Divination & a Pinch of Protection

Divination & Protection Tools available at the shop!

🔮 Divination: What Even Is It?

You hear people talk about tarot, pendulums, oracle cards, and more—but what is divination, really? What tools do you need? And what kind of protection should you have in place before you even start?

Let's get into it!

👄And as a reminder, this is the view of one Witch. As I say, talk to another Witch & you'll get a different point of view! So go do that & educate yourself! :)

🔮Divination (from Latin divinare, 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual - courtesy of The Occult Encyclopedia

⚫Let's start with protection, which is important during any sort of divination. At the shop we have a various assortment of items for Warding, which works by repelling things that are not for our Highest Good, & therefore keeping us safe from harm. You can find this through the Nazar, creating your own spell bag, sewing a sigil into your clothes, different stones, sprays and potions! 💎Sarah from Crystals & Chaos offers a wide variety of protection stones, the one shown in the picture is a black obsidian tower.

🧶Cayla from Crow-Made Crochet has pentacle coasters available.

🫙I offer Banishing & Warding potion that you put on your hands to cleanse & protect.

💦Lili from Invokations offers an Aura Spray & a Protection oil.

🪄Taylor from In the Glen Goods offers their own essential oil blend of incense.

🌿You can create your own spell bag or jar in the shop as well as your own essential oil blend!

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🔮OK, so now we have that out of the way, let's talk about Divination!

There are MANY other types of Divination tools than what I have listed here. The above link for the Occult Encyclopedia has a few.

🃏You can do Cartomancy, which is Divination through cards (the origins being playing cards). You can also use Tarot cards, Oracle cards, any cards, really. All you do is shuffle until you feel the need to stop, & pull a card!

📔For Tarot, I learned from these two books: Llewellyn's Complete Book of the rider-Waite-Smith Tarot and Michelle Tea's Modern Tarot.

Michelle Tea's book is more of a story telling format with a spell for each card.

Llewellyn's is more textbook style. There are hundreds of other Tarot books out there to learn from as well! You will see that each person has their own method of reading the cards, remember, there is no right or wrong way to do it!

You can also stop into the shop & ask me!

➡️Now let's talk about the difference between Oracle & Tarot cards.

♠️Tarot cards have to follow a very specific set of rules. They have 78 cards which break down into 22 Major Arcana, 56 Minor Arcana, and within the Minor Arcana there are 4 suites as well as 4 court cards for each suite. For Tarot, each reader interprets the cards a bit differently. That is based on where we learn, the mood of the room, the vibe of the client, the cards around the cards, our personal history in life, ect. A lot goes into Tarot readings (but don't let that overwhelm you! If I can learn, so can you!)

♥️Now for Oracle cards, those are easier, and cooler in some ways. Oracle cards have absolutely no rules to follow. They can be about anything they want to be. You still shuffle until you feel like you need to stop, then you pull your card(s), and whatever you pull, you find that card in the book that came with the deck & read what it says!

I find mixing Tarot & Oracle together work well, but some folx like to stick with one or the other.

When I got started with Oracle cards I would pull a card a day. Then I started pulling a card a day with Tarot cards, then I moved up to three cards a day once I started learning how to put the meanings together. If you want to learn how to use Cartomancy through playing cards, check out this article, or contact Taylor from In the Glen Goods as they are an excellent teacher.

➡️The next divination product I have for sale is Scrying Mirrors!! I am SO STOKED to be able to sell these, courtesy of Crystals & Chaos!

🕯️How I like to do this is to sit in a darkened room & light a candle. It can be a chime candle or a scented candle or a 7 day candle, it doesn't matter. The point is to have just enough light to reflect off of the mirror. Shit this could even be a night-light. Or, if you choose to do this outdoors, the moon could be bright enough for you!

🎧OK, I then put on some binaural beats through earbuds. I thought these were bullshit (binaural beats, not earbuds), but my therapist kept harping on me to use them, so I did a little research & apparently they actually work. This website does a good job explaining what the fuck they are. I usually use Theta or Delta waves.

This is a YouTube channel I often go to.

💺I sit in a comfortable position where I can relax yet easily see the mirror. That often involves some finagling of pillows, stands & candle readjustments. Once I get that drama situated, I light my incense, find the binaural beat I want & sit, soften my eyes like I'm trying to figure out the shape in one of those shitty autostereogram magic eye posters that I could never see, & start gazing into the mirror.

🍂 struggle (like everyone) with keeping my mind focused, so when it wanders into some bullshit, I just picture the thought moving through my mind like watching a leaf in the wind and actually do focus on my breathing.

📦I start with eyes closed box breathing for a couple of minutes to get settled, then I will open my eyes and gaze at the mirror. Whatever comes up, whether you see it ON the mirror, or it comes through your mind, is the message you are supposed to receive. You can start gazing for 5 minutes, then go to 8, then 10, then 12, then 15 and on up (or however you want to do it). The more often & longer you sit in meditation with your mirror, the easier it gets & the more messages you will receive.

✍🏽You can write stuff down immediately after the session, or if you want to use a recording app/device so you can talk through what you see & write it down later, you can do that. Another option is to use talk-to-text in an email or notepad app, that way you don't have to translate, you just have to figure out what the fuck, "buy more rabbit horse code" means.

When you are finished with your session you can say something like, "This session has ended", or you can get up and walk away, whatever you feel is right. I would suggest covering the mirror when you're not using it. Since it is black it absorbs things that do not serve us, and if we are using it for scrying it's important to allow the least amount of that into it.

I am still practicing scrying. It is not as intuitive to me as some other skills & I'm having to work on it. I do a better meditation practice with my eyes closed, but I'm working on it!

Here is a good article on scrying. Of course, there are lots more, but I did like this one.

🕯️Let's talk about candle gazing. This works the same as scrying in an obsidian mirror but you are looking at a candle flame. If you have a particular intention you want to focus on, you could use a color specific to that intention, but that is not necessary.

🪄You could use a pendulum for divination. For pendulum work, find one that you feel called to, or one you think is cool. You can also just use a necklace, make your own, whatever is clever. As long as the string is long enough to give it enough room to sway or not sway, & the piece on the bottom of the pendulum is heavy enough to create movement.

Hold the top of the string/chain in your fingers. Some people place their other hand below the swinging pendulum to create an energy current between their two hands, some people don't. Ask the pendulum to show you what "yes", "no", "I don't know" and "I'm not answering you right now" look like. Get a feel for those answers before you start asking questions.

Once that is established, I would ask obvious yes or no answers a few times to see if it works with you. If it doesn't answer the answers correctly, it's not the one for you, or perhaps you aren't quite ready to work with one, which is OK. I wasn't ready for a while, I kept asking questions and it was incredibly inconsistent. I got different pendulums & it still did the same thing. I put that skill on hold, & recently came back to it & it works like a charm!

👻You can use pendulum work by moving it over the letters & numbers on a talking board to get information (make sure you "close the session" by saying something like, "This session has ended", or something like that.

🌄You can talk to your Deity using it, or any other spirit that wants to talk with you!

Just remember that when we start building that skill where we are opening ourselves up to the spirit world, we need to set firm boundaries and only let in who/what energies we want in.

🪄We also have Blessed Sight Smoke from Invokations! It is made with herbs that are safe for ingestion via smoking or drinking. You use it before any sort of divination work. You can smoke it or create a tea out of it. Once you have ceremoniously ingested the mix, you are ready to start your divinatory practice!

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✨ Remember: Every practitioner finds their own rhythm. Some of these methods will speak to you. Others may not. That’s totally normal.

You can always ask me questions, experiment at home, or explore tools and teachings from the amazing creators who contribute to the shop.

Come on in, grab some supplies, and see what messages the universe has for you!