Drop Palo Santo Pendulum

A weight on a chain. You hold it still, and then you watch it start to move. What you are watching is your own body, magnified by the length of the chain.

The Drop is short and heavy. It is one of our two smallest. The mass is concentrated low and close.

Properly this is the Mermet, after Abbé Mermet, the Swiss priest who documented dowsing in the early twentieth century. The teardrop he used became the standard form, which is why almost every pendulum you have ever seen is a version of it.

The wood and the carving · Carved from a single piece of palo santo, aged more than thirty years. Computer-guided carving is what makes the rings exact and the balance repeatable. No two pieces of wood are identical, but every Drop is the same Drop.

On using it · A pendulum is a tool, and the power is in the one handling it.