b"Divination: A geophysicist's viewFeaturea Dr Perkins to his Connecticut patients for the relief of aches and pains due to noxious electrical fluid. This procedure was deemed, by his peers, to be quackery. Rods are a device in popular contemporary fiction. Magic wands are Harry Potters indispensable tools for wizardly activities in a series of well-known fantasy novels, and, for aficionados, a wide range of them are commercially available to suit every occasion.An additional function for a rod is in rhabdomancy (: divination). It is so used to produce, or seem to produce, magical, marvellous, mysterious, or miraculous results e.g. searching for and finding minerals, water (water witching) and other objects, in the near subsurface. The instrumentation is basic: a divining rod, held by a dowser.Rods can have a variety of shapes including a straight, forked (Y), bent (L), and divergent (V). Rods can be rigid or flexible (bobbing). The Y rod is frequently used, it is picturesque, and the fork furnishes a handy grip. In the hands of a dowser, with the right knack, a rod of any configuration moves to indicate hidden Figure 2An early form of divination. Sacred chickens were a Roman treasure, or so it is claimed. The L rods are quite popular too. They divinatory field-tool. Chooks with a good appetite for grain were a favourable omen. Before the 249 BC naval battle of Drepana, during the first Punic War, anachieved a recognition of sorts in Russell Crowes 2014 movie The impatient Roman fleet commander, Claudius Pulcher, much vexed by the birdsWater Diviner in which he surveys a rural paddock with a pair of refusal to eat, ordered them to be thrown into the sea, to drink instead. AfterL rods. The short parts of the rods (base of the L) were held in the such a sacrilegious breach of divination protocol he was soundly defeated byhands, while the long parts of the rods, horizontally positioned the Carthaginians. (Perhaps his more prudent crew, sizing up their opponents,leading the way, crossed over each other above an underground fed the chickens earlier in a futile attempt to avoid battle.) location deemed to contain water. This location was duly marked by pushing the long ends of the rods into the ground.sects, fortune tellers, and quacks continued to operate. Nowadays some of these activities are esoteric, and some areThe Old Testament of the Christian Bible (Numbers, 20, 7-11; and mundane, such as astrology. It is peculiar, and relevant in theExodus, 17, 6) records the striking success of the 13th century BC context of divining, that the para-science of astrology stillprophet Moses in finding water under the Lord Gods guidance. survives, indeed thrives. Astrology embodies the Stoical beliefPerhaps this is the earliest report of dowsing. A rod was used by in a universal sympathy coupling humans in the microcosmMoses to smite a rock and provide water for his people in the to nature in the macrocosm. Thus, the configuration of thewilderness (Figure 3). This is quintessentially divinatory. It ticks all heavens at ones date of birth decides ones lot and luck in life.the boxes: the supernatural (the Lord), a select and gifted agent Astrologers cosmic reckonings are now daily available in the(Moses), a rod, geology (rock), the movement of the rod towards back of magazines and newspapers to titillate the believersthe sought substance, and the scientifically inexplicable bounty.and entertain the cynics. Who can resist a surreptitious glanceWhat are we to make of this, and the profusion of claims since at ones horoscopea personal slice of the heavens? On thethen? Consider astrology; there is a vast corpus of astrological other hand, dowsing thrives as an esoteric activity, beguilingliterature (documents, texts, charts, symbols, forecasts) and mysterious, and readily carried out by the gifted using aexplaining its methods and predictions. The same applies to pedestrian prop. geophysics. However, there is little available on dowsing except Divination is associated with the earth or earth materials infaith, word of mouth, commendations, anecdotes, and hearsay. several ways including geomancy, scrying, and rhabdomancy.Accordingly, an appreciation is difficult, but we will try.Geomancy is the divination of patterns of stones or sands on the ground or thrown on the ground. Scrying is practised by portentous seers who gaze fixedly into a rock crystal and describe and explain images seen therein. The rock crystal is quartz, either as a hexagonal prism or a smoothed ball manufactured from a large crystal. But rhabdomancy is our focus, it is the domain of the dowser.RhabdomancyThe ancient Greek word for a rod, stick, switch, stave, baton or wand is, rhabdos. Over millennia, lengths of wood have been used by humans for foraging, fishing, spearing, walking, climbing, surveying, measuring, goading, enchantment, thrashing (preferred implement of chastisement in boys high schools of yesteryear), and especially as symbols of authority e.g. the imperial sceptre, and the Roman fasces (bundle of rods carried by a magistrates lictor). Rods have been used in medicine. In the late 19th century short metal tractor rods (tractare: to touch, massage, drag around) were applied byFigure 3.The prophet Moses scores a striking success as a water dowser.49 PREVIEW DECEMBER 2020"