A history spanning centuries
The word is recent, but the gesture is old: hold an object, ask a question, observe. Here are the best-established landmarks.
- 4th c.The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus recounts a divination scene in which a ring hung on a thread moves above a table bearing the letters of the alphabet. It is the closest ancestor of our boards.
- 1556Georgius Agricola describes in De re metallica the forked rod used by miners in central Europe. He is guarded about it: in his view, prudent miners do not use it.
- 1692Jacques Aymar, a peasant from the Dauphiné, becomes famous for following the trail of murderers in Lyon with a rod. The affair stirs controversy: scholars of the time dispute his results.
- 1833–1854The chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul studies the pendulum and the rod. He concludes that the movement comes from the person, without their realising it. In 1854 he publishes De la baguette divinatoire, du pendule dit explorateur et des tables tournantes.
- 1852The physiologist William Carpenter gives this phenomenon a name: the ideomotor effect.
- around 1927Abbé Alexis Bouly coins the word "radiesthesia" (sensitivity to radiation). The practice at last receives a name and a reputation as a discipline.
- 1930–1950Practitioners such as the Swiss priest Abbé Alexis Mermet popularise the pendulum, including over maps. Associations of radiesthesia practitioners are founded in France.
- 1987–1988Large controlled experiments in Munich, Germany, test dowsers. Their authors see an effect in a few people; independent reanalyses conclude that the results do not exceed what chance gives.
- TodayRadiesthesia remains a leisure activity and a tradition, not recognised by science. Many people use it as a quiet moment.