Experimenting with pendulums

Allow me to add to my disclosure on hoaxing a palm reading and other kinds of fortune telling.

If you phone up for a session I will have your phone number. If I have that I will have your adress. You gave me your name when you booked the session. If I have that I will probably find you on the internet. Our local phonebook even have our professional title.
Since my schedule is busy I'll have a week or two to find stuff on you.

I might go to your adress (most people don't travel far for a setting) and ask the kids in the neighborhood if they know where you work or what you do for a living. Have you any pets, car, bicycle, spouse, children?

If I have found you on the internet I have you in the palm of my hand. Pun intended.

With twitter or facebook I can find friends and relatives. Once I have them, I can be very persuasive.
It is also on Facebook and Twitter that you find personal - VERY personal - details.

Should you hide behind pseudonyms on the internet I'll fall back to basics.
Or maybe your friends have written about you.

My father in law has never been on the internet yet there are articles about him because he used to race on bicycle on a semi professional level when he was young. In some of the news articles mentioned on the net there are a few personal facts about him.
Two or three personal facts that "nobody knows" will clinch the deal.

If you are attending one of my sessions in the city hall then you will wait outside with a bunch of people while you wait for the doors to open.
You will talk to others of your ecspectations. If you don't others will. No matter what I'll have someone in the crowd waiting with you.
I don't need to know who want to hear from uncle Richard. All I need to know are the two words "uncle" and "Richard".
If you want to test this try talking to the others waiting with you about your grandmother Eileen who sadly took her own life and that you feel guilty about it. Chances are that you will be told not to feel guilty and that she is happy now and wants you to get on with your life.

Wait for true gems of information. Don't volunteer any of your own.

And some will ask what basis - and motive - I have for disclosing this type of information.

For one reason only. There are thousands of charlatans and con artists for every true medium.
If we don't educate you about how to spot a charlatan you won't recognize the truth when it comes your way.

I have always tried to be truthful to people about the few paranormal things I can do - even when I don't understand how it works - and it hurts my moral codex when I see people being cheated by the same tricks I learned as a child and young man.

Just an update.

My daughter has just told me that she is pregnant. 5 weeks gone.

I dowsed her and her partner.

Identical pattern.

circle - lenghtwise - circle

Should mean that she will have a boy.

Now we wait.

[edit on 20.8.2009 by HolgerTheDane]

reply to post by HolgerTheDane

---

Congratulations!

I had the best bloodstone pendulum but it has recently disappeared. I am very upset about it!

i have to admit, i am a large believer of the pendulum. my mom introduced me to it, and we asked it obvious questions which were always correct, and a lot of the questions i asked about life answered my questions exactly how i thought it would.

we even did an experiment where i held a pendulum and my mom held a pendulum and my brother asked the questions, and both of our pendulums always responded with the same answer... it was never off

@ Ravenshadow
Thank you. I'm quite exited to be a granddad. Even if I have to pretend it doesn't.

Sorry to hear about your lost pendulum. I have a brass pendulum which has followed me for about 30 years. I'd be really upset if it got lost.


@ Calihan
Once you have tried it, a pendulum is a pretty difficult thing to shoot down isn't it?


----


It is my strong belief that what the pendulum shows is what we know subconciously.

This belief is supported by the fact that the pendulum does nothing of value if you don't look at it and concentrate about your question.

Or should I say - I have never seen a pendulum dowser with closed eyes do a convincing reading.

Another fact is that you can't predict anything truly unexpected - like the lotto numbers. Only stuff that you *could* know subconciously.


I'm still setting my self up to contacting the local birth prepareness class and ask for their cooperation in a controlled test.

reply to post by HolgerTheDane

---

I haven't read the whole thread but I'd still say I don't believe that pendulums work. It's the Ideomotor effect in action...

In cases where the pendulum has got it right well thats just down to statistical chance; just like flipping a coin. As for your personal record well I can only take your word for it and they do say seeing is believing.

I unfortunately haven't seen it so I'm not prepared to believe you however if what you say is true then I must admit it would be a pretty impressive to say the least.

Can someone explain to me the so called science behind pendulums? Whats making them work so to speak? Because your literally just flipping a coin and I don't see anything magical or mystical about doing that.

If they work then why can't you get lotto numbers, winning horse etc

Think of it this way:
Most outdoor persons can quite easily tell when it's going to rain. The cloudcover, the way the light is, wind direction, the sensation of the air, moistere level etc.
What they are doing is picking up on small (or big clues) and deciding what they think will happen.

Pendulum dowsers do the same. Pick up on small clues and answer accordingly. The aswers are giving through the pendulum via specific motions that one learn to recognize. Sometimes the movements are determined by oneself - as in "When I want a positive answer I expect the pendulum to move in *this* direction".

It is true that the movements are there because you yourself make it happen. This has been extensively proven by many people including myself.

HOWEVER.
It has not been proven or disproven, what makes you as a dowser cause the pendulum to move in a certain way.

It can be disproven if one asks questions pertaining the future. Lotto numbers, game scores etc.

It can be proven if one asks questions like "have I got brown eyes", "is my mother dead", "do I have a dog".
All of those are immediately verifiable and you know the answers.

But when we sit at the same table and I ask it if you have a dog it is likely that I pick up the correct answer. And where does it come from?
Well. Perhaps I pick up on an odour that I can't smell, but my subconscience can. Perhaps I see dog hairs on your clothes (without really seeing them). Perhaps I recognize scratches on your wrist that are from a cat and probability tells me you have a cat - not a dog.
Point is that my conscience does the work and relays the answers through the pendulum - which I cause to move in the correct pattern.

Whatever it is, it is a fact that I can't give any answers above statistical probability about people I don't have personal contact with.
But I can do it with people I am in personal contact with.

This does not detract from the value of dowsing woth a pendulum. It does however tell us that we know more than we realize about the world around us.


And then we have the charlatans.

There is a cartoon on the internet where a young man tries to score by claiming to be able to read minds.
"Think of a number between 1 and 100".
"yes"
"43"
"NO WAY!"
...
"Shall we go out?"

Point here is that you might get it wrong a number of times, but the 1 % is worth it if you get it right.



Through dowsing you cannot get anything about the future that you can't work out by paying attention.

You can predict WW3 because it is very likely, but you cannot predict when.

You can predict intelligent life on another planet because it is probable.

You can't predict lotto numbers because it is purely down to chance.

reply to post by HolgerTheDane

---

That was a very good explanation

So effectively your doing nothing more than a cold reader?

They pick up on subtle clues and use them to give their readings i.e. they might notice a wedding ring indicating marriage, dirty shoes/clothing indicating a lack of money etc

Your subconsciously picking up on certain clues and then the Ideomotor effect is translating them to movements of the hand which you interpret as a yes or as a no.

I have no problem with that explanation.

However, as far as I'm aware there are no subconscious or conscious clues that would indicate the sex of an unborn baby. Therefore predicting the gender of a child would be entirely 50/50%

I can't remember the figures you quoted but didn't you say it was something like 50 out of 60 correct?

Thats almost 90% of the predictions correct!

I have some information on predicting the sex of a unborn child that I'll find later and post.

56 readings - 52 correct answers
1 reading still to be proven/disproved.

No subtle clues to explain the gender of an unborn child...

Except if you allow for a sixth sense or even mindreading combined with a sixth sense.

There are plenty of tales among people of the ability to tell the gender by how high the child is carried or by how round the stomach is.
Also plenty of tales from native populations throughout the world about mothers knowing the gender.
Those tales might be true or untrue.

However - in my experiments there seems to be little room for any other explanation for the hit rate to be so high than this:

The mother somehow knows the gender and I somehow pick it up.

I have no doubt that I cannot see into the womb even with an imaginary third eye. This leaves the mother to be able to know the gender.

So the ideomotor theory explains why the pendulum moves.

There is no confirmed explanation of why it moves as it does.

But as far as I am concerned we all have the ability to pick up on even minute clues in our environment. Many people think it silly or ignore it, but most people have experienced it in their daily life.

For the sake of truth:

Just tried predicting child gender on a pregnant collegue only days before her first scan.

I said boy and the scan said girl.

Ah well. Can't win every time.

[edit on 18.9.2009 by HolgerTheDane]