The Pendulum Dichotomy
by Becca Kannapell
I am pretty well acquainted with the dark and I am no tourist to the light. In fact, I am rather drawn to both. Sometimes to the extreme. It is harder for me to hang out somewhere in the “middle” where my feelings reside in a more balanced state of being. Which leads us here: I think my depression really began as an adolescent, as a lot of depressions do. I seem to enjoy going really high, and then diving down really low. I think I was addicted to being depressed, actually, as it felt like the best way to process some of my truer, deeper emotions. Although I am a Virgo-rising middle child, and when little always felt safest when everything was stable at home with everyone happy and fitting into their perfect, neat, organized little boxes with bows on top, I am also a Gemini Sun and—let’s face it—tend to swing between extremes.
How fitting that that which sustains me financially at this phase of life is: THE PENDULUM.
By mere happenstance, accident, or act of fate, my jewelry company (founded by my mother), made a pendulum necklace that gained traction quickly, becoming our jewelry business best seller. At that time, neither she nor I even knew what a pendulum WAS exactly. I learned a little bit about how they are used for energy healing maybe a week before she made the necklace. She just so happened to have a crystal shaped as a pendulum, and a brass fist for making clasps. She combined the two and made them into a necklace. After she made it, I told her what a pendulum was and how they could help us tap into our higher-knowing to answer questions on a more intuitive level.
She wasn’t all that interested. But the necklace was popular and everyone wanted one!
The pendulum can be a beautifully carved crystal or a regular, “found” rock tied to a string. Due to the weight of its structure, the effects of gravity and Earth’s energetic pulls, it swings from one direction to its opposite extreme before finding its center place of stillness once again. Pendulums are used in dowsing, aka divining, water witching, or rhabdomancy. Dowsing is an ancient practice to detect underground water or minerals within the Earth. Using the pendulum for dowsing is known to be an incredibly efficient manner for locating the much sought after buried resource or treasure.
In the last 500 years or so, the pendulum has become widely-used as a tool to help us tune in to the knowledge and wisdom that resides beyond our five senses. It can assist us in reaching beyond our rational, thinking, conscious mind in order to uncover the truths that lie in our subconscious mind—the terrain that houses the encoded behaviors, feelings and ideas of self-worth that are formed from ages 0-14, respectively. The subconscious serves as the fertile soil that our conscious mind feeds (or starves) in order for us to evolve back into who we were always meant to be.
I truly feel as if the pendulum was brought into my life by the angels to serve as a straight-talk reminder of universal ebb and flow. On a really awful day, my conscious mind forces itself into believing that things will always suck. Conversely, on a really amazing day, it is hard to believe anything could ever go wrong again and my ego tends to get a bit inflated. But when I can remember to look to my left or to the right, there is bound to be a pendulum lying somewhere within a 5-inch radius of me and it serves by its very presence to remind me that tomorrow will most likely be different than today. This is the best way for me to enjoy the present moment without attaching myself to it.
As Michael A. Singer says in his book The Untethered Soul,
“From science we know that if you pull a pendulum thirty degrees to the right, it will swing back until it is thirty degrees to the left. All the laws are the same, inner laws and outer laws. The same principles drive everything in this world… The Tao (aka, the road, the way, the path) is in the middle. It’s the place where there is no energy pushing in either direction. Everything has it’s yin and it’s yang, it’s doing and not-doing, it’s contraction and expansion. If you want to understand the Tao you must take a closer look at what lies between the two extremes. This is because neither extreme can last.”
He also talks about how much energy can be wasted when we live at either end of the spectrum. When we dwell in extremes versus in balance, we waste a lot of our bodies’ energy supply.
I get a lot out of reading and processing Singer’s words about balance. I also know that life will push us from one extreme to the other if we are busy, active, engaging, working…people. For me, the pendulum serves as an incredible reminder. Yes, I can find my balance point and sit in stillness and reap a million benefits from the process. And also, yes—I can live my life knowing that my emotions and the things around me will fluctuate in small or big ways. And that is ok, too.
The pendulum will keep on doing its thing, which is to swing!
(P.S. A widely accepted “YES” from your pendulum will appear as a clockwise ellipse or circle. Mirroring the YES, your pendulum most often will respond “NO” to a question when it forms a counter-clockwise circle. The best way to get your pendulum synchronized to your specific energetics is to give it some practice runs with questions you already know the answers to. Simple questions in a YES / NO format. When the pendulum swings somewhere in the middle it might mean MAYBE, it might be NEUTRAL, or maybe just ask again! As with any energetic tool, take time getting to know your pendulum and give it time to get to know you. Sage it to cleanse it before your first use and set intention to the stone, so that it knows what you would like to utilize it for. And most of all…enjoy the journey!)
ABOUT THE AUTHORESS
Becca Kannapell
Becca is a Gemini Sun, brown-eyed, introvert turned extrovert. Nothing lights her up more than traveling the world in search of treasures and gems. Her dual Twin nature is manifested in how she views the world as a playground of infinite possibilities, while being driven to research the meanings, dealings and healings of stones and all things mystical. She loves art, photography, the human body, alchemy, daydreaming and CRYSTALS!
As a spiritual being having a very human experience, Becca LIVES to adorn and celebrate "form" just as she feels overjoyed by the spark of life when dancing, doing Qoya or yoga. POUND Jewelry is her raison d'etre currently.
At the deepest, passion-driven center of her being, Becca believes that—throughout history, presently, and forever more—crystals and stones carry codes that help us heal. And they matter.