I come from a long line of water witches. Water-witching, also known as dowsing or divining, is a practice used to locate groundwater. Using a forked branch or two l-shaped rods, a water witch will hold their chosen tool while walking slowly across the land. As they move over the water source, the tool will move, indicating where to dig or drill. Some dowsers can even specify the depth at which to drill. Water-witching has also been used to locate mineral ores, oil, lost objects, sites, and information. Relying on communication with unseen forces, dowsers seek answers and direction through the movements of tools and materials. In this way, dowsing can also be understood as a form of divination leading to insight into a question or situation. A harbinger of what is to come, it can bring insight into the present and the past. It can allow access to the subterranean within our bodies and the land. While the practice of dowsing has been formally discredited as pseudo-science, its use persists. My mother’s family has long been regarded for their water-witching abilities.
Years ago, my Aunt Nancy wrote to me, sharing her story of water-witching. When she was a teenager, she was asked to “witch” for a well on a property for friends of my grandparents. She’d never dowsed a well before, but everyone knew that the women and girls in my mother’s family could find water (I have since learned my grandfather was also known to dowse). A willow branch was plucked and whittled into a fork and placed in her hands. She didn’t know how or what she was doing. She was instructed to hold the two ends of the fork, one in each fist, while keeping her elbows turned outwards, pointing the opposite end in front of her and keeping it slightly upward as she moved. As she walked slowly, the dowsing rod moved “of its own accord” at a particular spot, pointing down to the earth as though pulled by an invisible force. “It was an extremely strange feeling for me, but everyone seemed quite matter of fact about it as if this was just what they expected. So, I tried not to overreact…”1 Though a well was successfully drilled in that spot, she confessed that she never tried it again. The last line of her email was, “I wonder if water-witching wears away…”.2 As I read, her words felt like icy air on my skin. Why didn’t she try it again? Why was dowsing such a shrouded mystery to them even though they all put so much stock in the results? Why haven’t we tried to stay in touch since then? These are simple questions without easy answers.
Image Description: A custom print on paper made with the juice of blueberries sits atop a red a white checkered table cloth. On top of the print is a custom dowsing rod: a wooden spoon and lavender branch bound together. To the right is a white mug with muddled up blueberries in the bottom. A stick sits in the mug, ready for the artists to sign the print once dowsing is complete.
Image: Dowsing during a water-witching workshop with Alana Bartol. Photo credit: Emma Metcalfe Hurst, courtesy of Access Gallery.
Image description: A closeup, over-the-shoulder image of a workshop participant holding a dowsing rod made of a forked tree branch. The rod is held at waist-height, pointing away from their body and parallel to the road below. The feet of other participants are visible at the top of the image, indicating that they are walking as a group along a roadway.
As a white settler, understanding my relationship to my dowsing abilities has been part of my ongoing work to develop a connection to a family lineage and ancestry. To me, this history is inseparable from the ongoing violent colonization on Turtle Island. Dowsing, like my family, is tied to white settler colonialism. It has been used in parts of Europe since the 15th century for finding water and as a tool for prospectors searching for mineral ores such as gold, copper, and silver, as well as coal. Peter (son of Nels Peterson), my fourth great grandfather on my mother’s side, was born in Denmark and arrived in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded and ancestral lands of the Mi’kmaq People, in the late 1700s. He married Elizabeth Stillman, my fourth great-grandmother, a first-generation settler from Germany. They settled in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia and had six children. Beyond this, I don’t know much about them.
Growing up, we identified as Canadian, and while the story of Peter was occasionally shared (though without any discussion of our role in settler colonization and white supremacy), any connection to Danish history, language, and culture had long since been lost. There was never any mention of Elizabeth or our German ancestry; I only learned of her later on, through my own research.
I was born in K’jipuktuk (Halifax, NS) and spent a good portion of my childhood there. For me, dowsing is a way to discuss my relationship with the earth and my own complicated cultural and familial history. Through this work, I reflect on how I, along with other white settler Canadians, am implicated in systems of oppression—organized around white settler colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism—intertwined with environmental degradation, Indigenous dispossession, and ongoing colonial violence.
Image description: A black and white print of a sparsely populated forest landscape. While some individuals dowse with forked tree branches, others dig holes in the rocky landscape in search of water.
Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.3
The first time I tried dowsing was during Food Water Life, a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity with lead artists Lucy and Jorge Orta. It was winter, and the snow was high; technically, there was water everywhere. Almost every day, I would go out to dowse in the woods alone, walking with a forked stick silently directing me. It seemed absurd, but I kept doing it. I could feel myself becoming differently attuned to the environment, listening with my entire body. The residency gave me space and time to explore this embodied practice. It also gave me a chance to learn deeply about the history of dowsing. Once I began researching, I became less concerned with answers and more curious about questions. I wanted to play with these tools to form a dowsing practice that could—much like an art practice—consider the processes of asking, as well as what questions were worth asking.
I saw how dowsing could allow conflicts, desires, and systems to come into view and, maybe most importantly, how it could act as a tool for reciprocity, questioning, and movement, a tool for attuning ourselves differently to our environments, energies, the earth, the elements, our more-than-human kin, and each other.
During the residency, I created several works around dowsing, including a collaborative piece with artist Lisa Myers entitled Dowsing for Woo, a participatory performance piece inviting the other artists-in-residence, staff, and faculty artists to a potluck dinner. Each guest was invited to make a dish with the power to “woo” someone, and we created a dowsing chart to measure the amount of “woo” in someone’s dish. Lisa created prints of the charts using blueberry ink and made aprons for us. I fashioned a custom dowsing rod using a small, forked branch, binding one of Lisa’s spoons to the end with a sprig of lavender. And a unique method of dowsing was devised!
On Valentine’s Day, we held the potluck, invited people to present their dishes to us before feasting, and conducted dowsing readings to determine the amount of “woo” in each dish. The dowsing chart prints were stamped with a purple heart indicating the results of each reading and were given to the dish’s creator. The dowsing rod and the charts became stained and smeared with food and drink as the evening continued. (Part of the process was to put a sample of each dish on the chart to get an accurate reading.) One artist—who was very skeptical about the whole thing—was overjoyed when their dish was stamped “Love-a-vore,” one of the highest indicators of food woo-ability next to “Insatiable Woo.” The dowsing process felt magical in a way that was elusive and unmeasurable.
Image: Dowsing for Woo, Alana Bartol with Lisa Myers, at The Banff Centre, 2015.
Image description: (1) Artists Alana Bartol and Lisa Myers stand behind a table containing red and white checkered cloths, prints on paper, a plate filled with thick sliced bread, a bundle of lavender, and mugs filled with blueberries. Alana Bartol holds a custom-made dowsing rod (of a wooden spoon and lavender branch) overtop of the blueberry printed paper. To the right of the image is a closeup of both the dowsing rod and print on paper. (2) A dowsing rod on top of an eight-sectioned paper wheel printed in blueberry ink. The dowsing rod, bound with a lavender branch and flowers, points to the section of the print that reads: “Fired up and Hot.” Other sections of the wheel read: Hedonic Encounter Woo; Saucy Woo; Insatiable Woo; Love-a-vore; Leftover Woo; and Ripe today Rotten tomorrow Woo. (3) A dowsing rod sits on a checkered cloth next to a pie. A bundle of lavender sits at the top of the image. (4) Closeup of a print that has been ‘wooed,’ a smear of blueberry ink covers the centre of the wheel. (5) Closeup of a print that has been ‘wooed,’ a smear of blueberry ink (of a lighter colour then in the previous image) covers the centre of the wheel.
Create a dowsing tool. Before you begin, consider what it will be used for. How does that guide the shape, materials, and form? How would it change if you had to include others? What would you ask of them? What will they ask of you? What will they receive? What values are important to you in developing a dowsing process? Is developing a process the same as developing a practice?
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.4
Dowsing is inquiry, it involves asking questions. Dowsing tools come in many forms: the most recognized divining tools are Y rods, often a forked tree branch (willows or water-loving trees are best), L shaped rods (often made of copper), and handheld pendulums, a weight suspended by a pivot, which can come in many materials and forms. The pendulum’s ensemble of responses is limited to “yes,” “no,” or “unclear.” One must think through all the ways in which their question could be interpreted—learning how to ask questions is integral. How one might explain dowsing is an altogether different concern: dowsing’s long history as a pseudoscience conjures coincidence, mendacity, and sorcery as explanations. What, then, is “reliable” information? How important is it to ask the right question?
Images: Dowsers from various water-witching workshops. Photo credits: Yuula Benivolski, Courtesy Blackwood Gallery, and Emma Metcalfe Hurst, Courtesy of Access Gallery.
Image description: (1) A participant holds a custom-made dowsing tool: a drain plug on a string. (2) A number of dowsing tools sit on a table (from left): forked tree branches; drain plugs on chains; small glass vials; round metal rings; metal pipe fittings; carved wooden forks. (3) A number of metal fittings and drain plugs tied to strings sit on a table ready to be used as dowsing tools. (4) A metal dowsing rod commercially packaged as “Searcheroonies.” Text on the packaging reads: “Find buried Treasure! Find underground water! Find lost or hidden objects in the grass…in the snow…in the sand! Searcheroonies can help you find things under the ground just as divining-rods helped our ancestors find water in the olden days. SEARCHEROONIES are easy to use and fun for the whole family.”
In Ursula Le Guin’s novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the protagonist, Genly Ai, a human envoy from Terra, is sent to the planet Gethen. There, he meets Faxe, a Foreteller or Weaver and leader of the Handdara, with the ability to see the future through ceremony. The Handdara is a Gethenian religion whose practitioners are interested in the interconnectedness of light and darkness; they embrace not knowing and uncertainty.
Drawing on Taoist philosophy, the book imagines a world that moves beyond constructed binaries of gender, separation of human and nature, and other dualisms. Despite his knowledge-gathering mission on Gethen being counter to the Handdara philosophy, Genly receives information (and an answer to his question). Before an answer is given, Genly is told by Faxe that the Handdara “don’t want answers” and that they developed and practiced foretelling to “exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question.”5 Genly is perplexed. How could the “Answerers” not want answers?!
Unlike seeking answers from the foreteller, dowsing is (usually) an individual practice, though participatory and communal methods can also be done. Perhaps Le Guin’s statement about science fiction as descriptive, not predictive, also applies to dowsing. The questions you ask, or the elements you seek, give insight into the present; they describe a situation. In her Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin says: “Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.”6 In exploring dowsing as a metaphor, what truths can you access? What lies can you construct that are also truths?
The enigmatic answers of oracles and clairvoyants are never straightforward but an entangled web of possibilities and interpretations. How can dowsing teach us to embrace uncertainty in ourselves? Can we learn to hold more than one answer in our minds? And what happens in our bodies when we do? Is dowsing reciprocal? What are the complexities of asking questions—particularly yes/no ones? How specific or general should they be? What are the questions we want to ask, and why? How do you receive the answers? Where do they lead? Are there consequences for you, for others, and for the earth?
Image description: Two workshop participants stand on a rocky beach with their dowsing rods pointing straight ahead toward a large body of water.
Though it has often been associated with witchcraft and the occult, dowsing has frequently been used for prospecting ores and water. Dowsing was practiced in parts of Europe in the 15th century when it was considered by some to be a legitimate method for miners to find mineral ores. Martine de Bertereau (est. 1578 – 1589), one of the first recorded female mineralogists, was a mining engineer who lived and worked in France. Working with her husband, she employed various techniques and types of knowledge in her work, including dowsing, astrology, and botany. She was also known to read palms and practice horoscopy. Accused of witchcraft, she died in prison along with one of her daughters. Martine’s story is a complex one that points to the historical relationship dowsing has to mining and resource extraction, which stems from the colonial violence that Martine both participated in and was killed by. For me, Martine has since become a complicated muse of sorts. Through Martine and the figure of the witch, I’ve been exploring how embodied practices can be reclaimed from colonial-capitalist-patriarchal forces, and how they can speak to the past, present, and possible futures of our relationship with energy, so-called natural resources, and the earth.
Can dowsing, once used for prospecting and mining, be transformed into a process for developing reciprocity, opening up new possibilities in our relationships with the earth and each other?
In past artworks, I have conducted performative dowsing readings at sites in Alberta contaminated by the oil and gas industry to draw attention to the health of damaged sites and to examine the so-called remediation practices of industry. Orphan Well Adoption Agency (OWAA) is an ongoing project, a fictional non-profit organization dedicated to finding caretakers for orphan wells in Alberta. Through symbolic adoptions, members of the public are asked to consider their role as caretakers.
OWAA re-imagines dowsing as a technology for environmental remediation, one that asks how dowsing might shift our relationships with the earth while examining the lack of responsibility, accountability, and transparency in the Alberta oil and gas industry. The OWAA has created custom dowsing tools, including pendulums. Field workers (Dowsers) listen to orphan wells and other contaminated sites and enable communication with them. Dowsing becomes an act of listening, allowing sites to speak through tools and materials.
Image: A letter from the Orphan Well Adoption Agency. Image courtesy of Alana Bartol.
Image description: In the top left corner, a small, round, black and white silhouette of an oil well. The text reads: Orphan Well Adoption Agency. Orphan Well 01-19-089-03WS, AKA “Rusty X” Opportunity No 17, AB. “I am parched. The thirst is overwhelming. The earth is alive. I am alive, so why do I feel dead? My paint has faded. I am dormant. Unmoving. I grow colder with each passing winter. I tell myself that I am just conserving energy. I listen to the sounds of the land. I hear chirps, clicks, and chatter from animals, birds, and insects. Humans and their machines generate low hums that reverberate across fields and forests. The prairie and wind screeches, howls, and moans. Sometimes it blows softly, whistling gently while I soak in the sun. It peels my paint. I know it is bad for me, but it feels so good. In the summer, the air is electric, charged with energy. I can’t wait to start again.”
Messages from the adopted wells and sites are translated into letters to caretakers. These letters express the range of experiences and woes the orphan wells face. Some are defensive, despairing, purposeless, and on edge; some are asking for help, while others sit in wait. If caretakers write back, their responses are often tender; some take the form of a poem or artwork, others include newspaper clippings about orphan wells or ask their adopted well questions. In her letter, a young caretaker named Claire reassures Thirsty Bird XXII in Special Area No. 2: “If you were in a special area or not, you are special.”7
How can we disrupt fictions that preserve and enable extractive and colonial projects? How do we hospice a failed system leaving masses of infrastructure with the potential to contaminate and endanger land, water, air, and life?
This is an invitation to try dowsing and to consider what it might offer you.
Dowsing rods and tools can take many forms. While dowsing tools such as y-rods, l-rods, pendulums, and bobbers can be purchased, a resourceful dowser can easily transform everyday household items into tools for dowsing. Though copper l-rods are nice, two hangers will suffice. You can find instructions on how to make l-rods from wire coat hangers online.
L-rods can be used together or one at a time:
Grip the short end (handle). Do not grip the handles too tight, as the rods must float freely to work.
Your arms should be bent at the elbow, and the rods should be straight out in front of you.
This is your ready position. How and when you are ready is up to you.
Have a clear mind and be open to receiving information that could come in the form of a sensation.
Be open to receiving with all your senses.
Before you begin, you want to determine your answers: yes and no. Ask: what is a yes? The rod (or rods) may move to indicate the answer. In the case of the L-rods, they may cross (think “x” marks the spot). The y-rod may dip down (or up) and then return to neutral, although it may do something different.
Once you receive a yes, you can ask what a no is. The l-rods may repel from each other, or they may not move at all. The movements between yes and no should be different to distinguish between them. Unclear should also be determined. It could be a movement that isn’t yes or no, or it could be no movement at all.
A note on yes/no answers: consider if you ask a question and receive a yes. How does that feel? Did it give you what you were really looking for? Is there another question underneath that one? Does the answer give you what you need, or is it your anticipation of/reaction to the answer that brings insight?
Often a forked branch, the y-rod, can be trickier. Water-loving plants and trees work best. Hold an end in each hand with the end pointed in front of your body. Palms up and thumbs out feel comfortable to me, with a slight push inward for tension, but be careful not to snap the branch, especially if it is dry. Many dowsers find neutral at a 45° angle. Find what works for you.
Handheld pendulums can come in many materials and forms (my go-to is a drain plug on a chain). Hold the end of the string or chain and let the pendulum hang before you. Ask it to show you a yes. It may swing either clockwise or counterclockwise or back and forth. Repeat the process to find out the movement for no.
Dowsing asks us to slow down and listen through our bodies. Before you begin, do you know where you are? Visit Native Land and Whose Land to locate yourself. Whose land are you on? How does this impact your questions or process? What is your relationship to the land? What is your intention? What do you want to find? What questions are important to you right now?
If you are searching for something, you may begin walking and allow the l-rod or y-rod to lead you. Take your time, and be prepared to slow down. When the dowsing rod or rods indicate a yes—stop. You might ask, is there something here for me to find? If so, do you have permission to find, examine, access, take, or remove it?
Dowsing involves asking questions and learning how to ask better questions. Ask your best one today. Ask better ones tomorrow.
Water-witching Workshops
Images: Water-witching workshops. Photo credits: Yuula Benivolski, Courtesy Blackwood Gallery, and Emma Metcalfe Hurst, Courtesy of Access Gallery.
Image description: (1) Artist Alana Bartol stands in front of a group sitting on a wooden stage within a grassy landscape. Industrial buildings fill the background. (2) Bartol sits on a wooden stage surrounded by workshop participants. Dowsing tools sit in front of her. (3) A group of workshop participants have their back to the camera while facing Alana Bartol with dowsing rods in hand. They are standing on a pathway alongside a large body of water.
In 2015, at the invitation of Access Gallery, I conducted my first Water-Witching Workshop, leading an exploration of the tools of dowsing and their various uses. Participants were invited to dowse in the urban landscape in the second half of the workshop and consider how dowsing might attune or orient them to the environment differently, heightening their awareness of the environments they moved through. Many were pulled to move outside of city grids and lines, finding that they could more freely wander only when gathered in a park.
Since then, I have continued facilitating dowsing workshops, which are always free and presented in partnership with arts organizations, programs, and galleries. All are welcome, even the skeptics. Participants leave with their dowsing tools made from everyday household objects: coat hangers become l-rods, drain plugs and small copper fittings for plumbing are tied to string and are transformed into pendulums.
Part of dowsing is finding a way that works (or doesn’t) for you. Sometimes it takes a lot of patience, and sometimes there is no response. Dowsing can conjure a range of emotions and reactions from calm and meditative to frustrating, fun, or silly; some people are adamant that it simply doesn’t work.
I quickly learned that people attending the workshops may have much more dowsing experience than me. One experienced dowser delicately rested the ends of a forked branch in downturned palms. Another used a chain to find breaks in an underground pipe; the chain would halt at each break as he dragged it along the ground. One man spoke about dowsing being nothing special as he knew many construction workers that used the technique to locate underground pipes and lines at sites.
As the workshops evolved, they became spaces for sharing dowsing experiences and techniques. I have learned so much from others through these conversations, and every workshop takes a different path shaped by the participants.
At the Water-witching Workshop in Port Union, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), with Union House Arts, participants were eager to put their dowsing skills to the test. This area is recognized for significant fossil discoveries of early life forms. Previous to the workshop, some participants had searched a specific area of rocks to find fossils, to no avail. To their surprise, the l-rods pointed them in the right direction, and several fossils were found.
Go for a walk outside with your dowsing rod(s). What does dowsing reveal about our movement through public space? How do other people react? Do you notice your awareness of your environment changes when dowsing? Do you move differently? Does your rod(s) pull or point you in a particular direction? Is there something there for you to notice or pay attention to?
Alana Bartol is an artist based in Mohkínstsis (Calgary, AB) in Treaty 7 Territory. [www.alanabartol.com]
- Nancy Nelson, e-mail message to Alana Bartol, July 24, 2014.
- Nancy Nelson, e-mail message to Alana Bartol,
- Pauline Oliveros
- Ursula K. Le GuinLe Guin, Ursula K., The Left Hand of Darkness, (New York: PAce Books, 1976), xii
- Le Guin, Ursula K., The Left Hand of Darkness, 70.
- Le Guin, Ursula K., The Left Hand of Darkness, xv.
- Claire Bernardin, Letter to Thirsty Bird XXII, 2020.
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