The pendulum swings out in one direction. Its task is to move – stopping is death. For the pendulum, the point of rest, the dead centre, is a point of death. So it sets off in one direction and swings out, and in doing so creates on the other side a lack, and a pull that springs from it. This pull lets the pendulum go all the way to the outermost point of its fullest swing, then draws it back from there. At the outermost point the pendulum stops, then starts back. The lack that has arisen swings it across to the far side, but this again creates a lack on this side, which in time will force it back once more. The momentum, force and deflection that build up on one side at once yield on the other a lack just as great, which presses to be balanced out. The pendulum always passes through the balance point of the golden mean, but never stops there. On one side it gathers up something good, and as it swings, the good dwindles and the weak grows. This swings it over to the other side, where the weak, or the bad, seems to grow strong, but the pendulum reaches the outermost point, and the power of the bad begins to wane, while the lack has already given birth to its pull and carries it towards the good.
And so it goes on to the very end, for as long as the pendulum's momentum lasts. This is not physics, and not gravity, but the working of fate, and compensation, and destiny.
Some believe that in the world there is a balance between good and evil, so that if, say, they pray, they multiply the good, and therefore, to restore the balance, evil appears somewhere and condenses into suffering. So they would rather take it upon themselves to offset, with self-mortifying penances, the good their prayers have called forth: the mounting evil must not fall on someone else. Can it be that multiplying the good also multiplies the bad? Would the reverse then be true as well, that where the bad gains the upper hand, the good appears? In this alternation, then, neither phase lasts for ever: everything passes one day?
The struggle of light and shadow, over longer spans of time, follows the same pendulum-principle. The cosmic struggle of good and evil moves in swings like these, now light standing to win and shadow to lose, now just the reverse. When the good holds the winning position, decay sets in.
Prosperity creates the lazy man, the lazy man creates hard circumstances, hard circumstances create the strong man and the strong man creates comfortable circumstances.
If any extreme gains the upper hand, it is not healthy, it runs rampant, and slowly, or even headlong, it is driven back.
The scales, too, are a pendulum. If one pan grows heavier and pulls the scales down, it lifts the other, and itself descends. Opposites presuppose and give birth to each other, and neither can exist without the other. In Egypt, Anubis placed the soul of the dead upon the scales; and if it was found wanting, it had no share in salvation.
If you put into the material pan of life, and why not: striving, desires, will, love; then put into the spiritual pan as well: prayer, meditation, sacrifice.
Beneath the plane in which a Foucault pendulum's sphere swings, hung sufficiently high and of sufficient mass, the Earth turns full circle. Seemingly it is the pendulum that traces a circular path, but in truth everything happens the other way round: the pendulum moves in the same plane, and space turns round beneath it. If it is so arranged, it snuffs out candles set in a circle, or draws a compass rose in the sand.
It may be that the scales of our life swing out, that for the moment we cannot find the balance, and yet slowly they reach the golden mean. And it may be that in the cosmic contest of light and shadow one side wins one battle, the other side another, but the war is already decided: over a long enough span, the light triumphs.