A pendulum is a small weight attached to a length of chain or thread. When someone holds it by the thread and asks a question, the weight moves and provides the answer. In the last few days I have witnessed two good examples of this.

Pendulum Experiences
Fluffball, a pet rabbit, got out of her cage and disappeared. The owners searched the immediate neighborhood with no success and were starting to panic. I suggested that they use a pendulum. They were skeptical, but they had reached the stage where they were prepared to try anything. I showed the lady of the house how to hold the pendulum. She held a pen and moved this over a map of the immediate area while holding the pendulum in her other hand. The pendulum began swinging strongly to and fro when her pen indicated a street almost a mile away.

"She can't have gone that far," the woman said. However, the family immediately went to the street that the pendulum indicated and found Fluffball contentedly sampling her way through someone?s front garden.

The second experience involved friends who were at a dinner we attended. The wife is allergic to MSG (mono-sodium glutamate), and has been hospitalized on a number of occasions after accidentally eating it. Consequently, when she is away from home, she always uses a pendulum to test her food before eating it.

I was curious to see what she would do on this occasion, as it was a buffet meal served to about two hundred guests. She selected the food that appealed to her and returned to her seat. She then took her pendulum out and held it under the table while holding her free hand over the plate of food. She silently asked the pendulum if the food she had selected was free of MSG. When the pendulum gave a positive answer, she ate it. If the pendulum had given a negative response, she would have gone through the items she selected, one by one, to determine the foods she could not eat and would then have gone back to the buffet line.

Too Simple?
Finding a lost pet and determining whether or not food is safe to eat are two excellent examples of what the humble pendulum can do. Although most people know of the pendulum, few people use it regularly to enhance their lives. Part of the reason for this is that it seems too easy. I have met countless people who used a pendulum once or twice and then put it away to experiment with things that appeared more exciting. Many years ago, I met a man who had used a pendulum to help him decide on a suitable career. Although he had followed the pendulum's advice, and was happy with his choice of career, he had never used it again. When I asked him why, he muttered that the pendulum seemed too simple, and he would probably have chosen the same field anyway.

Of course, even though a pendulum is simple to use, it still takes practice to become good at it. You can buy pendulums at any new age store, but any weight suspended on cord or chain will act as an impromptu pendulum. Choose something that weighs at least three ounces and attach it to four to six inches of cord.

Hold the cord between the thumb and first finger of your right hand, if you are right-handed. (Use your left, if you are left-handed.) Rest your elbow on a table and allow the pendulum to swing freely an inch or so above the surface of the table. Stop the movement of the weight with your free hand. Then ask the pendulum to move in a direction that means "yes." The pendulum may start moving immediately, or it might take a while to indicate a positive response. When it starts, it will either move from side to side, backwards and forwards, or rotate in a clockwise or anti-clockwise direction.

Yes or No
Once the pendulum has indicated "yes," stop it again, and then ask it to indicate "no." Follow this by asking for "I don't know" and "I don't want to answer" responses.

Now you can ask the pendulum questions that can be answered with these four movements. Start by asking the pendulum questions that you already know the answers to. You might ask it if you are male. Ask if you live at your current address.

After checking your pendulum in this way, you can proceed to ask questions to which you do not know the answers. Start by asking questions that you can check later on. The correct answers that your pendulum provides will give you confidence as you continue to experiment.

There is no limit to the types of questions you can ask once you become proficient with the pendulum.