Divination

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Divination can be quite a divisive issue among mystics, though I don’t see it as necessarily so. Sometimes the pushback is dogmatic: quite a few religious scriptures seem to cast a negative light on the practice of divination and/or the character of diviners, so from the start it can be a problematic issue to raise. Sometimes the pushback is philosophical: they posit that since a mystic is supposed to give up everything to the Divine – including their own will – attempting to have a sneak peek of the Divine will via divination demonstrates a lack of faith and trust in the Divine. Neither criticism has ever appealed to me. Divination comes naturally to some people and quite easily to others: I figure that it is a Divine gift just as much as the gift of our five senses. Naturally, I am careful in how and when I broach the topic of divination in “mixed company” as it can go off the rails very quickly if one is not cautious!

I grew up pretty much ignorant of, and oblivious to, divination in general. Our family did not talk about it much, nor did they practice it -- excepting a few times that my mother used her favourite necklace as a pendulum for answering questions in a “yes” / “no” binary. And I had a great-uncle who was a talented tealeaf reader: I never met him, but my father told me stories about his uncle’s astonishing accuracy and then, after seeing many horrible things in the tealeaves (this would have been during the rough financial years of the 1930s and the deadly years of WW2) for clients, he simply stopped and never returned to it. Otherwise, I was ignorant about divination: the only thing I knew about Tarot was from the Bond film Live and Let Die and astrology was something that existed in a very uninteresting column in the daily newspaper.

Nor did I seek out divination. From the start of my mystical path in my mid-teens, I figured that whatever God wills is for the best, regardless of how we feel about it, and so just enjoy whatever comes! At the same time, however, I would regularly pay attention to weather forecasts and would attire and equip myself in advance and think nothing of it. However, later I began to wonder if it makes sense to do so at the worldly level, perhaps there is no harm in people doing the same at the spiritual level – and if they want to get a peek of their future, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just the same, it was not my cup of tea.

During my college years, I made friends with a couple of older guys who were quite into the New Age scene, in which divination was a very common practice. I humoured a woman who really wanted to conduct an annual Tarot reading on me for New Year’s Day, but I could not make heads or tails out of what she was telling me – except that one card associated with money somehow got reversed and it showed that I have disdain for money (no argument from me there!). But later I gradually ended up mixing with people who had a strong belief and considerable knowledge in astrology – and so I asked questions about it and got some interesting answers.

As it so often happens, I ended up paying more attention to divination when I was going through a rough patch in life and sought some answers. By the time that my attitude towards divination was opening up, I came to know about a good Vedic astrologer (distant relative of my friend) and I figured to give him a shot. I gave him only my name and date, time and place of birth beforehand and scheduled a meeting. I knew quite a bit about the technique of “cold reading”, so I made sure to be careful in how I responded to him when he asked me questions and I saw no signs of him trying such tricks on me. Right at the beginning of the meeting the astrologer told me many things about my family history with pinpoint accuracy: details which he could not have possibly known ahead of time. And he went on to tell me many general things about my future – nearly all of which came true in the fullness of time. Years later I consulted him again and at that time he warned me that I may lose my job in a week’s time (which happened, to the day!). Such experiences opened me up to the reality that divination can be fine honed to an extremely accurate predictive tool.

I guess that you can say that divination gradually “grew on me.” I came to realize that just like the captain of a ship would not be so foolhardy as to start a voyage without knowledge of the tides, the winds and the barometric pressure, in the same way it can be wise to determine the “tides of influence” in the more subtle realms especially before embarking on a major change in life. So, I made peace with divination philosophically but took no efforts to actually practice it.

Then, out of the blue, I got “jumped” by a strange book at my local branch of the public library. It was a new publication prominently displayed among other new books. It was a book entitled The Art and Practice of Geomancy written by one John Michael Greer. I had no idea what it was all about but was curious enough to borrow the book; plus, I had a very strong intuition that I needed to read the book. I took to it like a fish to water and have practiced it nearly daily ever since. That was 15 years ago. Then, I decided to “bite the bullet” of Vedic astrology – which I knew would be a major undertaking – about 10 years ago, spending all my free time over the course of a year reading various books, summarizing the information, and learning how to cast and interpret charts. Finally, about five years ago, my wife took an interest in tarot and so I bought her a Rider-Waite deck. Her interest in tarot faded after a while, but mine grew. And so, I ended up making it the final member of my “trio” of preferred methods of divination. I have tried a few other forms of divination, but they did not appeal to me.

I compare my three favourite forms of divination to different types of fruits. Tarot is like a bunch of grapes: the images on the cards are so impactful emotionally that very little effort is required to “tease” the meaning out of the spread. Geomancy is like a banana: some effort is required to gather information from the abstract patterns of dots that form the sixteen figures, like removing the peel in order to eat the fruit. Astrology, to me, is like a coconut: the flesh inside is very nourishing but a great deal of time and effort is required to fully interpret a chart. All three kinds of divination fascinate me and from time to time I change my mind over which is my current “favourite”. In the long run, however, geomancy has been my favourite: it is fairly obscure (which is an attractive feature to me), quite fast and easy to use, and gives very direct answers to the questions that are asked of it. Besides, it was very popular during the European Renaissance – my most favourite historical period.

In the early years of practicing geomancy, I wanted to become really good at certain kinds of readings. I kept very careful records and looked for repeating patterns among specific charts to “fine-tune” my chart interpretation skills. But then I found something: the harder I tried to restrict the interpretation – bend the charts to my rational will so to speak – the weaker the “signal” of the pattern became! How odd! But then I found out that scientific experiments on psychics in the mid-20^th century encountered something similar: when initially asked to guess the right image being seen by the “control” the psychics were able to guess correctly well above random chance – but when the experiment was carried out over long periods of time, the number of correct guesses gradually reduced to the baseline of random guesses, and if pressed further, would even go below the random guess baseline! It seemed as though the “intelligence” that was facilitating the process had grown bored and/or decided to ruin the experiment! Lesson learned: I backed off the intense scrutiny and learned to rely more on my intuition, but keeping in mind the foundational meanings and associations of the geomantic figures. This has served me well.

I have encountered people for whom divination has become an obsession or a crutch of sorts: they will hardly dare step outside their front door until they know in detail what their day will involve. Such people are dominated by fear. That’s no way to live one’s life – far better to be totally oblivious to all kinds of divination and just live based on one’s own capabilities and conscience. There is a famous saying among astrologers: the stars incline, but do not compel. That is, the future is not written in stone. The same is true for divination in general. What divination can do, however, is to give one a ‘heads-up’ and an opportunity to make changes in advance so as to either mitigate the event or take evasive steps. If, for example, one lived in a tsunami-prone area and divination indicated that a big tsunami will come soon, would it not make sense to make preparations in order to survive or avoid the raging waters? At the same time, it is important to have a solid grasp of reality, so that if divinations – either one’s own or those performed by others – seem to be really “out there” one can take the necessary dosage of “salt” with it.

For me, divination is a tool to help me stay in touch with my intuition, which is always a good tool to have handy. Living in a society that combines hyper-rationality with hyper-emotionality – both of which can drown out the “still, small voice” of God within – I find it good to find a few minutes a day to get in touch with that inner voice through various means, including divination. Being able to know “what’s around the corner” is secondary – though a very convenient secondary – purpose for becoming proficient in divination. It is also a good form of discipline and a process of ever-refining one’s skills. As a mystic, I believe that the Divine is talking to each and every one of us constantly through a huge number of methods: divination is merely one such way to “tune in” to what the Divine is communicating to us.