Hello Wayfarer,
Don't know if you might have got the Diamond Dowsing course by now... Re your pendulum dowsing, I've been doing it for 30+ years with pretty good results. So I suspect that your indifferent results with a pendulum may be for various reasons.
First, your daily drill approach may not be helping: try dowsing when you feel relaxed, and when you feel like it. Also, attitude of mind is all-important. It takes being able to really "clear" your mind of preferences and anxiety alike: to let whatever answer you get -- even none -- be "OK". If you get no answer, rephrase the question: make it simpler.
You say you start each session by establishing a "kinaesthetic yes or no", but once you've established your personal swing directions (mine are opposite to yours!) it's not likely to change between sessions. "Give me a yes", and "give me a no" is usually enough once and for all. After that, a good way to start a session is simply to ask the pendulum "Am I ready?" Usually, it will respond only with a "yes": because if you're not ready, nothing happens! Which means you need to relax & clear your mind a bit more (or even leave it to another time).
In using your very abstract, testing approach -- asking "red or black", then "diamond or hearts" of a deck of cards & getting 50 / 50 results (ie no better than chance) at least two things are likely.
(1) Intrinsically, no answer "matters" enough to you: who cares whether a card is red or black? it's not going to affect your life or anyone else's in any practical way. (2) Personally, on an ego level, each answer "matters" too much! i.e, it's relevant only to testing your ability: introducing both ego and a stress factor. And as the fact that 50 / 50 results to date have suggested "zero ability", it also seems likely that on an unconscious level you will also be feeding in this expectation to ANY question you ask. It virtually amounts to asking the pendulum to give you 50 percent wrong answers: and it obliges, of course.
Ditto, if having established "zero ability" you're then using a pendulum on life situations / circumstances, it's hardly likely that you're going to get better- than- chance answers. This also makes it unwise to act on any of the answers! Wait until you get better results on simpler things, before using a pendulum on things that really DO matter.
You're likely to get better results by starting again. Try abandoning both intrinsically "so what" issues (card deck -- who cares) and life situations (too important, as yet). Instead apply questions to issues which interest you, but where it's not vitally significant whether the answer is right or wrong, only that it's intrinsically interesting: you hope to learn something.
Always ask a series of simple "yes / no" questions rather than any single complex question. It matters to make questions as simple and clear as possible -- capable of a "yes / no" kind of answer or the result may be confusing, eg with the pendulum swinging alternately in both Yes and No directions. Or sometimes a pendulum may swing from side to side in a straight line (which in my experience usually indicates ambiguity).
When confronted by a puzzling variety of pendulum responses, observe what the pendulum does, & modify the question. Try to figure out the meaning of various pendulum movements according to how you re-shape your questions. If you do this consistently, you stand to find out that your pendulum can move in various ways, with characteristic meanings for you.
Pendulum dowsing can be developed to a fine art, but it takes time and practice. Many years ago, I started using a pendulum -- with no special training, all DIY stuff -- for map dowsing, with startlingly accurate results: eg I discovered whereabouts in a town I'd never been to, was the building I was about to visit for a job interview. I got the job, & have now lived in that city for 30 years.
And finally, you can dowse with ANYTHING suitable to hand. I've dowsed with seashells, cotton reels, keys, paperclips, brazil nuts -- suspended on cotton, thin strong, hairy string, wool: so long as it swings, it doesn't matter. Relax & enjoy!
Good luck.
