ASD DIGEST
VOLUME 21, NO.1 FEBRUARY  1981

DOWSING THE OHIO SERPENT MOUND

            In the August 1980 issue of this journal, archaeologist Clark Hardman's map of the unique pre-Columbian structure known as the Ohio Serpent Mound, was printed (see small inset). Two sets of questions about it were addressed to readers:

1)   Are there any water domes associated with the mound?

If so, how many, and where are they located

2)    Are there leys (ley lines) associated with the mound?

If so, how many, and where are they located?

            The Ohio Dowsers Chapter, led by Richey Liming, volunteered to collate the answers which have been summarized as follows:Twelve replies were mailed in from seven states and Canada, including a beautiful drawing from western artist, Ralph Johnson of Duncan, Arizona.
Seven of the twelve respondents found a = water dome beneath the center of the "egg," which the serpent is said to be swallowing (see larger inset). Eight found a dome under the center of the coiled "tail." Two more respondents found a dome nearly at the center of the serpent's "head," but not within its tail. Of the two remaining respondents, one found a dome just west of the egg and one found no domes at all.

            After comparing these results of map dowsing with dowsing at the actual site by members of the Ohio Dowsers Chapter in 1978, it was felt that first prize for the map dowsing effort should go to Guy Hockett, of Alamo, California, who located four of the eight domes the on-site dowsers believed they had pin-pointed on a cold, blustery November day in 1978.One who was present adds: "It seemed to us that the structure had been designed to correlate with underground water in that, not only were the egg and tail precisely centered over water domes but, at each bend of the serpent's body there was a small subterranean spring not visible from the surface—a wholly remarkable circumstance, if correct."

           It is further noted that ten of the twelve respondents pinpointed one, or more, leys running through the egg—three in all—under a lovely, old red-bud tree and passing directly over the large dome mentioned as having been located in seven of the twelve replies.This exercise, and its implications, may be of more than passing interest to dowsers, especially, those drawn to the activities of such bodies researching ancient sites as the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA), the Early Sites Research Society, the Epigraphic Society, and others.

            We thank all who participated in this exercise for their time and energy, and especially Richey Liming, for his help in collating the material.

—T. E. R.

  "The constant presence of underground water at the exact centers of these circles and earthworks is a significant feature easily verified by others. If this is allowed to be intentional, then the selection of sites for consecration) by the Druids and their predecessors no longer appears arbitrary but dictated largely by geological conditions”. —Reginald Allender Smith, 

authority on the Stone Age, Keeper of British and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, and Director of the Society of Antiquaries, before the British Society of Dowsers, 1939.

            "As dowsers know, the course of underground streams or of magnetic flow is not naturally straight; they spiral and undulate like surface rivers or currents of air. Yet the currents that follow prehistoric alignments are as direct and regular below ground as are the leys on the surface”.

—John Michell in "The View over Atlantis", 1969.

Map by Hardman, an archaeologist, Los Angeles, 1979.
Water and leys dowsed by Ross and members of ASD at conference held on site,
November 1978.

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