Divination

Divination Methods

AUTOMATIC WRITING

Automatic writing is traditionally regarded as a tool of medium-ship, whereby, it is believed, information is channelled from a spirit, whether that of a deceased close relation or someone who needs to communicate to the living information about the manner of his or her death or unfinished business. However more recently it has become popular as a personal art for the purpose of receiving wisdom from angelic communication.

It is also an excellent method of decision-making and you can draw the answers from your wise unconscious mind that is not blocked by the limits of time and space and conscious thinking

You can define the purpose for which you are carrying out the session and either ask questions to set up a question and answer response or simply allow your mind to go blank and wisdom to flow.

COFFEE GROUND READINGS

Coffee ground readings are another easy way of accessing future information.

If matters are not adding up after logical assessment, a coffee ground reading may just help your unconscious mind to integrate the necessary information and come up with an inspired or at least the most sensible solution.

The advantage of coffee reading is that by the time you have made and drunk the coffee, your own intuition has done an awful lot of background research and your conscious mind has slipped out of over overload to a more psychically receptive mode.

Of course this unconscious wisdom has to be interpreted, for the unconscious does not just hand over secrets in chart form and certainly not business jargon. It speaks mainly in symbols.

Visual symbols have a whole lot of attached meanings built up from personal experience, what we have read from fairy stories or mythology, from history and our particular culture; both our immediate culture and our root ancestry. Our dreams use precisely the same symbols that we discover in such divinatory forms as coffee ground reading.

Without realizing it you may already be a coffee reader. If you are a regular cappuccino drinker you may occasionally sit staring into the residue, maybe thinking you’d like another coffee before getting back to work but haven’t got time/should have a water or juice instead.

As you gaze into the almost empty cup, you may half consciously have noticed pictures. These interpreted intuitively will open your mind to a wider range of possibilities and information that is not accessible through more conventional means.

You really need no more than your cappuccino machine or plastic cup from your local takeaway bar or try reading coffee grounds.

CRYSTAL BALL DIVINATION

Scrying means seeing magical images in a reflective medium, such as a crystal ball. What you see can shed light on the present and guide future action. The word ‘scry’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon ‘descry’, which means to see.

Scrying in shiny surfaces has been practiced in every culture and time, not only by mystics and magicians, but every girl who has gazed into a mirror and performed rituals to see her lover’s face, or by any man who has sought wisdom in moonlit water.

Crystallomancy differs from other forms of scrying such as tea leaves, because the images are not formed by the medium itself, but from within your psyche.

People sometimes feel that they cannot use a crystal ball or a mirror successfully because there are no concrete images on which to work. For this reason, scryers can become anxious and actually block the natural and very vivid images cast on to the glass by the mind’s eye.

THE ORIGINS OF CRYSTALLOMANCY

The Maya used the crystal which was sacred to the Sun God Tezcatlipoca and his temple walls were lined with mirrors.

Apaches gazed into crystals, not only to discover if an expedition would be successful but to find the location of property and ponies stolen by other tribes.

Crystal ball divination became popular in Europe in the fifteenth century when it was believed that spirits or angels would appear in the glass. Rituals were long and complex. One in a sixteenth century manuscript included purification rituals as well as invoking protection from God and the good angels: ‘First say one Paternoster, one Ave Maria, one Creed, then say Vobiscum Spiritu, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God Of Jacob, God of Elias . . . who hast given virtues to stones, woods and herbs, consecrate this stone.’

One of the most famous scryers was Sir John Dee (1527-1608) who was astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I.  On November 21, 1582, he bought a crystal ‘as big as an egg, most bryght, clere and glorious’ and through this sphere he communicated with his angels. These not only gave him all kinds of knowledge, but, he believed, protected both the Queen and England. He called his crystal his ‘shew-stone’. It was not a clear crystal, but an obsidian, a stone through which light can be seen when held to the sun. It is said that this crystal provided forewarning of the Spanish Armada.

Although the crystal ball is the most mystical of all divinatory forms, it is quite accessible, whether you use a conventional sphere of deep blue or yellow beryl or clear crystal quartz, a household mirror or a clear glass, paperweight or even a large spherical glass such as a brandy glass.

CRYSTAL DIVINATION 

The messages within individual crystals

When you select seemingly at random two or three crystals from a number of different stones to answer a specific question, the process is in fact far from random. Most people work with crystals of similar size kept within a drawstring bag so that the hand is guided purely by intuition in a form called psychometry or psychic touch. 

Invariably you choose the specific crystals that answer your question, no matter how many or few crystals you have within your bag. 

When carrying out crystal divination for others, allow the questioner to select the crystals and you can choose one extra stone on their behalf. In this way the questioner’s own intuition is the prime mover and you are the psychic guide or interpreter. 

Divinatory crystals can be categorized both by colour and by the kind of crystal. Both of these definitions offer information as to the meaning of the individual crystal that is chosen in a reading.  Let’s take the example of red garnet. Red is a colour of action, change and determination and so would indicate these particular qualities or strengths are needed in the questioner’s life to resolve the matter under question. 

But different red crystals also have their own strengths. The garnet (which can also be found in green) is traditionally a very protective stone, in folk lore associated with guarding travellers from every hazard including vampires.  Put the two definitions together and the red garnet crystal may be telling you that you know in your heart you have make a change, maybe a career move or according to the question you asked you need to undertake a physical journey or house move. But deep down you may be worried about issues of security, material and emotional as well as actual in this change. Will the move or journey bring dangers and uncertainties you had not anticipated? Do you really want to make the journey or change? Crystals selected touch upon issues buried in our subconscious and alert us to information just beyond the limits of strictly linear time. This our unconscious spiritual radar has picked up but our conscious mind has not yet processed.

The answer to the question posed will lie also in the colour and kind of the other crystals you cast in the reading to answer the question.

However crystal divination is unique in that not only the specific stones cast offer guidelines but by holding each of these crystals in turn  you can access all kinds of relevant knowledge beyond that revealed by colour and kind. This  information is also received intuitively through your fingertips by the psychometric process that prompted you to choose specific crystals in the first place from the divinatory bag.

You may also as you hold each crystal you have selected, see images in your mind. These images like dream symbols can be interpreted to help you understand what is really going on deep down within your invariably wiser inner self. You may also hear words in your mind related to the issue spoken by your wise inner self.

The wise and often disregarded inner self knows the answers even if your conscious mind can’t or won’t listen. Often symbols we visualize when crystal reading are ones we already understand from dreams.

It is this spiritual process of allowing the individual crystals to speak to you in words and images that enables you to work with a relatively small number of crystals and yet get accurate answers.

DREAM INTERPRETATION 

As you develop psychically and connect with the forces of the Moon, Sun and Earth, you will find quite spontaneously that your dreams become more vivid and filled with symbols and you may also find your recall improves and even that you become aware that you are dreaming while you are asleep. If you are a member, you will learn how to work with lucid dreaming the ability to change or use a dreamscape by being aware that you are in the dream state; these techniques mirror those of astral travel.

Dream analysis is an important form of divination as it offers access not only to your unconscious mind, but many people believe to the universal symbol system and to higher forms of consciousness that enable us to interpret our own experiences in the context of a world not bound by material limitations. Nor is it bound by time and so we can often see in our dreams future paths that would be fruitful and warnings of less advantageous actions or ventures. All we have to do is to understand the symbols in which the deeper mind operates –and as we work with our scrying and tap into the symbolism associated with the planets, so we can interpret the psychic code and so make wise choices in the light of day.

RECALLING AND RE-ENTERING YOUR DREAMS

To work with your dreams, it is first important to improve your dream recall, so that you can from the beginning interpret them as any other form of divination as counsel from the collective store of wisdom. For through your dreams, you will find as you work with them you can receive messages from higher beings, such as angels and access future as well as past knowledge.

Keep a notebook, pen and easily accessible light close to your bed. When you wake from a vivid dream, allow the dream to re-run as though you were watching a video screen. Write down absolutely every detail in any order or draw images (this is like emptying a bottle so you tip out the last drop, but again be patient).

When you have finished, close your eyes and reconnect with the last image before you woke.

If you want to re-enter a dream, one technique is, just as you are aware of waking, leave something in the dream, a piece of luggage, an earring, and you can, by looking for that, often retrace your path by visualising it when you wake.

Alternatively visualise something of yours on one of the dream paths and moving via the last image you recalled, draw yourself towards it by visualising your boundaries.

If you do not want to go back, push the image away gently on boat down a stream to return to the dream plane and float on pink fluffy clouds or in a warm blue ocean until you drift off again (or take advantage of the early morning for some Dawn magic or meditation and take a siesta later).

DREAM INCUBATION

It is quite possible to use the dream state to give answers or creative solutions to questions or dilemmas, by casting the topic into the dream sea and trusting cosmic wisdom to provide the solution. You can even gain either a healing remedy or actual healing in the dream state by focusing pre-sleep on the specific concern.  In Ancient Egypt, this was called dreaming true. The seeker went to a cave that faced south and sat in the darkness gazing at the candle flame until he or she saw in it a deity. He would then sleep and in his dreams it was said the god or goddess would come and provide the answer to the problem.

This method can easily be adapted to the modern world: 

Light a deep blue candle for quiet meditation before sleep and recite the question as a silent mantra for two or three minutes only.

Write it then on paper and burn the paper in the flame, this time reciting the question or dilemma aloud. (Be careful doing this and practise sensible safety precautions!) 

Set a metal tray under the candle to collect the ash and scoop some into a small purse to keep under the pillow with a few grains of lavender or rosemary for meaningful but gentle dreams. 

 Blow out the candle, saying; - 

‘Light of love, light of hopefulness, carry the answer on the sea of dreams.’

Dream healing was practiced by the Ancient Greeks, through a process known as dream incubation, which resembled the Egyptian dreaming true. Most famous for dream incubation were the Aesculepian temples in the Classical world, which were sited at sacred wells and springs. You can adapt the above technique. In this case, it may be a healing angel or deity who enters your dreams or you may dream of particular plants or places where you fill find relief.

INDUCING A SIGNIFICANT DREAM

About ten minutes before bedtime, light frankincense or myrrh in the bedroom and a tiny nightlight to work by. 

If possible avoid talking to anyone whether by phone, e-mail or in person as this will keep your mind in the conscious world.

Just before bedtime, on your left palm draw an outline of Bes with his crown of feathers in smudge proof dark lipstick or eyebrow pencil or use concentrated vegetable based paint and fine brush (test your skin for sensitivity)

Use conventional black ink to write on a slip of white paper the question or request that will form the source of the dream.

Take a long wide dark scarf or shawl; You can ask Bes, Mother Isis or any personal deity or angelic form to bless the garment and enfold you in protection during your sleep travels, saying:

Enfold yourself in the scarf and read aloud the question. Place it under your pillow folded. 

Blow out the light and lie in the darkness tracing the outline of Bes through the scarf and repeat the question as you drift into sleep. 

Keep a pen and paper by the bed so whenever you wake you can write the symbols of your dream before it fades. Draw an image of Bes at the four corners before you begin recording your dreams and say: 

'Bes, aid and make true my memory of this dream.’ 

Before you get up, look at the uncovered Bes on your hand and repeat the question for the final time. If you remain still the answer will come into your mind and you will see how the dream expands on the words and suggests the direction in which you should proceed. 

Wash your hand very carefully, thanking the deities for their wisdom

HERB SCRYING

Whether for yourself or if you are reading for another person you can use herb scrying and a simple divination technique.  Use clear water and sprinkle dried herbs on the surface. This gives you tangible external focus from which you can derive images. It is also a good transitory stage if you find pure water scrying unproductive. 

Fill a deep clear glass bowl slowly from a jug of water until it is just over half-full. 

While the water is still moving, drop on to the surface a handful of dried culinary herbs, such herbes de Provence, rosemary, basil or parsley that have reasonably large separate leaves. 

These will swirl round, giving an image or maybe several and if you add a few more herbs at a time you can keep the herbs swirling and new images forming. 

Use a tape-recorder  or digital recorder as you and/or the questioner will be calling out many changing forms. 

The key is to keep swirling the water and making new images until you have seven or eight, or even more. 

Some people read the herb pictures, others the spaces between the herbs. 

Write down/say what each picture means to you (and the person you are working with) and then see how together the images add up to an answer to your question. 

Tip the divination water away either into soil or running water (a tap and sink will do) so that the energies will continue to flow.  

THE I CHING AND CHINESE WISDOM 

The I Ching or Book of Changes is more than a system of divination. It is also the earliest and most profound classic of Chinese ancient literature that represents one of the first efforts of civilised humankind to understand his or her place in the world and the course and meaning of his life. 

The I Ching has been described as a map and guidebook to life’s change points. The basis of its philosophy is that nothing is static. The Chinese believe that any quality or state reaches an extreme and tips over into the opposite, from joy to sorrow, love to hate, darkness to light, peace to war and back again. 

While we cannot some events cannot be changed people can influence their destiny by their reactions, whether to decide to wait or act, stay or go, use emotion or logic. There must be endings or there can be no beginnings, loss so that there can be an appreciation of gain. So the future written in the I Ching is not fixed, but depends on recognising the opportunities and pitfalls highlighted by the chosen hexagram, the eight lined unit of meaning that underpins I Ching divination - and then using the wisdom to determining for oneself the direction of the nature of any change. 

THE ORIGINS OF I CHING

The original inspiration for the I Ching came from the shell of the tortoise. Legends abound throughout the Eastern world of giant tortoises holding up the world and the Islands of the Blest, the earthly equivalent of paradise where immortality was assured to those who resided there. 

For divination purposes the shell of the tortoise was heated until it cracked and the cracks were interpreted. This is still commemorated in the Chinese character for divination: 

 This is composed of two words: -  interpret and  crack. 

I Ching divination in its purest form dates back about 5,000 years to the time of the ruler Fu Hsi. This monarch was said to have first found the eight trigrams are the building blocks of the sixty-four hexagrams (two trigrams or three lines of yang and yin, put together) on the shell of a tortoise. Fu Hsi, believed to be descended from the P’au Ku, Divine Artisan, who created the mountains and earth, is credited with teaching laws, introducing fishing nets and building the first permanent dwellings. 

It is thought that the I Ching was first recorded in about 1,700bc when it still retained a very simple form and was probably still centred around the basic trigrams and their natural images. 

The meanings continued to evolve, but the actual recorded Ching was used mostly for predicting natural events until Lord Wen paired the trigrams to create hexagrams about 1122bc. Lord Wen was said to have been an exceedingly wise and benevolent ruler in the Chou principality in what is now the Shensi province of China. His ways were in sharp contrast to those of the last king of the Shang dynasty, Choe, who held the land in a grip of terror and squandered its wealth. There was a rebellion against him and although Lord Wen played no part in it he was thrown into prison. During his time there he was inspired by a vision to write the hexagrams on the wall of his cell. His son, the Duke of Chou, wrote commentaries and added the concept of moving or changing lines. So Confucius was a comparative newcomer when he or his followers added yet more interpretations more than five centuries later. 

HATHOR MIRROR MAGICK 

Hathor was the Ancient Egyptian Sky Goddess of joy, love, music and dance and protector of women. In the ancient world she promised good husbands and wives to all who asked her. She appears in statues and on tombs, wearing a sun disk held between the horns of a cow as a crown. Hathor was allowed to see through the sacred eye of her father/consort Ra. In this way, she had knowledge of everything on the earth, in the sea and in the heavens and the thoughts as well as the deeds of humankind. Hathor also carried a shield that could reflect back all things in their true light. 

From this shield she fashioned the first magic mirror. One side was endowed with the power of Ra’s eye so that the seeker could see everything, no matter how distant in miles or how far into the future. The other side showed the gazer in his or her true light and only a brave or pure person could look without flinching. 

Hathor mirrors were originally made of polished silver or bronze with an image of Hathor on the handle, but you can work with a single–sided conventional mirror with a handle. Years ago dressing table sets with embossed handled mirrors were very common and these can still be picked up cheaply from garage sales and are absolutely perfect. You may also find a Hathor metal mirror in a museum shop. There are a number of on-line museum shops and it is well worth seeking one out for pride of place in your temple. 

But of course you can use any round mirror and some practitioners of Hathor magic prefer to use a swivel mirror on a stand. You can also adapt a highly polished plain silver or pewter tray. 

BEGINNING MIRROR DIVINATION 

As well as being potent for bringing to the surface issues concerning personal identity and potential areas of development, mirror divination is, as it was in Ancient Egypt, effective for discovering the identity of a future partner, and for answering questions about love, fidelity, marriage and permanent love relationships, fertility, family concerns and for discovering the location of an item or animal that is lost or the truth about a matter that is hidden from you. 

Work during the hour before sunset 

To distance yourself from the everyday world for this special form of scrying, have a bath beforehand in water containing rose petals, rose essential oil or bath essence. Roses are sacred to Hathor. 

When dressed, you can if you wish circle round your eyes with turquoise eye shadow, believed in Ancient Egypt to increase the power of the inner clairvoyant eye and ward off all harm. Men as well as women used this method. 

Circle the mirror with tiny turquoise crystals, Hathor’s own stone of power or with golden jewellery, the sacred metal of Hathor, for example small gold earrings. You can also use imitation gold or golden coins in the circle, but try to have one piece of genuine gold, however small, in the circle. 

Hold the mirror or swivel a table mirror so that if possible the last light is reflected in it. 

You can also light red candles, Hathor’s colour so this light also catches the mirror reflections. In more modern magic, orange and pink have also become her colours. 

Light rose incense on either side of the mirror. 

Tilt the mirror angle so that you do not see your own face reflected, unless you are seeking to discover yourself in your true light. 

Ask a question of Hathor and wait for the images to form either within the mirror or in your mind's eye. Both are equally valid and with practice you can cast the images from your psyche into the mirror. 

To do this, visualise the image in a tunnel of light passing from the centre of your brow, the location of the psychic Third Eye, so that the pictures re form within the glass. 

Alternatively begin by visualising the image you saw in your mind on the surface of your magic mirror, then gradually see it receding deeper within the mirror and becoming three-dimensional. 

Either way you may see single images or whole scenes. 

As before if you experience difficulty, close your eyes, open them, blink and look at the mirror, naming whatever image you perceive in your mind. 

Once you have an image either look away or close your eyes again, open and blink. 

Continue until you have evoked five or six consecutive images. 

INTERPRETING THE MIRROR IMAGES

I find drawing the images and then sitting quietly gazing at them in candlelight, will allow the unconscious mind to make sense of them.

It may also be that sounds, impressions or fragrances formed part of the mirror scrying experience. All the psychic senses are linked and the more you work on the spiritual plane, the more readily your other psychic sense become part of what will eventually be a multi-sensory psychic experience. Whenever you come across a new symbol, add it to the Book of Egypt. You will also the more you work, add new meanings to existing symbols and in time a major image may fill a whole page.

MORE FORMAL MIRROR SCRYING

From this early mirror work evolved a series of rules for mirror scrying that have survived into modern magic. However, you may prefer not to use them if they conflict with your more spontaneous interpretations.

An image moving away says that an event or person is either moving away from the scryer’s world or that a past issue or relationship may still be exerting undue influence on the scryer.

Images appearing on the left of the mirror suggest actual physical occurrences that have or may influence the everyday world in the near future.

Images appearing in the centre or to the right tend to be symbolic.

Pictures near the top of the mirror are important and need prompt attention.

Those in the corners or at the bottom are less prominent or urgent.

The relative size of the images can indicate their importance 

CRYSTAL PENDULUM DIVINATION

You can use a crystal pendulum for decision-making at work or at home.

Alternatively, choose a favourite birthstone pendant or a crystal point that you hold between the thumb and first finger of your power hand.

On a piece of paper, draw a circle and divide it into four, six or eight segments according to the number of options or draw a square and make a grid of boxes.

In each segment write down the different options you have, whether a decision about career, a relationship, foods you suspect may be causing an allergy, alternative possible holiday destinations or properties you have visited when seeking a new home. Shade in any left over segments.

Move the pendulum slowly over each option in turn very slowly, allowing images and words to form in your mind.

Then pass the pendulum a second time over the options and this time it will pull down strongly over one of the options.

If it does not responds to any option, leave the reading overnight and your dreams may suggest another avenue to add.

TAROT

The Tarot pack comprises 78 highly illustrated cards ¾ twenty-two major cards, or Trumps as they were traditionally called, forty numbered cards in four suits and sixteen Court cards. The first twenty-two cards form the Major Arcana, (arcana means hidden wisdom). Many people use these alone, since they represent the main archetypes known to mankind in all times and places, the father, the mother, the wise man, the fool or child, the trickster, the divine sacrifice, the judge, the hero and the virgin, as well as Fate, the Sun and Moon and the eternal quest to confront the basic human dilemmas of finiteness and being (except in the mother’s womb or when pregnant), ultimately alone.

The Minor Arcana includes 40 numbered cards from Ace (or one) to ten in each of four suits. Pentacles, coins or discs, Cups or chalices, Wands, spears or staves and Swords correspond with the four traditional playing card suits: Diamonds, Hearts. Clubs and Spades. But these suits also represent what the ancients regarded as the basic elements Earth, Water, Fire and Air – and the spiritual qualities associated with these elements. In a reading, these number cards tend to refer to specific issues and courses of action. 

Pentacles, Earth, represent the dish from which Jesus ate the paschal lamb. In Celtic tradition it represented the ancient Stone of Fal, on which the High Kings of Ireland stood to be crowned. The Stone was on Tara, the sacred Hill of the High Kings of Ireland and before them the hero Gods.

Cups, Water,  are symbols of the Grail cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, and the Cauldron of the Dagda, the Celtic father God, that was never empty and had great healing powers.

Wands, Fire, symbolise the sacred lance that pierced Jesus’ side. In Celtic tradition it is the spear of Lugh, who slew his own grandfather the old solar God Balor with it and so brought about the new order.

Swords, Air, stand for the Sword of King David and in Celtic tradition, the sword of Nuada of the Silver Hand whose sword hand was cut off in battle, but who had one fashioned of silver and went on to lead his people to victory.

There are also sixteen court cards – four more than the usual playing card deck – because the Jack takes on two aspects: the Page and the Knight (some­times the page is regarded as the feminine side of youthfulness). The court cards can have different names such as Princess and Prince, Daughter and Son, even Priestesses and Shamans instead of the traditional Queens and Kings. These cards usually refer to personalities or aspects of personalities and, as such, focus on relationship issues.

Almost more than any other form of divination, the Tarot has been unfairly regarded as dark magic, the stuff of malevolent clairvoyants in B horror movies because of the erroneously literal interpretation of the Death, Devil and Tower of Destruction cards.

THE ORIGINS OF TAROT

Tarot cards in their present form seem to be a mediaeval creation, although the images and themes are much older. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris has seventeen ornate cards, sixteen of them Tarot Trumps, originally believed to have been made for Charles VI of France around 1392, but now thought to be Italian, dating from about 1470.

One suggestion is that Tarot cards sprang from the north of Italy, in the valley of the Taro River which is a tributary of the River Po. This could have influenced the Italian name for the cards Tarrochi and the French name Tarot. The modern Tarot pack comes directly from an Italian version, the Venetian or Piedmontese Tarot which has twenty-two Trumps. The same form is found in the French pack called the Tarot of Marseilles that is still sold. Both designs were in popular use by about 1500 in Northern Italy and France.

The four suits represented different strata of society: the swords as the aristocracy, cups or chalices as the clergy and monastic orders, coins for the merchant and batons for the peasants.

Another theory claimed that the gypsies brought the Tarot with them in their long trek to Europe from India via the Middle East. In 1781, a time when Egypt was seen as the source of all knowledge, Antoine Court de Gebelin, a French Protestant clergyman who became fascinated by the occult, found some friends playing with Tarot cards. He identified the cards as containing the secrets of the priests of Ancient Egypt, the lost Egyptian magical wisdom written by Thoth, the Egyptian God of inspired written knowledge, encoded in Tarot symbolism to protect this wisdom from invading barbarians.

The Arabic word Tariqua (the way of wisdom) bears some resemblance to Tarot and the Ancient Egyptian word Ta-rosh means the Royal Way. Some believe that the Tarot was named after Taueret, known to the Greeks as Thoeris, the Great One, Taueret, the Egyptian hippopotamus goddess who was protective deity of childbirth. It was said she gave birth to Tarot wisdom.

A third root was seen in the Kabbalah, the source of Hebrew esoteric wisdom. Torah is the Hebrew name for the first books of the Old Testament. In Golden Dawn interpretations of the Tarot, much significance is attached to the Latin world ROTA meaning Wheel engraved on the Wheel of Fortune card. When reversed it gives Tora(h), and can be rearranged as Taro. By learning the Tarot wisdom, one can step off the Wheel of unremitting Fate. There are links to ORAT to speak the truth as well in mythology. A Latin sentence said: "Rota Taro Orat Tora Ator", which can be translated to: "the wheel of Taro speaks the law of Ator", the reference is to the pharaonic Goddess Hathor who personified nature.

In 1856 Eliphas Levi made the first connections between the Tarot and the Kabbalah, linking the 22 Major Arcana cards with the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet that each possessed inherent esoteric significance. Eliphas Levi Zahed, usually shortened to Eliphas Levi was the pseudonym for Alphonse Louis Constant, born in 1810 and originally a Catholic priest who became interested in the study of magic and coined the word occult. Indeed he considered that were one only to have a Tarot pack, it was still possible to acquire a great deal of knowledge through using them. including the Kabbalah and the Bible. 

Other explanations link the origin of the name with the Celtic Tara, the sacred Hill of the High Kings of Ireland from ancient times until the Sixth Century. This view was given credence by Robert Graves, the historian and novelist, who believed that the twenty-two Tarot trumps were derived from the ancient twenty two symbol Tree Alphabet of the Celts.

The greatest influence on modern Tarot reading is Arthur Edward Waite who in 1891 joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical group whose members included the poet WB Yeats. The Tarot was important to the Golden Dawn which traced its traditions back to the mysterious Rosicrucians of the seventeenth century, who in turn drew on alchemical and Kabbalistic traditions, traceable, it is said, back to Moses. The Rider Waite Tarot pack with its richly illustrated Minor Arcana, was intended to promote visions as well as being used for divination and this pack has influenced countless others, especially with Minor Arcana meanings. It was Waite who associated the four suits with the four sacred objects of the Holy Grail quest.

Some Tarot practitioners do identify the Tarot journey with the quest for the Holy Grail, with for example the Emperor as the Fisher King whose wounds have caused the land to become barren, the High Priestess as the female guardian of the Grail and the Fool himself as the seeker, for La Folie Perceval was written around 1330. Perceval needed to attain wisdom though experience before he was ready to inherit guardianship of the Grail. The Hermit. Charioteer and Lovers also feature in early Grail legends.

READING TEA LEAVES 

Tea leaves are the simplest of the psychic arts. Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers and their mothers and grandmothers who passed down the craft, usually through the female line, did not use complicated books with hundreds of meanings. They could instinctively interpret pictures in the clouds, in the suds as they stood at the wash tub, in the embers of the fire or in a candle as they sat beside the bed of a sick child. So too as the matriarchs sat over a gold-embossed china or a Brown Betty earthenware teapot, they listened to what their children, grandchildren, neighbours or friends were saying with their hearts and not their lips and read their fortunes in the leaves. In industrial areas of Britain, the Brown Betty is the traditional teapot used for tea leaf reading, a plain dark brown pot. You may find one in an old fashioned hardware shop or even a car boot sale. 

Tea Leaf Reading is the most intimate of the psychic arts and while you can easily read your own leaves or those of others from a plastic cup at work or in a crowded café, as its best tasseography as it is called, takes place in a quiet warm room with tea, hot scones and lashings of intimate talk, gossip and laughter. 

THE ORIGINS OF TEA LEAF READING 

In Chinese tradition tea was used in China as early as 3000bc as one of the elixirs of long-life and, it was said, came out of an egg when the Divine Artisan was creating the world. According to Buddhist legend the first tea leaves came from the eyelids of the meditating Holy One who cut them off to prevent himself from falling asleep while he was meditating. 

Tea was used for divination in the Orient from almost the beginning and the tea ceremonies still practiced in Japan today have their roots in meditation and creating that quiet space in which insight can come spontaneously. From China the secrets of its cultivation and divination spread to India and Sri Lanka, the former Ceylon. From India, the Romany gypsies brought the magical art to Europe. 

Tea did not arrive in England much before the middle of the seventeenth century and was very expensive, costing from £6- £10 per pound in the prices of that period. It was not until 1885 that tea from India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) reached England in any quantity and so even in Victorian times tea was a great luxury, kept in a locked wooden box by the lady of the house. 

But the art of divination from the dregs left behind in a cup or glass was practiced in Europe much earlier. Wine dregs were consulted, a craft known as olinomancy. From early times too, peasant women made herbal brews for minor ailments and to preserve good health and afterwards leaves from the brews would be used by the family matriarch to discover the root cause of the distress. 

Tasseography has remained primarily the art of the Romany Gypsy or the home rather than the professional clairvoyant. It can be accompanied by varying rituals as to the kind of cup and methods used, but in essence, tea leaf reading should be learned by practice rather than by rote and the questioner’s interpretation of identity of a symbol is invariably the right one. 

WATER DIVINATION

Scrying or seeking images in water is the oldest form of divination, practiced in dark pools by moonlight or in brilliant sunlight. 

Traditionally water for scrying is darkened with mugwort and practiced in the hour before sunset so that the natural light on the water becomes increasingly scarlet. You can surround your bowl with pink and purples candles to emulate the effect. 

Whether you use a natural pool with shadows cast by trees, passing clouds and natural sources of light or trees or an indoor water source, illuminated by candles, sun or moonlight, scrying involves merging with the reflective substance, ie the water, so that the images from the deep unconscious parts of your psyche can as it were slide onto the surface of the water. 

Burn lavender or rose incense to break down the conscious barriers that keep telling you there is nothing in the water,  

Indoors, arrange candles and sit near a slightly open window so that the surface ripples. Floating candles with glass nuggets or small crystals on the bottom of the bowl are very effective if you are new to water scrying.  

In daylight dispense with the candle and allow sunlight to fall on the water, placing crystals and small mirrors around the bowl so they amplify spots of radiance on the water.  

Ask your question, stir the water nine times with a twig, close your eyes monetarily, open them, blink and as you stare at the surface, name what comes into your mind whether it appears externally on the surface of the water or in your mind’s eye.  

Stir again nine times and repeat for a second and third image.  

Whether alone, or if reading for someone else, speak aloud quite spontaneously about each image (record what you say as it is easy to forget details) and continue to speak, unless the person for whom you are ready wishes to add their interpretation based on any personal significance the images have in their lives. Then put together the whole picture and relate it to the question.  

Where possible try outdoor scrying in sun or moonlight or illuminate a garden pond with torches. Use a long branch to ripple the water.

NUMEROLOGY 

‘I am not a number, I am a free man!’ was the defiant cry of Patrick McGoohan, at the start of every episode of The Prisoner, the television series about a man trapped in a nightmare world where unseen and incredibly powerful forces tried to reduce him to a cipher. 

Numerology takes  the view that everybody can be reduced to a number – but it does not seek to rob us of our individuality. Rather numerology helps us to realise our own unique potential. It describes the paths that change according to the way we react to the opportunities fate offers and the doors life closes, sometimes apparently without reason. 

Each letter of the Runic alphabet was associated with a certain power. The Hebraic and Egyptian alphabets also have these connotations. But our alphabet, inherited from the practical Romans, has lost such meanings. We might use X to signify the Unknown but that is as far as it goes. Numerology seeks to remedy this deficiency by linking each letter to a number which does have magical significance.  In this way you can discover your weaknesses and strengths by finding your unique combination of numbers, deduced from your name and birth date. If you can tap into these underlying vibrations, you can understand what holds you back – or what may unconsciously drive you to react in certain ways. You can also discover auspicious days, years and even places where your ‘personal number vibrations’ are in harmony with the movement of the wider world.

If you accept the principle of synchronicity, then your name in its many forms as well as your birth date assume significance and mirror not only what you are, but what you could be. 

Our names are of immense significance in how the world but perceives us and how we view ourselves. Birth names may cause pride or immense embarrassment; a nickname may endear or diminish us. In the different roles we play in the world we are addressed in ways that reflect diverse aspects of our personality; from Mum or Dad to the name used on a passport, on a name badge at work, among friends or neighbours and by loved ones. In changing a name, you change more than your image. You alter your relationship to the world. The individual letters that make up names each have a numerical significance, so that a name or birth date can be reduced to a single or master number to give information about hidden talents and future paths to success and happiness.

ORIGINS OF NUMEROLOGY 

The Ancient Egyptians and Chinese used numbers for divination. However it was mainly the Greeks and the Hebrews who developed the systems used in modern numerology. In the sixth century bc the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras wrote: ‘Numbers are the first things of all of Nature.’  He regarded numbers as not just having mathematical significance but as being central to all religious and philosophical wisdom. Each of the primary numbers, he said, has different vibrations and that these vibrations echoed throughout heaven and earth, including mankind. ‘The Music of the Spheres’ expressed the harmony of the heavenly bodies who each had their own numerical vibration.

The meaning of numbers are universal, although varying symbols may be used in different cultures. The Pythagorean system, based on the nine primary numbers, is most commonly used for basic numerology, although the ‘master numbers’ of 11 and 22 are sometimes added in certain aspects of numerological divination.

According to Pythagorean theory, the letters A, J and S equal one, B,K and T equal 2 and so on. The following table shows how the alphabet is broken down into numbers.

NUMBERS OF POWER

There are four main personal numbers that reflect the different facets of a person. They do not usually coincide, for if we were the same in all situations and at all times, we would be either incredibly spiritually evolved or remarkably impervious to life’s slings and arrows.

BIRTH OR LIFE PLAN NUMBER 

This is the number of possibility that unfolds throughout life. It provides an excellent indicator of what you could or should be, predominant traits, strengths and weaknesses, some as yet undeveloped. These traits may be most apparent at creative or change points in your life. Ideally, this number is the same as your Destiny or Fate Number that reflects the attributes that have been manifest in your life so far. 

But people’s lives rarely unfold spontaneously in a perfect way and it can take many false starts, obstacles, changes of direction and conscious decisions to develop our potential to its full. 

As with astrology the Birth or Life Plan is a symbolic or synchronistic number. With changes in the calendar and times over the centuries and in different part of the world and the fact that the birth of Christ did not occur on 1.1.00, there is no absolute point of reference. Even the current practice of using CE or Common Era rather than ad does not fully resolve this issue, for changes in Summer time are just one example of how a person; birth date can vary by a day. Nevertheless in practice the birth number does offer an unchanging marker for the individual. 

This number offers the most scope for long-term divination of futures yet to be made, as different challenges, unexpected as well as planned, call different facets of personality into play. A sudden promotion or redundancy, a birth or bereavement, falling in love or out of it, a windfall or financial loss or even waking one morning and deciding that the chosen path is no longer the right one; any of these can bring to the fore a strength that has never been utilised or eradicate a weakness when survival or thriving is an issue. 

THE DESTINY OR FATE NUMBER  

We make our own destinies in the way that we tackle the opportunities or challenges that present themselves and so the Destiny number represents all we have achieved in both work and personal world. A number derived from all of the letters in the complete birth name makes up the Destiny number.

The Destiny Number is also indicative of change and so is important for divination. It indicates the most likely course your future will take, given the present trends and direction. This in itself offers to the conscious mind, alternatives and possibility of changing what seems a set path.

NUMBER OF ACQUIRED FATE 

This is your full name, taking into account any variations of name changes whether legally, informally or by marriage. This reflects the new persona if any you have acquired and can replace the birth name as a benchmark of achievement, as any film star or musician who has changed their name and soared upwards, will verify. Calculate this name separately from your birth name. If there is a variation and you can see how you are, perhaps unconsciously, changing the direction of your life by something as simple as using your middle name and dropping your first one. This then is the number of life change and new directions and refers to a permanent alteration in the full name. For example names by marriage, nicknames and terms of endearment are calculated separately under Personality numbers.

THE HEART OR SOUL NUMBER 

This is found by adding together the vowels of your full birth name. It reveals the inner private person, the secret hopes, fears and dreams, the longings of the soul, the underlying and often unconscious and motivations in life. It can be very valuable in understanding what sometimes seem to be impulses or drives. 

The Soul Urge or as it is sometimes called, the Heart’s desire, is an important core influence in numerology. 

As well as A, E, I, O and U, W and Y also count as vowels when used in a full name. Y is a vowel when there is no other vowel in a syllable, for example Lynn or Marilyn and when it is preceded by a vowel and sounded as one sound, as in Rayner. W is a vowel when it is preceded by a vowel and sounded as one sound, for example Powell. The sum of all of these letters, converted to numbers, and reduced to a single number or a master number, gives the Heart Number. 

THE PERSONALITY NUMBER  

The Expression or Personality Number, obtained by adding all the consonants, represents the persona or face you show the world, the traits that others see most readily. This is the point to consider all the different names by which you are known. It is important to realise how a subtle change to our names can affect our relationships. Notice the way in which a salesman will begin using your first name in an attempt to create a feeling of intimacy.