I think some dowsers believe that the rods themselves are crucial to the detection of a particular item, such as water or gold. They seem to believe that the material in the rod is attracted selectively to various things. I vaguely remember seeing adverts for various types of rods, copper, brass, steel, aluminum and even twisted copper wire rods which apparently were material specific for dowsers' searches.
Other dowsers appear to believe that the rods are just a tool, and it is the mind that somehow causes rod movement to indicate the location of the desired item. In this group, some accept the ideomotor effect as the mechanism for causing the movement, while others believe the mind magically moves the rods. The information which informs the mind to cause the movement directly or indirectly is believed alternately to be derived from god or yet unknown forces/senses possessed by humans. Some dowsers bristle at the idea that the information can be simply derived by the dowser's known senses, which is in fact the case, while others give an impression of possibly allowing for this likelihood but cannot tell you which sense would be responsible.
Most seem to be content with the broad notion of "information dowsing".
Though the sample set is small, this is my best understanding of the classes of dowsers. It doesn't seem to matter what you believe when among dowsers, just as long as you don't start asking to do any double blind trials, or question the validity of any claims of discovery. They really don't like skeptics. I can't decide whether dowsers are as a group afraid to know the truth, just because dowsing is so much fun, or whether they honestly think skeptics are at once evil, dangerous, damaging to their craft, and maliciously disbelieving for nefarious purposes...or perhaps some combination of these.
What is very likely going on is that dowsers are generally just not interested in nor appreciative of scientific explanations of natural phenomena. It's like learning boring facts for them, and they already know all they need to know, which to them feels like a scientific method of their own. Having special arcane knowledge and a desire to share it with others can be the norm in an academic setting, but it is also often one symptom of certain mental issues and of aging in general.
I think some people are members at BSoD just because they enjoy other people who don't need evidence for their beliefs and don't even have a real interest in dowsing. In some ways, it is reminiscent of the past lives forum we encountered years ago. There is a wide variety of woo over there at BSoD, including reincarnation.
This is because Akhenaten and I were born on the same day, don't you know.
