Eau no! France turns to dowsing as water shortage looms

Name: Water divining.

AKA: Dowsing.

Age: Ancient.

How does it work? So you hold a Y-shaped hazel branch in front of you and walk slowly over where you suspect there may be water. Some diviners favour willow, others use L-shaped rods, or pendulums. When the branch or rods or pendulum dip or twitch or whatever, that’s where to start digging. Divining is also used to search for metal.

Like a kind of organic metal detector? Exactly.

Amazing! How does it work? Diviners claim that the divining rod is physically affected by emanations from underground water (or other substances of interest).

And what does science say? Science says balderdash (or more likely something ruder). There’s precisely zero evidence that divining is effective. The scientific community puts any success down to luck.

So why are we even talking about it? Because it is – note the present tense; we’re not talking about the middle ages – now a thing. Make that une chose, in fact.

French because? That’s where the thing is happening. An annual divining course in the village of Pouilloux in Burgundy is getting record numbers of attenders. Le Figaro has called it a growth sector with a bright future. A new generation of diviners is emerging in the countryside.

So what’s driving the renewed interest in something that should have been made redundant by reservoirs and pipes and publicly owned water boards (as well as having no basis in fact)? Climate change, I’m afraid. Those reservoirs are lower than they should be at this time of year. The French government predicts that over half the country will face drought this summer.

This isn’t just an issue in France, is it? No, the catastrophic environmental and political implications of the world’s dwindling water supply are central to the very future of the planet and its inhabitants. Water has been called “blue gold”, but that might be overegging the importance of gold.

Maybe it’s not surprising, given looming Armageddon, that folks are looking to divination for answers. Does it ever work? One dairy farmer told Le Figaro a diviner had found a water source under his farm, which would save him a load of money on his water bill.

What did the chair of the French Committee of Hydrogeology say? That any success was probably because they had looked at hydrological maps. “Let’s stop pretending it’s magic when it isn’t,” Patrick Lachassagne said, almost certainly with a stereotypical gallic shrug.

Do say: “Quel ramassis de conneries!” [“What a bunch of crap!”]

Don’t say: “It moved! Quick, give me a go with the rod, I’m Pisces … ”