There he found a ley line, cutting diagonally across the garden wherever a lack of trees and overhead pylons allowed him to dowse it through. I first met him when he appeared in my parents' garden many years ago, dashing about enthusiastically with his dowsing rods and demonstrating how he could do it blindfold. Sadly he died a few days ago on 26 June 2014, so this essay stands as my epitaph to a great man. But he was as sharp as a razor, understood electricity and magnetism better than anyone I have ever met and could wield a soldering iron with the greatest ingenuity and effect.

Consequently he could never tackle higher mathematics, write a serious scientific paper or cope well with computers, and so he was forced to work, unqualified and unsupported, outside the mainstream. But it needs to be said, if only to honour the man who developed the first truly rational and scientific theory as to how it all works.Īnthony Hopwood, Tony to his friends, was a highly intelligent and imaginative scientist who unfortunately suffered from dyslexia and dyspraxia - inabilities with spelling and numbers. So when I choose to tell you about my own experience of dowsing a ley line and the events which surrounded it, I trust you will forgive me. Ley lines fare little better, with historians also keen to offer dubious theories that keep the pot boiling.

Dowsing, Ley Lines and Tony Hopwood Tony and the phenomenon of dowsingĭowsing is one of those difficult subjects that bring out the worst in people: the mystically inclined get carried away by spiritual energies while otherwise sober and rational scientists rant with rabid, even evangelical fervour against the mere mention of the idea.

Garden story dowsing rod