What is “Dowsing”?
“Dowsing” is the ability to find water, metals and other things by means of a tool held in the hand, or, sometimes, by use of only the hand.
The art of dowsing was first recorded in early cave drawings, it was written about in Roman times, and in Elizabeth I’s reign ‘great faith was placed in the virtues of the divining rod’.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries dowsing for water to mark the spot for drilling wells and boreholes was a well established practice.
During the twentieth century dowsing organisations began to be formed with the British Dowsing Society was founded by Colonel A H Bell, OBE, DSO, MRI in 1933.

Magic or reality?
Reality, but even today some people perceive it as being ’magic” or ‘trickery’ and a whole mystique has grown up around divining.  This probably stems from Saxon times. A person with strong dowsing skills would keep the knowledge to himself and would only pass the knowledge of how to dowse on to his eldest son. This kept the ‘power’ in the family and slowly a mystique sprang up about what, in reality, is an everyday skill.

How does it work?
I don’t know!
There are no scientific explanations for dowsing, but time and time again it is acknowledged that there is some correlation between the dowsing reaction and changes in magnetic flux, especially when dowsing on site.
What is really difficult to understand is that dowsing can be carried out at a distance and, no matter how far the dowser is away from the thing being sought, the actual distance does not matter. It still works. Dowsing can be carried out for something in the next room or on the other side of the world.
This means that items can be located by dowsing over a map of an area to find an item, with no need to travel to the actual site.

Can anyone become a dowser?
Yes, if they really want to and if they have an open mind. 

Having said that, a few people really have some difficulty in learning to dowse. At the other end of the spectrum there are definitely some people with a natural gift who can dowse without any lessons. It has been noted that  young children often demonstrate a natural flair for dowsing that adults can only acquire with practice.