The mental processes which directly control our movements are not connected to the same processes which figure out what caused what, he claimed. Wegner argued that our normal sense of owning an action is an illusion, or – if you will – a construction. You can read what this means for the nature of our minds in The Illusion of Conscious Will by psychologist Daniel Wegner, who sadly died last month. Sure enough, in the right circumstances, you can get people to believe they have caused things that actually come from a completely independent source (something which shouldn't surprise anyone who has reflected on the madness of people who claim that it only started raining because they forget an umbrella). That we can make movements that we don't realise we're making suggests that we shouldn't be so confident in our other judgements about what movements we think are ours. The interesting thing about the phenomenon is what it says about the mind. Research showed that the carers – completely innocently – were typing the messages themselves, rather than interpreting movements from their charges. This effect also underlies the sad case of " facilitated communication", a fad whereby carers believed they could help severely disabled children communicate by guiding their fingers around a keyboard. The same basic phenomenon underlies dowsing – where small movements of the hands cause the dowsing wand to swing wildly – or the Ouija board, where multiple people hold a cup and it seems to move of its own accord to answer questions by spelling out letters.
What is happening with Chevreul's Pendulum is that you are witnessing a movement (of the weight) without "owning" that movement as being caused by you. The effect is known as Chevreul's Pendulum, after the 19th Century French scientist who investigated it. The string allows these movements to be exaggerated, the inertia of the weight allows them to be conserved and built on until they form a regular swinging motion.
There's no supernatural force at work, just tiny movements you are making without realising. Magic? Only the ordinary everyday magic of consciousness. Hold this thought in mind, and soon, even though you are trying not to make any motion, the weight will start to swing in answer to your question. Instead, just ask yourself a question – any question – and say that the weight will swing clockwise to answer "Yes" and anticlockwise for "No". The weight will start to swing clockwise or anticlockwise in small circles. Hold the end of the string with your arm out in front of you, so the weight hangs down freely. The phenomenon is called the ideomotor effect and you can witness it yourself if you hang a small weight like a button or a ring from a string (ideally more than a foot long). The only mystery is not one of a connection to the spirit world, but of why we can make movements and yet not realise that we're making them. Ouija board cups and dowsing wands – just two examples of mystical items that seem to move of their own accord, when they are really being moved by the people holding them.
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