Divination is often misunderstood. While the old Shaman crouched over his bones, or the gypsy peering into her crystal ball are powerful images full of symbolism, images like these tend to isolate us from the truth that we are all connected to the Divine, and all have the ability to listen, see, and read the energy around us.
Your intuition, your “gut feel”, is your natural spiritual ability to see beyond the limited physical world. You cannot see or touch emotions, but they are there nonetheless. You are surrounded by Angels and Spirit Guides wanting to help you on your path, and connected to your own Higher Self – the part of you that is pure spiritual energy and connected to the Divine energy that is everything.
But sometimes we need a little help to hear our inner guidance. There are many types of ancient tools exactly for this purpose. Take the “spooky mysticism” out of the picture, and learn to utilize the tools around you to empower yourself on your path.
Here is a very basic introduction to some of the well known divination tools available:
PENDULUM
Pendulum Divination, also known as radiesthesia, dowsing, rhabdomancy, or water witching, is divination by utilizing human sensitivity to the subtle energies emitted by any source living or inert. Some folks believe that their spirit guides act as the source of energy in revealing secret information. The history of this pendulum divination can be traced back over 5,000 years to the ancient Orient. The pendulum is the main instrument used for this area of divination, although wooden rods are also used. The pendulum is a simple tool. The basic design is a weight of some sort suspended on a fine chain or a length of chain. A dowser is a person who is sensitive to hidden information and uses an indicator, like a pendulum or a rod, to intensify that sensitivity. There are a few different ways to hold your pendulum while working with it. Most dowser’s will hold the end of the chain directly between their fingers. Next, seat yourself comfortably at a table and start out with simple yes/ no questions. Fix in your mind the direction of “yes”, and the direction of “no”. Most people consider it yes when for vertical movement, and no for horizontal movement, but do what feels right to you.
RUNES
The Runes are a set of 25 ancient symbols which can be read either upright or reverse whichever way they are laid. In all its varieties, they may be considered to be an ancient writing system in Northern Europe. The earliest runic inscriptions date from circa 200, and runic alphabets were used continuously for the next 1400 years, last being attested as used in 17th century rural Sweden. The three best known runic alphabets are the elder futhark, the younger futhark, and the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Each rune has a meaning and there are different ways to use the runes to help with divination. One of the easiest ways is to use Runes is to place all of your runes in a bag and ask the question you want answered, then while focusing on this question reach into the bag and draw out a run. Now you can look up the meaning of the Rune you drew and figure its meaning in your personal situation.
ANGEL CARDS
The Angel cards are a more recent introduction but bring caring, gentle guidance from above. As with all forms of divination they will offer support, understanding, comfort and direction. As with tarot cards, you can do various card layouts (spreads). For a short reading, choose just one card, or do a 3 card reading for past, present and future. Shuffle the cards while focusing on the question or situation you wish to receive guidance on, then select your card or cards.
TAROT CARDS (pronounced Tarow)
Tarot Cards are perhaps the best known form of divination and perhaps the most used. Scholars and historians have long wondered where the tarot came from, but to this day nobody is certain. The closest approximation thus far is that the twenty-two Major Arcana originated in ancient Egypt, where early records of the practice of divination can be found. The Egyptians were “connected” to the universe, and relied on spiritual guidance to tackle the problems of their daily lives. Some religious historians have wondered about the connection between the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana. The words “Tora” and “tarot” are so similar that some scholars believe there to be a connection between the cards and the Jewish holy book. After all this study and research, only one real conclusion was made regarding the tarot/Kabala connection: Even if the tarot came after Kabalistic teachings – or vice versa – there is a clear association between the two, and there are deep insights to be learned and applied through conscientious use of the cards.
Many different layouts can be used but for a short, quick answer you can do a one card reading, or a three card reading. A three card reading consists of 3 cards, representing past, present and future. Shuffle the cards while focusing on the question or situation you wish to receive guidance on, then select your card or cards.
DOWSING RODS
Dowsing, sometimes called divining, doodlebugging (in the US), or (when searching specifically for water) water finding or water witching, is a practice that attempts to locate hidden water wells, buried metals or ores, gemstones, or other objects as well as currents of earth radiation without the use of scientific apparatus. A Y- or L-shaped twig or rod is sometimes used during dowsing, although some dowsers use other equipment or no equipment at all. Dowsing has existed in various forms for thousands of years. The original may have been for divination purposes — to divine the will of the gods, to foretell the future and divine guilt in trials.
Hold the rods in your hands with both rods facing forwards parallel to each other. This is called the “search” position. When you ask a question, the rods swing out away from each other for “yes” or if you’re looking for something, “here”; and cross each other for “no”.
I CHING
To cast the I Ching, you cast three coins, six times, each time depending on which way the coins fall forms a hexagram, which gives you your message. You also may get special lines, which give you extra messages and a further hexagram for your second message. The first message is your current situation and your second is the future reading.
This is one of the most ancient divination techniques and originates from China. This is a very complex form of divination. The I Ching, or Book of Changes, is structured as an 8×8 matrix of 64 hexagrams representing the states and the dynamic relationships of the eight elements, each represented by a trigram. Throughout China’s region of cultural influence (including Korea, Japan and Vietnam), scholars have added comments and interpretation to this work, one of the most important in ancient Chinese culture; it has also attracted the interest of many thinkers in the West. (See the I Ching main article for historical and philosophical information). The process of consulting the book as an oracle involves determining the hexagram by a method of random generation and then reading the text associated with that hexagram, and is a form of bibliomancy. Each line of a hexagram determined with these methods is either stable (“young”) or changing (“old”); thus, there are four possibilities for each line, corresponding to the cycle of change from yin to yang and back again.
Earth DNA 