#sexdetector

[mysteriousplanchette]

Yesterday I posted a selection of Ikriki pendulum devices from my collection, and today I’m featuring a few illustrations from their instructions, courtesy of my friend and fellow collector@philiptreece. Thanks for the scans, Philip! #ikriki #pendulum #dowsing #sexdetector #occult #ghost #seance #rooster #spiritualism #radiestesia #seance #egg #pendule https://www.instagram.com/p/CAP6tCqlpIT/?igshid=4wxvj6v33zc6

[mysteriousplanchette]

The Ideomotor Response was put to good use by manufacturers of novelty “sex detector” pendulums that started popping up in the 1920s, like the popular “Ikriki” that was pitched to farmers in poultry trade magazines to determine the sex of unhatched eggs. Less impressive, but undoubtedly more accurate, was using the device to determine the gender of another person, which this illustration taken from the instruction sheet shows. I guess you had to be awfully bored... On a side note, these devices were one of my earliest encounters with ‘psychic’ phenomena, as they were still being sold to poultry farmers from the pages of Grit & Steel magazine in the early 1980s and, well, its a little known fact that I grew up on a chicken farm, and my father actually ordered one of these small brass rods and we gave it a whirl. I recall us using it in our “biddy barn” to test and mark eggs, where it was soon determined to be worthless. But like most gimmicks of that sort, they got our money! #pendulum #sexdetector #ideomotorresponse #ideomotor #psychic #occult #radiesthesie #radiestesia #penduledivinatoire #pendule #divination https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz5Xr0wFavQ/?igshid=1leifrmt8aupr

[mysteriousplanchette]

A triune of Ikriki pendulums. Primarily sold as “sex detectors” for poultry eggs in the 1920s, the instructions also inform the user that “ghosts can be called to” with the device during use, bumping it from the pseudoscientific realm of dowsing toward the less earthly spiritual realm. #ikriki #pendulum #dowsing #sexdetector #occult #ghost #seance #rooster #spiritualism #radiestesia #seance #egg #pendule https://www.instagram.com/p/CANZyjPF6DF/?igshid=1s1sfloux3t76