Pendulum Dowsing Charts: What They Are and How to Use Them

What a dowsing chart is

A dowsing chart is a sheet with options laid out around a central point, and you hold the pendulum over that point to choose among more than two answers. The French call them planches or cadrans; on Paths we call them boards.

Without a chart, a pendulum answers with only a few movements: back and forth, side to side, a circle. With a chart, the direction of the swing points to a specific option: a day of the week, an emotion, a color, a number. It's a way to move beyond yes or no to open questions like "What do I need today?"

Charts are closely tied to twentieth-century French radiesthesia, which made the pendulum its main instrument, and whole books of charts are still published today, with dozens or hundreds of fans for every kind of question.

Why most charts are fan-shaped

The fan shape, a half circle divided into wedges, is the most common chart layout because it suits the way a hand-held pendulum swings. You sit facing the chart, hold the pendulum over the center point at the base, and the swing opens forward toward one of the wedges.

A fan keeps every option in front of you, at about the same distance and easy to read. It also leaves the space behind clear, where your arm would be. That's why fans work well with three to twelve options; with more, the wedges get so narrow it's hard to tell which one the pendulum is pointing to.

For many options, dowsers use a wheel, a full circle with the pendulum in the middle. It's typical for zodiac signs, months or letters, where the options have a natural circular order.

The most common kinds of charts

The most common dowsing charts fall into a few families, depending on the kind of question they answer.

• Answers: yes, no, maybe, not now; or five graded answers from "clearly yes" to "clearly no."
• Scales: percentages from 0 to 100 or scores from 1 to 10, for questions of degree, like "How much energy do I have for this?"
• Time: days of the week, months, seasons, times of day, moon phases.
• Traditions: zodiac signs, planets, elements, I Ching trigrams, runes, tarot major arcana.
• Body and well-being: chakras, emotions, needs, parts of the body to pay attention to.
• Everyday life: areas of life, colors, numbers, letters, directions.

How to use a chart with your pendulum

To use a chart, rest your elbow on the table, hold the tip of the pendulum over the center of the base and let it settle. Then ask your question, out loud or silently, and wait for the swing to take a clear direction.

Many people start from a neutral movement, such as a gentle swing toward the middle of the fan, and watch which way it drifts. If the pendulum wavers between two wedges, that can be a sign the question needs sharpening.

Read the answer as an invitation to look at something, not as a verdict. If the emotions chart lands on "sadness," the useful question is what would happen if you gave that some room today.

Writing and designing a good chart

A good dowsing chart has wedges of equal size, options that don't overlap and, where it helps, a space for "unclear" or "ask something else." If two options mean nearly the same thing, the chart muddies more than it clarifies.

It also helps if the options are all the same kind of thing: all emotions, or all actions, or all dates. Putting "yes," "Tuesday" and "red" on the same fan makes the answer impossible to read.

On Paths you can build your own boards in My pendulums, with 2 to 36 options, colors and icons, and share them by link or QR code: the board travels inside the link itself.

Maps, rulers and other variations

Besides fans and wheels, dowsers use rulers, lists and maps. With a ruler, the pendulum is moved along a scale to see where its swing changes; with a list, you run a finger down the options one by one until the pendulum responds.

Map dowsing, which the tradition calls dowsing at a distance, became famous through Abbé Alexis Mermet, who in the 1930s claimed to find water and objects without being on site. Controlled tests don't support the idea that it works, and Paths offers no boards for finding people or anything that depends on outside information. Its directions board is a playful prompt for when something is misplaced: it helps you slow down and retrace your steps, it doesn't locate anything.

The boards on Paths

The boards on Paths follow the tradition of dowsing charts, adapted to a screen. There are four layouts: the axis, for two or three answers like yes, no and maybe; the fan, for three to twelve options; the wheel, for seven to thirty-six; and the scale, for ordered values such as percentages.

Each option comes with a short text that invites you to reflect on what it means that the pendulum stopped there. And because you pick the engine, you decide whether the answer comes from your device's randomness, from your question, from a physics simulation, or from your own hand.

That way a board stops being just a sheet with wedges and becomes a small conversation: you ask, the pendulum points, and the text hands you back a question.