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The society's historians insist that Moses himself showed the first dowsing skills when he rapped on that rock in the desert and got water. In 19th century America, "water witches" grew as plentiful as traveling medicine men, ready, for a fee, to point out a potential water hole. As handy as dowsers seem to have been for many a parched landholder, the practice eventually fell victim to the new scientific age. Science abhors a mystery, especially one with a maddeningly practical application. Modern hydrologists and the U.S. Geological Survey long ago rejected talk of water "veins" as nonsense and declared that dowsing was about as reliable as a roulette wheel. Dowsers naturally began to feel a bit beleaguered.
No more, apparently. By the society's estimates, there are now some 25,000 dowsers in the U.S., probably as many as there ever have been. Nearly 2,000 of them are card-carrying dowsers, all of whom belong to a group that is now incorporated under Vermont state law as a full-fledged "nonprofit, educational and scientific society." The organization's elders claim no special credit for the dowsing revival. Nor do they cite a renaissance of American gullibility. Their official explanation: dowsers came in demand again with the exodus to the suburbs after World War II and the need for more drinking water. Commenting on skeptics, Norman Leighton, of Portland, Me. says: "If thickheaded clods would rather have laughter than water, it's all right with me."
At Danville, there are abundant signs of how far—and how far out—dowsing is reaching. In the clapboard churches and meeting halls, the talk is all about body auras, universal grids, Jastram's entities, and illnesses that seem beyond the ministrations of ordinary medicine. At the dowsing convention headquarters in the Danville town hall, piles of books on the occult are offered for sale, from the works of Edgar Cayce to studies of UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle. Dowsing buffs can also buy every kind of tool, from little plastic rods (at $1 a pair) to miraculous electronic black boxes (price: $65) that purportedly "discharge toxic vibrations from your mind, emotions and etheric body." Explains Raymond Willey, the society's secretary and a retired General Electric engineer: "Dowsing for water is only the bottom rung of the ladder. Now these powers are used for everything from determining what foods to eat to finding lost objects and people."
Remarks like that clearly make some traditional dowsers a bit uneasy. Robert Monicol drove in his camper all the way from Mesa, Ariz., not because he is interested in "all this psychic stuff' but because "I want to improve myself in my hobby—treasure hunting." A splendidly coiffed blond commodities broker from New York City allows that dowsing helps her cope with, if not actually predict, a fickle market. Ira Denbar, a young mailorder and advertising man from Providence, is trying to shake off the painful effects of a divorce. "Dowsing helps me keep my head together," he says. "It plugs me in to the universe."