Dowsing, also known as divining, is the practice of finding water, minerals, caves, missing items or people, and locating illnesses in the body using tools such as pendulums and maps or two L shaped or forked sticks. One method of dowsing involves holding the sticks in front of you while you walk and noting when the sticks cross or pull toward the ground and another, which has a bit less obvious scientific reasoning, involves holding a pendulum over a map.

Records of knowledge of the art of dowsing go back 8,000 years. The earliest record of dowsing comes from cave paintings dating back 8,000 years found in the Tassali Caves in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. A large wall painting in one of the caves depicts a man holding a forked stick looking for water while others watch. In Egypt 4,000 year old wall etchings depict Pharaohs dowsing and a 2,500 year old etching in China depicts a ruler dowsing as well. References are made to dowsing in scores of ancient literature including the Bible. By the middle ages German miners relied heavily on dowsing skills to locate their caches. The 31st president of the USA, Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer and a known, as well as a publicly admitted, dowser.

Today while many scoff a the idea of dowsing having any scientific basis, many members of both the British and American Societies of Dowsers are earning impressive amounts of money from major companies for their help in locating minerals, water, underground wires and pipelines, and even missing persons. The United States Government spent 35 million dollars researching and training