How does a dowsing pendulum tell me I have found something?
That depends upon you, your pendulum and how you react to what you are looking for.
Many books will say that the pendulum swings “anticlockwise for no” and “clockwise for yes”. But pendulums cannot read books and you do not know how it will move until you try it.

My own pendulum moves in it’s own way:
My dowsing pendulum does not behave as it says in the book.  It can ‘shimmer’ (vibrate it’s chain side to side whilst the weight stays still), it can swing left to right or it can swing in a circle. Sometimes it can come to an abrupt stop as I move away from the target. Sometimes it does nothing. It all depends upon what I am looking for and how close I am to finding it.
When I first started dowsing with a pendulum and a map I had no idea what the movements meant until I had experimented.
So, there is no reason why your pendulum should be the same or different – it will act as you and it interact with each other. The secret is to try your pendulum and see what it does. Read the short article below on my very first attempt to dowse with a pendulum to give you an idea.

My first attempt to dowse with a pendulum.
I could already dowse, quite successfully, with bent copper rods. We were at my parents’ house when my mother asked me if I could dowse with a pendulum. I replied that I had never tried.
My father, in another room, drew a sketch map of a house they used to live at on the west coast of Scotland, and some of the surrounding countryside. My mother covered this with a piece of paper so I could not see it, handed me her pendulum and asked me to dowse for water.
All I could see was a blank piece of paper, and had no idea what had been drawn underneath.
At first I could not get the pendulum to move other than sway side to side as I moved my hand over the paper. I started to shorten the chain until I the pendulum was about 6inches below my hand. The swinging seemed different. After a few slow passes over the paper I started to see different swings and movements.

In one area the pendulum was almost still, but the chain was ‘shimmering’ by moving side to side a tiny amount.
In other areas the pendulum went from hardly any movement to a strong side to side movement that abruptly stopped as I moved my hand away.

I assumed the strong movement was water. My mother removed the top paper and the results were good. The side to side shimmering of the chain had occurred when the pendulum bob was over an area of marshy land near the garden boundary. The strong side to side movements had picked up the river that ran outside their garden, their water well and the septic tank in their garden. That abrupt stop happened as the pendulum moved away from the target.

We did this test again when we arrived home. My wife covered a map of our farm and not knowing where anything was, I found our ditches and our well too.

How do I learn to use my pendulum?
Practice. For a guide, see the “Practice, practice and practice” posting in this category.