Dowsing

[poliphilo]

Ailz has a witchy party trick where she dowses the number and sex of a person's children (already born or to come) by swinging a pendulum over their open palm. It works with both men and women- and I've never known her get it wrong. Here she is performing it with our niece, Jenny.

Comments

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

So if she doesn't know how many and what sex children one has that are already born she can work it out?

I've only ever heard of guessing the sex of the unborn children.

Fun!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes.

The pendulum moves one way for a girl and another way for a boy.

She's been doing this since she was a teen.

[shullie.livejournal.com]

My mum use to do this for the local pregnant ladies when I was a girl.. way back in the mid 70's..lol. They would come round to the shop ( we kept the local newsagents), and my mum would take them into the back room, and get the pendulum out... though I am sure she 'knew' just by looking at them...

When my oldest daughter was pregnant ( 8 years ago) I did it for her, though we all just 'knew' she was having a girl, the same with my second daughter - we 'knew' she was having a boy, so much so she only had 1 emergency girl's name - just in case.. And neither of them asked to know what it was when they had their scans...

(‘We’ being my sisters and I )

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ailz started doing this when she was a teen- so way back in the seventies. I don't know if anyone taught her or what..

[mamarose.livejournal.com]

I love chatting with unborn babies this way :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah, you can do it too....:)

[mamarose.livejournal.com]

I picked up dowsing when I was on the road doing tarot readings. I am best with yes/no questions, but love it. I call this one of my parlor tricks, as once the pendulum starts swinging, it always draws a crowd.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I met a guy once who claimed to be able to detect underground anomalies- like wells or mineshafts- using maps.

[mamarose.livejournal.com]

Using maps? I wonder how accurate he was. I wonder how that works. So interesting.

My great grandfather could use a twig to dowse for water, which I still find fascinating. Though he did so by walking around, not over a map ;)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He didn't do it commercially- and wasn't trying to sell himself; he was in fact rather reticent about his ability. Very strange. I never put him to the test- more's the pity.

[methodius.livejournal.com]

I used to do something similar when a teen. A friend had a pendulum and a pice of string that came in a DIY dowsing kit that he'd bought in a novelty shop or something. I tried it out by covering photos and seeing what it said about the sex of people in the photos. It was supposed to swing backwards and forwards for one sex, and in circles for the other (I forget which).

It was remarkably accurate. A bit like spinning a coin and having it come up heads each time. I can't recall that it ever got one wrong.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

These things work in real life- but when they're tested under laboratory conditions they almost always fail. It's a weird old world.