I was browsing the 'alt.divination' newsgroup, when I first came across Sig Lonegren. He had posted a response to a question related to dowsing for ley lines. I was intrigued, as I had always thought dowsers worked strictly with water. I wrote to him, and as him if he would be willing to interview, and he agreed. Sig Lonegren had been scheduled to appear in the December issue, but I had lost the original 2 hour transcript. I was embarrassed and upset. I sent him a letter, explaining the problem and asking him to let me take another shot, not really believing that he would respond. But he graciously forgave me and accepted, setting another date for the January issue. This interview, like the first, was conducted in an AOL chatroom. His is the first interview that I have taken this way, and I found I liked the medium more than I had believed I would. Translation of the log files, on the other hand, were tough! :>
DC: What is dowsing, exactly?
Sig: Dowsing is the ability to find objects and the answers to questions that can not be obtained by the five physical senses. There are four basic dowsing tools; the pendulum (an evenly balanced weight on the end of a string or chain); the Y rod (the old forked stick); L rods (usually two wires bent into L's, and held out in front); and the bobber (example: hold a fishing rod from the wrong end. It will bob up and down, and from side to side, or up and down to signify yes or no. It is used mostly by oil dowsers).
DC: How did you get involved with dowsing?
Sig: My mother taught me to dowse about thirty five years ago. We were out on our lawn looking for where the water pipe brought drinking water into our house. I first dowsed with L rods where it entered our home, and then Iwent down into the cellar and saw where the pipe came in. I was on target.
DC: Is this an inborn talent, or can anyone learn it?
Sig: I believe that anyone can learn to dowse. I co-headed the American Society of Dowsers (ASD) dowsing school for several years. We offered to give anyone their money back if they didn't get a dowsing response during the school. No one ever asked for their money back! Now these people wanted to dowse. But it works for non-believers (sometimes) as well. But if you keep at it, and do practice dowsing exercises every day, you will learn how to dowse. Anyone can do it.
DC: Who would I contact if I wanted to learn to dowse? Would it be the ASD? Are they nation wide?
Sig: ASD Yes, the American Society of Dowsers is a nation wide organization. Their address is ASD, Danville, Vermont 05828. And their phone number is (802) 684-3417 or (800) 711-9530. E-mail: asd@dowsers.org. They have a great bookstore with dowsing supplies and lots of books on dowsing. ASD also has local chapters all over the US, and they run gatherings and schools in various places around the US each year. Their web site is: www.newhampshire.com/dowser/asd.html
DC: So dowsing is taken more seriously than I had thought! How far back does the art go?
Sig: There is huge drawing of a man apparently holding a Y rod (forked stick) in his hands that is found in the Tassili-n-Ajjer Mountains in east central Algeria. There are many odd figures drawn on the walls of caves in these mountains. They carbon date to around 6,000 BCE. This is by far, the earliest dateable evidence of dowsing that I know of. I would add that Moses used the same rod he did his miracles with in Egypt during the Exodus. On two different occasions, he tapped his rod on the ground, and water sprang forth.
DC: What things can you dowse for, exactly?
Sig: The ability to dowse for water was so valuable that it was the one aspect of this ancient art that made it through what are called "the burning times," when they literally burned people for using this form of divination.
For example, Britain only took the witchcraft laws off their books in the nineteen-fifties. When the American Society of Dowsers started around 1960, it was primarily begun by water dowsers. By 1970, other kinds of dowsing was being covertly discussed at their annual meetings, and today, all kinds of dowsing (like dowsing for oil, health, yes/no answers to questions, and even the stock market) are discussed - and are actually of primary interest to most members.
Dowsing is a tool that can open up your mind to your more intuitive/creative/subjective side, but interestingly enough, you must also have your rational mind working in top gear as well. If you don't ask the right question, you don't get the correct answer. (Incidentally, I would be the first to admit that dowsing is not correct 100% of the time - but then neither is the rational approach.) The idea is to use and value both the rational and the intuitive, and to therefore come up with better conclusions.
Having said all this, I use dowsing at ancient sacred sites to look at the Earth Energies that gather there. One of them, for me, has to do with veins or domes of underground water. This is the yin Earth Mother. Also, I find things I call "energy leys," straight beams of yang energy that cross like spokes on a wheel at sites like Stonehenge, Native American Medicine Wheels, Tibetan monasteries, and at Swedish prehistoric and historic sites like viking ship settings (vesica shaped stone rings), significant mounds like those at Gamla Uppsala, and at the many labyrinths that dot the shore line and interior of that Scandinavian country.
You can dowse for anything you can think of. Another way of saying this is that you are only limited by your imagination as to what you can dowse for. As to specifics, there are two basic targets - tangible and intangible. Tangible targets are things like, "Where did I loose my wedding ring?" or "I'm lost in the woods, where's my car?" Dowsing is also used to answer yes or no questions. The answer "yes" is not a physical target. It is intangible. You can't touch a "Yes." : ) Other intangible targets are things like auras, and energy leys.
DC: Wow..How does this work..I mean, where do the answers come from?
Sig: The ASD has no answer to the question "How does dowsing work?" I don't know either. I believe the answers come from the One (or whatever your name for your Creator is).
DC: Could dowsing be used to get in touch with your subconscious information also?
Sig: Some call it the Akashic record. In any event, the source is omniscient. The answers come through what I call this the unconscious. Are we talking about the same thing?
DC: I'm not sure..I believe that we know so much more than we are ware of, that there is information that you have that is hidden from your conscious process. I guess I wondered if dowsing might release some of that information into conscious thought.
Sig: Let's use the words Conscious, Unconscious, and Superconscious. I believe that we must go through the Jungian Unconscious to get the answers, but they come from the Superconscious - that part of our being that is connected with the One. The problem comes because our Unconscious is very anxious to please us, so it will give us the answer it thinks we want to hear.For example, if your Mother is ill, and she has a lump in her breast, your question might be, "Does my Mom have cancer?" Now if you are wishing all of the time after you ask the question, "Dear God let it be "no", that is the response your dowsing tool will give you. This is a real danger zone all dowsers must face. You must not allow your particular need for a particular answer get in the way of the truth, but your Unconscious will give you the answer it thinks you want. The way to avoid this is, after you ask the question -"does my Mother have cancer" -immediately say to yourself over and over, "I wonder what the answer is going to be? I wonder what the answer is going to be?" As long as you are saying that, you can't also be thinking, "Let it be no."
DC: I see...I just had a thought..is using a ouija board a form of dowsing? It seems to follow the same lines.
Sig: I do not use ouija boards. Dowsing is a tool that will protect the user from various types of problems in the spiritual realms. Ouija boards (because two people are usually involved) opens you up to nasty spiritual incursion. I've heard more than one tale of spiritual difficulties that come from using ouija boards. I have not heard of any stories of someone getting personally in trouble when using dowsing.
DC: Why don't dowsers get into trouble? As opposed to ouija boards,I mean.
Sig: If you want to use dowsing as a tool to communicate with the otherside, you must come back to this side (the physical) every time you want to ask another question. Many get into trouble because they can't get back here. Dowsing teaches you how to do it because you must go back and forth all the time. In this case, dowsing offers a form of protection. Ouija boards apparently do not offer this kind of protection. I'm not exactly sure why this is.
DC: I often hear references from people regarding the "otherworld." Is that the place you refer to now? A spiritual realm where people can get lost?
Sig: "The Other world" or the spiritual realms are vast. The physical spectrum that we operate in is but a tiny slice of "Reality." For the last several thousand years we have chosen to cut ourselves off from these realms and to concentrate just on the physical and our five physical senses. The rational mind has become the only reality -the only way to define reality. The Church has been reduced to asking its adherents to take the spiritual world on faith - because we have been denied personal Conscious connections with these realms. So today, we're all babies at this. Babies get lost easily. Dowsing is a tool that can help folks from getting lost as they begin their spiritual work.
DC: So you believe that these senses that we lost can be recovered? That would be wonderful,indeed!
Sig: Many people are recovering those lost senses. Being "Born Again" is one way to personally experience the reality of the spiritual realms. And there are many others. When the dowsing rod turns in your hands apparently "by itself," this is an Ah ha! experience. It awakens you. You have to be awake (to these other senses) to dowse. There are many other examples of this as well. People are not waking up as fast as I might like, but it's happening. And our Earth needs this.
DC: What a wonderfully hopeful thought! One last question, rather abstract, and I'll let you off the 'interview hook' ;> How do you think reawakening these senses will help us as a species?
Sig: At the moment, we are only working with half of our potential (indeed some brain researchers say we are using less that 15% of our brain's potential). But I say half because I am talking about Western Man's insistence that we use only our rational/analytical side of our brain (left brain). Dowsing requires that we use this rational half to ask the correct question. But then, dowsing goes to our right brain for the answer. This is our more intuitive and creative side. It will be through our use of both sides of our brain that we will be better equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
Sig Lonegren received an interdisciplinary Masters Degree in the study of Sacred Space in 1979 from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. He focused on pre-Protestant Reformation sacred structures on both sides of the Atlantic, studying particularly their connection with Archaeoastronomy, Sacred Geometry, and the Earth Energies that are found at these sites.
Dowsing Books by Sig Lonegren:
1990. "The Pendulum Kit." A Fireside Book. Published by Simon & Schuster, New York. The dowsing book for beginners. Over 650,000 copies in nine languages sold world-wide. Comes with a pendulum.
1991. "Spiritual Dowsing." Gothic Image Publications, Glastonbury, UK. Intangible target dowsing - the Earth Energies and healing in sacred space. (Originally published in 1986.)
1995. "The Dowsing Rod Kit." Charles E. Tuttle Co. Rutland, Vermont, and Boston. Six experts present their latest thinking on dowsing. Good as well for beginners. Comes with L rods.
All of the above books can be ordered from the ASD Bookstore in St. Johnsbury, Vermont 05819. Phone (802) 748-8565 or (800) 711 9497. Sig's books can also be ordered at your local bookstore. Distributed by New Leaf in Georgia.
The address of the British Society of Dowsers is BSD, Sycamore Barn, Hastingleigh, Ashford, Kent TN25 5HW, England.