Everyday Magic: The Pendulum

The pendulum is one of many tools a witch may use in magic or a divination practice. There are many available resources on this subject, but my personal understanding and practices vary from some of these resources. Like my daily sacred rituals, I have claimed pendulum work as a way of reading my own energetic currents to better understand the world around me through my connection to the divine within.

The pendulum I am referencing is one of stone, metal, or wood attached to a strand of beads, links, or even thread and held suspended. I learned from a peer to thread a needle if I needed one in a bind, although getting an answer was slightly more difficult as I had to take the additional time of attuning to it.

Choosing a Pendulum

The options for pendulums are almost endless. Many practitioners prefer wooden ones because they are perceived to be not as susceptible to outside energetic influences; if cleansed properly, it should be only attuned to your energy. If there is a certain type of work, such as healing or heart-centered dowsing practices, some people prefer to utilize stones like amethyst, green adventurine, or rose quartz. When choosing a pendulum, like any tool, it is important that it is chosen because you feel the connection to it.

Tips:

• Work to buy in person and local, also, do not just touch. Please ask the shop for permission.
  • I personally shop local and ask for 4 or 5 that may catch my eye to be put on a counter so I can ‘feel’ the energy by passing my hand over it.
• If purchasing online, check the shop reviews and how they source their supplies. It is important to buy ethically produced goods.
  • I have purchased tools online and most of these require extra cleansing because of how many hands it has passed through, manufacturing, or shipping processes.
  • I recommend trying to connect to the piece through the online forum or try to have others do it and describe it in their own words to see what vibrations you pick up from others that are describing it.

Cleansing

Like all tools, I highly recommend a cleansing and attunement period for pendulums. Cleansing is done to remove all energies not inherent in the pendulum itself, for a period of three days, via a daily pass through a sacred smoke of your choosing (sage, Mugwort, and frankincense are all types of smoke I have used for cleansing as a trio or singularly) or a salt strophalos bath.

 It should feel lighter and free of ‘gunk’ that may have been weighing it down.

If it does not, or if it was an online purchase, try leaving it in the strophalos bath or passing it through smoke for an additional three days.

Attunement

When I attune something to myself, I mean that I attune it to my energy and vibration, for a period of 7 days. We are all energy that is vibrating, we have our own type of magnetic field (especially the heart!). The best way that I have found to navigate the attunement cycle is to carry it with me during the day and put it next to me or under my pillow while I sleep.

Whether one throws a satchel in the pillow case containing the pendulum or creates a special pocket inside the pillowcase for herbs and attunement purposes, it works!

The pendulum can attune to your unconscious vibrations as you navigate the liminal spaces of your dream world. In this respect, it is attuning to your divine truth and your conscious, waking truth over a 7-day period.

Activation

Activating a pendulum for its purpose is a relatively quick process once it has been cleansed and attuned. I like to leave mine outside during the dark moon (or on a window sill if I am concerned about weather or the crows) as it is a liminal time, a time of veneration, and a time of higher intuition in the dark (where we are stripped of the sense of literal sight and must rely on other ways of ‘seeing’). I chant my intention of its use over it three times, call to my guides and deities to bless it into my toolbox and activate it to its highest purpose in my intentions. Leave it overnight and collect it in the morning. I encourage everyone to notice the difference the next day!

Translating the Language of Energy

Like other divinatory practices, the energies that come up for us through our tarot deck, our animals guides that make themselves known, the plant spirits, or our pendulum, must be translated into our consciousness from the world beyond it.

It must be translated from our unconscious or the connection to Universe in all of her creation.

If we know that we are an emanation of the divine spark, that the divine spark lives within us, then it makes sense that the information and the knowing is also within us. We are working to bring the unconscious into our conscious awareness. We are working towards the unification, individuation, or wholeness and the pendulum is a tool that allows us to read the energy of our own knowing through its use.

Initial Use – Yes and No

Upon initial use, it is important to get a reading for yes and no answers that you are consciously aware of already. Hold the pendulum up steady and then ask a question where your unconscious and conscious awareness are in alignment already, such as ‘do I currently have a dog named Sasha?’ Yes, I do, so I give it a few moments and make note of the movement it makes. Maybe is swings slightly left or right or is more up or down. Now I know how the pendulum speaks yes using my energy. Try it a few times with different ‘yes’ answered questions and with ‘no’ answered questions. This will help you identify the language of the energetic answers of ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

Initial Use – Divination Mats

Like throwing the bones, the pendulum can be used in divination practices where a mat or grid has also been attuned with both the pendulum and our energy. Depending on where the pendulum is pointing, it will give us a direction, a planet, a plant, a time, or possibly a number. I have used the pendulum over my own wheel of the year to determine a timeframe that would be best to start a new endeavor and can also discern correspondences that align with that timeframe. The possibilities are endless, but ultimately it is us that make the intuitive choices and use our own discernment in the energy translation.

The Divinatory Power

The divinatory and healing power of our tools are made so because we make it so. As a witch, I know the answers already, hidden within my own connection to and of the divine. I use the tools to align myself with the ability to read the energy I hold deep within.

This is not something we either have or we do not…

It is something we can rebuild and remember within ourselves (most of us lost this superpower as children when we were told to grow up and stop daydreaming). It is deep work to build the practice again, but the only limits are self-imposed when it comes to the mind work involved with divination and intuitive energy translation. May your process of remembering be the spark that ignites the Witch within!

A candle and a key,

Stormie