Augery, or divination as its colloquially known, is a practice with deep roots & ancient origins. In our pop culture, most everyone is aware of some form thereof, be it Tarot, Runes, Psephoi, Geomancy, I Ching, Khat al-Raml, or Palm Reading.

The trouble is that, in my experience, there is very little discussion that goes into the dangers of various forms of augery.  Those that do are typically looked at from an uber-religious "thar-be-demons!" perspective which is altogether unhelpful. My intention here, is to throw a few ideas out there to get folks thinking on this subject.

Before the alarmists get started in, I should note that I have yet to see someone be possessed on account of sortilege.  I've ne'er had to exorcise an unwitting victim on account of them having thrown some bones whilst attempting to discern the future.

I have, however, been forced to involve myself when folks have screwed things up for themselves by acting on incorrect information and, worse yet, have dealt with situations requiring remediation on account of persons becoming too emotional on account of what they've seen.  Some individuals aren't aware of just how their strong feelings influence the world around them, and these are the problem children when it comes to divination.

They are troublesome because they have the ability to do magical things, but cannot control themselves.  Instead, they unconsciously react to knee-jerk inspirations and cause situations to worsen or become nigh untenable. They either take the information to heart and start acting out in the physical realm, or they become so damned fixated upon the negative aspects of a situation that they reach out, metaphysically, and wonkily turn the Dharma Wheel, so to speak. In doing so, workings can be jilted off-course and the scene can spin out of control.

We often perceive what we want to see or otherwise feel the need to see, and this can be great....it can also be really negative, as we create our realities with our self-chatter.  That internal push to be [x], do [y]. or react to [z] can either help us or get us into a great deal of trouble.

We revert to what we're comfortable with as a point of fact, yet give relatively little thought to how that affects us or the situations around us.  This is strangely pertinent in divination for two reasons:

1) We will usually see what we want to see.
2) We often take action on what we want to see, and that's not always good or valid information.

Dealing with #1 is relatively easy, and #2 depends on how we deal with the former.  When getting started with divinatory work, I recommend being highly suspicious of anything that confirms your thoughts on the matter at hand; I would recommend going as far as to have your readings checked by someone you trust until you get the hang of your mind's inner workings and feel that you can accurately use cleromancy to your benefit.

It helps to stay entirely neutral and to go into the reading with purpose, but without agenda.  If your intention is to learn of the best way to handle a situation in a way that is beneficial to you and you've suspended pointed desire, you're generally able to get true information that's worth reacting on. This then renders both sticking points, mentioned above, as relatively moot.

#2 is harder to deal with because we are very good at deceiving ourselves. Worse yet, when we get something that confirms our bias, it excites/saddens/elevates/deflates us, and so being resolved to read the truth is necessary.

The advice I use, in short, is to stay neutral and view Tarot as entertainment TV until the result is in. Augery should be treated with respect, and so too should those who provide such a service.  Keep an open mind with your readings, as the information can surprise you from time to time. That has to be ok, as its better to get correct information that bothers you than it is to get wrong information that causes problems.

Enjoy!

SE

Scrying, or looking deeply/through something as a means of viewing the Divine is an interesting practice that's been around for a very long time.  The possible methods of doing so are as varied as the practice is old, so much of doing so successfully is just finding something that works for you.

That said, the subject has come up several times in the past few weeks, so I thought I'd talk about it here.  Scrying, as a practice, is an area where there are many right answers and a few wrong ones, primarily because there are certain methods that just aren't particularly wise. I will, herein, focus on how to get results.

If you're having trouble getting results when scrying, I would recommend that you procure a small glass bowl from the Dollar Store and paint the backside of it black. Once that has dried, paint the following sigil at its apex:

Once completed and dry, when ready to get started, you will want to fill the bowl with water, leaving at least half an inch of space from the brim (you don't want to spill!).  Put hyssop, amethyst, rose quartz, and smokey quartz in the water, and add a dash of an appripriate essential oil if you feel so inclined.  Light a small candle and set it in such a way that it illuminates the water-filled bowl.

From there, simply meditate for a few minutes and focus on turning on your spirit-sight, then gaze into the bowl and look for what you intend to find.  Record your results and repeat as necessary.

Enjoy!

SE

The importance of divination really can't be overstated, but for whatever reason, in the occult community folks tend to forget to do it.  This might be out of laziness or out of ineptitude on their part, but without divination, we are more or less adrift with no insight into why things are occurring the way they are. We've no way of telling whether or not someone is telling the truth or just being an attention whore, barring the existence of available evidence.

That being the case, its a practice that the Ancients took seriously, so why don't we?

If you don't feel that you have the skills to figure it out yourself, you should be talking to someone who does know what they're doing and won't blow smoke up your arse by telling you what you want to hear.  You want someone honest, direct, and, let's face it, blunt. Sugar-coating things obscures the seemingly hard edge of relative truth and waters it down, and that's really not helpful in the long run.

If you're a witch, sorcerer, magician, etc/whatever, neglecting the practice will get you into hot water.  If instead of checking to see if conjuring [X] to do [Y] will get you the result you seek, you just charge in unawares, you may well do irreparable damage to the person(s) you seek to help, oust yourself from your job, or dork up the relationship you're trying to mend. You might just be setting yourself up for failure, so running blind is really just a terrible idea.

Rant aside, there are a great many methods that one can use to sort things out.  You've got the staples of modern magical practice, such as tarot, runes, ogham, geomancy, and i-ching, and then the more obscure practices of hydromancy, divining by pendulum, necromanteia, reading wax, divining by spilled liquid, tea leaves, and so forth, so the toolbox you can pick from isn't exactly tiny, and you can combine various methods to get at the truth. For every method I've mentioned, there are at least thrice-fold more, and many of those methods can be taught by spirits such as Vassago, Bune, Freyja, Wotan, Rudra, and so forth. Many spirits have their own methods, in fact, as do many clans of spirits. Point is that so long as you aren't lazy about it, there's a lot of ways to get it done.

When in doubt, invoke or evoke a spirit that you trust to help you figure things out. There are plenty of examples of folks doing this in the mythical texts, and many deities will have their own interesting insights into the way to read the cards/runes/i-ching/etc.

For example, if I were trying to figure out how to help a male client seduce someone and I didn't understand the runes, I'd invoke Oðin, explain my intentions, then get His input.  For a female, I'd talk to Freyja, Frigga, or Idun, depending on the disposition of the client in question.  If looking to hunt down a client's competition, Skaði'd be my go-to-girl. For matters of fertility and abundance, Thor and Freyjr are likely best.

Involving different spirits at different times can help you to get a different vantage point on the situation, so its a useful pastime when in doubt.

Happy Divining, you lot! ;)

SE

Ave, dear readers.

For those of you who are interested in bettering your divinatory skills, I decided to come up with and post a simple diviner's charm to aid in the practice.  Be aware, however, that if you are not right with Luna, it will not work for you; instead, you will be forced to make amends and fix the imbalance, so I leave it to you to proceed at your own risk.

Enjoy!

SE

Greetings and happy Monday, ladies and gents. I hope this posting finds you well, or at the very least, awake and functioning.

In my wanderings, ramblings, gnosis, and the latent digestion of such things, I've come to a greater realization with regard to how our folk affect us.  We often spend a great deal of time interacting with others and we often take more than we'd like from people.  This function is something that's programmed into us at a biological level, as evidence by the fact that we even respond to how other people's hearts are beating.  The links for such studies escape me at the moment, but sufficed to say, we are much more intimately linked than we like to admit.

We end up mirroring people we respect as a result of our focus on what they represent to us.  We instinctually try to live up to the ideal they tout in order to become better in their eyes, and that can be a dangerous tendency.  When someone is sufficiently strong-willed, they can project a great deal onto others and do a ridiculous amount of damage to that individual.

Its not at all uncommon for a mental patient, for example, to project his or her disease/disorder onto the doctor or that individual's spouse.  I saw and experienced this firsthand as a child, when my mother's erratic behavior and lack of moral limitation "infected" my father.  Not only did I witness him changing over the years, but I confirmed these changes with my family after the fact. Apparently, before he married my mother, he had a slight "bad streak", but it was never particularly volatile or violent.

We see the same tendency in schools, as noted by my significant other (she's a teacher); when a smart kid hangs out with the would-be thugs, the smart kid's test scores and schoolwork suffers.  If that same student suddenly starts hanging out with a bunch of nerds, his scores improve.

In short, our values are ultimately set by the clan we interact with. If your friends, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, or some other such individual or group is intensely negative, you will behave the same way as a result of your interactions.  This may not be true initially, but eventually your Will will break down and you will fall in line with your pack.

The same interactions and changes occur with those of us who are religious, spiritually inclined, or to those of us who practice some form of magic involving interacting with spiritual forces.  Our very interactions with those spirits, for weal or woe, changes us on some level.  They, very literally, become a part of  our life and our worldview, changing us from within even if we don't expect it.  Its not particularly abnormal for a practicing mage's IQ to be raised as a result of working with planetary intelligences, for example.

I've personally experienced this over the years, as working with Zazel, for example, has helped me to become better at discerning limitations, exposing them, or strengthening weaknesses, even if this wasn't the goal of the work.  It fits perfectly with His Saturnine nature.

That being the case, we can respond to this external stimuli in a couple of different ways; we can either use this to our benefit, or we can try to run from it and become a hermit. I would suggest that we should use this tendency to our benefit rather than pursue the goal of shielding ourselves from influences from others.  It is, ultimately, futile to do so, as we're trying to escape biologically-programmed functions which help us to interact.

I would recommend that you surround yourself with successful folk that you can look up to and interact.  I'd also recommend that you take it a step further and actually work with spirits that will benefit you in such a way.  If you're looking to cultivate a sense of inner peace, either work with Shiva and Ayra-Tara-Ma or have someone else do the work for you. Just bringing an entity into your sphere can have far-reaching effects for the same reasons listed above.

Furthermore, cut the bad apples off the tree.  Make the sacrifice and move on with your life if someone isn't benefiting you.  Don't sit their and stew; it WILL come back to bite you if you don't heed this advice.  Compassion is great until it drags you down; if it does, it needs to be managed like any other emotion or instinct.

The TL:DR version of this is illustrated pretty well by Hopsin in the following music video:

The long and short of it is that in order to grow, we have to cut loose the anchors that hold us down.  If you want to get somewhere in life, make whatever sacrifices you need to, so long as they'll actually get you somewhere.  If that means that you need to ask for help, realize this and then make it happen.

There are plenty of resources, spiritual teachers, spirit workers, teachers, therapists, business contacts, and potential friends who can help you to change your life for the better.  All you need to do is reach out and work to make that occur.

If you should desire such assistance, contact me and we'll talk. If you're not sure what to do about your situation, but just want to do something general to help fix it, I can probably assist.

Take care and thank you for reading.

Regards,

SE

Greetings, dear readers; I hope this post finds you well on this toasty Tuesday (locally, anyway).

This is yet another "helpful rant" post that is, at least partially, because of a post I logged into see on Facebook this morning. Lately, due to the things that have been occurring in my personal life, I have been exposed, repeatedly, to consequences that have come from both my own stupidity and lack of foresight, as well as from the stupidity and lack of foresight of others.  That being the case, I have to admit that this particular post irked me a bit and bears discussion.

The post in question was innocuous, and stated, simply, "When you are at peace with yourself and love yourself, it is virtually impossible to be self-destructive." 

Now, let's really take a look at that statement and think about it; while it is true that inner peace and self-love are useful towards negating self-destructive tendencies, they don't solve the problem entirely.  Why is that?

Well, we, as human beings, are often short-sighted, impulsive, and rather unintelligent when it comes to things that we want. We often confuse need and want and act on various impulses as a result; those impulses can really get us into some sticky situations and, as a result, they are self-destructive though not caused by a lack of self-love or inner peace.

This may sit at odds with what is comfortable to believe, but when you sit down and really think about it, how many of us are ready and willing to be a mountain ascetic akin to Siddartha?  That's not exactly a methodology that works well, nowadays.

Having said as much, there are really three actionable areas for us to focus upon:

1) Inner Peace: This is a noble goal and when we choose to become the change we want to see, we do actually see some remarkable changes in the world around us.

2) Self-Love: This one is tricky but is again, noble.  Many of us are programmed to hate ourselves so self-hatred is an easy trap to fall into.  Peacefulness can help here, but so too can therapy.

3) Thoughtfulness: This is the final building block that really needs to be utilized.  If you're not sure how an impulsive act will affect you, divine!  If you've got any magical ability, you can use it to see what's going on around you and turn your spirit-provided information into actionable information.

Step #3 is so very important that to pass over it is, ultimately, self-destructive because of the fact that inhibits your growth.  Inner peace and self-love are worthy goals, though there are times where even that must manifest in a way that is not altogether pleasant.

Many times, in order to really love ourselves we have to get to the core of the supremely screwed up behaviors we exhibit and discover why.  It requires total honesty with yourself and an ability to actually be with yourself.  The pursuit of such a goal may, in fact, lead others to hate you as it did recently for me, but that's just one of many growing pains.

Sometimes those growing pains involve cutting dead weight out of your life, such as a person whose unsupportive of your spiritual goals or an individual whose a fiscal drain; it can be a painful process to go through, but it is ultimately useful.

Now that I've splashed these words upon this page, I will bring this note to a close: in all things, strive for balance.  We're all screwed up in some form or another, and many times those in your immediate vicinity will be surprised by your desires, wants, or perceived needs; its important to balance those needs and wants as that's the key to peace of mind.

I do hope this has been helpful.

Regards,

SE