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The Ancient Stones of Wales – Chris Barber and John Godfrey Williams
Chapter 15 - DOWSING

"Every megalithic site is over a centre or channel of the terrestial current whose emanations are detected by the dowser's rod."  John Mitchell

The discovery of underground streams beneath large stones has been known and acknowledged since ancient times. There are two clear references to this in the Bible. Exodus 77.6 reads "Behold I will stand before thee thereupon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.  And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel."

Numbers 20, 7-11 refers to this in more detail.
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying. Take the rod and gather thou the assembly together, thou and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes: and it shall give forth his water, and thoushalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink.
And Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as he commanded him. And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them. Hear now ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?
And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also."

This is probably the first record of a dowser at work and it should be noted that the rock must have been large as the congregation were gathered together before the rock. Also, the water course must have originally been underground as there was no mention of any water being present until Moses struck the rock, apparently in a particular place.

It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that modern dowsers claim to be able to detect underground streams of water passing immediately below our prehistoric standing stones. The earliest record of dowsing at a Welsh prehistoric standing stone occurs in the works of Alfred Watkins, the Hereford photographer and Secretary of the Woolhope Field Club. In 1930 he visited The Four Stones at Walton, near Presteigne, Powys (SO 246608), with a local water diviner who went blue in the face whilst dowsing at these stones and claimed there were two underground streams at different levels crossing below the four stones.

During recent years other dowsers have had similar results and it is now believed by some that there are always two underground streams crossing at different levels below all single prehistoric standing stones. These underground streams are usually believed to be 20 or more feet below the surface of the ground where the stone is standing and this means that it is not possible to prove these claims of the dowsers, for no landowner is likely to permit anyone to drill or dig holes of more than 20 feet deep by a standing stone. The result is that many people will reject the findings of the dowsers, who normally show no wish to prove what they have detected to non-believers who are prejudiced in their thinking.

If the dowsers are correct in only some cases of underground streams passing directly under these ancient upright stones, then it raises a number of questions of great importance which modern man finds hard to grasp. Were these large prehistoric stones placed in position where there were crossing streams of underground water or were the underground streams, in fact, diverted to cross beneath the stones?

This of course raises many other questions concerning the reasons for such a complex system, its uses, and by no means least, the kind of users that lived in this land when these ancient stones were erected. Here is a new field for the proposers of fanciful theories which one day they will exploit!