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WHY USE A
PENDULUM?

 

PENDULUMS ARE SIMPLE TO OPERATE AND ANYONE can use them. They are beautiful and mystical, and they draw people in who are curious how they work. You don’t need any special qualifications to use a pendulum, and people from all walks of life can pick up the practice. Pendulums are small, compact, and affordable and can be used anywhere. While you can use a pendulum as a reliable source of guidance and information without any training, certain techniques can enhance their use and will be discussed later in more detail in chapter 5. Pendulums can be used not only for yourself in divination but also for others (with their permission). Pendulums can be used for your pets and your garden, testing food and water, and in addition to other divination tools. Let’s take a look now into some different ways that you can use your pendulum:

BASIC EVERYDAY QUESTIONS

You can use your pendulum for answering basic yes/no/maybe questions such as, “Did I leave my glasses in the car?” “Should I have pasta for dinner?” “Should I buy those black boots?” Practically anything can be asked! Don’t be afraid to use the pendulum for these simple questions, as this is a great way to connect and form a strong bond with your higher self and to better see how your pendulum works for you. Practicing with simple questions actually helps you gain confidence, trust, and patience with the pendulum, allowing you to grow and branch out into divination for yourself and others.

MEDITATIVE STATE

Do you remember watching movies or television shows when a magician swung his pocket watch in front of someone’s face to hypnotize the person? There is some truth in this, as you can use your pendulum to get yourself into a state of meditation. The swinging motion of the pendulum helps you focus your attention and brings your mind to a state of relaxation. It helps to remove the cumbersome everyday thoughts that are constantly crowding your head. Some people find it difficult to simply sit cross-legged on a floor and focus on breathing as a form of meditation. The pendulum can be an easier alternative. Meditation takes a lot of practice, especially in this day and age, as our lives are ridiculously busy and so are our minds. It’s hard for our brains to stop and be calm. Having a tool such as the pendulum to help us focus, relax, and to stop stressful thinking is a great way to start a meditation.

To use your pendulum for meditation, start by holding it in front of you and allowing it to move freely. It may move side to side or in a circular pattern. Focusing on this is a wonderful and relaxing way to get into a theta state of brain wave activity. This is the calmest state for brain waves. Throughout the day, your brain waves are usually in the normal beta state or the increased alpha state if you are anxious or stressed. By meditating, you can slow your brain waves down below the beta state and into the blissful theta state. Being in a theta state allows your brain to quiet the mundane, everyday thoughts that run through your head. This state instead creates calmness and peace and clears space for you to connect easily with your spirit guides and relieve anxiety, stress, and chaos from your life. It is important to allow your body to come into this meditative space—to wind down and actually relax your muscles, organs, emotions, nervous system, and hormonal system.

DIVINATION TOOL

Divination is the art of seeking knowledge of what the future holds, along with asking for guidance from higher sources. Divination can be achieved by using the pendulum just as it can by using oracle/tarot cards, runes, mediumship, scrying, tea-leaf reading, and so on. I find that it’s easier to offer guidance with the pendulum for other people, as I tend not to have a biased view on the outcome. If you ask a very important personal question close to your heart such as, “Will I become pregnant this year?” you may be hoping for a certain answer. If you have only just started out using the pendulum, you are more likely to move the answer to what you desire because you are emotionally invested in what you want the answer to be. Trusting that you are using the pendulum correctly takes time. You should start out asking very simple questions as mentioned before and become accustomed to how the pendulum works for you. Practicing trust with the pendulum actually means practicing trust within yourself —to allow yourself to stay focused, relaxed, and open minded. Trust me, your higher self knows when you are not in the right frame of mind to use the pendulum because—as in my case—it doesn’t move at all or it literally swings all over the place!

Remember that using the pendulum for predicting the future is just like using any other divination tool—the answers you receive now may not always be the true outcome in the future. Your life always moves with your free will, and the answers that you get will be relevant for only the here and now. Your spirit guides know the best outcome for you and the best path for you to follow. It is okay to have different thoughts from the ones your spirit guides have—you are human after all. Spirit guides are here to guide you in the right direction, but you are living a life in the here and now, surrounded by many influences, distractions, and expectations. Staying on your life path and being true to yourself, not to other people, can be tough. If you stay true to your heart and yourself, then guidance with your pendulum will be easy.

WITH OTHER DIVINATION TOOLS

I love to use my pendulum with my oracle cards, tarot cards, and runes. Every day, I pull some cards as daily guidance for myself. What I like to do is get my pendulum and place my decks in a circle, making sure there is an odd number of decks so that I can tell what deck the pendulum swings to (the pendulum circle diagrams in chapter 6 give good examples of this). Another method I use is grabbing a few decks and asking my pendulum yes or no while hovering over each deck. The pendulum will then help me choose the right deck for the guidance I need for that day. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the choice of decks (I love to buy decks of all sorts!), and sometimes I just trust my pendulum to choose for me.

I also ask the pendulum questions such as, “Should I pull two cards today?” “Is this the right question for me at this time?” “Am I interpreting the card guidance correctly?” The list goes on. The best thing about using a pendulum with other oracle tools is that there are endless ways to get guidance. Not everyone is the same, so having an individual method that suits you is the best way to work with your intuition, higher self, and guides. There is no one right way on your spiritual journey; experiment, explore, and enjoy.

ENERGETIC HEALING MODALITIES

Chakra Balance: I use the pendulum as part of my Reiki and chakra-balance sessions to assess each chakra before I work with my clients. Chakras are spinning disks or orbs of life-force energy that are based in your auric field. There are many hundreds of chakras in your energy field, but there are seven main chakras that align in the center of your body where the meridians cross. These seven chakras are associated with certain body parts, emotions, physical ailments, life situations, mental thoughts, and spiritual development. If any one of these chakras is blocked, it can cause significant disruption and disturbance in one’s life. These chakra disks all have different colors and vibrate at different speeds, making them each unique. Each chakra has a matching allocated color and corresponding crystals. When placed over a chakra, about one to two inches above the body, the pendulum will spin in a circular clockwise motion if the chakra is balanced. If the chakra is unbalanced or blocked, the pendulum will spin in an irregular sideways pattern or will not spin at all.

If you find an unbalanced chakra, spin your pendulum over it three times in a clockwise direction, then counterclockwise three times, and then again clockwise three times. This shifts and disturbs the stagnant energy so that the chakra can spin freely again, allowing ease back into one’s life. Once you have shifted the energy around the chakra, place the pendulum above the chakra again, and watch if it’s spinning freely in a clockwise circular motion. If it is not, repeat the process until it is. Once the chakra is balanced, place the appropriate crystal over the area to boost the healing process. I do this before a Reiki session, as I feel it’s an added boost of healing—the crystals work their magic while I give the client Reiki.

Reiki: Reiki is a type of healing that uses the life-force energy that the practitioner is “attuned” to via a series of symbols by a Reiki master. During a Reiki session, the practitioner emits this life-force energy via the crown of tßhe head (the crown chakra) and through the hands to the client. It’s noninvasive and very relaxing and aids in the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental healing process of the client. I use the pendulum in chakra-balance sessions and to assess what part of a client’s body needs more mental, emotional, or spiritual healing, which isn’t as readily apparent as physical ailments. I like to start from the crown of the client’s head and slowly move the pendulum around the body to see where I need to pay more attention. As with the chakras, the physical areas in the body have links to emotions, life events, past-life situations, spiritual development, and so on. These physical areas can help pinpoint what needs to be dealt with in life. When you hover the pendulum over a client’s body, watch where it spins or starts moving, as this may be an indication of what needs healing for the client. You can always do this on yourself as well.

Usually with these sessions involving the pendulum, I can focus Reiki energy on a particular area and receive messages from my spirit guides or the client’s guides to help with the client’s healing process. Most of the time, something as simple as a name or word can help immensely in the healing. Sometimes clients may burst out crying, and all of a sudden a stream of thoughts and ideas come into their heads that may not have ever occurred to them before. These breakthroughs release negative energy, which promptly disperses, and clients are on the road to healing a particular situation in their lives.

One of my clients felt low, like she just needed time out from being a mom. I hovered the pendulum over her body very slowly and as we got to her shoulders, the pendulum began spinning in a counterclockwise direction, which indicated blockage. While I focused Reiki energy on her shoulders, I felt an immense weight on my own shoulders, so I was feeling what she was feeling. The weight started to subside after a few minutes of energy healing, and eventually, it was gone. I received worded guidance from my spirit guides while at the client’s shoulders about her sister and family circumstances; and when I then relayed the messages after her session, she just cried! She was releasing what she had been harboring inside for so long she wasn’t even consciously aware she had been holding onto it. She started opening up and just let the words flow out until her face glowed. She realized what the weight on her shoulders was actually about, and once she did, she felt so much lighter and happier; she was able to focus on changing and dealing with her life more authentically.

I don’t always use the pendulum with my Reiki clients, as this process can take some time. I let my intuition inform me with each client, and if I have a feeling that I need the help of my pendulum, then I will use it.

The clients are the true healers of themselves. We, as practitioners of Reiki or of any energy healing modality, are only helping to facilitate the healing. Remember, the use of pendulums or any form of oracle is only intended for guidance about healing, and it should never be used to override the advice of medical professionals or in place of it.

CONNECT WITH YOUR SPIRIT GUIDES

If you find it difficult to contact your guides, angels, or whomever you resonate with spiritually through meditation, then perhaps use your pendulum to get to know them! Ask them yes/no questions such as, “Are there more than two of you?” “Are there more than five of you?” You can then narrow down your questions as you go so you get more of a structured answer. If you do contact your spirit guides through meditation but you would like a more specific answer to the visions that you may receive, then ask away and narrow down with the pendulum.

An example would be that I had a vision of kitchens in one of my meditation sessions and couldn’t figure out why I was seeing them, as I don’t exactly like cooking and would rather be doing a million other things. So I asked my pendulum if I was meant to spend more time in the kitchen. And the pendulum said yes! So I asked if it was because I need to focus more on my diet. And the pendulum answered another yes. So I then asked if I should be focusing on healing my digestive system through cooking better food, and again the answer was yes. I know it sounds like a simple example, but we tend to override what is important for our bodies because we are all so busy with everything else. We tend to not actually listen to our bodies even if they’re screaming signals at us. In my case, my signals were stomach cramps. This is a good example of how working with the pendulum within your meditation sessions can be so valuable.

You could also make a circle with the letters of the alphabet (one is in the pendulum circles chapter). You could ask your guides/higher self a question and allow the pendulum to spell out the answer by swinging itself to the letters. This takes time, patience, and practice, but it is a good way to communicate exactly what the answer may be. This is not a Ouija board and will not bring in bad or negative entities, so don’t be fearful about using it.

Energy Clearing

There are many methods for clearing negative, stagnant, and unwanted energy from spaces and people, and using a pendulum is one of them. I like to regularly clear the negative energy in my home, such as energy from entities that are still present in this realm, negativity, and so on. Perhaps bad energy remains after an argument with a loved one or stagnant and unwanted energy from other people who may have visited or who may be surrounding the property, such as neighbors.

Sit comfortably in an area of your home (I like to sit in the middle of my home) and hold the pendulum out in front of you. Ask the pendulum to please remove any negative, stagnant, and unwanted energy from the home and for this energy to be moved to deep underground for transmutation. The negative energy will change in the earth and turn into positive energy—a process called perpetual transmutation in which energy is always in motion and changing forms. I choose the earth for the energy to be transmuted as I feel the ground beneath us gives us new life; therefore, the negative energy is given new life.

The pendulum will move differently for everyone, so just feel along with the pendulum and let it spin the way it wants. For some, it will start spinning in a counterclockwise direction; for others it may spin in a forward-back motion or a side-to-side motion. It doesn’t matter which way the pendulum swings; it is still clearing the energy. Mine likes to do a combination of all motions: my pendulum starts moving in a forward-back motion, then changes to a side-to-side motion, then to counterclockwise for about five minutes. You could visualize the process of white light coming from above and surrounding you while you do this clearing. As the pendulum is swinging, visualize negative energy mixing with the white light and then flowing down into the ground beneath you.

The pendulum will then start to slow down and begin moving in a different direction once it has cleared the energy. So at this point, mine will start spinning in a clockwise direction, bringing in positive energy. If yours had moved in an up-down direction then it will move in a side-to-side direction, and vice versa, once the negative and unwanted energy has been cleared. It’s also really important to put your intention into the process of removing this unwanted energy from your space, as doing so heightens the positive effects and end results.

CONTACTING ANIMALS

The pendulum can be used to connect with animals. Maybe you know that something is wrong with your pet: it is not looking well; it is not eating; it is lethargic. You could either ask questions regarding your pet or another animal in question, or you could scan its body with the pendulum slowly and notice where the pendulum spins. The spinning can give you an indication of internal issues that may need to be addressed by a vet.

DIETARY GUIDANCE

Using the pendulum can be a great way to test how fresh and wholesome your food is. Have you ever bought meat labeled sustainably sourced and organic, but you really want to make sure before consuming it? Ask the pendulum! Fruits and vegetables are the same—ask the pendulum how fresh they are, if they are ladened with pesticides (even if they are labeled pesticide free), if those particular vegetables and fruits are what you need in your diet at that time, and so on. If you feel that you may have an intolerance or sensitivity to a certain food or food groups, you could ask the pendulum once you start feeling symptoms; however, always consult a medical professional before changing your diet or self-diagnosing.

Would you like to know if the water you are consuming is okay to drink—especially if you are traveling? Hover the pendulum over the glass and ask, “Is this water safe to drink?”

I like to ask the pendulum about what type of food my body needs: “Do I need more iron-rich foods?” “Do I need to incorporate more Omega 3 into my diet?” “Are my stomach cramps from eating too many rich, heavy meals?” It may sound like very basic information that we should know about our bodies, but sometimes we just need an additional guided push to sustain our bodies better.

MAP DOWSING

As mentioned before, dowsing with a pendulum has been practiced throughout history to locate natural resources. But did you know you can do the same thing to locate missing animals, keys, and so on? Perhaps you’re not sure where you would like to relocate to next or you’re a little stumped as to where your next vacation should be. If so, print yourself a map that suits what you need and ask the pendulum to spin or simply make some movement over your answer. Slowly hover the pendulum over the map until it starts moving for you.

The pendulum can help guide you in your daily life and beyond. Take the time to put your energy into your pendulum. The more you work with it, the stronger your bond will become and the easier the pendulum will swing. Like everything, the pendulum works best with practice.