The Divining Mind: A Guide to Dowsing and Self-Awareness

by T.E. Ross, Richard D. Wright

The art of divining, or dowsing, has for years been cloaked in mystery and superstition. Recognized by some as a means of finding water and minerals, it is actually a method for anyone to develop intuitive skills. This thought-provoking book demystifies dowsing and presents this ancient science as a powerful tool for self-knowledge.

Includes a brief history of dowsing, and step-by-step instructions for learning to use L-rods, Y-rods, and pendulums, as well as non-device dowsing. Shows how dowsing is used for locating water, gold and other minerals, buried artifacts, ancient ritual sites, and in police work to help find missing persons.

136 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1990

Reviews

[Will]

There's some great stuff here--notably the description of a theory of dowsing as a progressive skill that begins with a learned ability to trust the dowsed responses to physical targets of increasing distance, to nonphysical questions, and eventually through to dowsing without physical tools in a profound connection to Nature via brainwave entrainment.

The book closes with something I've seen Sig Lonegren discuss in a YouTube video, which is the Threefold Permission framework. This a check-and-balance like habit that recommends dowsers ask first if they may be permitted to ask their question, then if they can or are capable of asking and receiving the right answer, and finally if they even should. This is such a compelling idea to me it I think it could've been a whole chapter much earlier in the book.

The bulk of the book, however, develops into a rambling survey of speculations on the phenomenology of dowsing that did not age well from my naive perspective. Perhaps pick this up with the intention to only read the instructional parts where they seem to me to do a great job conveying their ideas about how to learn to dowse.