Pendulums – Dowsing, Intuition and the Ideomotor Effect

When I first wrote this article in 2015, I had recently misplaced an amethyst pendant that meant a great deal to me.

Naturally, I reached for my trusted pendulum to help me find it.

There was just one problem.

I desperately wanted a particular answer.

I was upset about losing the pendant and emotionally invested in finding it that my pendulum answers were all over the place. At the time, I understood this as being too emotionally attached to the outcome for the pendulum to give me a clear answer.

Eleven years later, I actually think that little experience provides a fascinating introduction to pendulum dowsing.

What Is a Pendulum?

A pendulum is beautifully simple: a small weight suspended from a chain, cord or thread so that it can swing freely.

When held still, tiny movements in the hand can cause the pendulum to swing backwards and forwards, side to side or in a circular motion.

Within traditional dowsing and spiritual practices, these movements may be interpreted as a way of accessing intuition, the higher self or other forms of guidance.

There is also a recognised phenomenon called the ideomotor effect, where thoughts, expectations or mental imagery can cause tiny unconscious muscular movements without us deliberately making them. Those movements can be enough to set a pendulum swinging.

And suddenly my missing amethyst pendant becomes rather interesting!

Was my emotional attachment interfering with my intuition? Were my expectations unconsciously influencing the movement of the pendulum? Or could both descriptions be different ways of looking at the same experience?

I don’t think you need to decide before you pick up a pendulum.

Part of the fun is learning how yours responds, experimenting with it and discovering what the experience means to you.

What Can You Use a Pendulum For?

Pendulums have been used in dowsing traditions for many different purposes.

Perhaps their most familiar use is asking simple yes or no questions. Some people use them when considering a decision, exploring their intuition or simply as a tool for self-reflection.

Traditionally, pendulums have also been used for:

• searching for lost objects
• dowsing for water, minerals or ley lines
• energy and chakra work
• choosing between different options
• exploring questions during meditation or spiritual practice
• working with maps, charts or other dowsing tools

You may also come across pendulum practices involving health, allergies, foods or supplements. I would approach these differently today.

A pendulum can be interesting as a personal reflective tool, but it cannot diagnose an allergy, determine whether a food or medicine is medically safe for you, or replace appropriate professional advice or testing.

That doesn’t mean we have to stop experimenting with pendulums.

Quite the opposite.

For me, they’re most interesting when we use them with curiosity rather than handing over responsibility for our decisions to them.

So Who – or What – Is Answering?

This is where pendulum work becomes particularly interesting.

From a spiritual perspective, some people believe the pendulum allows them to communicate with their intuition, higher self, guides or another form of consciousness.

From a psychological perspective, the ideomotor effect offers another explanation: our subconscious thoughts and expectations can create movements without us consciously intending to move our hand.

And perhaps the most interesting thing to explore is what happens when you use one.

Rather than telling you which explanation you should believe, I’m going to show you how to work with a pendulum so you can experiment for yourself.

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How to Use a Pendulum

If you’ve never used a pendulum before, the first thing to do is become familiar with the way it moves.

Sit comfortably and hold the end of the chain between your thumb and finger, allowing the pendulum to hang freely. Try to keep your hand relaxed rather than deliberately holding it rigidly still.

Now you need to establish what the different movements will mean.

Traditionally, pendulum users work with three basic responses:

• Yes
• No
• Maybe / I don’t know

The movements themselves can vary. Your pendulum might swing:

• backwards and forwards
• from side to side
• clockwise
• anticlockwise

There are two common ways of establishing your signals.

You can decide beforehand which movement will represent each answer, which is how I originally learned to work with a pendulum.

Or you can simply hold the pendulum and ask:

“Show me yes.”

Watch what happens.

Allow it to settle, then ask:

“Show me no.”

And finally:

“Show me maybe or I don’t know.”

Don’t worry if the movements are very small at first. With a relaxed hand and a little patience, they can become surprisingly clear.

Test Your Pendulum

Before asking anything important, try a few questions where you already know the answer.

For example:

“Is my name Tracy?”

For me, that should produce my established yes response.

Then I could ask:

“Is my name Billy?”

That should produce no.

You could also ask something simple such as:

“Am I sitting down?”

The purpose isn’t to prove that your pendulum possesses mysterious knowledge — you’re simply becoming familiar with its movements and learning how consistently it responds.

And this is also where the ideomotor effect becomes fascinating.

Try not to deliberately move your hand.

You may be quite surprised by how strongly the pendulum can move anyway.

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Before You Start Asking Questions

When I originally learned pendulum dowsing, I was taught to begin each session by setting an intention for where the answers should come from.

My own practice was to say:

“I call upon my higher self to answer these questions. I seek only truthful answers which are aligned with the highest and greatest good for all concerned.”

For someone approaching pendulum work spiritually, that kind of ritual can still be a meaningful way to begin.

You don’t have to use those words.

You might prefer simply to sit quietly for a moment, take a few breaths and set an intention to remain open, calm and as unbiased as possible.

And unbiased is important.

Remember my missing amethyst pendant?

If you desperately want the answer to be yes, expect the answer to be no, or feel anxious about what the pendulum might tell you, your expectations can influence those tiny unconscious movements we talked about earlier.

Whether you understand pendulum dowsing spiritually, psychologically, intuitively — or as a mixture of all three — learning to recognise your own expectations is part of the practice.

Asking Good Questions

Pendulums work best with questions that have a clear yes or no answer.

Try to make your question specific and avoid asking several things at once.

Then ask the question and allow the pendulum time to respond.

Most importantly, don’t try to make it give you the answer you want.

And if you’re highly emotional about the outcome?

Put the pendulum down and come back to it another day.

That is one piece of advice from 2015 that I would very definitely keep. 😁

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Questions to Try With Your Pendulum

Once you’re comfortable recognising your yes and no responses, you can start experimenting with different questions.

Begin with things that aren’t particularly important to you, so you’re less likely to influence the result through expectation.

You could try:

• Is today Thursday? — obviously change the day!
• Am I currently indoors?
• Am I wearing something blue?
• Is there a cup on the table?
• Did I have tea this morning?
• Would I enjoy spending some quiet time reading this evening?

Then you can experiment with questions where the answer isn’t immediately obvious.

This is where it gets much more interesting.

Write your question down along with the pendulum’s answer, and check later to see what happened.

You might even try a little experiment: ask a friend to hide an object beneath one of several identical cups or boxes while you’re out of the room, then see whether you can use your pendulum to locate it.

Don’t worry about trying to prove anything.

Be playful with it. Test it. Get things wrong. Try again.

If you approach pendulum work as an experiment rather than something that must give you the correct answer every time, you may learn much more about the pendulum — and possibly about yourself.

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How I Work With Pendulums Today

My relationship with pendulums has changed considerably since I first wrote this article in 2015.

These days, I rarely use one to ask questions.

One of the biggest changes in my own spiritual practice is that I no longer deliberately connect to anything outside of myself for answers or guidance.

There is so much about consciousness and the unseen aspects of our world that we simply don’t understand. For me, discernment means being very careful about assuming that something presenting itself as helpful, loving or wise necessarily is what we think it is.

So rather than looking outside myself for answers, I prefer what I sometimes call my “inner pendulum” — paying attention to my own intuition, responses and inner knowing.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped finding physical pendulums interesting.

I still play with them occasionally, and if a customer in the shop asks how to use one, I’m very happy to demonstrate.

I also find dowsing for energy fascinating. When I used to work therapeutically, pendulums were something I sometimes incorporated into healing sessions, where observing their movement could provide an interesting focus for exploring changes in the energetic field.

Whether those movements reflect subtle energy, unconscious muscular responses, heightened attention or something we don’t yet fully understand is another question I’m happy to leave open.

A Pendulum Is a Tool, Not an Authority

Perhaps that’s the biggest thing I would add to the article I wrote eleven years ago.

Don’t give your power away to a pendulum.

Don’t allow it to make important decisions for you, and certainly don’t use it to diagnose illness, identify allergies or decide whether a food, medicine or treatment is safe.

But as a tool for meditation, self-reflection, dowsing, experimentation or simply exploring your own responses?

I still think pendulums can be fascinating.

Maybe the most interesting question isn’t “What is my pendulum telling me?”

Perhaps it’s:

“What am I noticing within myself?”

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Pendulums at The Crystal Tree

We still stock a selection of crystal pendulums at The Crystal Tree, made from different crystals and minerals.

If you’re new to pendulums and visit us in the shop, please feel free to ask. I’m always happy to show you the basics and let you experiment for yourself.

Or, if you’d like to see what we currently have available online, you can explore our collection here:

Explore Our Crystal Pendulums