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Scrying

The more common form of Divination is scrying, which is the "classical" divination, including the cliché-ridden Crystal or Mirror gazing. The Magickal Mirror existed long before Snow White's beautiful but misguided stepmother gazed into one and wasn't pleased by her looks, and the Crystal Ball was too expensive an item for many of the charlatans usually associated with it, having long been delegated to the realm of the "professional" met physicist, usually no more than the town leech.

Tradition decrees that the Crystal ball be clear, preferably quartz, and lit only by candle or moonlight, but it seems that people respond differently to different Crystals. A friend has a sphere of blue lace agate that she divines in, another uses the face of a crystal prism which is hung in his window to gather the power of the sun. Although the traditional crystal ball of the motion picture industry is kept in an ornate stand, often metal, the crystal ball of the scyrer rests on black cloth, usually velvet, which is occasionally draped over a stand to prevent scratching and give an ideal "blank" background. I've been told that using different color cloths influences the outcome, and are especially powerful for discerning information geared toward certain people or things associated with that color.

Scrying mirrors are also decreed by tradition to a few distinct forms, but the personalization of your mirror is what makes it work, not getting all of the Theban script in the proper alignment! Although usually black, often concave and rarely seen in daylight, the scrying mirror is personal, and it's the person who needs to feel comfortable.

If you've been doing Wicca or Metaphysics for a while, you're probably most comfortable in a circle. After it's cast, try doing the air visualization to "free your mind." Then, gaze deeply into the mirror or ball. Blink, shift, scratch, cough, and move normally, don't stare like a television medium! If you do stare, all that you'll see is spots, mist, and all the other creatures of eyestrain, and trust me, eyestrain sucks. If you can't blank your mind, repeat a nonsense word in your head.

This sounds bizarre, but I've been known to meditate on the phrase "blah, blah, blah," while scrying. It occupies my outer mind, like the music I play to write, or having the TV on while I study, while my inner mind can concentrate on the activity at hand. It has been my experience that as you awaken your brain, you need more stimuli, and I envy anyone who can sit in the darkness and focus all of their mind onto one thing, I wish I could!

Probably not the first time, but eventually as you scry (limit yourself to one half hour at a time at first) you'll begin to see misty forms in the surface, whether these are no more than cloud-like shapes waiting for interpretation or pictures that slowly form changes from person to person, but you will see something with persistence. If you can't get a mirror or ball, try a cup, bowl or plate of water. Black plates and bowls are often available at housewares shops for under two dollars, and make great containers for scrying water.

The ways that power effects objects are not yet fully understood to us, but neither were magnetism or gravity at one time. As humanity grows and learns, a lot of what we have "known all along" will become common knowledge outside of our community. Scrying is just that, an untapped, unknown power which we do without understanding. Life is not a cartoon, just because you don't know about gravity doesn't mean that you're capable of ignoring it. We don't need a "reason" why things fall, because they do, whether we want them to or not, and scrying is the same way, it works, but we just don't know why.