Part 4

There is a mystery in the hidden flow of subterranean courses of water, and in the occurrence of deposits of valuable ores, which encourage a resort to mysterious methods for discovering them.

If the wise can point to no sure clue to them, the ignorant pretender does not fail to find one, which to many is all the more acceptable for its extravagant pretensions and inexplicable nature. It is stated by a writer in the "American Journal of Science," (Vol. 11, 1826,) that the divining rod has been in frequent use since the eleventh century.

A work was published in France, in 1871, detailing six hundred experiments made to ascertain the facts attributed to it, "by which is unfolded," according to this work, "their resemblance to the admirable and uniform laws of electricity and magnetism."

These sciences still continue to be appealed to in order to support in some vague way phenomena which defy other means of explication.

As commonly used, the divining rod is a forked, slender stick of witch hazel; elastic twigs, however, of any sort, or even two sticks of whale-bone fastened together at one end, do not appear to be rejected in the want of the hazel tree.

One branch of the twig is taken in each hand between the thumb and forefinger, the two ends pointing down. Holding the stick in this position, the palms towards the face, the gifted operator passes over the surface of the ground; and whenever the upper point of the stick bends over and points downward, there he affirms the spring or metallic vein will be found.

Some even pretend to designate the distance below the surface according to the force of the movement, or according to the diameter of the circle over which the action is perceived, one rule being that the depth is half the diameter of this circle; whence, the deeper the object is, below the surface, the further is its influence exerted. It is observable that a rod so held will of necessity turn as the hands are closed more tightly upon it, though this has at first the appearance of serving to resist its motion. From the character of many who use the rod and believe in it, it is also plain that this force is exerted without any intention or consciousness on their part, and that they are themselves honestly deceived by the movement.

On putting the experiment to the test by digging, if water is found it proves the genuineness of the operation; if it is not found, something else is, to which the effect is attributed, or the water which attracted the rod is sure to be met with if the digging is only continued deep enough. Some ingenuity is therefore necessary to expose the deception.

The writer above referred to succeeded in showing the absurdity of the operation by taking the "diviners" over the same ground twice, the second time blindfolded, and each time marking the points designated by the rod. This, however, is a test to which they are not often willing to subject their art.

Some operators do not require a forked twig. There was, in 1857, and may be still, within less than one hundred miles from New York, a man who believed himself gifted in the use of the divining rod, and was occasionally sent for to go great distances, to determine the position of objects of value sunk in the lakes, of ores and of wells of water. He carried several little cylinders of tin, but what they contained was a secret. One had an attraction for iron, another for copper, a third for water, etc. He had in his hand a little rattan cane, which he used as not likely to excite the observation of those he met.

Taking one of the cylinders out of his pocket he slipped the rattan into a socket in its end, and holding in his hands the other end of the stick, he set the contrivance bobbing up and down and around. That it was attracted and drawn towards any body of ore in the vicinity he was evidently convinced.

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[_From Notes and Queries._]

DIVINING ROD.--Divination by the rod or wand is mentioned in the prophecy of Ezekiel. Hosea, too, reproaches the Jews as being infected with the like superstition: "My people ask counsel at their stocks and their _staff_ declareth unto them." Chap. iv, 12. Not only the Chaldeans used rods for divination, but almost every nation which has pretended to that science, has practiced the same method. Herodotus mentions it as a custom of the Alani, and Tacitus of the old Germans. See Cambridge's "Scribleriad," book V, note on line 21.

In the manuscript "Discourse on Witchcraft," 1705, written by Mr. John Bell, page 41, I find the following account from Theophylact on the subject of _rabdomanteia_ or rod-divination: "They set up two staffs, and, having whispered some verses and incantations, the staffs fell by the operation of dæmons. Then they considered which way each of them fell--forward or backward, to the right or left hand--and agreeably gave responses, having made use of the fall of their staffs for their signs."

Dr. Henry, in his "History of Great Britain," tells us (II, 550), that after the Anglo-Saxons and Danes embraced the Christian religion, the clergy were commanded by the canons to preach very frequently against _diviners_, sorcerers, auguries, omens, charms, incantations, and all the filth of the wicked and dotages of the Gentiles."

The following is from "Epigrams, etc.," published London, 1651--_Virgula Divina_:

"Some sorcerers do boast they have a rod, Gathered 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."

The earliest use made of the divining rod by the miners was for the discovery of the _lode_. So late as three years ago (1850), the process has been tried. The method of procedure was to cut the twig of an hazel or apple-tree of twelve months' growth, into a forked shape, and to hold this by both hands in a peculiar way, walking across the land until the twig bent, which was taken as an indication of the locality of the lode. The person who generally practises this divination boasts himself to be the seventh son of a seventh son. The twig of hazel bends in his hands to the conviction of the miners that ore is present; but then the peculiar manner in which the twig is held, bringing muscular action to bear upon it, accounts for its gradual deflection, and the circumstance of the strata walked over always containing ore gives a further credit to the process of divination.

The vulgar notion still prevalent in the north of England of the hazel's tendency to a vein of lead ore, seam or stratum of coal, etc., seems to be a vestige of this rod divination.

The _virgula divina_ or _baculus divinatorius_ is a forked branch in the form of a Y, cut off an hazel stick, by means whereof people have pretended to discover mines, springs, etc., underground. The method of using it is this: the person who bears it, walking very slowly over the places where he suspects mines or springs may be, the effluvia exhaling from the metals, or vapor from the water impregnating the wood, makes it dip or decline, which is the sign of a discovery.

In the _Living Library_ or _Historical Meditations_ we read: "No man can tell why forked sticks of hazill (rather than sticks of other trees growing upon the very same places) are fit to shew the places where the veins of gold and silver are." See Lilly's History of his Life and Times, for a curious experiment (which he confesses, however, to have failed), to discover hidden treasure by the hazel rod.

In the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for February, 1752, xxii, 77, we read: "M. Linnæus, when he was upon his voyage to Scania, hearing his secretary highly extol the virtues of his divining rod, was willing to convince himself of its insufficiency, and for that purpose concealed a purse of one hundred ducats under a ranunculus which grew by itself in a meadow and bid the secretary find it if he could. The wand discovered nothing, and M. Linnæus's mark was soon trampled down by the company who were present; so that when M. Linnæus went to finish the experiment by fetching the gold himself, he was utterly at a loss where to seek it. The man with the wand assisted him and pronounced that it could not lie the way they were going, but quite the contrary; so he pursued the direction of his wand and actually dug out the gold. M. Linnæus adds, that such another experiment would make a proselyte of him." We read in the same book for November, 1751, xxi, 507: "So early as Agricola, the divining rod was in much request, and has obtained great credit for its discovery where to dig for metals and springs of water; for some years past its reputation has been on the decline, but lately it has been revived by an ingenious gentleman who, from numerous experiments, hath good reason to believe its effects to be more than imagination. He says that hazel and willow rods, he has by experience found, will actually answer, with all persons in a good state of health, if they are used with moderation and at some distance of time, and after meals, when the operator is in good spirits. The hazel, willow and elm are all attracted by springs of water. Some persons have the virtue intermittently; the rod in their hands will attract one half hour and repel the next. The rod is attracted by all metals, coals, amber and limestone, but with different degrees of strength. The best rods are those from the hazel or nut tree, as they are pliant and tough and cut in the winter months. A shoot that terminates equally forked is to be met with--two single ones of a length and size may be tied together by a thread and will answer as well as the other."

In the supplement to the Athenian Oracle, p. 234, we read that "the experiment of a hazel's tendency 'to a vein' of lead ore is limited to St. John Baptist's Eve, and that with an hazel of that same year's growth."

There is a treatise in French entitled, _La Phisique Occulte ou Traite de la Baguette Divinatoire_, et de son utilite pour la decouverte des sources d'Eau, des Minieres, de Tresors caches, des Voleurs et des Meurtriers fugitifs: par M. L. L. de Vallemont pretre et docteur en theologie; 12 mo., Amsterdam, 1693. 464 pages.

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[_From Brand's Popular Antiquities._]

At the end of Henry Alan's edition of Cicero's treatise De Divinatione, and De Fate, 1839, will be found "Catalogus auctorum de _divinatione_ ac fato, de oraculis, de somniis, de astrologia, de dæmonibus, de magia id genus aliis."

With the divining rod seems connected a _lusus naturae_ of ash tree bough resembling the litui of the Roman augurs and the Christian pastoral staff which still obtains a place, if not on this account I know not why, in the catalogue of popular superstitions. Seven or eight years ago, I remember to have seen one of these, which I thought extremely beautiful and curious, in the house of an old woman at Beeralston, in Devonshire, of whom I would most gladly have purchased it; but she declined parting with it on any account, thinking it would be unlucky to do so. Mr. Gostling, in the Antiquarian Repertory, ii, 164, has some observations on this subject. He thinks the lituus or staff, with the crook at one end, which the augurs of old carried as badges of their profession and instruments in the superstitious exercise of it, was not made of metal but of the substance above mentioned. Whether, says he, to call it a work of art or nature may be doubted: some were probably of the former kind; others, Hogarth, in his Analysis of Beauty, calls _lusus naturæ_ found in plants of different sorts, and in one of the plates of that work gives a specimen of a very elegant one, a branch of ash. I should rather, continues he, style it a distemper or distortion of nature; for it seems the effect of a wound by some insect which, piercing to the heart of the plant with its proboscis, poisons that, while the bark remains uninjured and proceeds in its growth, but formed into various stripes, flatness and curves for the want of the support which nature designed it. The beauty, some of these arrive at, might well consecrate them to the mysterious fopperies of heathenism, and their rarity occasions imitations of them by art. The pastoral staff of the Church of Rome seems to have been formed from the vegetable litui, though the general idea is that it is an imitation of the shepherd's crook. The engravings given in the Antiquarian Repertory are of carved branches of the ash.

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[_From Modern Magic, by M. Shele de Vere, published 1873._]

The relations in which some men stand to nature are sometimes so close as to enable them to make discoveries which are impossible to others.

This is, for instance, the case with persons who feel the presence of waters or of metals. The former have, from time immemorial, generally used a wand, the so-called divining rod, which, according to Pliny, was already known to the ancient Etruscans as a means for the discovery of hidden springs.

An Italian author, Amoretti, who has given special attention to this subject, states that at least every fifth man is susceptible to the influence of water and metals, but this is evidently an over-estimate.

In recent times many persons have been known to possess this gift of discovering hidden springs or subterranean masses of water, and these have but rarely employed an instrument.

Catharine Beutler, of Thurgovia, in Switzerland, and Anna Maria Brugger, of the same place, were both so seriously affected by the presence of water that they fell into violent nervous excitement when they happened to cross places beneath which, large quantities were concealed, and became perfectly exhausted.

In France, a class of men, called _sourciers_, have for ages possessed this instinctive power of perceiving the presence of water, and others, like the famous Abbe Paramelle, have cultivated the natural gift till they were finally enabled, by a mere cursory examination of a landscape, to ascertain whether large masses of water were hidden anywhere, and to indicate the precise spots where they might be found.

Why water and metals should almost always go hand in hand in connection with this peculiar gift, is not quite clear; but the staff of Hermes, having probably the form of the divining rod was always represented as giving the command over the treasures of the earth, and the Orphic Hymn (v. 527,) calls it--hence, the golden rod, producing wealth and happiness.

On the other hand, the Aquæ Virga, the nymph of springs, had also a divining rod in her hand, and Numa, inspired by a water-nymph, established the worship of waters in connection of that of the dead. For here, also, riches and death seem to have entered into a strange alliance.

Del Rio, in his _Disquisitiones Magicæ_, mentions thus the Rahuri of Spain--the lynx-eyed, as he translates the name--who were able, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, to discover all the veins of metals or of water beneath the surface, all hidden treasures and corpses in their coffins.

There is at least one instance recorded, where a person possessed the power to see even more than the Rahuris. This was a Portuguese lady, Pedegache, who first attracted attention by being able to discover subterranean springs and their connections, a gift which brought her great honors after she had informed the king of all the various supplies of water which were hidden near a palace which he was about to build. Shafts were sunk according to her directions, and not only water was found but also various soils and stones which she had foretold would have to be pierced.

She also seems to have cultivated her talent, for we hear of her next being able to discover treasures, even valuable antique statues in the interior of houses, and finally she reached such a degree of intuition that she saw the inner parts of the human body, and pointed out their diseases and defects.

The divining rod, originally a twig of willow or hazel, is often made of metal, and the impression prevails that in such cases an electric current arising from the subterranean water or metals enters the diviner's body by the feet, passes through him, and finally affects the two branches of the rod, which represent opposite poles. It is certain that when the electric current is interrupted, the power of the divining rod is suspended.

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[_From Notes and Queries._]

Perhaps, like many of your correspondents, I had imagined that the supposed properties of the divining rod had been a discovery recently made, either by the great American artist, Mr. Barnum, or by one of _Dii Minores_ of this country. To my mortification, however, I find that it is "as old as the hills," or at least contemporaneous with the Sortes Virgilianæ, _et id genus omne_. I have before me the works of Mr. Abraham Cowley, in two vols. 12 mo., London, 1681, and in one of his Pindarique Odes, addressed to Mr. Hobs, I find the following lines:

To walk in ruines like vain ghosts, we love, And with fond divining wands, We search among the dead For treasures buried.

And to these lines is added the following note:

"Virgula Divina, or divining wand, is a two-forked branch of a hazel tree which is used for the finding out either of veins or hidden treasures of gold or silver, and being carried about bends downwards (or rather is said to do so,) when it comes to the place where they lye."

"In the first edition of his _Mathematical Recreations_, Dr. Hutton laughed at the divining rod. In the interval between that and the second edition a lady made him change his note, by using one before him, at Woolwich. Hutton had the courage to publish the account of the experiment in his second edition, after the account he had previously given. By a letter from Hutton to Bruce, printed in the memoir of the former which the latter wrote, it appears that the lady was Lady Milbanke."

"A Cornish lady informs me that the Cornish miners to this day use the divining rod."

However the pretended effect of the divining rod may be attributed to knavery and credulity by philosophers who will not take the trouble of witnessing and investigating the operation, any one who will pay a visit to the Mendip Hills, in Somersetshire, and the country around their base, may have abundant proof of the efficacy of it. Its success has been very strikingly proved along the range of the Pennard Hills, also, to the south of the Mendip. The faculty of discovering water by means of the divining rod is not possessed by every one, for indeed there are but few who possess it in any considerable degree, or in whose hands the motion of the rod, when passing over an underground stream, is very decided, and they who have it are quite unconscious of their capability until made aware of it by experiment.

I saw the operation of the rod, or rather of a fork formed by the shoots of the last year, held in the hands of the experimenter by the extremities, with the angle projecting before him. When he came over the spot beneath which the water flowed, the rod, which had before been perfectly still, writhed about with considerable force, so that the holder could not keep it in its former position, and he appealed to the bystanders to notice that he had made no motion to produce this effect, and used every effort to prevent it. The operation was several times repeated with the same result, and each time under the close inspection of shrewd and doubting, if not incredulous observers. Forks of any kind of green wood served equally well, but those of dead wood had no effect. The experimenter had discovered water, in several instances, in the same parish (Pennard), but was perfectly unaware of his capability till he was requested by his landlord to try. The operator had the reputation of a perfectly honest man, whose word might be safely trusted, and who was incapable of attempting to deceive any one--as indeed appeared by his open and ingenuous manner and conversation on this occasion. He was a farmer, and respected by all his neighbors. So general is the conviction of the efficacy of the divining rod in discovering both water and the ores of calameni or zinc all over the Mendip, that the people are quite astonished when any doubt is expressed about it. The late Dr. Hutton wrote against the pretension, as one of many instances of deception founded upon gross ignorance and credulity, when a lady of quality, who herself possessed the faculty, called upon him and gave him experimental proof, in the neighborhood of Woolwich, that water was discoverable by that means. This, Dr. Hutton afterwards publicly acknowledged.

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After delivering my essay before the Civil Engineers' Club of the Northwest, the following letter was forwarded to me by the secretary:

BROWNSVILLE, TENN.

GENTLEMEN:--I notice that at a meeting of your honorable Club, Mr. Latimer read an essay upon the subject of the "Divining Rod," and seemed to be at a loss to know how to tell whether the rod's movements pointed to or indicated any particular substance under the earth. I am now seventy-three years of age, and have been studying and experimenting with it since twenty years of age. I am not satisfied what causes the motion of it in my hands, but by experimenting, I can tell to a certainty whether I am over any substance, either water or mineral, or whether it is sulphur, salt or any other kind of water.

I am glad that investigation in this is being made by scientific men, and hope some day it may profit man. For any information you may want, address me at Brownsville, Tennessee.

Very respectfully,

HARRY SANGSTER.

Upon receipt of this letter from Mr. Sangster, I wrote to him asking him to explain to me upon what principle he could discover the difference between metals and water, and between one kind of water and another. To this I have received the following answer, just in time to add it to this publication:

BROWNSVILLE, May 10, 1876.

C. LATIMER, ESQ., _Cleveland, Ohio_:

DEAR SIR:--Your favor of the 5th inst. is before me; also that of the 15th ult. You must excuse me for not answering the latter sooner, owing to ill health and other causes. I am glad to furnish you all the information in my power relative to the matter in question, because I would like to see it developed--as I believe it will be eventually--into a tangible, practical and useful science. The prejudice now prevailing against it will, in my opinion, ere long be dispelled. It is impossible for me, in the space of a letter, to give a full statement of my views, theory and experience on the subject of finding the locality of metals, minerals and water under the surface of the ground; but will endeavor to answer the inquiry of your first letter as concisely and explicitly as possible.