This beginner’s guide to divination focuses on the Three Pillars of Divination, which are the principles of spirituality, intuition, and rituals. Divination is an ancient practice used to gain insight into a person’s life by interpreting symbols or understanding omens. It is believed that these symbols and signs can provide knowledge of the person’s life.
There are various methods of divination, including Tarot cards, rune readings, I Ching readings, and pendulum readings. Using a pendulum mat, practice, and an open mind can help tap into intuition and seek guidance from within. Bibliomancy involves opening a book at random or using numerical associations to land on specific passages or pages. Lithomancy is the practice of performing divination by reading stones, while the interpretation of signs, details, fantastic objects, and hidden geometry can be used for advanced notice of omens.
Various divination systems include tarot cards, dowsing with a pendulum, crystal balls, palm reading, the I Ching, and reading tea leaves. These methods can be found around the world and practiced under different names in different cultures. Body divination involves pressing your forefinger and thumb together as you ask yourself a yes or no question. Other instruments or practices of divination include Tarot-card reading, rune casting, tea-leaf reading, automatic writing, water scrying, and psychedelics.
Divination is employed to discover the source of trouble in order to remove it, whether through sacrifice, countersorcery, or accusation and ordeal. Each day, one should perform a reading on themselves or about what the day might hold, logging the reading into a journal. Divination practices are often based in nature, taking form through its elements, such as tea leaves, bones, nuts, and more. By following these guidelines, beginners can navigate the world of divination and start their own mystical journey.
📹 Dive Into Divination: Tarot, Pendulums, Scrying, and More – Decide on the Best Technique for You
See More ☾ Today we’re demystifying divination by looking into a few popular techniques. We’re covering Card reading, scrying, …
What does it mean to practice divination?
Divination is an art or practice that seeks to predict future events or uncover hidden knowledge, often through omen interpretation or supernatural powers. It is often used to gain unusual insight or intuitive perception. For instance, reading tea leaves and other forms of divination can provide insight into the stock market. Shamanism, a practice in Korean politics, has a long history of leaders seeking out shamans for their divination and truth-telling abilities.
However, the commercialization of these practices has created a warped caricature of their true purpose and sacred history. Daily meditation, journaling, and self-development through divination, including oracle and tarot cards, have been used in ancient African traditions. Despite their historical significance, the commercialization of divination practices has created a warped caricature of their true purpose and sacred history.
How is divination practised?
Divination practices are often rooted in nature and can be performed using various elements such as tea leaves, bones, nuts, water, cards, and other non-nature-based components. They can also be done in and as the body, such as through spirit possession, mediation, and dreams. Divination can be diagnostic, offering advice, guidance, rules, and taboos to be followed, forecasting future events, and interventionist, intervening in the receiver’s spiritual and physical health or destiny.
However, it is also a ritual and tradition, constituted by an ongoing dialogue with more-than-human agents. Nature is traditionally fundamental to divination, with indigenous metaphorical roots remitting to natural phenomena such as stones, water, and animal behavior. In some African and Afro-American religious communities, animal blood and other sacrifices are necessary to obtain enough vitality for the gods to manifest in an oracle. Different concepts of temporality apply in divination, such as the need to comprehend multiple temporalities for engaging in “evil eye” exorcisms and coffee-cup readings.
Modernity’s temporality has little to say about dream signs from the future and how they penetrate the present for dreamers. In modern times, the present is something impermeable, unaffected by future-telling oracles, such as coffee-cup readings, which interpret patterns on remaining coffee sediments.
How do I train divination?
Training the Divination skill involves configuring rifts to convert memories into enhanced experience, harvesting from wisps until a full inventory is obtained, and using the “Convert memories” option on an energy rift to deposit the memories. This conversion consumes energy to grant a larger amount of experience. Players can purchase energy from the Grand Exchange to ensure they always have enough energy for enhanced experiences.
During training, players should harvest enriched wisps and collect chronicle fragments, making a boon each time they advance to a higher level wisp colony. Players have a 1/25 chance of spawning a chronicle fragment, which can be exchanged for Divination experience or used to power rifts. Catching a chronicle fragment gives Hunter experience equivalent to 10 times the player’s Hunter level. If caught within 6 seconds, players receive an enhanced chronicle fragment, giving double the amount of experience and empowering percentage when used to empower a rift.
Chronicle fragments can be used to empower an energy rift by using the “Empower” right-click option, which grants Divination experience based on the player’s Divination level and charges up the rift. Upon reaching 100 charge, the rift spawns a corresponding enriched wisp and provides a Memory Overflow buff to nearby players for 10 minutes.
What does God say about divination?
Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 19:26, Leviticus 20:27, and Deuteronomy 18:10-11 all prohibit the practice of necromancy, divination, and soothsaying. These laws are portrayed as foreign and are the only part of the Hebrew Bible to mention such practices. The presence of laws forbidding necromancy proves that it was practiced throughout Israel’s history.
The exact difference between the three forbidden forms of necromancy mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:11 is uncertain, as yidde’oni (“wizard”) is always used together with ob (“consulter with familiar spirits”) and its semantic similarity to doresh el ha-metim (“necromancer” or “one who directs inquiries to the dead”) raises the question of why all three are mentioned in the same verse. The Jewish tractate Sanhedrin distinguishes between a doresh el ha-metim, a person who would sleep in a cemetery after starving himself, to become possessed, and a yidde’oni, a wizard.
In summary, the prohibition of necromancy in the Hebrew Bible is a significant aspect of Jewish history.
What are some examples of divination practices?
Divination, a practice that originated in ancient Roman culture, has evolved over time to encompass a wider range of beliefs and practices. In some societies, divination is a common practice but not solely focused on discovering the will of the gods. The concept of godly providence controlling human affairs is unusual, but humbler spirits are often thought to intervene in troublesome ways.
Divination is universally concerned with practical problems, private or public, and seeks information for decision-making. The source of such information is not mundane, and the technique of obtaining it is often fanciful. There are many mantic (divinatory) arts, and a broad understanding can only be gained from a survey of actual practices in various cultural settings.
Divination is attended by respect and the attitude of participants may be religious, but the subject matter is ephemeral, such as an illness, a worrisome portent, or a lost object. Divination is a consultative institution, and the matter posed to a diviner may range from a few lost coins to high questions of state. The casual or solemn nature of the matter is usually matched by that of the diviner in terms of attitude, technique, and style.
The diviner’s art has many rationales, and it is difficult to describe them as a distinctive social type. They may be a shaman, priest, sorcery peddler, or a holy person who speaks almost with the voice of prophecy. To appreciate the significance of the diviner’s art in any culture or era, one must be familiar with prevailing beliefs about man and the world.
How do I tap into my divine energy?
Introspection can foster a deeper connection with the divine through mindful practices like meditation and reflection. Relaxing into quiet moments and embracing inner stillness allows for intuition and guidance. Surrendering to the natural flow of life, as outlined by Tiny Buddha, is crucial for healing. Witnessing signs and synchronicities in daily life can be a divine guide towards healing opportunities.
Release past traumas and limiting beliefs, creating space for healing energy to flow through. Surrender doesn’t mean giving up, but trusting the wisdom of your divine to guide you towards the best possible outcome. Trusting in the unknown can lead to great things happening.
What is the oldest method of divination?
Deuteronomy 18:10-12 and Leviticus 19:26 may be interpreted as forbidding divination, but some biblical practices, such as Urim and Thummim, casting lots, and prayer, are considered divination. Trevan G. Hatch disputes these comparisons, arguing that divination did not consult the “one true God” and manipulated the divine for the diviner’s self-interest. One of the earliest known divination artifacts, the Sortes Sanctorum, is believed to be Christian-rooted and uses dice to provide future insight.
Divorce was associated with sacrificial rituals in the ancient Near East, including Mesopotamia and Israel. Extispicy was a common example, where diviners would pray to their god(s) before vivisecting a sacrificial animal. Both oracles and seers in ancient Greece practiced divination, with oracles being the conduits for the gods on earth and their prophecies being understood as the will of the gods verbatim. Seers, who were more numerous than oracles and did not keep a limited schedule, were highly valued by all Greeks, not just those with the capacity to travel to distant sites like Delphi.
Is tarot card divination?
Since ancient times, people have used magical or mystical rituals to predict the future. Tarot card decks, originally used for playing cards, became used for fortune telling in the mid-18th century. Dreams have also been used for divination, with early Egyptians believing they contained god-sent messages. In the 18th and 19th centuries, publishers issued books and pamphlets to help readers assess their dreams.
Can playing cards be used for divination?
Cartomancy is a form of fortune-telling or divination that emerged in Europe in the 14th century. Practitioners, known as cartomancers or card readers, use standard 52-card decks for fortune-telling readings in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. In France, the 32-card piquet stripped deck is most commonly used, although the 52-card deck can also be used. In English-speaking countries, the most common form of cartomancy is tarot card reading, with tarot cards being almost exclusively used for this purpose. Cartomancers, card readers, or simply readers are all professionals involved in cartomancy.
How do you unlock Divination?
Upon initiating gameplay, players will have the opportunity to unlock divination, which can be accessed via the draw menu. This feature can be toggled between standard fighter draw and divination at the bottom right.
What religion follows tarot cards?
This literature review examines the relationship between Tarot cards and New Age religion, emphasizing their function in the contemporary study of the New Age movement.
I loved the trance music disclosure😄. I started doing cartomancy (playing cards divination) a few years ago though its not a constant practice. Without yet knowing the system i use by heart, i’ve had extremely accurate results. The cards i’ve pulled have always been pertinent to the question at hand & made sense. In my experience, it’s the being able to ground & get into a trance-like state that brings forth the answers, not so much memorizing the system. Although i think its important to at least be familiar with the system, and make the clear decision that it’s the system your looking for answers from. What i did was study up on a few systems (there were at least 3 i looked into) and then chose the one i felt more drawn to. If your testing out various systems, declare which one you intend to use before each reading. Once you decide on the system you’ll use for good, meditate with your deck and make that decision known to it.
I use pendulum for more low-stakes things (it’s easy to carry in a pocket) and tarot for bigger-picture stuff. I also use the pendulum to clarify cards in tarot readings when they aren’t making sense to me. I’m making an ogham stave set but it takes a long time to get to know the trees and it won’t be finished any time soon :> Thanks for the article!
Tarot was my “gateway drug” to all things witchy, but I do like to branch out. I also love layering techniques for big questions and readings – using tarot and runes in the same reading. I have a few of these items for divination that I haven’t used much recently, or much ever, and this is inspiring me to pull them out and try them. Your articles are always interesting and well structured for a beginner like me. Thank you!
My first divination tool was 3 pennies and an I’ching divination book that I got in a thrift store. After 7 years I got my first Tarot deck. I didn’t realize how difficult the I’ching was for beginners. I love both but now I only ask the I’ching for the really big stuff and the Tarot for everything else. Ty Hearth and all of yall.
Thank you for the disclaimer at the end; I think it is really important. I try to keep my divination for things I don’t directly control. I keep my will in my control and use divination mostly as communication, not much for telling the future. I strongly advise people who ask not to use divination to make decisions. Make decisions based on reason and your own intuition. If you make important decisions based on divination, you will end up second guessing your decisions and maybe hold resentment or regret if you let divination direct your decisions
I have been seeing things in mirrors as long as I can remember. I thought everyone saw things in mirrors and was amazed to find out other people didn’t! I am a card reader. All cards, it doesn’t matter, I like them all. Lenormand and tarot are my favorites. I scry with Crystal balls and mirrors. I have a ridiculous collection of pendulums. I play around with tea leaves when the opportunity presents itself. I also help people with dream interpretation. I think we all have to find our power move. Mine is divination. I understand crystals and some herbolgy, astrology, and numerology, but divination is my fast lane. I say try it all out. You won’t know what you are good at until you try it. Thank you for the content.
I use playing cards for card divination and it’s definitely my favorite than other card techniques. It’s actually a very simple reading. If you’re just starting out, I recommend the book “Cartomancy in Folk Witchcraft” by Roger J. Horne. The cards can be read by a single card or by different spreads. And yes the imagery is limited but it’s more about patterns. Yes each suit and numbers have their own symbols and meaning, but if you have more red than black in a reading this can be a pattern to decipher. Or if you have more 9’s than other numbers, for a basic example could be a pattern too. I found reading playing cards actually easier than tarot and I even went to modify my playing deck by making them look “vintage” by burning their edges or dipping them in coffee. This also helped me bond with them more. And then I also got them their own box that I also customized, further building a bond. Just wanted to give a little bit more of a deeper view for anyone who may be interested in playing cards. I have found them so rewarding!!
On the rare instances that I do divination, I usually use Tarot Decks. So far each of my readings for myself and other people have been very accurate! I do want to dip my toe in pendulum reading. I believe my deceased grandmother was leading me to her in my aunt’s house with my amethyst pendulum. It was a very special and exciting moment, and I think I want to learn a little more and maybe be able to communicate with her a little better.
Love articles on this topic ! Also, if you could, do a article and/ or articles on the different Clairs. I try to find more on this but it seems hard. Most people focus on only clairvoyance or just 3-4. I hear there’s 8. If not, can you point me in a direction to get more information on all the different Clair senses ? THANKS !!!
What a beautiful and informative article. I try using the pendulum method, but that didn’t work really well for me. Now cards is my thing. I love the tarot. Also if i may add please I Ching is a nice divination tool. It is very nature based and you learn a lot about Chinese philosophy using them. Have a gentle heart and peaceful mind.
A great overview, I especially liked the warning at the end. I primarily use tarot for myself and clients, though I’ve been known to scry also. This article has made me want to try pendulums which I’ve always thought of as not being worth it for some of the same reasons Hearth mentions, maybe I’ll find a new appreciation for them!
I’m a relatively new witch, & so far I’ve struggled with reading Tarot cards,but with the help of my guardian angels and spirit guides i manage pretty well with my guardian angel message tarot pack and my crystal reading cards. Scrying with a crystal ball makes me feel that my eyes are bleeding and i fall asleep lol, witches Runes work well with me, i recently bought a book on palmistry, but my all time favourite is the pendulum, i love my pendulum 😊
I use mostly tarot and oracle cards. I use the cards more to answer to this moment if I’m wanting to have other view to the problem I’m having. Sometimes I ask about the future or guidance. I also made my own pendulum, but I have not used it much. I’m interested about the runes, I plan to do a set, but I that is going to be a long project, as learning the runes can take some time.
I’ve been viewing your content over the past couple of weeks as it’s so good. I really like your hearing your thoughts, it’s non-judgemental and non-biased. I love your website. Ya, that’s happened to me, something I own becomes lost and not sure how I lost it to find the last thing I lost to be right in front of me — house spirits maybe, hee. ☺
I started with a crystal pendulum, then Nordic runes because of my Danish ancestry. Never thought I’d get into tarot but 2 years ago, a deck called my my name and now I have both tarot and oracle decks. I use each for different things. I haven’t tried a thing, but I do have an obsidian mirror so who knows?! 😁
I use all sorts of techniques, and typically in tandem with each other. I use taceomancy (my phone tries to autocorrect that to necromancy) along with my tarot deck, and they work wonderfully together for me. Also, pendulums work really well for my practice and I typically carry one on me at all times. Often I end up using whatever necklace I’m wearing at the time if I forget one at home.
The thing at the end of the article, I’ve had that happen before. And I’ve literally emptied every item in my purse, the item was missing for THREE WEEKS!! I’d checked over my purse multiple times as well as everywhere else. Then one day I reach in my purse, and it’s there on top of everything. I was so confused. Now currently it’s also happening with a witchy necklace I bought. I set it down, and now, it’s just gone. My husband and I have looked over every inch of the house multiple times, and it’s just gone. I’m sure it will pop up when it feels like it. lol
I’ve begun with tarot and oracle cards. I’m taking up the pendulum. I’m learning the runes (starting with Elder Futhark, but planning to learn more) this one is such a big one that requires so much research and reading, I will be working on it for years I’m sure. Someday I hope to learn scrying, but I’ve got a lot of work to do before getting to that. It’s on my path tho.
I have been trying to find a pendulum that speaks to me and feels right. As such, I haven’t purchased one yet. However, the other day I felt I needed one for a situation that needed a quick answer, and net thing I know I’m using my earplugs that I use when I go to the gun range. And it worked. And it’s worked consistently ever since then. And I’m so confused about it. I’m honestly not sure how to feel about it because I was wanting to stay away from artificially-made stuff like plastics and rubbers and such…. and here my earplugs are literally nothing BUT plastic and rubber.
Hey Hearth 😊 I was just exploring all the other divination possibilities apart from what I know now, when I saw this article. I use tarot/oracle cards mainly, sometimes with a pendulum when I have an extra yes/no question for example. I love runes as well but I am learning. What I am interested in, but you have not mentioned here (I know there are so many), is bibliomancy, that can sometimes be really interesting. Also like charms or astrology/rune dice… there are so many but I don’t like every one of them 😅
Hi, I loved this article! Very informative and interesting. I have dabbled in tarot and rituals etc but would like to spend some time leaning more into these techniques, in particular pendulums that I’ve been drawn to before but never practiced. Would you say the pendulum has to have a pointed shape or just something that hangs? I was considering using one of my necklaces as it is on me a lot and connected to my energy but it is circular. Furthermore, do you think it is important to energetically charge your pendulum before use for personalised answers or for it to be more energetically cleansed or neutral? Thanks again for the wonderful, accessible magical content ❤
I don’t ask my pendulum to show me yes and no before each session. We got that sorted out on Day One and I never saw any reason to go over it again. I do find it interesting that almost all pendulums that I’ve heard about, including mine, show yes by swinging forward and backward, and no by swinging left and right, just as you said here. Thanks for another great article, Hearth!
My favorite method is sprinkling dried rose petals into a bowl of water… I personally use a silver plated bowl, rain water, and try to only use roses I’ve grown in my garden. (Not necessary but I find that guidance and clarity come through clearer that way.) i also have 22 random deer bones, i throw down on the ground and communicate with the fae, i was told the bones need to have moss growing on them so that life, death and rebirth are all emcompassed.
That was really interesting. I found psychometry comfating for me as a lounch pad the woman who was leading the development cercle tried to use desawade me and try using one of my clairs. My mum used tarot cards for years. I’m glad you mentioned a black mirror I got one not long ago and I should practice more. The woman in the shop said just look at it but I think you have shad more light on it for me. Its really hard to find deadicated people these days and cercles tend to be full. I did do a few readings and gave people a few names once I was in an open circle and I got a squirrel in my mind looking for nuts and I found myself looking at my sandy trousers which brought Colombo to mind. It turned out that her Husband was a detective and she Helped with missing people. I used to get music in my mind it was like having Bumble Bee giving me Messages😂. I’m not a wyitch I was more a medium or tried to be. I had my good weeks and bad. The woman who tried to teach us kept interupting and wanted to know what the person looked like. Maybe I should try and find my own way of Developling. And learn how to recognise the signs. Once I was giving a message and a memory came to me of my dad getting frustrated because my mum accidently frew the tax dics away I asked are you having trouble with your car and the person checked and said her tax dic needed changing. I’m a bit clairaudient at times but I can’t force it and I’m not confident in groups because I feel like people are judging me.
Timely, as I am just now getting into this as a newbie to everything. I’ve been trying to find a decent article on oracle cards because I find them so confusing-especially given that they are all so different and have such random stuff written on the cards and there is no set rules/descriptions like with tarot cards. I’ve been shopping for a deck but I can’t say which is even right for me. Surely there’s more important things to go on or by other than just interesting or pretty artwork right?