Quartz Crystal & Chain Pendulum (Dowsing)

[Antranik1]

I have a quartz crystal that is hooked up to a 6" chain. It looks similar to this picture. (http://i21.ebayimg.com/02/i/000/aa/bf/6c10_1.JPG) Dowsing is supposed to be a way for people to identify the flow and status of a persons chakra's. These chakras are supposed to be energy centers, along the middle of your body. I had read this in a book called, Barbara Brennen's "Hands of Light" book.

So anyway, how this works is the "healer" is supposed to hold the crystal pendulum over a persons chakra as close to their body as possible and it will begin to pick up on the energy, and start to move in certain directions. There's an entire chapter on this and a (very) detailed chart saying what every movement means. ETA: In the illustration, the person holding the pendulum is labeled as the "healer" because the book teaches you how to become an energy-healer eventually, but this demonstration has nothing to do with "healing" but more so for diagnosing energy-centers in the body.

I've tried this many times over and over on a few relatives and friends. The crystal definitely starts to move after about 1-2 minutes. And then when it starts moving, sometimes it may be super strong, like it can be so strong that it will literally be making a circle as wide as possible as the chain allows, so it can look very impressive. Especially because I (or whoever else is trying it) do not want to move it at all because that would destroy the point of it. I, after all, want to see what's going to happen on its own. So it seems to work, and it can be a powerful demonstration.

So my friend and I wanted to test this out by fixing the end of the chain to something solid. We taped the near-end of the chain to the fireplace mantle. The illustration in the book shows that this works by the combination of the energy of the person holding the chain, the crystal, and the person underneath the chain. So, we left a half inch of the chain to be able to be held by my friend at the top and when he would, the crystal wouldn't move, the whole thing was nice and solid. I sat underneath the chain and the crystal was a couple inches above me, should be enough for it to pick up on my crown area. Well after a few minutes of just me sitting there, and my friend holding this chain to simply establish the connection, there was never a movement, even the slightest, not even a simple rocking back and forth. Everything was completely still. Absolutely Zilch, Nada, Zip.

So, dowsing with a crystal pendulum is really just the slight movements of the actual person holding it. I removed the chain from the mantle as we were done with that test. We saw the results. I held the pendulum in my hand freely and I tried to mimic the circular-motion by moving my hands so slowly that it would be almost difficult to tell, and a course of a minute, it can spin really strong and be impressive. When I stopped moving it with my hand (very difficult to tell), it will slow down only after many seconds, and the spinning would slow down at an extremely slow rate. So it looks like it's spinning on its own pretty powerfully but it's just really good at holding its momentum, lol.

This is all pretty sad because it would've been great if there was something to this! People use dowsing though, not just for diagnosing the status of chakras, but for asking any "yes or no" questions and setting the intention that clockwise is a yes and ccw is a no. You're supposed to ask the question and then free your mind and allow the crystal to swing in anyway it goes, and whatever way it goes, is your subconscious mind giving the answer. And many dowsers say that the crystal is simply just a tool for answers that you already know, and as you get confident in the answers you receive, you realize that you don't need a crystal at all, and the answers can come to you. In other words, the crystal is there to help solidify the answer since our thoughts are fleeting and we doubt ourselves. So unconsciously the crystal is moving in a direction that is perpetrated by your hand somehow. Why it's moving in the direction your hand (or you) decide it to move is beyond me and it could be completely random, or not, I really don't know on that stuff and don't care to test anymore, it would be much more time consuming.

Well anyway, just sharing my thoughts on the issue and the test that I carried out. This is coming from a person who has always enjoyed new-age/metaphysical stuff, so you can imagine how much I wanted this experiment to work, but it didn't and I urge anybody else here who doesn't believe me, to try the test yourself, it's super simple.

[Fnord]

Didn't "The Amazing Kreskin - World's Foremost Mentalist (http://www.amazingkreskin.com/)" use this as part of his act?

An Old Wive's Tale goes something like:

Thread a length of the woman's hair through her wedding ring, and suspend it by hand over the woman's lower abdomen. If the wedding ring swings in a strong circular motion, the baby is female. If it swings like a pendulum, the baby is male.

And I suppose that if it just hangs there, motionless, it must be gas?

[this charming man]

Bravo to you for thinking about this and performing a test.

This is known as the ideomotor effect; it is well documented. This is how "dowsing", ouija boards, and more function.


http://skepdic.com/ideomotor.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_effect

[Antranik1]

Thanks charming man. Now that you mentioned it.. it is the ideomotor effect! :)

Here's something else about this whole dowsing thing that I forgot to mention. Well, this has nothing to do with dowsing per se, but it has to do with the effect the crystal has on our body. I demonstrated this on my friend a few days ago, who was completely new to this, and is the one who carried out the test with me above as well. When I was over his crown area, he felt great discomfort. He actually had this strange ringing or tone in his ears after I tried it on him for the rest of the evening. A long time ago my brother had tried this on me and when the crystal was put over my forehead, after a few seconds it felt like the crystal was literally piercing through my head and there was this great vibration, like my head was going to explode. That affect has actually occurred twice for me. It was extremely uncomfortable and I couldn't handle it. Why is it that this feeling occurs with the quartz crystal? What causes this discomfort to occur? It is not something that I can easily dismiss and am mentioning it to understand the phenomena more because, while I have not felt it every time, the two times I have felt it, it was very powerful and I couldn't stand it whatsoever.

[Denver]

Knowing someone is holding a potentially sharp and pointy object near your head could be stressful in itself, causing some of these symptoms.

To really test, maybe get a few little bags and have friend1 put the crystal in one, and similarly shaped and weighted rocks in a couple others, and label the bags. Get another friend, who doesn't know what is in any of the bags, to hold each over your head. And write down how you feel. Then check the bags?

[Apology]

You know those quartz pendulums make really pretty necklaces and some of them are very nice mineral samples, suitable for a collection :)

I have an interest in crystals that comes from being an amateur rock collector rather than a crystal believer. I don't think the crystals have any intrinsic powers. They're nice, they're pretty, they're fun to seek out in nature and to have, but that's about it.

I stumbled across a crystal believer's book and thumbed through it one day. I was amused to see that several minerals that I'd handled in large, raw samples, were considered "perhaps too strong" and "might effect change more quickly than I'd like". I'd handled hundreds of pounds of these minerals at a time, kept samples that weighed in at several pounds in my work and living spaces for years on end, and this book warned against keeping more than a few ounces of the same minerals around, lest I suffer ill effects. Nothing bad ever happened to me.

That leaves me wondering if the crystals seemed to have an "effect" on your body during your sessions with your friend because you expected there to be an effect? Maybe you hold your breath while you're being "read" and don't realize it? There could be many other things that might cause such an effect as well.

[Garrette]

I echo charming man's kudos to you. Most people won't bother to test, and most who do won't test in a way that controls for the variables.

Good job.

[Antranik1]

We could test if this discomfort or pain occurs by simply keeping our eyes closed or being blindfolded as the crystal hovers over us. Like I've said before though, this has occurred to me only twice. And as far as expecting there to be an effect. I never mentioned to my friend that there was going to be any discomfort, because frankly, that's not what we were looking for, we wanted to see the spin action. The discomfort was just like something on the side that occurred. That's how it occurred for me the first time as well. And I've tried to look online as to why it may cause pain and there's no answer.

The next time my friend and I meet, maybe we'll try to test out whether the pain is happening because we are aware of its proximity versus the pain is happening because the crystal is over us without our knowing whether it really is or not. And there's also the possibility of there not being any pain at all too obviously.

[this charming man]

Thanks charming man. Now that you mentioned it.. it is the ideomotor effect! :)

Here's something else about this whole dowsing thing that I forgot to mention. Well, this has nothing to do with dowsing per se, but it has to do with the effect the crystal has on our body. I demonstrated this on my friend a few days ago, who was completely new to this, and is the one who carried out the test with me above as well. When I was over his crown area, he felt great discomfort. He actually had this strange ringing or tone in his ears after I tried it on him for the rest of the evening. A long time ago my brother had tried this on me and when the crystal was put over my forehead, after a few seconds it felt like the crystal was literally piercing through my head and there was this great vibration, like my head was going to explode. That affect has actually occurred twice for me. It was extremely uncomfortable and I couldn't handle it. Why is it that this feeling occurs with the quartz crystal? What causes this discomfort to occur? It is not something that I can easily dismiss and am mentioning it to understand the phenomena more because, while I have not felt it every time, the two times I have felt it, it was very powerful and I couldn't stand it whatsoever.

Read about the placebo effect.

http://skepdic.com/placebo.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_(origins_of_technical_term)

[Lanzy]

Reference the discomfort of the crystal near certain body parts, I would suspect hypnosis would also work very well as suggestibility here seems quite high. You should continue with your testing efforts.

[sthomson]

I'll echo everyone else's kudos to you for thinking of a rational way to test claims about crystals!

I demonstrated this on my friend a few days ago, who was completely new to this, and is the one who carried out the test with me above as well. When I was over his crown area, he felt great discomfort. He actually had this strange ringing or tone in his ears after I tried it on him for the rest of the evening.

Was he sitting very quiet and still while you were standing over him? I'm not surprised that as he was sitting quietly, he began to focus more on the noises our own bodies make! (like the blood in our ears). A blind test like you suggested would be a good way to show this.

A long time ago my brother had tried this on me and when the crystal was put over my forehead, after a few seconds it felt like the crystal was literally piercing through my head and there was this great vibration, like my head was going to explode.

Again, this just may be the effects of concentration, and maybe the fact that you thought something would happen. Since you say it has only happened twice, this would be harder to test.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

You know those quartz pendulums make really pretty necklaces and some of them are very nice mineral samples, suitable for a collection :)

I have an interest in crystals that comes from being an amateur rock collector rather than a crystal believer. I don't think the crystals have any intrinsic powers. They're nice, they're pretty, they're fun to seek out in nature and to have, but that's about it.

I stumbled across a crystal believer's book and thumbed through it one day. I was amused to see that several minerals that I'd handled in large, raw samples, were considered "perhaps too strong" and "might effect change more quickly than I'd like". I'd handled hundreds of pounds of these minerals at a time, kept samples that weighed in at several pounds in my work and living spaces for years on end, and this book warned against keeping more than a few ounces of the same minerals around, lest I suffer ill effects. Nothing bad ever happened to me.

<< SNIP >>



No effect on you? They seem to have turned you into ebil skeptyk. :D

[Apathia]

There's this bit of colorful fiction out of Fu Man-Chu of the "Chinese Water Torture." It's a kind of precision strike waterboarding. The victim is tied down under repeated drops of water striking his forehead between the eyes. After some time this gentle sensation of droplets becomes to the victim's sensation an intolerable series of head splitting blows. In other stories it induces a trance state in which the prisoner will talk.

Here's the grain of reality behind both the story fodder and Atranik1's experience. Select a thumb (one of yours) and put your attention on it. Feel the sensations in your thumb and with them keep up the attention.
I won't tell you what to expect, but you will get the picture that there are interesting sensations to be had whereever on your body you maintain attention over a period of time.

Thanks to the power of suggestion, self-consciousness, and the social aspect of experiencing, these sensations can be even more interesting if you are taking notice of a place on your body another person's attention is upon.

Add to that that there are sspots of muscular tone and nural sensitivity here and there on the body. In Massage Therapy these are called "trigger points," Also the meditation traditions of cultures worldwide identify the forehead between the eyes as a place to focus for trance induction. It's the origin of all that "third eye" stuff.

So I'm not surprised that, especially with suggestion, Antanik1 had an exciting experience. It wasn't about the crystal itself, though. Most anything that draws and holds your attention will do.

The orther piece of this is that bloodflow and nural sensitivity increase at any point on the body to which you hold attention. A relaxed attention often releases muscile tension there and this might have an associating shudder or a feeling of warmth.

Well, I'm off now to Washington to teach the CIA my new interrogation technique, "Quantum Touch Crystal Torture!" :lol2:

The Book of Sacred Stones by Barbara Walker is a nice little tome of facts and superstitions regarding minerals. On the topic of Crystal Healing, she's a skeptic and comes down very hard on silly claims of crystal power.

[sthomson]

I won't tell you what to expect, but you will get the picture that there are interesting sensations to be had whereever on your body you maintain attention over a period of time.

Yep. As a hypochondriac, I can say that the harder I think about whether or not I have an upset stomach, the more upset my stomach feels.

[Apathia]

Yep. As a hypochondriac, I can say that the harder I think about whether or not I have an upset stomach, the more upset my stomach feels.

LOL!
My sister is an extreme hypochondriac who can create symptoms. There's not a doctor in Jacksonville, Florida now that doesn't know her, and she gets so angry when the emergency rooms tell her to go home.

[Explorer]

Bravo to you for thinking about this and performing a test.

This is known as the ideomotor effect; it is well documented. This is how "dowsing", ouija boards, and more function.

I am certain that the ouija board indicator moves as a result of the muscular movements of the participants arms, hands, fingers etc. What is most intriguing though about ouija, is how the combined movements of the participants leads to the effect.

Having responded to threads about ouija in the past, I maintain that there has to be a dominant "covert" leader when conducting ouija experiments, hoaxing and messing about aside.

If there was not a dominant leader involved, the results would be gobbledegook. The same would happen too if all the participants were blindfolded.

Having tried several ouija experiments for myself, and if you like, taking a leader role by, at the very least choosing the subject matter, in this case local history, and writing down the responses coming across, it is nevertheless still a fascinating example of the ideomotor effect.

I was not conscious at all of trying to influence the glass. The responses came across like an historical novel. Incorrect assumptions regarding names of persons being spelled out before completion, were corrected immediately, by a "NO" response, and the spelling was started again from the beginning until it was correct. One example was this: M-I-C-H..... Michael? "NO" N-I-C-H-O-L-A-S. Now why should this happen? Given that the result is coming from my, or someone else's brain, why and how does this happen? Why are our subconscious workings of the brain so sophisticated that apparent errors are corrected in this way, why did it matter so much? How do complex stories worthy of the best plot lines in historical novels download through the simple ouija, as opposed to a novelist who has to work hard at it at a conscious level for days on end?

I think it is a shame that the "effect", whether it be from ouija or dowsing, is termed the "idiomotor" effect, and then people move on. This must be good fertile ground for research in the workings of the brain for conditions like multiple personalities and schizophrenia etc.

[arthwollipot]

I'd be careful about that. It sounds a little too close to facilitated communication for my liking.

[Silly Green Monkey]

My chakras were dowsed once, and I felt rather itchy and uncomfortable where she held the pendulum. I described the sensations to a woo-ish friend later, who insisted it was proof. I pointed out that as my eyes were closed, I didn't actually know if the pendulum was held near me or not. That wasn't the answer she was looking for.

[Explorer]

I'd be careful about that. It sounds a little too close to facilitated communication for my liking.

Not all! It was probably me doing it for me, and not for any of the other participants, and that, I admit is the most likely explanation. However, that doesn't take away the fascination. It seems that there maybe a part of the brain that can act independently, detached from conscious thought, be creative and original, and that can express itself in a subliminal way through the media of ouija. Two intriguing possibilities.

This could also explain the phenomena of regression under hypnosis. The past lives that are related, could merely be a product of this apparently autonomous part of the brain. Each character and personality, created against a background of scenarios that seem so plausible to many, but are nevertheless, totally fictional.

[Apathia]

My chakras were dowsed once, and I felt rather itchy and uncomfortable where she held the pendulum. I described the sensations to a woo-ish friend later, who insisted it was proof. I pointed out that as my eyes were closed, I didn't actually know if the pendulum was held near me or not. That wasn't the answer she was looking for.

Loaded question # 1:
Did you feel the energy?
People say "OMG, I did!" And that interpretation of the sensations sticks.

Loaded question # 2:
Aren't crystals powerful?
The usual answer: "Yes, that was amazing!"
The misdirection: that the "energy" came from the crystal.

[Apathia]

I'd be careful about that. It sounds a little too close to facilitated communication for my liking.

It's the same deal as facilitated communication. Output from a semi-unconscious process is ascribed to someone else. In the case of Facilitated Communication the content is claimed to be coming from the autistic child. when it's the adult's process with the device. In ouija it's all what people are contributing on the board in a facsinating collaboration rather than a spirit entity. In automatic writing the individual assumes some entity has taken over her hand, when actually her own unconscious is using driving the motions.

The Ideomotor effect is not a mere random, jerky motion. It can drive the output of a dance or Jazz piano improvisation. Or even have an individual spewing out meaningful sentances that seem to be "channeled."

Back to Pendulum Dowsing:
For the trained user, the swing of the bob isn't randum but indicates their own intuitive guess. A personality who is more emoto-intuitive than analytical will make a big deal of it, forgetting the times when intuition doesn't match reality.

[Explorer]

"In ouija it's all what people are contributing on the board in a facsinating collaboration rather than a spirit entity. "

No spirits agreed, but collaboration absolute nonsense. It could never be done that way. It would all be gobblegook, with each individual trying to assert their own ideomotor effect.


Decision by committee is always doomed to failure!

[Cactus Wren]

Whatever you think of Barbara G. Walker’s research and scholarship in other areas, her Book of Sacred Stones is the best work ever written on crystal mysticism:

At a recent mineral show, one dealer was overheard saying to another, “The healy-feelies are the greatest thing that ever happened to my business. They bought all my quartz for thirty times what I paid for it.” Another dealer told what he considered a funny story about mystics who came to his table with crystal pendulums and bought whatever made their pendulums swing. “One of the loonies said my crystals were the most active she ever saw. The real magic was that my table was standing in a breeze from the open door.”

Most of the properties of minerals are either unknown to, or completely misunderstood by, crystal mystics ... For example, it is postulated that crystals interact in bizarre ways with both human beings and sounds:In the act of a human energy system interacting with a quartz crystal especially, the crystal’s energies establish a resonant rapport with the biocrystalline matrices and stimulate not only an energetic amplification in the biocrystals but also greater states of vibrational coherency and actual changes in the biocrystalline lattice structures on the auric and microscopic levels (that is, recrystallization of bond angles, lattice-code reorientations, and the like)....

At specific indexed sonic frequency thresholds, intensely focused sonic input induces a state of hypercoherency within the crystal matrix. Normal molecular and lattice coherency orientations undergo a quantum matrix transposition to a higher level of energetic order in which the magneto-gravitic profile induce a major dimensional threshold level breakthrough.
Certainly no one could accuse this author of hypercoherency – if there were such a thing. As for “biocrystalline matrices” and “biocrystalline lattice structures,” the meaning of these terms will remain forever mysterious, especially to biologists. This kind of talk is depressingly typical of New Age crystal mystics, who use the language of science as young preliterate cildren use alphabet soup. They seldom understand that scientific words to have specific meanings, which cancel each other out when the words are haphazardly strung together and produce gibberish. Yet people will read this kind of apparent gibberish and imagine that they have been somehow enlightened, although they may not have comprehended a word of it.

Elsewhere in the book she describes the writings of crystal mystics as “some of the most fascinating examples of word salad ever seen in print.”

[arthwollipot]

I can always control the direction a pendulum swings, even if someone is holding my hand to keep it steady. I can't do this if the pendulum is secured to something else.