Pendulum Power

Pendulum Power

One of the most remarkable, but little known pioneers of psychic research was the distinguished British academic and archaeologist Professor Tom Lethbridge. He was a man who professed a healthy scepticism for all aspects of the paranormal with one exception- he had a secret passion for dowsing.

He had always been fascinated by stories of the great archaeological discoveries made by Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans which they had credited to an inner sixth sense, and he suspected that the dowsing, or divining rod (often a forked stick) might act as an extension of the archaeologists intuition. He had proven the rod's potential for himself during an archaeological expedition to the island of Lundy off southwest England when he had successfully located veins of volcanic rock far underground. He was therefore keen to extend his experiments to proving the power of the pendulum, an allegedly more accurate instrument.

Dowsing Experiments

At the risk of inviting ridicule from his Cambridge University colleagues, Lethbridge devoted the latter years of his life to exploring the power of the pendulum as a divining device, but during his experiments his research was to take an unexpected turn. He had begun by placing a silver dish on the floor of his study and varying the length of string until at 56cm (22in) the pendulum began to circle. He concluded that this length must be vibrational "frequency" of silver and rushed out into his garden in the hope of finding a cache of buried silver coins. Holding the pendulum in one hand with his other arm extended like an antennae he scanned the area until the pendulum indicated the direction of buried silver. He repeated the procedure from the other side of the garden to get a second line, reasoning that where the lines crossed he would find his silver. His hopes seemed to be confirmed when the pendulum began circling over this spot. But after digging up a considerable amount of earth and a fragment of Rhineland stoneware he had found nothing of value.

When he dowsed a second time the pendulum failed to register any interest over the hole at all and Lethbridge grew despondent. But just as he was about to refill the hole he held the pendulum over the fragment of pottery and watched it go into a circular swing. It was then that he remembered that German pottery of a particular period was often glazed with lead salts containing silver. In a subsequent experiment he discovered that lead and silver shared the same "vibrational frequency" which could be measured by the length of string needed to get a reaction from the pendulum. But it was possible to determine which of the two metals were being divined by the number of times the pendulum swung in a circle. For lead it circled 16 times and for silver 22.

Working on different Substances

Once he had "tuned" the pendulum into a substance it would unfailingly lead him to more of the same. On one occasion he turned it into truffles, a rare fungus found in such delicacies as pate' de foie grass, and promptly located a specimen the size of a pea which the London Science Museum analysed and declared to be an exceedingly rare variety.

Of even more interest was his discovery that human beings could 'charge' supposedly inanimate objects with their own energy and that this energy varied in vibrational rate according to the emotions of the person who handled them.

Different Vibrational Rates

He measured the vibrational rates of a number of sling stones he had excavated from an Iron Age fort and which he suspected had been used in battle. The pendulum responded strongly to these at both 61cm (24in) and 102cm (40in) which he subsequently discovered were the rates for male energy and anger. Lethbridge discovered these corresponded in an ingenious fashion. He chose some from a nearby beach using a pair of tongs so that he would not influence them in any way and then he and his wife hurled them against a wall with as much force as they could muster. When they recovered the stones they discovered that all those which he had thrown reacted to a rate of 61cm (24in), while those that his wife had thrown each measured 74cm (29in). Then by holding a stone and concentrating on various abstract ideas and emotions in turn he was able to accurately measure the vibrational frequency of each using the stone as a medium. After an exhaustive series of experiments, all of which were conscientiously repeated to make sure that the results were consistent, Lethbridge concluded that many things had the same vibrational rate, but that normally they seemed to be interconnected. For example life registered 20 as did the colour white, earth and electricity, while death registered at 40 as did the colour black, anger and sleep. It would seem that the tables of correspondences drawn up by the ancient alchemists and magicians reflected a lost knowledge of natural world that we are only now beginning to rediscover with the current practice of 'charging' crystals and acknowledging the innate power of stone circles.

Courtesy of New Age Living
Author: Paul Roland
ISBN 0 600 59768 7