Orientation in the surrounding space is the most important thing for any living creature. Determining the distance to the desired object is not easy, and different creatures do it in different ways. People primarily rely on sight, dogs - on scent, foxes - on hearing …
But in some exceptional situations this is not enough. Then biolocation and bionavigation can come to the rescue, which not everyone got.
From goose to salmon
Both terms sound pretty impressive, but in the animal kingdom, biolocation and bionavigation are common concepts. Everyone knows that bats navigate the terrain by screaming, then catching sound waves reflected from obstacles with their huge ears.
Dolphins and whales also communicate with each other by sounds transmitted by a wagon at a distance of several miles - here it is, dowsing in action. There are, of course, more impressive examples: fish can perceive water vibrations with a special sense organ, and rays do pick up electric fields.
Bionavigation is a little more rare and poorly studied. Birds migrating to warmer countries seem to have a built-in compass that guides them accurately every fall. And it would be okay for experienced individuals - any young goose without any prompts knows when to shoot and where to fly.
Promotional video:
But geese are very intelligent birds, you say. Perhaps they have a highly developed genetic memory? It is not excluded. But how, then, to explain the salmon phenomenon? These fish, which do not shine with intelligence, are born in rivers, spend their whole life in the ocean, and when spawning begins, they return to the same river where they were born to start spawning themselves.
Into the same river! Even if salmon swim hundreds of kilometers away from it and spend years in the ocean! Not everyone would find their way back, but fish bio-navigation works flawlessly.
There are many other examples - among mammals, mollusks, insects … Cats, which were accidentally forgotten in other cities, returned to their homes in a few months. Sea turtles unmistakably find the shore where they were born and lay their eggs there. Bees fly away from the hive for great distances, but always come back.
The explanations for this phenomenon are contradictory: developed instincts, the ability to distinguish changes in atmospheric pressure and even see the magnetic lines of the Earth … Scientists cannot give an unequivocal answer. But the real mystery begins when such abilities are found in humans.
Seekers of underground wealth
Probably, each of us happened to get lost - sometimes even in familiar places. This happens when our "sense of direction" fails, we become insecure, and the terrain is almost frightening. On the contrary, it happens that a person finds the right path even in the most intricate maze, without a map and a compass.
Bulgarian dowsers
This is an everyday manifestation of biolocation, a special gift. It is either there or not. By the way, people who have such a strong instinct have learned to make money on it even in ancient times.
Dowsing is the ability to find underground minerals, water and even treasures, using only a forked stick, a vine, and an innate talent for dowsing.
The first mentions of the skill of searching are found in European literature since the 15th century - in the description of miners looking for veins of metal ores. Even the Bible speaks of dowsers, albeit in a very negative way. The official position of the church was unambiguous: the art of dowsing is from the devil. But, despite the condemnation from Christianity, people continued to pick up the vine and try to find underground resources with its help. Sometimes, when it came to water, it was simply a matter of life and death.
Of course, few people wanted to think that he received his gift from the dark forces. Most dowsers of antiquity believed that the magic was in the vine, since it was the vine that indicated the goal. Research already in the 19th century dispelled this myth: it became obvious that the instrument is not the vine, but the person himself. Scientists suggest that dowsing dowsers is based on strong intuition and local knowledge.
Suppose an experienced peasant is able to find an underground river by a barely noticeable subsidence of the soil subconsciously, without understanding this with his mind. But this theory does not always work. The purity of research, as in many other tests of psychic senses, is often hampered by scammers who want to go on a popular topic and thereby tarnish the reputation of real masters. But although the secret of dowsing remained unsolved, they continued (and continue) to use it.
In war and not only
During the war in Algeria in the middle of the 20th century, the sappers of the Foreign Legion were trained to search for water by dowsing. American soldiers in Afghanistan, among other equipment, were given metal frames for dowsers to search for mines and weapons depots. During the Second World War in Berlin, a special department was involved in checking military data on the results of naval battles by swinging a pendulum over photographs of ships.
However, the search for resources is only part of the capabilities of dowsing masters. Dowsing is used to find people: the dowser master catches the fluctuations of the aura and biofield. These concepts are purely esoteric and are not recognized by modern science, but many cases of people being found by dowsers and psychics have been recorded.
One of the first examples was the search for a murderer in the French city of Lyon on July 5, 1692. The wine merchant and his wife died at the hands of the villain, and the detectives just shrugged. The dowser Jacques Aimar, who in no time discovered the murderer, confessed in surprise and was executed. Then Aimar, at the request of the townspeople, walked through the streets, marking with a vine the houses where the adultery had occurred.
It's funny that the Frenchman's gift extended exclusively to people: later he failed the simplest test with pits filled with gravel and metal.
In our time, such a number of psychics are engaged in the search for people that it is almost impossible to distinguish truth from fiction, as well as to understand the mechanism of such a search. Telepathy? Dowsing? Intuition? After all, if you manage to help those in trouble, what's the difference?
Joke of nature
In modern society, dowsing in its original meaning has practically lost its relevance, giving way to devices that allow you to find water and fossils. Loza was replaced by a metal detector, and the media space was filled with numerous denials of the gift of biolocation.
In particular, in 1980 in Sydney, the famous "fighter against myths" James Randi set up an experiment. Up to half of the pipes were buried in the ground, one of which was then filled with water. For the successful discovery of a pipe with water, he appointed a reward of 40 thousand dollars and invited all interested dowsers to try their skills. The result was depressing - none of the sixteen applicants was able to give an unambiguous result.
So what, the bit card? Not at all: given Randy's line of business, the results of the experiment could well have been fabricated …
Despite all the scientific progress, many areas have not yet been adequately studied. Scientists do not know what leads migratory birds to the south and salmon to their native river and what makes the twig twitch in the hands of the dowser. Nature must have had a lot of fun putting such mechanisms in her children. We can only accept her gifts. And, of course, still try to figure out how they work.
Sergey EVTUSHENKO