorded the periods during which Mr. Ellenberger felt the presence of gold. When the times were compared they were found to correspond, agreeing to the extent of fifths of seconds.

The numerous other successful experiments which Mr. Ellenberger has eai-ried out include locating gold coins buried in the ground, and determining which of a number of stones, placed in a row, covei’ed a gold coin. The latter “test” constitutes one of Mr. Ellenberger’s most favourite “parlour tricks.” As a watei’-diviuer, Mr. Ellenberger can claim infallible power, and can divine not only the position of subterranean water but also the amount, and the depth at which it will be found. His sensitiveness to the “emanations” of water is not, however, an unmixed blessing, since it causes him acute disti-ess which, unlike that of Mr. Stone, is not alleviated by insulation. Whenever he ci’osses a subterranean sti’eam, whether walking, riding or driving in a cart or car, he experiences the disti’ess which he i has provsd to be the result of his j sensitiveness to water emanations; ! and throughout the entire period of a sea voyage, he is subject to this dis- j comfort, despite the fact that he is : a “good sailor.” His powers as a ! diviner are, in fact, a greater blessing | to others than to himself. He has never accepted payment for finding ■water; and he has found more than 400 wells in Rhodesia. “Dowsing,” or divining, is of course, one of the world's oldest arts. The earliest known illustration of the use of the divining rod applied to the finding of precious metals, appeared in G. Agricola's treatise on mining, published in 1557. In Paris, in 1693, was published a book entitled "La Verge de Jacob,” in which "l'art de trouver

les tresors” was described in detail. And since then the investigations in England of Mr. W. Stone (possibly a relative of the investigator referred to earlier) those of Mr. Thomas, originally a Wiltshire farmer who ultimately became a professional dowser in South Africa after successfully locating water in three different places on his farm in this country, and those of many other experimenters all over the world, have maintained public interest in this remai’kable art which stands somewhere between purely psychical -and semi-physical phenomena. The question is whether gold-divin-ing will ever become as reliable as water-divining, and whether scientific l’esearch will eventually reveal that, after all, the diviner’s art which at present seems to rest on no more secure foundation than superstition, is merely a demonstration of the natural reactions of a sufficiently sensitive indicator (certain human bodies, for the present) to the I’adio-activity now proved to exist, not only in uranimum and radium, but in water, metals and all other matter. Mr. Ellenberger’s expei’iments seem to suggest such a possibility, and the method he has evolved of computing the depth and quantity of the substance which he claims to divine, has at least the advantage of being logical, and seems to mark a definite advance in what, even now. is still looked upon as one of the black arts.