X. The Divining Rod

X. The Divining Rod.X. Die Wünschelrute.

The Middle Ages ascribed to the twigs of the hazel bush the capacity of showing underground watercourses and, in mines, veins of metal, when the twig is broken at a definite season, at a definite hour of the night, by an innocent boy with the saying of definite words. Now as no superstition is wholly groundless, this one too has a kernel of truth, which it is the task to peel out.

Sensitive persons are subject to the action at a distance of various substances. When a sensitive holding a rod in his hands walks over a piece of ground under which water flows, the flowing water acts as an exciter of electricity on the nervous system of the rod walker, and this effect on the organism is converted into spatial movement of the rod held, which by its tilting toward the ground shows the existence of the underground water vein or metal vein. The supposed property of the rod (which need not necessarily be a hazel rod) thus turns into a property of some rod walkers. Magic thus rests in this case too on unknown natural science.