In 1981 Rupert Sheldrake, a British bio-chemist, published his controversial book A New Science of Life in which he proposed that all objects are surrounded by “morphic fields” that define them and determine their form through time and space. This implied that the workings of the universe are less like a machine and more like a living being. Astonishing as this news seemed to be for the scientific community, it was ordinary for the native cultures around the world whose way of life is informed by ancient wisdom.

My Grandfather, Frank Witkus, was born in Lithuania and, I suspect, knew a lot about ancient traditions. He was Newport, New Hampshire’s resident water dowser. Dowsing, called Bio Location in Europe, is the ancient art of finding water with a forked stick or pendulum. Grandfather’s favorite tool was cut from a willow branch, the next best was apple. No one but a fool would buy land or build a house without first finding out if there was potable water available. This little girl child, however, never happened to accompany Grandfather on the many trips he took to dowse water for his friends and neighbors. But, he also had a passion for gardening and I often joined him on short treks into the nearby woods to gather wild flowers for transplanting into his much loved garden at our camp on Perkins Pond. I never even thought to question when he asked each plant if it wanted to live in his garden. Even though I do not remember hearing them answer, I was sure they must have as we always respected the wishes of those who did not want to move. He never came right out and said that plants, like animals, had the ability to hear and understand what we said and had wills of their own. No, he just always treated them as though they did. By the time I was six Grandfather had taught me how to transplant wild flowers, how to dowse for water and to respect the wishes of all living creatures.

Years later I read The Secret Life of Plants written by Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins. They wrote of experiments using ekg’s attached to the leaves of plants to record the plant’s reactions to threats of being burnt with a match, actually being burnt with a match, and even the thoughts of the scientist’s intention to burn the plant. They found that the thoughts of being burnt created the greatest reaction recorded on the ekg graph. The scientists were even more surprised to find that a violent reaction was recorded by an ekg attached to a plant at the same moment that it’s owner was in an automobile accident a few miles away. For me reading these books only confirmed my grandfather’s teachings in a more scientific language with broader implications. I found it to be only slightly more challenging to adopt the concepts of Sheldrake’s theories of morphic resonance, or the Giah theory of the “Living Earth”.

My biggest astonishment occurred in 1986 when I attended my first national dowsers convention in Danville, VT. Two old master dowsers diverted a water stream forty feet under ground. I thought at first this was some kind of group hypnoses until a couple joined us, not knowing what had taken place, and dowsed the water to be running in a direction ninety degrees from what we had known to be its original path. This confirmed for me that the water vein had indeed been diverted. The old Maine dowsers had simply hammered a short peace of iron bar into the ground, leaving about eighteen inches exposed, and then tapped the bar on one side with the hammer. The two or three taps indicated the direction they wanted the water to flow.

I had studied physics in high school and college but this was not physics. A simple tap on an iron bar could not have the force to change the course of water forty feet under ground. How had this been done? The only explanation that encompassed all my questions was that the dowsers actually communicated with the water and the water was willing to play and so turned to flow in the direction requested. That meant water was conscious! Was everything conscious? My whole belief system, the sum total of what I had been taught, was instantly expanded beyond the scope that I was ready to hold. Sure, I knew that plants, insects and animals and birds were alive and conscious. My cat seemed to be aware of my every thought. But it struck me as an immense leap to include water and perhaps everything else. What were the implications of this “reality”? What if ...? I felt confused and wanted to be alone. I could not talk to anyone. It was nearly two days before I felt comfortable joining the activities of the convention. There was no denying it. Something immeasurable had happened and my world would never again be the same.

Marty dowsing with a large branch
1997 -Montana

Measuring the aura on location
1989 -Cambridge

L rods for dowsing
drawing