A Brief History of
the British Society of Dowsers

Looking Back - Moving Forward

A Brief History of the

First 80 Years

of the

British Society of Dowsers

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In the Beginning were the Royal Engineers

‘In this age of speed and hurry, abbreviation is counted as a virtue, so let us say without apology that the B.S.D. came to life on May 4th 1933.’ With these words, Colonel A H Bell DSO, OBE, MRI opened the first editorial of The Journalof the British Society of Dowsers in issue no.1 in the September of that year.

The first meeting of the society was held at York House, Portugal Street, London with about 50 people attending. From the outset, it was primarily organised by a small group of retired senior military personnel, mostly former army officers, including several from the Royal Engineers.

Colonel Bell was succeeded as President of the British Society of Dowsers (BSD) by a series of men of significant social status:

Col Kenneth W Merrylees OBE, MI Mech E (1964-1966)

Major General J Scott-Elliot CB, CBE, DSO (1966-1975)

Dr Arthur Bailey PhD, MSc, FIERE, MIEE (1975-1981)

C B Thompson Dip Arch RIBA (1981-1987)

Sir Charles Jessell Bart (1987-1993)

Major General W F Cooper CBE, MC (1993-2000)

One example of the high standing of the early BSD presidents is that on his death, aged 98, the obituary in the Daily Telegraph stated that Colonel Kenneth Merrylees (the second president) ‘had worked as a bomb disposal expert during the second world war, when he used his dowsing skills to find unexploded bombs with delayed-action fuses, which had penetrated deep into the ground . . . (of which) one 500-pounder had burrowed under the swimming pool at Buckingham Palace.’

Colonel (then Major) Merrylees RE was also employed by Army Headquarters in France in 1939/40 to find water supplies for the allied troops at the front. Of sixty sites selected by him, 58 were successful.

Speaking in 1934, Colonel Bell reported that:

‘(The function of) The Royal Engineer Board is to investigate and test new ideas and inventions which might be of value from an engineering point of view, and an officer on the Board is member of this Society.’

‘Another mark of the interest now taken by the War Department is the fact that young officers in the Royal Engineers are now tested for their (dowsing) aptitude whilst going through their course of training at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. Last August, Major Creyke and myself were present when the tests were carried out . . . (and) out of 24 officers tested, 19 showed more or less aptitude’

Another remarkable army dowser was BSD member Major Charles Aubrey Pogson, who was employed as a Military Water Diviner in the UK, but was seconded from his regiment to the Bombay Government, where he worked for four and a half years. A pamphlet he issued as an advertisement listed some 94 wells that were successfully drilled in India following his advice.

One of the best-documented military applications of dowsing is described in a comprehensive article by Colonel H Grattan, which appeared in The Journal of the BSD in 1956. Colonel Grattan used the craft to identify sources of water for the British Army on the Rhine, near Monchengladbach, which would be secure from potential enemy contamination.

The military sense of focussing on the task in hand, and the robust approach to organisation engrained in the structure of the armed forces, was to provide the backcloth for the activities of the BSD for most of the rest of the 20th Century.

Dowsing and the BSD before WWII

In June 1933, an International Dowsing Congress in Paris was attended by 150 delegates from societies in Belgium, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland, together with various groups from France. There was clearly close communication between these groups - particularly those in France (where a group similar to the BSD had been founded a few years earlier) and in Germany. Many translated articles appear in The Journal throughout the 1930’s. A list of the available books about dowsing in one of the 1937 editions shows a majority to have been written in French and German - and even some of those in English were actually translations of European originals.

It is worth noting that dowsing (in a number of different guises) has a much longer and deeper formal acceptance in many of the other countries of Europe than it has enjoyed in the UK. In Britain, the Witchcraft Acts of 1542 - 1604 had rendered illegal many harmless and beneficial practices, including many aspects of divining.

It seems therefore even more surprising to appreciate that the BSD coalesced around a group of well-respected and highly decorated pillars of authority, who would have risked ridicule for championing the craft of dowsing in the public domain. However, the founders of the Society were all people who had used dowsing themselves, or seen it practised successfully, primarily to find water or discover hidden ordnance in operational theatres of war.

The commitment of these military officers was backed up by countless generations of rural water diviners, who had been performing much the same task both for impoverished farmers and for the landed gentry over the millennia. As Colonel Bell went on to state in that opening editorial:

‘The recorded practice of four centuries, and almost daily examples of the useful application of the dowser’s art, suffice to convince all but the most obstinate sceptic of its reality and value.’

The first Annual General Meeting of the British Society of Dowsers was held in October 1934, by which time the membership had risen rapidly to 250 (of whom 130 were known water diviners, who featured in the Register of Practising Members). The first local dowsing group had already been formed - The North East of Scotland Group, meeting at Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, with some 70 people attending an inaugural event. Two years later, an annual meeting of Scottish dowsers attracted around 100 participants.

The 1934 AGM itself was attended by a meagre 13 souls (AGMs have rarely been particularly popular in any society!). However, the report given to the meeting by Colonel Bell is of great interest, in that he noted that water diviners had been employed by at least 35 District Councils and also by Kincardineshire County Council.

It is clear from early written articles and contemporary newspaper coverage that the society operated in an atmosphere of excited discovery and considerable tolerance. The press and, to a lesser extent, the scientific community took an active interest in the rediscovered craft.

Post-war Growth

In the years before WWII, meetings and lectures had been held at the offices of the Royal Asiatic Society. During the war itself, events and meetings were understandably low-key, and it was with some evident relief that the first outdoor meeting of the post-war era could be held at Eridge Castle, at the invitation of the Marquis and Marchioness of Abergavenny.

In 1947, the Society changed its main venue to the ‘rooms’ of the Medical Society of London, where it continued to meet until 1982, when it moved again - this time to the Geological Society of London in Burlington House, Piccadilly.

1956 saw the holding of the first Congress (later renamed, Conference) at Moor Park College in the Wey Valley. This was a first real opportunity to gather together the various types of dowsing activity under one roof. Initially held as a one-day event, it later developed into a weekend - and it has been staged subsequently at a number of hotels and academic venues around the country, including Tunbridge Wells, Harrogate, Malvern and Cambridge.

Today, the BSD holds the meetings and events of its various constituent groups across much of the UK - and in recent years it has based its annual Conference at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire.

In 1963, and at the age of 85, Colonel Bell handed over the running of the Society to Bernard and Edith Smithett - having completed an astonishing 30 years at the helm. He stood down from the Presidency in 1964, and his last public BSD appearance was at the AGM of October 1967.

In 1978, Michael and Deidre Rust took over the administration of the BSD, and continued to run the Society from their home in Kent for the next 25 years.

The BSD had been converted from a membership society to an Educational Charity on 1967, after much hard lobbying of the authorities by Colonel Bell. It became a Company Limited by Guarantee in 1987, whilst retaining its charitable status. Although the Society’s financial comfort has ebbed and flowed over the years, it has always remained solvent. This has been partly due to a series of kind bequests by former members, and in particular by the substantial sums left to the Society by the late Elsie Floyd in 1989 and the late Geoffrey Ashdown in 1997 - not to forget the £1,000 left to the society for research purposes by founder member Captain W H Trinder in his will in 1950, which would be worth around £24k today.

The 1993 Congress was a tour de force for the BSD. Held at the College of Ripon and York, around 300 delegates attended talks by speakers from a number of countries - including one by Professor Dubrov from the USSR. (Russia has always taken a more matter-of-fact approach to dowsing, with some professional engineering qualifications requiring a proficiency in the technique.) Sally Williams’ grand cake, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the BSD, was a fitting centrepiece for the event.

As the 20th Century drew to a close, the burgeoning ranks of the alternative movement were doubtless using their dowsing intuition to investigate more esoteric experiences, but the annals of the BSD show that the Society still held firmly to its military mission to make dowsing a respectable scientific discipline. As the then Director of the BSD, John Moss, remarked in Dowsing Today in 2008:

‘The swinging sixties seemed to have passed the BSD by. At the 1972 AGM, Major General Scott Elliot CB, CBE, DSO was re-elected for a further term as president. Of the 10 members of Council, four were retired army officers and two were doctors.’

However, towards the end of the Millennium, the letters to the editor of The Journal certainly indicated that external pressures on the Society had started to become apparent - and in a world where social change was accelerating exponentially, an earthquake of some description was becoming inevitable in the BSD. It had to face radical change, if it was to survive at all.

The first tangible shockwaves of the subtle evolution came from an unexpected source. In 1995, Billy Gawn, a farmer and builder from Northern Ireland was allowed to set up a Special Interest Group (later known as a SIG) for those members interested in the emerging study of Earth Energies. At Congress that year about 20 people expressed an interest in getting together to discuss the subject - and the Earth Energies Group (EEG) came into existence. Within a couple of years, the membership (who then paid an additional subscription) had risen to 200, and a decade later, when the SIGs were drawn back into the main body of the Society, a majority of the BSD membership had enlisted as at least having a nominal interest in the work of the EEG.

As befits a community that researches the subtleties of reality, the actual realignment of the Society was first felt well below the radar of the wider world. A steady stream of new members from broader social and academic backgrounds began to join the BSD from the 1990s onwards. People were leaving and joining, broadly in similar numbers (much as they had done for decades), but the newer members were increasingly the children of the 1940s and 1950s - members from a different formative epoch. The challenges of the new century beckoned.

21st Century Confidence

On the retirement of Michael and Deirdre Rust in 2003, the Society’s office was moved to Malvern, and the first non-dowser to be appointed to a managerial position, Ian Clements, was appointed as Director. During his year with the Society, he completely reviewed the way the Society operated.

Following Ian’s departure in 2004, John Moss was recruited. Although he came from a financial background, John had already been running a local group for several years, and he was also a member listed in the Professional and Tutor Registers. John served as Director for eight years, during which time the Society rapidly changed to become a more open and outward-looking organisation.

The appointment of the first female President, Beulah Garcin MA (2000-2003) certainly indicated that the external world was seeping into the Society.

Her successor, Dr Patrick MacManaway (2003-2008), attempted to increase the general public’s awareness of the Society by moving the office to a high street ‘shop window’ location in St. Ann’s Road, Malvern. However, this venture did not prove to be a longer-term success and the BSD office moved again, in 2009, to its current, more modest home in the village of Hanley Swan, Worcestershire.

The annual Congress was rebranded the ‘Conference’ in 2007, to reflect a more inclusive approach, and a greater informality was introduced to the proceedings. The AGM was included in the event from 2006 onwards to ensure that larger numbers of ordinary members were more likely to hear about the issues of the day, and (hopefully) to take some part in the running of the society.

Following the lead of the Earth Energy Group, other Special Interest Groups were established and became part of the emerging BSD structure: Water and Site Dowsing (the W&SDG) in 2002, Health in 2003, and Archaeology (the ADG) in 2004. With much support from John Moss, the number of Affiliated Local Groups (ALGs) around the country increased significantly during this period - from 16 in 2000 to 32 in 2012.

During Dr Patrick MacManaway’s Presidency (2003-2008), the BSD joined the Internet age, with the original website being replaced by a more comprehensive and contemporary version. Patrick and his team created the first professionally devised Training Programme, with a team of Registered Tutors. The Society’s Ethical Codes of Conduct were also brought up to date during this period.

Grahame Gardner succeeded Patrick in 2008 - and he has been required to guide the Society through some challenging economic times. Grahame has overseen the substantial upgrading of the external electronic links, the development of an eNewsletter, the introduction of a popular Internet dowsing forum, the creation of a BSD Facebook page and the establishment of a YouTube video channel. He has also produced a series of award-winning podcasts himself, featuring dowsing interviews, talks and related items from around the world. In recent years, the BSD has become very much a part of 21st Century culture!

The Journal / Dowsing Today

From the very outset of the Society, The Journal had been at the core of the BSD. On several occasions the founder, Colonel Bell, described it as the LIFEBLOOD (his capitals) of the Society.

It has to be remembered that, in the days before electronic - let alone digital - media, the periodical of the fledgling organisation was just about all that most of the membership knew of the BSD’s activities. Bell remarked at a number of AGMs that he appreciated that for overseas subscribers (who numbered up to 40% of the total membership at times) it was literally the only communication they received in return for their annual fees.

This is not to say that well written content for the magazine was easily come by. The Colonel repeatedly pleaded with the members to submit articles, and for them to tell the Council about their own activities and successes. In this context, the similar plea in the spring of 2013, can be seen as just the continuation of an historical trend.

To emphasise the point, in 1960, Council instituted a competition to encourage the submission of serious articles which, in 1964, was renamed the Bell Essay Award in recognition of the retiring President and long-time editor, Colonel Bell.

To boost the quantity and quality of dowsing articles for the membership to read, for a considerable period - from the 1950s through to the 1980s - The Journal carried extensive extracts from the magazines and handbooks of other societies, including:

Radiesthesie Pour Tous (France)

Zeitschrift Für Rädiästhesie (Germany)

RGS (Switzerland)

Cespera (Italy - translated for many years by Brother Cowan)

and latterly The Digest of the American Society of Dowsers

Each year, from 1942 onwards, the names and addresses of all BSD members were also published in The Journal in a manner that would make any 21st Century editor, fearful of the Data Protection Act, quiver with trepidation. The list eventually filled around a dozen pages of the document.

From the 1950s, right up to the end of the 1990s, the layout (and the name) of the magazine remained basically unchanged.

So, from the perspective of the membership, perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the modernisation of the Society at the turn of the millennium came with the replacement of the original A5 publication with a magazine in a distinctly modern format - and with a definitive new name - Dowsing Today.

This followed the change from relying on a single editor to the employment of a volunteer editorial team comprising, over the next few years, of Peter Doye, Barbara Prisbe, Richard West, Tony Bailey, Pauline Roberts and Ian Pegler.

Dowsing Today still carried the important academic articles, but progressively widened the scope of the content. More images, coloured covers and computer drawn diagrams were added to illustrate the content. The heavy blocks of text were re-presented in a more accessible format. In subsequent years, and in the expert hands of Helen Lamb, the format became so professional in its presentation that both dowsers from abroad, and new members in the UK, assumed there was a whole team of staff helping to prepare it - which was far from the case!

From 2005, dedicated sections were included in Dowsing Today for the evolving Special Interest Groups, with the Earth Energies Group’s own newsletter Earth Energy Matters incorporated the following year.

By June 2009, as part of a general cost-cutting exercise, the editing of Dowsing Today was brought back into the BSD Office, with three larger issues published each year, supplemented by three editions of the new eNewsletter.

In 2010, Dowsing Today received a backhanded compliment by being gently lampooned on the satirical BBC news programme Have I Got News for You.

The presentation and editorial style has continued to improve, and Dowsing Today has received much praise for the way it conveys its subjects, which can often be difficult to describe to an audience holding very varied viewpoints and possessing differing levels of experience.

Thankfully, at least one copy of every edition of The Journal and Dowsing Today is held in the BSD’s archives. They contain a veritable treasure trove of information and opinion, research and speculation that will be of real interest to future scientists, historians, sociologists and philosophers. It shows not just what the membership has discovered over the decades, but what conclusions they have drawn. It describes how that distilled wisdom came to form the bedrock of today’s understanding of the techniques of dowsing - and why it is such an important aspect of today’s world.

Fields of study

Even a cursory study of the archives of The Journal shows that, despite its emergence from operational military origins, the areas of interest of the early BSD members were surprisingly eclectic.

Water and physical dowsing were certainly the anchor points - and remain so to this day - but well back into the 1930s there were also a number of articles concerning dowsing for health and wellbeing. Additionally, discussion of what we now call ‘earth energies’ made an unexpectedly early appearance on the printed page. Alongside these mainstays, were a smattering of pieces of a more philosophical nature, and various entries aimed at the encouragement of the beginner and the novice.

While the language and the style may have changed somewhat, one of the major conclusions that can be drawn from analysing the content of both The Journal and of Dowsing Today is that the fields of study, the types of questions being asked, and the methods used to answer them, have all remained remarkably constant.

Not being a discipline that inherently requires complicated equipment, the methods of research used by most regular dowsers are much the same as they were in the middle of the last century - and they use techniques that have stood the test of time. That said, huge advances have been made by dowsing researchers taking a more scientific approach. In particular, investigations of the workings of the mind/brain/body interface at a clinical level have moved us closer to an understanding of how we interpret the subtle forces that surround and influence us. Increasingly sensitive methods of detecting miniscule radiations and barely perceptible currents and energies have also edged our knowledge a little closer to a better understanding of the dowser’s cosmos. Yet each new generation of researchers appears to have taken a fresh view of the same basic concepts from first principles - aided by unfolding discoveries and conceptual breakthroughs in related fields of study and thought.

The early decades of The Journal included article after article aimed at reinforcing the assertion that dowsing actually worked. Clearly this was deemed necessary, as it was felt to be a skill that had been allowed to recede into the background of 20th century perception - to such an extent that if the person in the street had heard of it at all, it was as little more than an historical novelty. While there are still pieces being written to this day to substantiate that dowsing does indeed deliver results, they have tended to give way to a wider debate about the ‘how?’ and the ‘why?’ of the subject.

Right from the outset, the focus of the BSD was clearly set on proving dowsing to be part of the existing scientific world, and in 1936 members of the Society attended a conference on Electro-Radio-Biology, held in Venice. Between 1944 and 1954 The Journal was even re-titled Radio-Perception (Colonel Bell’s own preferred descriptor at that time), with Part I devoted to dowsing operations explainable by physical laws (sic), Part II describing dowsing for medical purposes - and all aspects of subjective dowsing, including map dowsing, ‘confined’ (to use Colonel Bell’s own word) to Part III. At the AGM of 1950, Colonel Bell described ‘an important - one might almost say, portentous - event’ to be the holding of a Scientific and Technical Congress on Radionics and Radiesthesia, with Brigadier General Sir Ormonde de l’Epée Winter acting as its President.

As dowsing was something that worked for most people much of the time, it seemed self-evident that it must have a scientific explanation - and, as it was so clearly demonstrable, there was likely to be an explanation very close to the surface of the emerging science of the day - or so it seemed!

The BSD Council held the scientific line as best it could, but eventually only by shifting the goal-posts. At the 1956 AGM, Colonel Bell was obliged to ‘make a plea for a more scientific outlook’, adding that ‘people are far too prone to attribute dowsing reactions to radiations, waves, rays and vibrations, which are obviously not electro-magnetic; and even if (they were to exist) they could not exert any appreciable force, such as might cause sufficient pressure on the bob of a pendulum to make it move’. The title Radio-Perception was omitted from subsequent editions of The Journal.

Following the 1957 AGM, a comparatively new member, Lucian Landau, an engineer and scientist involved in the then cutting-edge research into polymer technology, addressed the Society in a way that clearly chimed with Colonel Bell’s own evolving views - and he referred to it at some length in his 1958 AGM address. Landau’s premise was that the dowsing reaction is not primarily caused by rays or energies, but lies in the unconscious mind of the dowser. Bell joked that the reason there had been no call on the £1000 bequeathed in 1950 by founder member Captain Trinder for research purposes up to that point was that ‘Mr Landau . . . must have convinced many members . . . that the attempt . . . to attribute the dowser’s reflex movements to electromagnetic radiation . . . is to pursue a will-o’-the-wisp.’

As the years went by, more and more of the articles in The Journal started to raise the spectre of dowsing not being explicable from within the scientific paradigm of the day. Even those contributions that were earnestly rationalist in outlook often started to stray into more subjective (and occasionally even blatantly esoteric) territory.

Over the years, the more scientific and the more subjective wings of the BSD’s membership have sometimes chosen different paths, but to the mainstream dowser the ongoing debate has proved to be both fascinating and productive. More recently, the publication of books such as Lynn McTaggart’s The Field and Jude Currivan’s The Wave have indicated that abilities such as dowsing can be considered in both physical and non-physical ways. Additionally, the ideas being developed in quantum science are indicating a dovetailing of the rational and the spiritual explanations of why dowsing works.

The output of the Dowsing Research Group and the insights of Billy Gawn have also added to the breadth of understanding, and I am sure these are developments that would have excited and engaged the founding fathers of the BSD, as much as they do ourselves today.

The four main streams of dowsing research (Water Divining, Dowsing for Archaeological purposes, Health and Earth Energies) each have a worthy heritage.

Dowsing for water has the longest recorded timeline - dating back at least to Egyptian and possibly to Sumerian times. As it can be proven beyond all reasonable doubt that water divining delivers repeatable, reliable results, it is not surprising that in the early issues of The Journal the majority of articles were devoted to this subject. The output of many past and present BSD members in reinforcing the fact is part of the illustrious tradition of this aspect of the dowser’s craft. In particular, the near-perfect water divining accuracy of BSD members such as George Applegate and the late Donovan Wilkins are extraordinary examples of reliable, repeatable commercial dowsing in the field. Another noteworthy exponent of this genre is James Kimpton (a De la Salle Brother) who has worked, initially in Sri Lanka and more recently in Tamil Nadu, South India, for an astonishing six decades. Brother Kimpton is another practitioner who is renown for his outstanding ability to successfully locate suitable sites for the drilling of wells using standard dowsing techniques.

Health also makes a significant appearance in the early annals of the BSD. While the number of articles may be fewer than for water, the diversity of the approaches taken by the various health contributors is impressive, and it is certainly prescient of the widespread use of using dowsing techniques for health issues that exists today. Many of the early texts relate to studies, both in the UK and elsewhere, into the causes of cancer clusters - echoing the seminal work of Gustav von Pohl into that subject in Germany in the late 1920s.

Archaeology seems to have been a little slower to gain acceptance, at least judged by the written contributions to the Society’s magazines. However, articles by E S McEuen in 1937 and R A Smith in 1938 indicate that there were at least a few people dowsing for historical and pre-historical information before WWII. The publication of Dowsing and Church Archaeology (by R N Bailey et al) in 1988 certainly gave the subject a serious shot in the arm, but in more recent times the impressive findings by members of the BSD’s Archaeological Dowsing Group at sites across the country have been validated by physical investigation - demonstrating the practical worth of this form of dowsing.

Although articles by the Earth Energy pioneer, Guy Underwood (a former BSD Vice President), date back to the 1940s, Earth Energy dowsing itself only made an occasional appearance prior to the 1960s. At which point, publications describing the mysterious phenomenon of Ley Lines started to emerge. By the late 1990s earth energies research had evidently come of age - and it continues to be a field that is rapidly expanding and diversifying.

The earnestly experimental Dowsing Research Group (DRG) was instigated by Guy Hudson in 1993, following a discussion with Jim Lyons at the 60th Anniversary Congress in York. The aim of the group was (and remains) to unite ‘the science of dowsing’ with the wider scientific mainstream. It is a small, but influential, part of the BSD, which is researching the practical basis of dowsing in the realm of consciousness, by drawing together physicists, physiologists, psychologists and philosophers from across the spectrum.

Interestingly, a similarly named ‘Research Group’, albeit one with a rather narrower remit, was started within the BSD in the late 1930s, and operated discreetly throughout WWII. In much the same vein, a Standing Committee on Research was established in 1967 and continued for a while thereafter.

Discoveries from the emerging world of quantum theory, and the boundless possibilities arising from the Information Field concept, are certainly assisting today’s DRG in their task - but there is still much work to do in achieving a significant acceptance of dowsing by the existing scientific establishment.

One topic that was a mainstay of the BSD’s article writers up to the 1960s was Radiesthesia - a name taken from the French to describe the study of ‘energy’ or ‘rays’ emanating from all matter, both animate and inanimate. The field still exists today, particularly in continental Europe, but in the UK it has largely been absorbed into other branches of the discipline.

While the old adage that dowsing is only limited by one’s imagination is certainly the essence of the craft, other areas of study that make frequent appearances in the BSD’s publications include: the search for minerals and precious stones; the agricultural and horticultural uses of dowsing; finding lost objects, pets and people; map, remote and distant dowsing; and even the philosophical implications raised by the realisation that dowsing is part of our everyday reality. We have become a very broad - and ever broadening - Society.

Membership of the British Society of Dowsers

The first edition of The Journal, produced in the autumn of 1933, was posted to 108 subscribers, but by the outbreak of war in 1939, membership had risen rapidly to around 600. Numbers understandably fell below 400 during WWII (with 1939 being the only year not to have an Annual General Meeting). It was recorded in the minutes of the 1940 AGM that the Society’s membership list still included a number of ‘continental’ subscribers, who were ‘temporarily debarred from making payments’ and that a ‘lack of information as to their situation’ was much lamented.

However, by 1946 membership was picking up again steadily, to the extent that Miss E H Lampson became the first paid employee (working as Assistant Secretary on two days a week). Subscriptions were raised to 11 shillings a year - around £49 in current value.

When Colonel Bell addressed his last Congress as President in 1964, the list of members stood at 970 (albeit with 150 overdue subscriptions - a recurring theme!). In the Golden Jubilee year of 1983, membership was reported to be over 1000 for the first time. During the last 30 years, the size of the Society has varied between about 1100 and 1500 members, with a brief peak at 1628, in the heady pre-recessionary days of 2008.

Right from the outset, concern was expressed each year at the AGM about the ongoing loss of members, largely because the Society tended to attract people of a certain age. Indeed, even some of the quite early editions of The Journal had long sections devoted to the obituaries and valedictories of significant former members. While some people remain in the BSD for many years, and a few have taken out Life Membership - or have been awarded it in recognition of their service or achievements - a great many others join for a year or two, but subsequently choose not to renew. Despite the best efforts of administrators and office staff over the years, it is a phenomenon that we have yet to understand fully - a bit like dowsing itself really!

Although the BSD is, by definition, a British-based society, it has always had a significant minority of members living abroad - mainly in the English-speaking parts of the world, but also in mainland Europe and elsewhere. In 1950, a third of the 535 members ‘resided overseas’. By the 1960s, this proportion grew to around 40%. The largest number resided in the United States, and, even after the successful launch of the American Society of Dowsers by Terry Ross and others, the BSD’s US membership remained high, with many choosing to belong to both groups.

It is apparent that the dual membership of societies has always been a feature of the BSD’s social background. Not only are there many records of people holding domestic membership in different countries, but there has also been friendly cooperation between the BSD and other similar organisations. For example, for many years, from the early 1960s onwards, a substantial society of dowsers existed in Bristol, encouraged into existence by Colonel Bell himself. Run by Colonel and Alderman K A P Dalby DSO, OBE, FCA and Mrs Dalby (who were Mayor and Mayoress of Bristol, whilst also very active BSD members), the Bristol Dowsers were a distinct and separate dowsing organisation, at a time when transport from the west of England to the BSD’s south-eastern heartland was a time-consuming process. Many members belonged to both groups and there was an exchange of material between their two magazines.

There seems to have been no concern about the existence of rival providers - only a desire to encourage the birth and growth of new societies, especially those in other countries, which might pick up the trail of research from the BSD and further it in their own areas.

In the first published list of members, in 1942, the membership was about 73% male and 27% female. At the AGM of 1969, the then President, Major General (Jim) Scott-Elliot, noted that the gender ratio was exactly the same. In 2013, we now have a significant majority of women in the society, reflecting the social changes of the intervening years.

The 1942 list also included no fewer than 53 members who were serving or retired senior military officers, 15 titled members (including two Maharajas), 8 clergymen (including some senior theologians) and a number of doctors and lawyers. Right up to the early years of the new millennium, prospective new members of the Society had to be ‘vetted’ by Council, although it is not entirely clear quite what this process entailed!

Today, the BSD has become an open and ever-widening community. It is a melting pot of novices and professionals; some taking a serious scientific approach, some embarking on a spiritual quest, while yet others regard the rediscovered craft as simply an enjoyable social or leisure activity.

Over the years, the BSD has had its fair share of characters and eccentrics - including the former RAF intelligence officer turned off-beat comedian, Michael Bentine, who attended a number of BSD events and was designated ‘Congress Chairman’ in 1983. Bentine hosted a BAFTA-winning TV programme, It’s a Square World, in the 1960s and was a founder member (with Spike Milligan, Sir Harry Secombe and the actor Peter Sellers) of the legendary series The Goon Show. When he was asked how dowsing could be real, when there is no tangible reality to what he was dowsing, Michael characteristically replied that he was quite happy to navigate using latitude and longitude, yet there is no tangible reality to their existence either!

The Way Ahead

The dowsing community, supported and nurtured by the BSD, has grown steadily in size, confidence and experience over the last 80 years. In that context, the Society has performed a role not dissimilar to that of the BBC in the field of media - people have joined to learn the basics and to improve their skill; many have stayed and have become the senior exponents of their skill; others have moved on after a while to ply their craft elsewhere.

Many members clearly regard their chosen charity as a worthwhile endeavour in itself, regardless of their own involvement or perceived ability. The support of this silent majority has been critical in keeping the BSD’s head above water - and long may it continue to buoy us up.

However, today the British Society of Dowsers faces a very different set of external challenges to those addressed by Colonel Bell and his colleagues in the ‘age of speed and hurry’ of the hard-edged inter-war years.

Modern human societies are diversifying and fragmenting rapidly. The larger blocks of common bonding and enlightened mutual-interest seem to be melting away. The gradual expansion of personal expectation and of individual interest has dissolved many of the traditional certainties. People are no longer satisfied with the steady and recognisable progress towards a known destination. They want to know the meaning of life - and they want to know it now! For the BSD - and just about every other charity, society and lobby group - this presents a serious challenge.

The BSD’s role remains as vital as ever - both as an umbrella organisation and as a coordinating framework for all those interested in the practical and structured application of dowsing. It also feeds, and is fed by, those seeking to grasp the more philosophical implications of dowsing for our shared view of reality. Perhaps these functions are even more critical in the vast modern mélange of conflicting information and theories.

The Society’s education and training programme has been hugely successful over the last decade in guiding a generation of new dowsers to become highly competent in their craft. The income from these courses has also helped to provide the funding for the BSD’s other events and outreach projects. However, with the burgeoning number of courses now being offered privately, by members and non-members alike, there is a need to revisit the objectives and approach of the programme and, consequently, a fundamental review of the scheme is underway.

In terms of communicating with the membership, the Society has had to come to terms with the rapidly increasing costs of contacting the membership in a traditional paper format, while making the most of the declining costs of digital interaction. A vastly improved website is being introduced during 2013/14, which will greatly enhance the ease of access to the available information, simplify the procedure for course booking and enable copyright documents, images and physical dowsing accessories to be marketed more effectively. This project also seeks to open the BSD to the potential opportunities of working with, and learning from, the increasingly international dowsing community.

Perhaps, at this time of ‘looking back, whilst moving forward’, a last word should be devoted to the ongoing treasure trove that is the archives and publications of the BSD and its members. In compiling this necessarily brief account of the life and times of the Society, it has become apparent that much of what has been written about the craft over the last 80 years is still very relevant today. A project will therefore shortly be underway to digitise all copies of The Journaland Dowsing Today (and any other publications of the BSD and/or its members for which copyright clearance can be obtained). The intention is to make them available to members for a nominal fee, and to the general public at a commercial rate. Time and social change may have taken its toll on the style of presentation and some of the language used in these documents, but the inherent value to future scientists and philosophers of all persuasions remains quite inestimable.

Whilst the reality, let alone the possibilities, of networked information technology would have seemed like science fiction to Colonel Bell and his colleagues, no doubt the next 80 years will also destine the efforts and debates our own generation to be the pre-history of future understanding. However, it is clear that the work of BSD members, and the discoveries arising from their endeavours, have contributed greatly to the positive growth of human understanding. We look forward with great hope and much anticipation that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future - and even beyond.

Colonel Arthur Hugh Bell DSO, OBE, MRI (1878-1968)

President of the British Society of Dowsers (1933-1964)

Editor of The Journal (of the British Society of Dowsers) (1933-1964)

Administrator of the British Society of Dowsers (1933-1963)

Arthur Hugh Bell was born in Hampstead, educated at Charterhouse and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Engineers in 1898. After a distinguished military career, during which he saw active service in South Africa and India, he retired in 1928 at the age of 50. He had a second, thirty year, career as chairman of G Bell and Sons - the publishing house founded by his grandfather.

His obituary describes him as having ‘an acute, punctilious and energetic mind and a dogged, fearless and athletic temperament’. He is also quoted as possessing a ‘brusque, military manner’. ‘Once his mind was made up . . . contrary arguments tended to cut little ice, and this quality was at once his weakness and his strength’.

The British Society of Dowsers ‘became his primary concern and personal hobby; the Society his ‘baby’, which he regarded with a fiercely possessive parental affection.’ Given the close association of the day between the fledgling BSD and its more established sister organisation in Paris, the Association des Amis de la Radiesthesie, it is interesting to note that the Colonel himself translated various books and texts about dowsing and dowsers from French into English.

In the period after WWII, AHB (as he was known to his closer colleagues) ‘became increasingly to support the psychical, at the expense of the physical (objectives of dowsing) which he had formerly supported’. This might have been due partly to ‘the gradual veering towards mentalism on the continent (of Europe) as time went by, and to (his growth of interest in) medical radiesthesia - involving, as it does, a large amount of intuitive or psi perception’.

‘When faced by wartime threats, or when under intellectual fire, Colonel Bell was completely unperturbed, and bore all with stoical courage. Such uncommon traits undoubtedly aided his many positive achievements.’

It is apparent that while his hard work and dedication was recognised by all, by the time of his death, many of his colleagues felt he had moved away from the core of the quest. However, changing times and changing outlooks have been very much on Bell’s side. While he brought the BSD into existence to investigate the phenomenon of dowsing, and to find a solid, scientific explanation for its function, in the end he realised that this was just the entrance to the maze, not the goal itself.

He wrote again and again in his latter years that the effectiveness of map dowsing and distance healing rendered any physical scientific explanation of dowsing impossible. He was too early to benefit from the more recent work on quantum physics or information theory, which might have led him on to some of today’s emerging lines of reasoning. However, what he was able to do was to formulate the question correctly and - as any experienced dowser knows - that is the key to unlocking the door.

He came to appreciate that there wasn’t just one problem to solve, but that there were two distinct issues to unravel. The first, the little matter of earth energy, earth rays, noxious lines, radionics and the like was a physical conundrum, resolvable within an expanded scientific paradigm. Again, he lived too soon to grasp that there were forces other than electromagnetism, which could provide a greater perspective on this field. He did, however, realise that there might be an as-yet-unknown branch of physics, which could provide greater insight into these phenomena at some point in the future.

His more important revelation was that even if we did eventually come to understand the form of ‘energy’ that defied the most sensitive of electronic equipment available at the time that, in itself, wouldn’t explain why dowsing actually worked. He took the view, perhaps following on from the work of Jung, that our knowledge of the world outside of the here and now is in some way a function of the dowser’s subconscious.

In that, A H B was well ahead of his time. The theory of the information field only emerged decades after his passing, and he would have had no way of reaching such a platform through logic alone. However, by defining the duality of the problem, he beat a path towards a logical understanding of the dowsing enigma that others could use. In so doing, he has enabled us to gain a much better grasp of the importance of dowsing as a tool to broaden the understanding of our own reality.

Both practically and theoretically, he left us with a legacy of great worth - and, almost as a bonus, he bequeathed a flourishing Society of fellow travellers to continue the good work.

A Brief History of the British Society of Dowsers

Looking Back - Moving Forward