The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching, with a Bibliography — Arthur Jackson Ellis (1917)

The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching, with a Bibliography is Arthur Jackson Ellis’s 1917 U.S. Geological Survey study of dowsing, water witching, divining rods, and the long history of claims surrounding their use.

Physical edition: The Holographic Pagan Press edition is a handmade softcover book, not a hardcover.

Prepared as U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 416, Ellis’s concise monograph surveys the divining rod from early European accounts through modern American practice. It discusses forked twigs, pendulum-like instruments, mineral and treasure divination, alleged scientific explanations, and the cultural persistence of the practice, while also documenting the Survey’s skeptical position on paid water-witching services.

Its extensive bibliography makes the work especially useful as a map of the older literature on dowsing and divination, preserving references to obscure books, pamphlets, investigations, and controversies that would otherwise be difficult to trace.

This text has been prepared by Odd Enough Books / Holographic Pagan Press as part of an ongoing effort to recover and circulate overlooked works from the history of metaphysical, occult, scientific, and anomalous thought.

This is a handmade 8.5" × 11" Holographic Pagan Press edition, produced with muted sage cardstock, a dark tape-bound spine, and newly prepared cover artwork centered on the divining rod and subterranean water imagery.

Issued here as a first Holographic Pagan Press edition.

Details:
Author: Arthur Jackson Ellis
Title: The Divining Rod: A History of Water Witching, with a Bibliography
Originally published: 1917
Original series: U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 416
Original publisher: Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Original pagination: 59 pages
Format: Handmade 8.5" × 11" physical book / PDF edition
Binding: Dark tape-bound spine
Publisher: Odd Enough Books / Holographic Pagan Press
Edition: First Holographic Pagan Press Edition

Collector’s Note

This edition is part of the Holographic Pagan Press archival publishing project, devoted to recovering uncommon and historically important works from occultism, anomalous belief, psychical research, metaphysics, forgotten science, and the borderlands of human inquiry.