The Pendulum as Potent Tool

"You're trying to tell me a stinking rock hanging on a chain tells you all that? Look, just leave me alone, will you? Think you're so smart, with your freaky wizard toys . . ."
-- Damian, to Isaac

  I can't help but wonder how much trouble Ron, Harry, and even Snape could have avoided if they'd just had use of a tool as basic as a pendulum. It's not about telling the future, as in the hazy art of divination; it's about homing in on energies here and now, to which you otherwise would not be sensitive. Especially if you're acting like a damn monkey waving an exploding stick.
  (I'm actually really glad I didn't go to Hogwarts. How did those idiotic little buggers ever learn anything? And with no Latin class or Ethics class?! Please. Not to mention the overly meaty food, bullies in every hallway, and let's not forget the really nasty chemistry teacher you're torn between hating with every fiber of your being and wanting to, well, f----.)
  Ron: "Should I drink this?" (Pendulum: "No, you complete dolt.")

  I've known how to divine with a pendulum for probably six or seven years. Since the old apartment, when a friendly black girl showed me how. I haven't nearly explored it to its potential, and mostly used it for such mundane questions as, "Will this food make me sick? How safe is it?" I picked up "Yes" and "No" quickly, followed by "Maybe", and have since worked out movements for "More", "Less", and percentages. I recorded my earliest experiments in Potus, fortunately. But there's still so much more to learn!

  The resurgence of magickal inclination sparked by life in the 19th Street house also spurred a bit of advanced pendulum research, via the Internet, beginning December 2nd. (Another backlog entry!)
  This research kind of exploded in my mind. More than anything else recently, it reminded me of the Physics truth that everything is energy. Literally everything has a vibration, from the hum of a tuning fork or the rumble of elephants and volcanoes, to the 750Hz of UV radiation or the B-flat of frigid outer space. So, then, do our bodies. So do different foods, types and purities of water, and even thoughts.

  Mathematicians often like numbers because of the way they can be used to describe the quantity, movement and nature of just about everything. Despite the complexity of the Universe, there's a purity and simplicity to numbers, which allows a person to wrap their mind around their world, to measure it --- and, dare I say, to better appreciate its beauty.

  Numbers can also, of course, be used in comparison and to measure progress. To measure change. Science itself relies heavily on the ability to do this. It is our urge, as cerebral, analytical and self-reflective creatures with more than a mere amygdala (reptile brain etc.), to try to describe ourselves and the Universe.

So: What if everything could be described in, and compared with, numbers? Specifically, numbers correlating to the same quality . . . like, for instance, frequency? Physics suggests that this is indeed possible. Thanks to the Internet, I discovered lists of frequencies, emotional states, and techniques on how to determine the frequency of nearly anything using a pendulum. It's amazing!

  To me, the most exciting prospect of this is measuring self-progress, states of being in myself and others, and various energies around me. If a person is seeking to "raise their energy", improve their mindset or spiritual vibration, then intuition and gut sensations are all very well. Trouble is, a path like this can easily wander into the realms of woo-woo, where your head gets stuck in the clouds of theory (or, sometimes even more dangerously, the "focus on the light" mentality, with its risk of blindness, arrogance and denial), and means of self-analysis and accurate measurement of mental and spiritual progress shift like the clouds themselves.

  What if you had a concrete number for any given state, a way to test your energy field in the moment? With a system that tests out time and again, you no longer have to feel your way forward in the dark. Well, technically you do --- that's why the ultimate goal is called "enlightenment", perhaps --- but the Dark is no longer an enemy or shapeless void, merely a strange territory with little handholds to grip along the way.

  The more I read, the more incredible it sounded. I already knew logically that slower, heavier energies tend to contract, manifest on the material plane, and bind physical matter to the material plane. Whereas, higher-frequency energies tend to expand, liberate, "vaporizing" something (or someone!) into a less dense state, like ice into water and then steam. I knew that thoughts and emotional states, like the energy of sound or light waves, had vibration.
  But this was the first time I'd ever seen them listed in order of density. Others before me had found that slower vibrations of thought and emotion made a person "heavy", more stuck, binding them body, mind and soul to material form. Progressively higher-frequency states of soul, this suggests, make the spirit so "light" that it has no need, desire, or ability to remain on Earth in a material form: The concept of "Dissolve into love and light" becomes their reality.

  Hence, the stories of certain enlightened Masters and monks simply disapparating upon their death, dissolving into pure energy, leaving no or very little bodily remains behind. Yet perhaps this amazing phenomenon isn't yet the end of spiritual progress. Perhaps there are further levels of enlightenment and learning beyond, on etheric planes of existence!

  Back here on Earth, the idea that I could test anything, from food and drink to objects in my house and even thoughts, and see how they either raised or lowered my energy was --- and is --- very exciting to me. I had one pendulum already, years old, with a very long chain I decided to leave thus in case certain energies could be detected easier with a longer chain, and I also finally fitted out a wire-wrapped amethyst I'd owned for years with its own chain, replacing its original string (I love the energy of this particular crystal).

  I still have a lot of work to do yet. One distinct risk of using pendulum techniques to measure mental or spiritual progress is what I'd call the "Weight Watchers" phenomenon, where you get obsessed over vibe-testing each little thing, or monitoring your enlightenment level every five minutes. I don't need to use my pendulum once to know that this is how games, spiritual paths and other exploratory activities become a trap: The focus goes from fun and curiosity, to fear --- and fear is one of the dense energy states you're trying to release! Worse, it gets awkward, since there you are attracting stares on the street by dangling a crystal in front of you all day.

  A better use of the technique in my opinion is to, say, test your energy state before and after meditation or prayer, so as to positively affirm your life changes and goals. Negative thoughts are a trap, so can you use the pendulum to "catch" yourself during a brooding, grumpy moment, thus catching your mind in the act of dragging your vibration down and reroute it, sort of like biofeedback? Then there's your surroundings: I tend to hold onto stuff, so maybe I could test the vibration of an object (and/or my own response to it), and if it has a particularly low vibratory number, let it go.

  There's also a reluctance, I've found, to finding your number. It's like when you step on a scale (What the heck? I'm not fat, but I've gained 14 lbs. since college?!), except in reverse, where the goal is a high number. I'm not perfect. I think icky thoughts. I hate on people who left me with loads of emotional stress and shame in the past, through which I'm still working. All that will bring me down. The trick is knowing I'm not stuck there, that it's a temporary state, and I can learn from it. It's not a matter of forcing, it seems, but more a matter of letting: Letting yourself play, letting yourself love, letting go.
  Not long ago, I tested my number, and got something like 560. Well, not bad! I'm not Buddha, but I'm not a total hating grinch or recovering Fundaholic, either. Most likely, I'm where a lot of other folks are.

  Besides the many variations of emotional states, pendulums can also be used to determine the health or energy level of various organs, and also of the body's main energy gates or chakras. Each chakra influences its own set of emotions, body parts, needs, and states of being, and a person displays different characteristics and/or feels certain things depending on which chakras are well balanced or poorly functioning.

  Again, I have a lot more work to do here. Ideally, this type of work is best made a daily or at least weekly practice in order to reach mastery. (If I could, see, I simply wouldn't work. I'd just study esoterica, brew potions, make art and write all the time. Until then, the next best thing is being able to study and blog while at work, which I'm in fact doing.)

  One of my most stunning revelations, and certainly feelings of validation, came when I was perusing my new book on Alchemy and Mysticism, from the Paxton Gate store. It described one idea harkening back to at least the 1600s, which imagines the whole Universe as a vibrating instrument full of different frequencies --- a metaphor known as the "Music of the Spheres". These many frequencies, and how they interact, are literally what cause us and our world to manifest as it does, in various forms.

  So too does the harmonic dance cause one form to continually change into the next. The set of frequencies that brought me into existence bodily, for example, may fade in resonance eventually, so that my body "vibrates apart", collapsing from harmony into dissonance, and can no longer sustain itself as a housing for my soul; yet not only will my body become something else, but I have no reason to doubt that my soul will take its vibration off to parts unknown and assume a new form, too. Either way, it merits far less fear than the hyper-religious view of heaven and hell and a great punisher --- and won't we all Get There quicker with less fear!
  "To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure." (Dumbledore)

  What amazed me the most was how this early model contained a very similar concept of two frequency dynamics, as compared to the modern charts I found: an upward-pulling, elevating, or enlightening set of frequencies, and a downward-pulling, grounding, or manifesting set of frequencies. Once initiated, the upper, lighter harmonics tend to keep expanding, while the lower, denser ones tend to keep contracting, in progressive upward or downward spirals.
  Another big surprise of the Scale of Consciousness was that fear is not at the bottom, not the densest frequency there is; it's actually midway down the contractive levels. No, that dubious honor goes to shame. (Also a surprise, love as we humans know it is not at the top!)

  Finally, I've learned that use of a pendulum only clarifies, to the number or percentage, what I already feel. When I run into cheesy marketing copy, a sales ad, a snarky meme, or a dark-humor cartoon, I can feel my vibration lower. I feel the density contract, like a gathering darkness of matter. Ads, and money devices, are based on dense frequencies --- geared at survival, folks. If you're both media-literate and weighing pennies in your pocket, like me, you'll taste the dense pinch of a sales ploy right away. (Why do you think Internet marketers actually call a time-sensitive sales site a squeeze page? ...!)
  One exception I can think of would be where you love what you're doing so much, you aren't thinking about money much at all . . . and as a result of this inate love and abundance, the money comes to you. I think that would be the best course of action of all.

  There is, of course, a neutral point in between. And here lies the great mystery and secret of life on earth in a material body: Balance. If you wish to survive physically, and use this lifetime for doing works on earth, a certain amount of dense frequencies like fear, courage, and even shame may be necessary, mostly to deal with proximity to other people in a social context. At the very least to keep a roof over your head, and buy food and toilet paper. But to let yourself contract into a dense lump makes it harder to release into lighter, more peaceful planes of being, once you've decided --- in a hundred lifetimes or so --- you've done enough in the way of earthly pursuits, and wish to move on (and up). The best plan I can think of is to slowly but steadily move up and up, over the course of life/lives, until I reach a point of, "Okay, I'm ready . . . next!"

  But, to come back to earth:
  This Music of the Spheres stuff is amazing, but how do we conect to this vast Universal picture on a daily basis? How can we use a pendulum for that?
  Life is all the little things we do on this plane, which add up to our current equation. It's the food and drink, the crafts and exercise, the meditation and Tarot and crystals.
  And potions.
  I can think of so many ways I might use a pendulum to create potions that keep my vibration in balance. Am I too spaced-out, unable to focus on work? A grounding Saturn brew, heavy on the practical, productive energy of Capricorn, might help. If I feel burdened with past grudges, worries or regrets, I'd aim more at a formula that lifts me up, into joy and peace. This could be done ingredient by ingredient, via questions like:

• Is my frequency -------- i.e. 400 at the moment? More or less? Is it 450? etc.
• What is the frequency of this potion? Of this recipe?
• Will imbibing this potion raise my energy? Lower it? How much?
• Is this substance what I need right now? Is it helpful to balance me right now?
• How much of this ingredient should I use in this brew to achieve the intent, or balance, that I seek? One teaspoon? More? Less?
• My heart chakra needs a boost. Will this potion help? How much should I take? More, less? Will this ingredient raise and balance the frequency? etc.
  . . . .and so on.

  It's quickly apparent that the possibilities here are pretty much endless. This craft could be honed, and honed some more. I think most importantly, if the attitude toward it remains one of openness and joy (see that high vibration!), then the use of a pendulum --- and Potistry, too --- comes closer than ever to a spiritual practice. A complete art of healing, for body, mind and soul.
  Or, if you want to go the other way, for hexing.
  I'm not sure you'd find this type of subtlety in Advanced Potion Making, either --- sorry, kids. This is more like Graduate Dynamic Formulating 302.

  I can't help but notice that the little world in which Professor Snape lives is fairly dense. All those petty emotions flying about, competition and fear, family pride and far worse. Yuck. I remember reading those first books long ago and thinking, Geez, what's wrong with these people? They're all so mean. And so damn impatient, and stupid, I wouldn't hold out for many to learn self-analysis with a pendulum! (Perhaps Luna could get it.)

  Out of all the spirits running around in that big castle, I have no doubt Snape's is the densest, most contracted of all. Severus is so weighed down by anger and guilt, and above all, shame, I'm surprised he's not pressed face-flat on the floor, like a snake. And there's another dense frequency, too: pride --- so much pride that he can't stand pity, and would totally slam me for saying this, but . . . poor Severus!
  No potion of enlightenment in the world would free his soul in one dose. Except, perhaps, one:
  "The only thing stronger than shame is grace."
  However, if you want to wager on survival? I'll take that bet. No one else in that world handled the crushing density of pure evil, serving to destroy it without being consumed by it, for as long as Severus did; and while it finally took his body, love kept his soul intact --- suffering, but intact. The greatest lesson of that entire series is the integrity of the soul, beyond material death. Don't trade it in, don't break it apart
. . . don't fuck it up.

A note here on pendulum charts:
  These grids and wheels abound on the Internet. I have little experience with them, so this is yet another thing to play with. I'm a bit dubious, since my "Yes" and "No" are consistently contrary to some charts; I'm more inclined to develop my own chart based on my body's own interactions with the pendulum, even for letters and percentages. But I'll try anything once, too, so we shall see.