Modern systems: one concept
Pendulums
Pendulums are Vadim Zeland’s name, in Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for energy-information structures said to arise when people think alike and feed on their energy. Zeland calls a pendulum in essence an egregore; no study we found tests the claim, though psychologists have measured the pull of groups on judgement, Solomon Asch in the 1950s among them.
Groups of people thinking alike are said to generate energy-information structures that then feed on the attention of those same people and act against their interests.
In Russian. маятники is the original term; English and Polish editions do not always render it the same way.
Where the idea comes from
Pendulums come from Step I of Vadim Zeland’s Reality Transurfing, Пространство вариантов (St Petersburg: Ves, 2004), published in English as Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations (O Books, 2008). The Russian State Library’s record of the 2004 edition lists pendulums second among the six subjects of the volume, and chapter II is titled “Маятники”, pendulums. There Zeland writes that groups of people who think in one direction create energy-information structures, which then develop by their own laws, set rules for their adherents and take their energy. He calls a pendulum in essence an egregore. The table keeps apart what the book claims and what can be checked.
| Fact or claim | Status and evidence |
|---|---|
| Which book | Documented. Step I, Пространство вариантов (Ves, St Petersburg, 2004, 206 pages, ISBN 5-9573-0283-X). Chapter II is titled “Маятники” (Pendulums). Russian State Library record; publisher’s sample on LitRes |
| English edition | Documented. Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations, O Books, 2008, 182 pages, ISBN 9781846941221. Open Library record |
| What a pendulum is | Claimed in the book; a definition, not a finding. When people think in one direction, their thought is said to merge into an independent energy-information structure that develops by its own laws, sets rules for its adherents and takes their energy. Zeland’s examples run from a family, a club, a school, a company, a political party and a state to herds and anthills, and he calls every pendulum destructive. Step I, chapter II (publisher’s sample, no page numbers) |
| How it is said to feed | Claimed, not verified. On thoughts and feelings tuned to its frequency, for it or against it: in the book’s example, old women on a bench cursing the government feed the government’s pendulum. Fear is the strongest string it pulls; anxiety, guilt and duty are others. Same chapter |
| In the author’s words | Documented as the author’s own statements. A pendulum, Zeland writes, is in essence an egregore, though that concept does not capture every nuance. He will not judge whether a pendulum is a living entity or only a form of energy, and says it makes no difference to his technique. Transurfing itself, he adds, can become a pendulum if it is made into a cult, a movement or a school. Same chapter |
| Evidence that they exist | Cannot be checked as stated. Zeland argues from examples: a player whose blunder loses a match survives the stadium’s fury, he writes, only because the pendulum takes that energy. We found no test that could tell a pendulum from an ordinary group. A PubMed search for “transurfing” on 2 November 2026 found no records. In a 2011 Russian academic article, N. N. Pluzhnikova notes that Zeland does not tell his readers that there is as yet no evidence in any science, quantum physics included, that such energy-information structures exist. PubMed; N. N. Pluzhnikova, Izvestiya VGPU no. 9 (63), 2011, pp. 28-32 (CyberLeninka) |
| Nearest measured effects | Documented in psychology; different claims. People going along with a unanimous wrong majority (Asch in the 1950s, replicated in 2023), close-knit groups overriding doubt (Janis 1972, on disputed evidence) and negative headlines drawing more clicks (2023). None of them shows a structure that feeds on anyone; details below. Franzen and Mader 2023; Janis 1972 and 1982; Robertson and colleagues 2023 |
| The word egregore | Documented. Victor Hugo used égrégore in 1859 for something one can conjure; Éliphas Lévi, in a book finished in 1868, for the giants of the Book of Enoch. In the passages we checked, neither means a structure made by a group. Details in the next section. Hugo 1859, vol. II, p. 12; Lévi 1898, p. 255 |
Checked on 2 November 2026, each line at its source. Documented means a record or text anyone can open; claimed, not verified means the book asserts it and nothing independent confirms it; cannot be checked as stated means we found no test that could count for or against it.
Is a pendulum the same as an egregore?
In Zeland’s own account a pendulum is an egregore with a caveat: in Step I of Reality Transurfing he calls it in essence an egregore and says the older word misses part of what he means. The word has a longer history than that sense. Victor Hugo (1802-1885) used égrégore twice in the first series of La Légende des siècles (Paris, 1859): as an epithet, “l’homme égrégore”, in “Le Jour des rois”, and as a noun in “Les conseillers probes et libres”, where a counsellor, Malaspina, knows the art of conjuring the demon, the stryge and the égrégore. He does not explain it. Éliphas Lévi (1810-1875) is more concrete in Le Grand Arcane, finished in June 1868 and published in 1898: the eggrégores of the Book of Enoch are colossal forces that sometimes take the shape of giants and crush us without pity because they do not know we exist. A few pages later he rejects the whole mythology of the eggrégores.
In these passages neither writer means a structure that a group of people creates and feeds. That sense was current among occultists by the mid-twentieth century. René Guénon (1886-1951), in a book published in 1952, objected to using the word for the collective entity of a group, called that use one of the fancies of modern occultist language and named Lévi as the first to use it so; if his memory was right, he added, Lévi also derived the word from Latin grex, flock, whereas the Greek word had only ever meant watcher. What Zeland adds is the name, the picture of a pendulum that swings harder the more people feed it with their energy, and his advice for getting free. The claim that such structures exist is no better evidenced in his version than in the older ones.
The older idea
Pendulums are a theory of lost agency, and their line of descent runs through the French occult egregore, not through any Hermetic text. There is an ancient parallel worth knowing: the Asclepius describes people drawing celestial powers into statues so that the statues become ensouled, a structure made by humans that then acts. The difference is the point. The Asclepius describes a deliberate, honoured rite; a pendulum is unintended and feeds on the people who made it. The pedigree question in one card: Transurfing on the provenance cards. The working mechanism is attention: whatever you stop feeding with it loses its hold on your week.
What you can actually check
The observation behind pendulums is checkable today. Audit one week: where did your attention go, who was paid for it, and which of those arguments did you choose to enter? The structure behind it is not checkable.
Has psychology studied anything like pendulums?
Psychology has studied the pull of groups under other names, conformity and groupthink among them, and none of that research tests Zeland’s claim. Solomon Asch (1907-1996) had people match the length of a line after a group of confederates had given the same wrong answer. In his 1955 report, as a 2023 replication summarises it, the 123 real subjects went along with the wrong majority in 36.8% of the critical trials. That replication, with 210 people recruited at the University of Bern, found 33%, and 25% when each correct answer was paid (Franzen and Mader 2023).
Irving Janis (1918-1990) described groupthink in Victims of Groupthink (1972) and its second edition (1982): in a close-knit group, the members’ drive for agreement overrides a realistic appraisal of the alternatives. Its evidence is weaker than its fame. A 1998 review found a small, growing body of empirical studies (Esser 1998); another article in the same issue argued that much of the newer evidence, from declassified documents, oral histories and memoirs, does not support Janis’s account of the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam decisions (Kramer 1998); two critics found very little empirical support for the phenomenon (Fuller and Aldag 1998).
Zeland’s remark that the news media, pendulums themselves in his scheme, hold attention with bad news has a measured counterpart too: in 22,743 randomised tests of headline versions on Upworthy, a site of viral news stories, each extra negative word in a headline of average length raised the click-through rate by 2.3% (Robertson and colleagues 2023).
None of this is evidence for pendulums. In each study what is measured is people’s own answers, decisions and clicks, and nothing in the results needs, or shows, an energy-information structure. On our reading, what the chapter gets right is the description of these pressures, and the useful habit it implies works without the structure: notice when a group is setting your answer, and decide whether to give it.
Sources cited on this page. Vadim Zeland, Трансерфинг реальности. Ступень I: Пространство вариантов (St Petersburg: Ves, 2004), 206 pp., ISBN 5-9573-0283-X (Russian State Library record); chapter II, “Маятники”, read in the publisher’s sample on LitRes (IG Ves e-book), which shows no page numbers. English edition: Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations (O Books, 2008), ISBN 9781846941221 (Open Library record). Victor Hugo, La Légende des siècles, first series (Paris: Hetzel, 1859), vol. I, p. 122 (“Le Jour des rois”) and vol. II, p. 12 (“Les conseillers probes et libres”), text and scans on Wikisource. Éliphas Lévi, Le Grand Arcane ou l’occultisme dévoilé (Paris: Chamuel, 1898), pp. 255 and 263 (scan at the Internet Archive, labelled 1912 there, though its title page reads Chamuel, 1898). René Guénon, Initiation et réalisation spirituelle (Paris: Éditions traditionnelles, 1952), chapter VI, “Influences spirituelles et «égrégores»”, p. 60, read in the 2015 digital edition of Les Classiques des sciences sociales, which gives the 1952 page numbers in brackets. S. E. Asch, “Opinions and social pressure”, Scientific American 193 (5), 1955, 31-35, doi:10.1038/
What it does not settle
No boundary is drawn between a pendulum and an ordinary institution, and no evidence is specified that would show one exists. As a description of how movements capture their members it is sharp; as a claim about the world it cannot be checked.
Nearby
Excess potential · The current of variants
The full set, side by side: the ten concepts. Dating and pedigree: the main entry. What to do with any of it: in practice.
Fair questions
What are pendulums in Reality Transurfing?
Vadim Zeland’s name, from Step I of Reality Transurfing (Russian 2004, English 2008), for energy-information structures said to arise when groups of people think in one direction. In the book they grow by their own laws, set rules for their adherents and live on their energy; his examples run from a family or a company to a political party or a state. As a description of how groups capture attention it is useful; as a claim about a real entity it cannot be tested.
Which Transurfing book explains pendulums?
Step I, Пространство вариантов (Ves, St Petersburg, 2004), in English Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations (O Books, 2008). Its chapter II is titled “Маятники”, pendulums, and the Russian State Library lists pendulums among the six subjects of the volume. Where Step I sits among the five core steps: volume by volume.
Is a pendulum the same as an egregore?
Zeland says it is, with a caveat: he calls a pendulum in essence an egregore and adds that the word does not cover all he means. The word is older than that sense. Victor Hugo used it in 1859 for something one can conjure, and Éliphas Lévi, in a book finished in 1868, for the giants of the Book of Enoch; neither meant a structure that a group creates. René Guénon, in 1952, named Lévi as the first to use it in that sense and called that use one of the fancies of modern occultist language.
Are pendulums real?
Nothing shows that they exist as structures. In a 2011 academic article N. N. Pluzhnikova notes that no science yet has evidence that such structures exist, and a PubMed search for “transurfing” on 2 November 2026 found no records. What has been measured is the pull of groups on their members: in the experiments Asch reported in 1955, people went along with a unanimous wrong majority in 36.8% of the critical trials, and a 2023 replication found 33%. Those studies measure people, not pendulums.
How do you break away from a pendulum?
The book’s first answer is not to fight it: Zeland writes that a person who openly rises against a pendulum always loses, and that only another pendulum can defeat one; his ways of getting free come later in the book. The practical version needs no metaphysics: notice the pull to argue, explain, refresh or defend, ask who benefits from your attention there, and once decline to show up. Measure it by how much of the week comes back.
Sources & further reading
- The description is ours. We do not reproduce text, instructions or exercises from Vadim Zeland's books, which are in copyright.
- Dating, pedigree and the unnamed-source question: Reality Transurfing, read with care.
- How the system sits beside the law of attraction, Stoicism and a therapy with trials: compared.
- This page makes no therapeutic claim and is not advice for treating anxiety or any other condition.