Everyone has the innate ability to learn to dowse, an ability as old as humankind, even though few people understand the potential of the dowsing process and fewer still recognize its implications and responsibilities. Most people who have heard of dowsing associate it primarily with the findings of water with a forked stick. They think of a dowser as someone with special psychic ability. In truth, everyone has dowsing potential, it is just usually unrecognized and undeveloped, particularly as a tool to access intuition.

Here are the first three steps to learn to be on your way to becoming a dowser:

The Pendulum
Most dowsers use a pendulum as their tool. It is a suspended, balanced, weight of any material and of any size, that will swing freely and respond easily to your directions. You may make your own pendulum, using a fishing weight attached to the end of a string, or wooden ball hung from a fine chain, or any variation you choose, or you may prefer to purchase one. There’s nothing magical about the pendulum; it’s simply another tool.

The First Step
Once you have your pendulum, the first step is to adapt it to your own rhythms–called tuning the pendulum. You hold the string or chain close to the weight with the thumb and first finger of your dominant hand. Move your hand to start the weight swinging back and forth. As you do this, let the string or chain out slowly to the point where the pendulum weight swings in a circle on its own. This spot on the string or chain will be a good point at which to hold that particular pendulum; it is a point at which we say the pendulum is “tuned.”

The Second Step
Next, you again swing the pendulum back and forth and then ask it to indicate your ”yes” response. Usually this is a clockwise swing in a full circle. If you get no response, gently ”train” the pendulum by swinging the weight clockwise and saying, “This is yes.” Repeat this from time to time until the response is learned. In like manner, discover what is the response for “no.” For most dowsers this is a counter clockwise swing.

Particularly if you are a beginner, it is a good idea to check your yes and no responses before you dowse answers to any questions. Sometimes your body wants to reverse the responses.

The Third Step: Asking Permission Questions
Before we do any dowsing, using any tool, we first ask the permission questions. If we have been asked to dowse by someone else, then thee questions are especially important, and, if we are being asked to “do” anything based on what we dowse, permission is absolutely critical. Also, if we are asked to dowse in regard to a person, that person (or someone closely related to that person) must make the initial request. (For the land, the custodian must give permission.) These permissions are given prior to, but not superseding, the three dowsed permission questions: May I? Can I? Should I?

If we have dowsed accurately and have received “yes” to all the permission questions, then we may proceed to dowse further, framing each question so that yes and no responses will be meaningful.