45. Map Dowsing with Your Pendulum
In the introduction, I mentioned Verne Cameron and how he’d used a pendulum to locate the positions and depths of all the submarines in the Pacific Ocean at that time. In the 1940s, Henry Gross located the site of the first freshwater well in Bermuda. He did this from his home in Maine. (Roberts 1951.) Abbé Mermet located oil, minerals, and water in Africa and South America by map dowsing. He also did archaeological dowsing for the Vatican, and found missing people with the help of his pendulum.
Sadly, many of these people were dead before he was asked to find them, but at least some had a happy ending. In January 1935, a woman in France asked him to try to find her twenty-six-year-old son who had disappeared. Using maps and his pendulum, Abbé Mermet was able to tell the distraught mother that her son had had a nervous breakdown and was in Toulouse, forty-five miles away. Ten days later, the Abbé received a letter from the mother, saying that “they were making arrangements for his return home” (Mermet 1959, 202-203).
In 1970, not long before he became the world’s most famous psychic, Uri Geller used his map dowsing skills to help Moshe Dayan, at that time the Israeli Minister of Defense, locate archaeological treasures, which the minister later displayed in his home. He wasn’t paid for doing so, but since then Uri Geller has become the highest paid map dowser in history. In 1986, The Financial Times in London reported that Uri Geller received one million pounds for every job of map dowsing he undertook (Jacobsen 2017, 332).
There are a number of ways to perform map dowsing, and many dowsers use a combination of all them.
The first method is to move the pendulum over a map until the pendulum reacts. Continue doing this with more localized maps to pinpoint the exact location. Some dowsers prefer to use a pen or pencil as a pointer, and pass this over the map while the other hand holds the pendulum to one side. The pendulum reacts when the pointer is over the right spot.
The second method is similar to the first. Hold your pendulum beside the map and move a ruler or some other straight edge across the map until the pendulum reacts. Draw a fine pencil line across the map to mark where the pendulum reacted. Repeat the process by moving the ruler down the map at a ninety-degree angle to the drawn line. Draw another line when the pendulum reacts. You’ll find the item where the two lines intersect.
The third method involves placing the pendulum over one of the bottom corners of the map and asking it to indicate the direction of whatever it is you are searching for. The pendulum will swing to indicate a particular direction. Draw a pencil line across the map using the edge of your ruler. Repeat the process from the other bottom corner. You will find what you are searching for where the two lines intersect.
A fourth and similar method uses the map coordinates. Ask your pendulum, “Where on the north-south coordinate is (whatever it is you are divining for) to be found?” As you are saying this, run your pointer down the map from north to south. Mark where the pendulum responds. Repeat the process going from west to east. The item you are searching for will be found where the coordinates meet.
The fifth method involves mentally dividing the map into quarters. Hold the pendulum over each quarter in turn, and ask: “Will I find (whatever it is you’re searching for) in this square?” The pendulum will react when it’s over the right one. This quarter is again divided into quarters, and the process repeated. This can be done again and again, preferably using more localized maps, until the exact spot is located. Many maps are divided into grids, and you may prefer to use these instead of the quarters.
You don’t necessarily need an accurate map to perform map dowsing. Bob Ater, a well-known dowser in Maine, was challenged by two reporters, Emily and Per Ola d’Aulaire, at a dowsing convention in 1975. They handed him a sketched map, drawn in pencil on the back of an envelope, and told him it was a map of their farm, three hundred miles away in Connecticut. They asked him to tell them where their water well was. He successfully showed them where it was. He then told them there was an oblong shape on their property and indicated a blank area of their map. The reporters couldn’t think what it could be, until one remembered it was the foundations of an old garage that used to be on the site. Finally, Bob Ater ran his pencil along the outline of the house and found a “snaky line.”
The reporters were startled, as they realized he’d located their garden hose, exactly where they’d left it (article in Saturday Evening Post, May/June 1976).
A couple of years ago, my wife and I spent a few days at a seaside resort town and met a couple who owned a craft store there. When I said how fortunate they were to live in such a beautiful place, the husband told us they’d found it by using luck and magic. He was busy serving customers, so we had to visit their store again later to learn more. He and his wife had been high school teachers. They loved their work, but had grown tired of the long daily commutes and the hustle and bustle of life in a big city. One evening, he opened up a map of the entire country and asked his pendulum to find them the perfect place to live. When he ran his pendulum along the vertical and horizontal coordinates it indicated the resort town.
They did nothing about it for almost a year. It became almost a joke. Whenever one of them got caught up in gridlock traffic, he or she would suggest they move to this town that they had yet to visit. Finally, they went there on vacation and fell in love with it right away. After asking their pendulum further questions about the wisdom of making such a big move, they resigned from their positions, sold their house, and moved.
“It was the best thing we’ve ever done,” he told me. “We were planning to find teaching positions here, but this store came on the market at the right time. We bought a house just up the road, so we walk to work. No more commuting! We love the climate here, too. We’re very happy.”