© David Brandon 2010

I learned a few major lessons today dowsing. Maybe others can benefit from these lessons too. [1]

A couple weeks ago I was dowsing for Mastadon Bones in a field with very tall weeds…taller than me…when my brass pendulum got caught on some weeds and flew off in a backward diagonal angle to my right side. Since that time I've gone back looking for the pendulum bob three times and cleared the weeds in a circular area roughly twelve feet in radius.

The loss of my brass bob happened to coincide with the arrival of my new hazel pendulum. So each time I was clearing back some more weeds I was thinking I should be testing my dowsing abilities by using a hazel pendulum to find a brass one. I figured it should be relatively straight forward, though I knew I would get devoured by mosquitoes. And I did…despite taking every precaution to avoid it.

I looked up brass on the internet and found that copper was a major component. On Lethbridge’s rates table the rate for copper is 32-inches. So I thought it would be easy. It wasn't. I was getting a hit on one azimuth that kept pulling me further and further away from where I thought I lost it. It was a very frustrating experience. However I’m not someone who gives up without a fight. Today I went for the fourth time with my mind made up. I was going to find it without a metal detector…even if I had to stay out there all night long.

I started with the rate at 32-inches with similar results as before. I then thought maybe the pendulum bob was made out of lead so I tried 22-inches. I figured maybe I was getting problems because lead is an interrupter. [2] I had no success with this pendulum length. I then realized that my pendulum couldn't have been an interrupter because it worked for me with rates. I then felt totally lost.

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I thought perhaps I could go back to the Theosophical Society Bookstore where I bought the brass pendulum and test the rate of a similar one.

Then I had one last idea. I remembered that Lethbridge was adamant that any abstract thought had a rate too...like sound or love or hate.

I've experimented with this in the past with mixed results so I try to avoid it and stick to physical objects as much as possible. In this case, I was looking for a physical object but I didn't know the rate of the pendulum to find the object. So, I started at 40-inches and kept making the string shorter until it started to rotate at 30-inches. The whole time I was simply imagining the pendulum bob that I was looking for in my mind and wondering what its rate was.

When I got to 30-inches I was still dubious if I was at the right length but I didn't go any further and try other lengths. I simply started pointing my left forefinger in an arc slowly to see if I got any hits at this length. I did but not where I expected...it was only three feet from where I always lay my bag of tools when I looked in the past.

I wondered if I was somehow picking up something in my backpack at the 30-inch rate. So I moved all of the objects and I still got a positive hit. I had to cut some more weeds to try and see. I cut into the uncleared area about another two feet. I was scouring the ground all the time but still didn't see anything. A bright metal object should shine very bright so I couldn't imagine what the problem was. I started to wonder if I had any dowsing ability at all.

So with one last effort I took my foot and scraped along the top of the ground and piled up all the dirt and vegetation in a small pile. I started sifting through it with my hand and found my object instantly at the top of the pile. Needless to say I was very relieved and content. I had finally succeeded in finding my first object by dowsing.

In the process I had learned that if I want to find something and don't know the rate all I have to do is think of it and start at 40-inches and shorten the thread until it starts to rotate. Then I can use that rate to point my left forefinger until the pendulum starts to rotate again. The object should be in that direction. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities in looking for lost objects with a pendulum…for me at least.

One other thing that I first learned a couple weeks ago, but had reconfirmed today, is that when I'm dowsing and thoughts pop up in my head, they are not accidents because I'm more in tune when I'm dowsing…in a psychic zone of some sort. Here is an example of what I mean.

A couple weeks ago I had used Google Earth and a pendulum to try and determine spots to look for Mastadon Bones...my first attempt at map dowsing. I then went to the exact location on earth that I marked on the map and started marking out a boundary that I had created on Google Earth. As I was walking, I was moving the knee-high weeds to the side and I had this thought pop up in my head that I might find something on the ground.

I started feeling this sense of excitement that I was getting closer and I imagined finding Mastadon Bones just lying on the ground. I looked between my legs as I took a step and saw a dark object. My heart raced and I wondered if it really could be. I reached down between my legs, pushed the weeds to the side and found my hand was just six inches away from the head of a coiled snake that looked just like a rattle snake.

My heart just about jumped out of my chest at the thought that maybe I was accidentally tracking snakes that might have the same rate as Mastadon Bones. This possibility had never even occurred to me before. Luckily the snake looked more scared of me than I did of it...and besides I heard no rattle. I’ve come across many rattlesnakes prospecting out west in Utah and later I found out it was a fox snake…commonly mistaken for a timber rattlesnake and killed.

I then walked back through the weeds, amazed that I never thought of the possibility of accidentally tracking dangerous living things while trying to track extinct animal bones! I was really on the look-out for snakes by now and proceeded very carefully until I got to some cut grass and could start to breathe more easily once again.

I thought I was home free. But I then had another thought go through my head. I had better look closer. And just then I saw another little snake headed right for me on a crash course head on. I stopped the same instant the snake did. We stared at each other. He hissed at me. I pointed at him and to my amazement (with hindsight) had the presence of mind to get a pendulum rate for snake of 12-inches. Afterwards I figured it was a grass snake which is not poisonous. Maybe the rate for grass is 12-inches…and Lethbridge has shown in his beetle experiments that we are what we eat.

Anyway, this was the lesson I learned a couple weeks ago. Lethbridge in his writings mentioned some premonitions or visions that came in from the future as well as the past. He mentioned once that he won some money on the Grand National this way. Anyway today I experienced this for the first time. The last couple times I walked through this field I had come across this manhole cover and always got this distinct impression to look out for a snake. It seemed a very odd thought but I made a mental note of it...and never saw anything.

Today when I passed the spot I had the same thought but walked through quickly without even looking for the snake thinking that I must have been wrong as I had passed the spot at least ten times and never seen a snake. But on the way back after finding my pendulum bob, I had the distinct thought again cross my mind - ‘snake’.

I could just make out the manhole cover and readied my hand-axe just in case my premonition was correct. Three seconds after doing this I saw the large black tail of a snake with a white stripe on its back slithering quickly on the path away from me as fast as it could move.

I was amazed at how in tune I was to a living object that I consciously did not hear or see any sign of. I also thought back at the premonitions I felt every time I crossed that same spot about a snake and never saw any sign of one...until today.

Lethbridge wrote about several examples like this that he experienced in his own life. We probably all do.

Endnotes

[1] Written for The Lethbridge Symposium.
[2] See Interrupters & Reversers by Tom Lethbridge.