ABSTRACT
Water divining, dowsing or water witching is one of those quasi-magical practices that rationality has sought to banish, and it may be true that modern hydrology has not had to work very hard to displace the know-how of the water diviner, a character who was well employed from the Middle Ages searching with a forked stick for water or minerals. History tells us that the Church and Science both denounced the practice, one that nonetheless persisted well into the twentieth century. Just as medicine opposes the charlatan for its own professional interests, water-divining has been suppressed in the name of a disenchanted rationality. Yet what water mysteries remain untouched by science may continue to be expressed in worlds, Indigenous, for instance, that assert that “the spirit of water is the most multiple spirit of all.” Re-enchantment of matter may be just one strategy for attributing powers to things that rationality and objectivity may have unwisely stripped away.
