La Physique occulte, ou traité de la baguette divinatoire

The Hague, 1747. Engraved frontispiece and 23 full-page engraved plates. Contemporary mottled calf, spine and labels gilt, edges marbled blue. Old signatures on the titles. A very nice set. A mechanistic and scientific approach to dowsing and magnetism, the first French book published on the subject. Here the author attempts to remove occultism from the practice by posturing that the circulating corpuscles of the human body communicate with underground water sources through the divining rod as an extension of the arms, much like the eyes make use of microscopes and telescopes to see things unavailable to the naked eye. Vallemont goes on to suggest other applications of the divining rod, such as locating dead bodies and rooting out fugitives. The fine illustrations show proper ways of holding the rod, other dowsing equipment, and divinatory charts. Volume II concludes with a catalog of successful dowsing excursions and a compilation of astrological charts that provide the correct conditions for finding specific things.
Caillet 10987; Dupré, Silent Messengers: The Circulation of Material Objects of Knowledge 308-309.