As some of you may know, the pendulum has been used as a tool for divination and dowsing for thousands of years. Throughout thousands of time periods, historians have continued to discover evidence of pendulum use. It's stated that historically pendulums have been used by the Pythian Oracle of Delphi (400 BCE), French Explorers, Mathematicians (1600) and even Italian scientists (1500).
However, just like anything, the pendulum has had its fair share of critics. Pope John XXII (1300 CE) began persecuting "witches" who used this tool. The Church saw the pendulum as a form of divination and devil worship, leading them to become forbidden until the mid-1700s CE.
In 1833 Michel Eugene Chevreul researched the movement of the pendulum and came to the conclusion that involuntary and subconscious muscular reactions are responsible for the movement of the pendulum - aka the earliest definition of the ideomotor reflex.
I could go on and on regarding the history of pendulums, but let's get to the juicy details. How the heck do these beauties actually work?!
Pendulums combine a simple appearance with a mystical and nuanced function. They respond to your body's own energetic field in conjunction with your higher self and intuition, provoking jerk reflexes in your arm and wrist that allows the pendulum to move in a certain way. This movement in your wrists/arms, is what Chevreul discovered back in 1833 , the Ideomotor Reflex. It is said that this reflex is the derived from the muscles moving in your arm, which is triggered by your subconscious brain activity. So by asking your pendulum a yes/no question, your energy field (aka your pendulum) is simply responding to what your inner self already knows subconsciously. Pretty fun, right?!
If you are wanting to learn more, I picked up a book last year that's been really helpful to dive deeper into this information. It's called "A Little Bit of Pendulums - An introduction to pendulum divination" by Dani Bryant.
To shop the pendulum featured in the photo click here.
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