Uppsala: Scrying

Please help me continue to write new books, write new blog posts, and keep this site ad-free:

Scrying

This ritual can be conducted almost anytime. It is performed to gain visions of far away places or future events. It is best done in a dimly lit room. Candlelight is preferable. For one method of scrying, a more recent method found in folk witchcraft, follow these instructions: First of all, the practitioner must prepare the aspersion mixture, which is to be done on a Wednsday at the 1st or 8th hour after sunrise, or the 3rd or 10th hour after sunset, during a waxing moon. It should be prepared by filling a pot with salted spring water and binding mint, marjoram, and rosemary in thread, and immersing it in the pot. It should be stored for future use in scrying ritual. Then the appropriate time for the ritual must be selected. This is done by trying to use as many of the following guidelines as possible. While the rite can be carried out with only one criterion met, the chances for success grow with increasingly meeting the criteria. Ideally it should be done during the waning moon, on a Wednesday or a Saturday at the 3rd or 10th hour after sunset. Once the time arrives, prior to which the practitioner should spend time in meditation, prayer, and contemplation, he or she should bring out the ceremonial divining dish. This should be unadorned on the inside, and be either white or black in color. Some find a glazed, shiny finish to be preferable, others find a flat, dull finish preferable. This dish should be fumigated by incense. While any incense will do, it is much preferable to make one by mixing as many as possible of the following ingredients: frankincense, pepperwort root, cinnamon bark, mace, zest of citrus fruit, bayberries, odiferous seeds, poppy seed, myrrh, cloves, cinquefoil. Once the dish is fumigated, it must be filled with water.

Ask the question to which the scrying is to provide the answer, keeping in mind the following rules apply: One: always get a confirmatory divination or omen. That is to say, after a divination omens of another kind should be consulted, such as bird omens, to either confirm or deny the validity of the interpretation. Only confirmed scryings should be trusted. Two: never rescry. After asking a question once, do not ask it again, for not only will a second reading be impossible to obtain with higher accuracy, it will in fact be less accurate because of the predispositions the mind now has about it. Three: never ask too many questions in a row. When the scrying ceases being easily interpreted, take it as a sign the spirits or forces grow weary or impatient and ask no more questions for the present. Four: never ask a yes-or-no question.

Keeping the question lightly in the mind, leaving it largely calm and undisturbed, gaze into the scrying bowl; now on the surface of the water, now on the bottom of the bowl, now on the water within. The gaze must never linger anywhere overmuch.

After a time images will begin to come into the mind. It should be remembered that the scrying tool is an object of focus, and the images come to the Second Sight, the mind's eye, rather than actually being seen in the tool. Once this happens, the slightest reaction to these images - whether intellectually or emotionally - will destroy them and the state that produced them. Abandonment of the self is CRUCIAL to successful scrying. The images should be allowed to run for a while. Eventually, a pattern will become apparent. After letting this pattern develop for a while the state can be released and conscious speculation and analysis as to meaning can begin. The proper point for this is unique to each practitioner and cannot be described, only discovered via practice.

Interpretation of the images should be done according to the following criteria: The key for interpreting the visions is two-fold. First of all, attention should be paid to the VERY FIRST impressions that arise in the mind upon seeing each element of the vision. These should be given more weight than subsequent impressions. The other thing that should be done is that, while still in an unbroken meditative state of mind (obviously one must be rather practiced in meditation to scry), the run of the visions and impressions as a whole should be passively observed. Each has multiple meanings or shades of meaning. All the possible meanings of each should lightly be in the attention of the practitioner during this. The practitioner should wait for patterns to spontaneously form in his or her mind amongst these meanings, for a consistency amongst the different elements to suddenly start to stand out. Once the pattern has begun to form, the practitioner might start to use left-brain discriminating thought in drawing conclusions about meanings and interpretations, and start filling in the gaps of the pattern.

These occult techniques are readily described by scientific analysis, and the only difference lies in the interpretation of the origin of the images. That is to say, whether they are stimulations of the deep subconscious by distant or future events either by spirits or magic forces, or whether they are stimulations of the deep subconscious by distant, buried memories and understandings that combine to form images "loud" enough to attract conscious attention. A temporary "Sherlock Holmes" mode. The analysis says that this process is virtually identical to the process of divination, only the increased experience the practitioner has at the attainment of the unitary state and Fermi processing allow the starting point for subconscious association to be less rigidly presented. The mind of the practitioner is at this point sensitive enough to the subconscious that association can be started by phantom images coming from random fluctuating noise, a result of the unfocused manner in which the scrying tool is viewed. Not unlike how sometimes pictures will suddenly seem to jump out of the snow, the visual static, of an unoccupied television channel. Whether the scientific or occult interpretations are selected by the individual practitioner is a matter of personal preference and ultimate irrelevance, as it can be done from either or both points of view.

An older form of folk-witch scrying, which may be old enough to be a survival of heathen ritual, involves a bucket or pot of cold water. Into it should be poured melted solder. (In place of the more traditional but more dangerous lead.) It will instantly harden into strange shapes when it is flash-cooled by the water. These shapes must be interpreted in the way that the visions of the previous methods are, observing all the same rules. In some ways this method of scrying is easier then the other, but might also not tend to give as deep or powerful experiences.