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In
this country where water wars are being fought between tribes over vanishing
water holes due to fast diminishing forests, farmers are asking help from the
most unlikely sources—witches.
Nanay
Selda Timora is a bent 72-year-old herbal practitioner. Throwing suspicious
glances over several farmers hunched over her, she holds two guava sticks
measuring three feet each, probing the dry earth. Hal-dragging her gaunt frame,
she walks and probes for almost an hour across the rocky and arid soil that used
to grow cabbages. In an instant, her hands tremble, her arms quiver and she
shrieks saying, “Here, dig here!” The farmers dig for almost two hours
and suddenly water spurts from the dry caked earth.
Nanay
Selda, the water witch, has done it again.
How?
It is no secret. Water witching has existed for hundreds of years all over the
world.
The
‘Force’ is with Her
Nanay
Selda is no necromancer, as water witches, water diviners or dowsers are
ordinary people gifted with the art of finding water.
Fr.
Herve Gardeu, a French Canadian missionary priest in Davao who popularized water
witching in the city in the early 80s says, “Dowsing is the action of a
person--called the dowser--using a rod, stick or other device--called a dowsing
rod or stick or divining--to locate such things as underground water.”
“There’s
nothing mysterious here, some have the gift, some don’t, some have learned it
like Nanay Selda,” says Fr. Gardeu who does not only run a parish of 5,000
people but also looks for the water of the Davao Development Foundation through
water witching.
Nanay
Selda says she is guided by a “force” when she extends her arms using the
guava branches. Her arms contort as the Y-shaped points of the guava twitch upon
locating water.
Scientists
Attempt to Explain
Various
theories have been given as to what causes the rods to move: electromagnetic or
other subtle geological forces, suggestion from others or from geophysical
observations, ESP and other paranormal explanations.
Of
more interest than why the rods move, however, is the issue of whether dowsing
works. Obviously, many people believe it does. Dowsing and other forms of
divination have been around for thousands of years. There are large societies of
dowsers in America and Europe and dowsers practice their art every day in all
parts of the world. There have even been scientists in recent years that have
offered proof that dowsing works. There must be something to it, then, or so it
seems.
Some
of the strongest evidence for dowsing comes from Germany and the so-called
"Scheunen" or "Barn" experiment. In 1987 and 1988, more than
500 dowsers participated in more than 10,000 double-blind tests set up by
physicists in a barn near Munich. (Scheune is the German word for barn.) The
researchers claim they empirically proved "a real dowsing phenomenon."
Jim Enright of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography evaluated the data of the
so-called "real dowsing phenomenon” and attributed it to chance.
Further
evidence for water witching has been presented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) [the German Society for Technical Co-operation]
sponsored by the German government. They claim, for example, that in some of
their water dowsing efforts they had success rates above 80%, "results
which, according to responsible experts, could not be reached by means of
classical methods, except with disproportionate input." Of particular
interest is a report by University of Munich physicist Hans-Dieter Betz,
‘Unconventional Water Detection: Field test of the Dowsing Technique in Dry
Zones’ published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1995.
Betz
ruled out chance and the use of landscape and geological features by dowsers as
explanations for their success. He also ruled out "some unknown biological
sensitivity to water." Betz thinks that there may be "subtle
electromagnetic gradients" resulting from fissures and water flows that
create changes in the electrical properties of rock and soil.
Water
witches or dowsers, he thinks, somehow sense these gradients in a hypersensitive
state. "I'm a scientist," says Betz, "and those are my best
plausible scientific hypotheses at this point.... we have established that
dowsing works, but have no idea how or why."
Which
is exactly what Nanay Selda and her followers say to their critics who blame
them of practicing occult and black magic. “Many things can’t be explained
by science.”
Prof.
William Paclin of the Ifugao State College of Agriculture and Forestry, a water
witching believer says, “it is not important to determine the scientific merit
of dowsing, what matters is it works. Need we question how the psychic Uri
Geller bends spoons?”
Amen
the farmers here say. “We need water, we go to Nanay Selda. Twenty-one farms
are proof to that. Who is better than her, there is no one,” they say.
They
still remember how in the neighboring Mountain Province, fifteen farmers died.
It all started from fighting over ownership of a water source. The five tribes
of Sadanga, Saclit, Dalican, Fedilisan and Betwagan fought it out in the
mountains for weeks, breaking the stillness of the forests with the stoccato of
M-16and AK-47 assault rifles. They stopped only when the military stepped in.
Believe
in What You See
In
finding water, Nanay Selda holds the guava branches by its two arms, with the
main stem of the branch pointing to the sky. Then she begins to struggle as she
approaches a water vein. Closer to the site, the stem of the branch begins to
swing forward little by little, until directly above the vein. Then suddenly the
branch forcefully transcribes a half arc and points to the ground. In the
process, Nanay Selda’s arms go through minor contortions.
After
she’s used the branches, one can see red welts on her palm, evidence of
struggle with a force, which shows unusual strength in such small frail arms.
When I asked how she did it, she snapped like a bitch warning her pups, “I
don’t know so don’t ask me.”
One
water expert and former regional water adviser of the World Health organization,
Dr. Edwin Lee, had this to say when asked about water witching, “There is no
empirical basis for water divining, yet it works. Water witches have not studied
hydrogeology academically, but they know it intuitively.”
Such
a response is likened to the use and effectiveness of acupuncture. Dr. Charles
Cheng, noted medical researcher and director of the Baguio Chinese General
Hospital and an acupuncturist, said when asked about water witching, “I’ve
heard of them but I have not seen them work. But if they are effective, why
should they be criticized. In acupuncture, we know it works but centuries
of Chinese knowledge can’t explain why.”
Yet
even as water witching groups have spread all over the world, the
academically-trained skeptic will always be critical. The National Groundwater
Association of the United States for instance scoffs at water divining and says,
“The academically trained hydrogeologist is the best authority to find where
water is.”
Perhaps.
But to the growing number of farmers who believe in Nanay Selda and who live by
the motto “we believe only what we see,” Nanay Selda is the best
hydroegologist there is.
Michael A. Bengwayan
has a Masters Degree and Ph.D. in Development Studies and
Environmental Resource Management from University College Dublin, Ireland as a
European Union Fellow. He writes for the British Gemini News Service,
New York ’s Earth Times and the Environmental News Service. He is
currently a Fellow of Echoing Green Foundation, New York, New York, USA. Your
emails will be forwarded to him by contacting the editor at: ScienceTech@islamonline.net.
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