Experimenting with pendulums

As I have already explained in more detail in other places my paternal grandmother was half gypsy. And as such she was heavily into fortune telling, dowsing, gender prediction and on and on and on.
Even if Gypsies in Elsinore, Denmark had a bad reputation she still maintained a somewhat proud attitude towards the mystic arts.
As she taught me, most is just clever reading of body language and some is blatant lies and fraud.

The pendulum she always said was the real deal. And she taught me techniques that would help me in my life with some serious stuff and a lot of party games.

When she used to predict the gender of an unborn child she always used a hair from the woman and her gold wedding ring. As I learned later it is just for show and nothing else. You can use silver, a piece of string or a piece of small link chain (necklace).

As I grew up I became very interested in the other side of the world as we generally know it. I could use words like parallel universes, other dimensions and the like, but nobody knows if this exists or not. Anything “proof” related to it is pure speculation and just as valid as comparing the increase in births in Denmark with the increase in the import of oranges from South America. There was a clear relation but it is not science (and probably not valid).

Anyway. I got interested in testing some of the claims made in various books and articles way back then in the mid seventies.

This is a good place to state, that I do not have pictures or journals and I will not produce any names of supposedly credible witnesses. Most of the women I have dowsed deserve their privacy and quite frankly, I’m not writing this to proof anything. I have mentioned my experiments with dowsing and some have urged me to write an article about it. And here it is.

First thing my grandmother taught me about dowsing was that you have to concentrate on the task at hand. Do not let your mind wander. Do not jump to a conclusion. Let the pendulum show you what it wants to tell you.
Plainly spoken: Don’t try to make the pendulum do what you think is right.

Hold the string or chain between your thumb and first finger with the string hanging over your first finger somewhere between the tip and first bending place (sorry lack of proper English knowledge and I can’t be bothered to look it up). This will allow you to relax and hold the pose for longer. If you strain too much your muscles will start to twitch and ruin your effort.

Make sure you have the pendulum at an absolute resting state. No motion.
DO NOT TRY TO START ANY MOTION YOURSELF. If there is anything to show and you have the ability, the pendulum will soon enough start its cycle.

There will be some arguments here as to what makes the pendulum start swinging. Bear with me – I’ll get back to precisely this point.

When I dowse for unborn child gender (UCG) I always do it on the wrist. There is no need to do it over the stomach as some people are want to do. You do have to remove any bracelets or watch worn on the chosen wrist.

To bring the pendulum to rest I usually lower it enough to touch the wrist in this way using the wrist a stop block. Then I slowly raise it till about one inch above the wrist. And wait.

After a short time the pendulum starts to move and I have seen others do it as well and their pattern is not always the same as mine. Their interpretations are based on their particular patterns. Mine are based on my patterns.
For me the pendulum starts to circle then it stops. Next movement could be a sweeping motion across the wrist or along the wrist. Then it stops. Then it repeats either of the mentioned motions. If it shows a circle the dowsing is over and that’s it.

Circle, across, across, along, circle.
For me that means girl, girl, boy.

Circle, circle
No children.

OK. Now it becomes a bit more complicated.

Often the two persons (the couple) involved have the same pattern. The pattern can change on a person. When I first noticed this change of pattern it was on my older sister and her boyfriend. At a party where we again had a bit of fun with the pendulum she and her boyfriend turned out to have different patterns and last time I had dowsed them they were similar. She immediately laughed out that perhaps I shouldn’t be so sure on myself when I claimed that this dowsing actually worked. The whole party laughed and we went on with the dinner.
Two months later she had left her boyfriend.

After that I always dowsed the woman, never her partner. Whenever they asked me to try them again and the pattern had changed I usually tried to find something like “moving house”, “loosing a family member” or “becoming vegetarian” as plausible reasons for the change.

After a while I only told them of the next child – not the children to come after. That way I could keep out of trouble so to speak.

And after 56 dowsing sessions on pregnant and non-pregnant women, I have successfully predicted the gender in 52 cases. In my book that is pretty damned good.

I stopped doing this on a regular basis because I had my colleague’s daughter coming around for the third time. She had had two girls (as I predicted) and now she wanted to know the gender of the child she was carrying. I told her it would be another girl and she went and had an abortion, because she and her husband wanted a boy.
That was a bit too close and I decided to hold back and not announce anywhere that I could do this. Some have found out and come on their own accord, but I don’t advertise in any way.

Prediction gender is not all you can do with a pendulum.
In some of the many books I read, someone mentioned finding directions. For example one could determine where a given object originally came from.

That sounded like fun, so I decided to test it out. Very unscientifically I found a school map and looked up the page with Europe.
I then took out my trusty letter opener shaped like a bayonet (my dad was a professional killer and everything in our house was military based). Maybe that’s why I liked Woodstock?

On the letter opener it said in clear letters Stainless Steel and that was it. No mention of origin.
I dowsed the letter opener and the pendulum started sweeping in one particular direction. With the help of a compass I determined the direction and looked at the map. A ruler placed on the map showed a direction down through Denmark and through Munich in Germany. As it happened my dad HAD been to Munich and he DID bring med the letter opener from there. Whether it was produced there I do not know.
I tried with other objects and got different compass headings. Very exiting and not very useful.

Net very useful until I met my wife (the one I have now) and we bought this lovely little house with an unkempt garden. Grass was as tall as one to two feet in most of the garden. While we were sitting in our new (old) house we happened to talk about dowsing. I got a bit carried away and told her (ad nauseum) about my “special powers”. She doubted me and in a stupid childlike way I jumped up and told her I’d prove it.
“Take this piece of wood (about 2x2x2”) and throw it out in the tall grass and I’ll see if I can find it.” I stayed in the living room and she went outside and threw the small block of wood out into the grass.

I stood by one corner of the house and concentrated on finding the direction. The pendulum started moving. I went to another corner – rinse and repeat. I got a new direction.
I visualised in my head where the two directions would cross and went to that spot. Looked down and there was nothing. As expected if you think about it. When I looked at my wife she was looking rather spooked and she said that if I looked about a foot to my right the block of wood would be there. And it was.
I have tried this on other occasions and my success rate is far from 92% as with the gender prediction. It’s more like 40% which could be mere coincidence.

Leylines or power lines in the ground are another exiting way to use a pendulum. It is said that those power lines can be detected with rods or pendulums almost by anyone. I have tried it on numerous occasions and it is actually possible to detect something that is lined up in some way.

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION
"power lines" in this context is what they call Leylines NOT electrical cables underground

My grandmother and I often used this to guide people on how they should position their comfy chairs or their beds. Theory being that you should not spend hours in the spots where those power lines meet in your house. She made money on it, but I always seemed to have trouble asking for money, so my services were free. Of course, she was a master at it and I was an apprentice. She also had the nerve to embellish her dowsing with mumbling and mysterious hand movements and lights and feathers and whatnot.

OH! I’ve been to Stonehenge. I was so looking forward to dowsing and embarrassing my wife with me looking for power lines and all that. But the bastards had fenced it in, so the public couldn’t get in between the stones. BUGGER. I did track Leylines outside the fence, but that’s not the same.



[edit on 21.3.2009 by HolgerTheDane]

What else have I done with dowsing?

I tried with a piece of cardboard with letters, numbers and yes/no options on it. A bit like those Ouija boards you can get.
I wanted Lotto numbers. I wanted the winning horse. I wanted money.
I didn’t get anything. Nothing. Nada. Not even a recognizable word. Ah well.

And I can’t find water either

And of course I have experimented with the art of dowsing, trying to determine what makes it work.

I made most of my experiments on someone’s wrist. This is where I get most consistent performance.

If I place the chain or string on a support and only gently touch it on the top where it goes “over the side” nothing happens.

If I look away while dowsing, leaving the subject to tell me what happens, it all goes bad. Nothing coherent happens.

If I support my hand at a place close to my fingertips nothing happens.

Conclusion is that I have to hold the chain or string myself and I have to have free movement of my hand and fingers. That makes sense doesn’t it? Unfortunately it also gives the unbeliever a very strong argument for crying HOAX.

There is of course the tiny matter of how I happen to know what my hand should do to make it swing in a particular pattern. How do I know what to predict for a pregnant woman? How do I know how to predict for a woman who isn’t even pregnant yet? How do I know where a power line is in the ground? Why do I find the same power line as another guy who has just been over the area with a pair of dowsing rods?

Our brain must be able to pick up on the tiniest clues from our surroundings and then influence the muscles to move in the correct way EVEN if we try our hardest to keep our fingers still.
What if gender is in fact determined by other factors than we know of? Could it be that there is some inherent power in any woman to influence the gender of a new foetus? And can our brain actually pick up on this power and measure the woman’s desire? Some animals appear to have this ability, why not humans?

Everything I have tested keeps pointing to this same ability to interpret minute clues and then direct the interpretation into actual movement of muscles.

If this ability doesn’t exist then the pattern should be random or always what I want it to be. In this case I should have gotten at least some words from my cardboard piece – shouldn’t I?

And not all are as they appear:

why dont you tell people to get a freakin ultra sound and while there at the doctor some a typical anti psych drugs for your lack in brain chemicals. lol sorry i just like hummour with my crazy story reading

Originally posted by Grimnal
why dont you tell people to get a freakin ultra sound and while there at the doctor some a typical anti psych drugs for your lack in brain chemicals. lol sorry i just like hummour with my crazy story reading

You are right of course.

Please understand that I am talking about 10-15+ years ago.

Ultrasound was not available in the early days and later they were viewed with suspecion.
Now they get an ultrasound when they are pregnant.

What when they plan to be? And if you read everything you'd realize that this could actually be used to determine if a couple are suited to each other. If they are likely to stay together.
Not that I'd do that, but some might.

And people seek fortune tellers for the oddest reason. The old cliché about meeting a tall dark man is not grabbed out of the blue.

As an aside, did you know that most fortune tellers (those that exploit people of course ) as a rule suggest tall dark men to blonde women and tall blue eyed blond men to brunettes?



[edit on 21.3.2009 by HolgerTheDane]

Originally posted by HolgerTheDane
And of course I have experimented with the art of dowsing, trying to determine what makes it work.

Our brain must be able to pick up on the tiniest clues from our surroundings and then influence the muscles to move in the correct way EVEN if we try our hardest to keep our fingers still.
What if gender is in fact determined by other factors than we know of? Could it be that there is some inherent power in any woman to influence the gender of a new foetus? And can our brain actually pick up on this power and measure the woman’s desire? Some animals appear to have this ability, why not humans?

You can expect to be ridiculed here by some. I'm a skeptic, but I believe you as I have seen this pandelum thing in action. It does work but is not 100% accurate. Ultra-sound is, of course, which only means that some senses in machines are better than what humans have. I also believe you because you do seem to be quite honest with this stuff, and because you also provide a possible natural explanation for your experiences.

As far as my own conclusions count, I have observed that humans do have some extraordinary deductive capabilities which are based on minute clues - as you call them - from our environment. Those are all that little things that we just cannot see because they are so small in detail and right in front of our eyes. Like the thing a coin having three sides instead of two (most people will say there are only two sides). Some people are capable to notice things that others simply are not because of their wiring in their brain.

I'm an electrician, by the way, and I can *confirm* that you can easily detect power lines below ground with simple rods. I'm not going to go into details because this is one of the nice tricks you can do for other people, who come with expensive radar equipment to find them whenever needed. It is my personal way to ridicule some people who trust technology a bit too much. However, you cannot find a power cable that has no electricity running through it. You can also find grounding cables with this tecnique. And yes, everybody can do it if they just know how. It has something to do with magnetic fields but I'm not going to expose the details.

I forgot to thank you for your burden of telling us your story. One final thing though, could you tell me something about how gypsies tell future from hand? I understood from your post that it is only using clues of body language.

Originally posted by rawsom
I forgot to thank you for your burden of telling us your story. One final thing though, could you tell me something about how gypsies tell future from hand? I understood from your post that it is only using clues of body language.

Hand Reading, Palm Reading or Chiromancy

You know that the lines in the hand are different from person to person and that they are given seperate meanings?

Imagine the "Life Line" and it is said to be shorter than normal. Well that means that you will die young. If you don't it meant that some major changes happened that obviously was foretold by the Life Line.
If I happen to read a heavy smoker he will die young. Chances are that I will be right.

The lines can be interpreted in many ways.

If you are a small framed, fair haired woman with a smokers cough and no wedding ring it will be fair to say that your life will be short and that you will have problems with your health. A man will become important in your life. If you are dressed very shabbily it is a fair asumption that your romance will be short lived. If you are very good looking and take care of your looks there is a fair chance that you will meet the man of your dreams.

Plain looking women also have dreams of a fantastic man. It is important to read the body language and tell them things that they want to hear as well as things that they already suspect.

If you want to tell them about their childhood try the classic one with a green area, probably a park and a brown dog and happy games with the dog. Many children have this experience and their body language will tell you if you are right. A drastic change in the pupils indicates strong feelings. Do they get smaller fast it might indicate a problem with dogs. Maybe they are afraid of them. If the pupils get large they have a fond memory. If they retract ever so slightly in the chair they are "hostile" and if they lean forward they are "positive". If you feel a pull on the hand they are loosing interest. You took a wrong turn - get back on track. There are other tell tale signs.

A good looking and well dressed married woman probably has a good lovelife and the shabbily dressed woman probably doesn't but would like to have. Don't commit to anything until you have determined their feelings by small probing questions or suggestions. If their body language doesn't reveal enough stop that branch of fortune telling and move on to another topic.

Keep your predictions from being too exact. Try to be very vague. Your target will fill in the blanks themselves. As long as they leave with a sense of having been told something valuable they are happy and will tell stories about how right you were.

When they leave they remember what fits into their desires and ignore the rest. If you did a good job. And remembered the names of the lines and mounds.

All this can be seen in broken lines, lines that branch of or are too short or even too long.

And then there are the serious Palm Readers. Those that know about this stuff. They can give you endless explanations about metaphysics and connection with Mother Earth and the spirit world. Search the internet for Chiromancy or palmestry. There is plenty out there. You won't find many articles along the lines I have just told you. You make up your own mind.

You are right, I can't find many such articles. Gypsies don't usually tell these things to outsiders, thank you very much for sharing all this. It was very enlightening, although I was pretty close in my own conclusions.

I remeber years ago, when my neighbour was having their first child they did the pendulum thing with cotton thread and a needle and correctly predicted the sex of the baby, i wasnt sold of the fact but then he went outside to show me it also works with plants and seeds and the method seperated both male and female plants. There ws more to it aswell but it was a while ago. I cant remember though which one is which, is the circle female or is that side to side, i want to try this with my pregnant wife.

Originally posted by rawsom

Originally posted by HolgerTheDane
And of course I have experimented with the art of dowsing, trying to determine what makes it work.

Our brain must be able to pick up on the tiniest clues from our surroundings and then influence the muscles to move in the correct way EVEN if we try our hardest to keep our fingers still.
What if gender is in fact determined by other factors than we know of? Could it be that there is some inherent power in any woman to influence the gender of a new foetus? And can our brain actually pick up on this power and measure the woman’s desire? Some animals appear to have this ability, why not humans?

You can expect to be ridiculed here by some.

I'm not bothered with ridicule. Of course there will be ridicule. The foetus thing IS a bit "out there on a limb".

I'm a skeptic, but I believe you as I have seen this pandelum thing in action. It does work but is not 100% accurate. Ultra-sound is, of course, which only means that some senses in machines are better than what humans have. I also believe you because you do seem to be quite honest with this stuff, and because you also provide a possible natural explanation for your experiences.

You're very kind.
I am a total sceptic in so many ways that it hurts, but the use of a pendulum is something I believe in because I do it myself, NOT because I've read a book about it.

I'm an electrician, by the way, and I can *confirm* that you can easily detect power lines below ground with simple rods. I'm not going to go into details because this is one of the nice tricks you can do for other people, who come with expensive radar equipment to find them whenever needed. It is my personal way to ridicule some people who trust technology a bit too much. However, you cannot find a power cable that has no electricity running through it. You can also find grounding cables with this tecnique. And yes, everybody can do it if they just know how. It has something to do with magnetic fields but I'm not going to expose the details.

Personally I think you should expose the details. If nothing else it might provide another clue to the reason why dowsing works.

As we said when I was a hacker/cracker: "Information wants to be free".

Originally posted by pazcat
***snip***
but then he went outside to show me it also works with plants and seeds and the method seperated both male and female plants.
***snip***

I've never heard of that one before. Must give it a try. Thanks for the info.

I cant remember though which one is which, is the circle female or is that side to side, i want to try this with my pregnant wife.

When I do it across the wrist it is boy when along the arm and girl when across the wrist. Circle for me is start and stop signs.

Oh well.. Just get about 1cm thick copper wire with all rubber/plastics ripped off. It can be of any lenght longer than about 30cm when arranged to almost whatever shape that you think is the best *antenna*. When you go over a grounding cable that is attached to a grid that has electricity on, you will feel its electrical power because of the magnetic field it generates.

It has some limits on depth of cable it can detect as well as amount of power required for this to work. That is why this propably doesn't work with a house that has less than 25A main fuse. It may work if you turn all your devices on at the same time, and then go searching for it, though.

I don't remember the exact equation anymore, but I do have it written down somewhere in my largish pile of notes about miscellaneous things. I don't want to search it, have mercy for me :-)

What's the best shape for this kind of antenna, then? Well, that is for the reader to figure out, I have given all clues needed.

Be cautious about one thing! If you touch electrical wires or put your antenna too close to it, you can die because of the electric shock. Safety distances can be found from safety standards meant for people who know this stuff.


[edit on 21/3/09 by rawsom]

Originally posted by rawsom
Oh well.. Just get about 1cm thick copper wire with all rubber/plastics ripped off. ***snip***

Kiitos

A dowsing rod

Holger,

I applaud you for your honesty and for taking a scientific approach to the paranormal. Healthy skepticism is good for everyone, and your observations on how the scams work is very interesting. It is very cool that you have inside information. As we discussed before taking a scientific approach to paranormal phenomena can be inherently more difficult than examining the observable universe, in most cases anyway.

The story of the lady having an abortion is very tragic, that could not have been easy on you at all. I don't know how I would have taken that, and I will consider much more carefully how my interest in the paranormal could adversely affect someone's life because of it. I document local sightings and collect data and do my best to keep my personal observations or beliefs structure out of the data, so hopefully I don't influence anyone at all. I want data in hopes that it may help explain some of the paranormal things I have experienced, not to prove my existing belief structure (which isn't all that "firm" anymore anyway).

I do have some thoughts to add about dousing, mainly using the "wire witch" or simply metal rods bend at a 90 degree angle with the short end held in the hand and the longer section held basically parallel to the ground. This seems to work much like the pendulum. I don't have any proof of how it works but it does seem to work. Basically the idea of people somehow picking up subtle clues, maybe even on some quantum level, and manifesting it in the pendulum or similar device.

I saw a program on a douser that located where to drill many wells, and being very successful where companies using technology had failed. There are a number of accounts of this happening in the farm country where I grew up and reside now, this majority of the farming depends on wells and well water. There are also local stories of dousers finding lost and buried septic tanks, water lines and metal pipe using the "wire witch" method. It is also supposed to be good for locating ley lines.

I experienced one douser that had us, one at a time, put on a blindfold, hold the rods and he would place a coin on the floor in front of our path. Then he told us to try to locate the coin while slowly walking the path. It was really interesting that the rods would cross while over the area where the coins was, and it worked consistently with four of us trying it and everyone was astounded by it. I was pretty young at the time. It worked for me as well. I have never even thought of trying it as a "party game." I don't think it had a direct link to magnetism because at least American coins are engineered to be non-magnetic, mainly so they work well with vending machines to help prevent easy use of steel slugs to cheat them and the dousing rods we used at the time were brass if I remember right. I know the douser and have asked him about it, he says that the metal composition isn't all that important it just needs to be metal and that coat hangers work just fine.

If anyone would want to try this please do. Let me know about your results if you do. Maybe doing an actual scientific statistical analysis would be interesting if nothing else and wouldn't cost much except for sacrificing a couple metal coat hangers and some time. At least in this case setting up controls in the experiment don't appear to be too difficult (make sure the blindfold is blocking 100% of the subjects vision, not putting out a coin at all in some runs, etc.)

I have a theory about things like these, that if it is a genuine phenomena and it does happen on some quantum level that having individuals involved with strong disbelief or negativity towards it may affect the results.

Thank you for your insight into this. It has got me to thinking about it again.

Take care.....Michael

Originally posted by AlienMike

I experienced one douser that had us, one at a time, put on a blindfold, hold the rods and he would place a coin on the floor in front of our path. Then he told us to try to locate the coin while slowly walking the path. It was really interesting that the rods would cross while over the area where the coins was, and it worked consistently with four of us trying it and everyone was astounded by it. I was pretty young at the time. It worked for me as well. I have never even thought of trying it as a "party game." I don't think it had a direct link to magnetism because at least American coins are engineered to be non-magnetic, mainly so they work well with vending machines to help prevent easy use of steel slugs to cheat them and the dousing rods we used at the time were brass if I remember right.

Thanks for your kind words.

I have a theory about the metal rod dowsing that works even with a blindfold on.

Perhaps there is - after all - some truth to the tales about an aura. Perhaps it is some sort of "forcefield" (wrong word but hey, it'll do) where you can pick up changes to the edges.

As an aside - I'm trying to pick up the courage to go to a pre birth class that is having weekly meetings in one of our meeting halls at my place of work.
All those pregnant ladies would make a perfect number of test subjects.
And since they will most likely have been scanned I'll get to know the results straight away.

Funny isn't it?
It is so much easier when they come to me for a sitting rather than me being the initiator. Go figure.