On the overcast afternoon of October 31, I met about ten other curious people at Access Gallery for artist Alana Bartol’s Water Witching Workshop. What better way, I thought, to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve than by learning some practical magic?
Bartol’s artistic practice involves, among many other things, dowsing for water. She discovered that the women in her family were known for their ability to find groundwater, and had been helping people find well sites for generations. Curious about her own abilities, Bartol began going on “dowsing walks” and incorporating dowsing into her art as a creative method for connecting to nature and the non-human world.
Dowsing traditionally involves the use of a Y shaped rod, made from a found willow branch, or two L shaped rods, usually made from copper. These days, dowsing rods of both shapes can be made from any material, from the bespoke ceramic Y rods Bartol makes herself, to the L rods made from wire hangers that we were given for the workshop.
The premise is simple, though as I learned, the practice is difficult. One holds their wand of choice lightly in their hands and asks it yes or no questions; the wand will respond with subtle movements directing the “water witch” towards water (or, as Bartol, informed us, toward anything one might be looking for). The L rods’ movements are more obvious, while the Y rod’s answers are much more elusive. Craving the challenge, I chose a spindly willow Y rod and headed down the street to Crab Park with the others.
We walked though Saturday shoppers, garnering strange looks as we held our dowsing tools in front of us unselfconsciously. When we reached Carb Park, we walked down the grassy slope to the beach, my willow branch bouncing wildly. In my skepticism I giggled and disregarded the branch’s warning. Then my foot sunk half an inch into the ground and I found myself hopping through the hidden marshland trying to stop the water from seeping into my leaky boots. Once we reached the beach, Bartol let us loose to explore using our rods. She suggested we ask the rods “Is there something on this beach I need to find?” and let them guide us freely from there.
It’s nearly impossible to be still enough for the rod to move completely on its own: even the slightest slip of my fingers caused the thing to quiver. That’s when I realized that there was no separating the magic from my body; if divination was going to happen, my body would be the conduit. The exercise grounded me, allowing me to notice things I probably would not have if I was taking a walk in the park on any other day. And so the rod became a kind of conductor, a radio tower between myself and the earth, which helped me dial in to the frequency of my surroundings.
Dowsing is extremely meditative. It made my thoughts less erratic and forced me to focus on being present with my own body. I had to pay attention to the way my legs reacted to the changing grade of the ground, on how I was holding my hands out in front of me despite sore elbows and finger joints, numb from the air’s damp chill. I found my way around the park with my whole body and not just my eyes.
Our dowsing revealed things that had been purposefully hidden, or that typically go unnoticed. Among the things I found were a shotgun shell and a shrine covered in flowers and dream catchers. One participant had asked her rods to help her find a stone with a white ring around it and a stone with black and white speckles. She opened her palm and showed us both stones. Another had found a drainage pipe, and someone else had discovered a tree full of fruit that she had never seen before.
We joked about taking a pair of glow sticks and dowsing for a Halloween party that night. But according to Bartol, we had all already been dowsing for those things: we can think of our phones as wands, too, that guide us through the dark streets towards places, events, things we need to find, and even each other. Really, we are witching all the time, it’s only a matter of becoming aware of it. And that was the most powerful part of the workshop: the feeling that the magic is already there if you take the time to practise it.