Anybody out there into "divining?" Also sometimes called "witching?"
The reason I posed this question is that I have an interest in the subject. In the 1970's, while pastoring a little church in a little town in the south-central part of Oklahoma, and not making very much money doing it, I went to work for a man who drilled water wells. I soon found out that I could "divine" or "witch" water--which was a surprise because I had always considered finding water with a forked stick a bit of nonsence. My older brother later told me that my father--he died when I was a baby--could "witch" or "divine" wells.
On one day, soon after I went to work for Red--that was the driller's nickname--we went to a place in the country to drill a water well for a man. His neighbor had a very good well right against the dividing fence. Our man had staked a location over on his land the same distance from the road as the neighbor's well. There was, however, a swag that angled across both places. The neighbor's well was in that swag, but the location staked by our man was not. When I looked at the situation, I told Red that, if we wanted to hit the same water as the neighbor had, we should move back into the swag. I was ignored by our man and Red, and we drilled 200 feet into blue shale and a small amount of oily water before we quit for the day.
The next morning, our man showed up with an elderly gentleman carrying the most perfect willow "Y" that I've ever seen. (I suspect he cultivated it.) With the stick, he walked from the road toward the back of the place. He got no sign where we were drilling, but when he hit the swag, that "Y" went down. He noticed me watching him closely, and asked, "Have you ever seen this done before?" I told him that I hadn't, so he said, "Come here! Stick your finger into my hand where the stick is and walk beside me!" I did as he said, and I could feel that "Y" twist in his hand but detected no movement in the hand.
Now, I had seen TV depictions wherein the forked stick was short and heavy--perhaps 3/4 inch in diameter. The supposed "witcher" or "diviner" would grasp the two sides of the fork, and, when he supposedly passed over water, the stick would force his hands to move so that it pointed at the ground. Like it is a lot of times about other things, that TV script was written by someone who knew nothing about a willow "Y" and less about using one. The willow "Y" was a very slender, flexible thing. The elderly gentleman grasped both sides of the fork with the stick pointing upward. At that point, his closed fists were perpendicular to the ground, but he bent the forks of the stick outward so that they were horizontal--parallel to the ground. When he pased over water, his hands never moved but the point of the stick went down and rotated the two sides of the fork in his hand as if it were alive. That rotation is what I felt. A person can squeeze the forks of that stick so hard it hurts when it rotates, but it will still rotate--sometimes striping the bark.
When the elderly gentleman left, he gave me his stick. We moved the drilling rig to where he had indicated--down in the swag--and drilled our man a good well. Between drill stem changes, I tryed out the willow "Y" and it worked for me. After that, I was often asked to locate wells.
Like Graybeard said about another matter on another forum, I'm sure that there is a natural explanation for that stick falling to water. I just don't know what that explanation is.
