chapter 2

Divination Journeys with the Tree of Worlds

We have used the integrated structure of seven worlds or realms as a map for shamanic-yogic-alchemical divination journeys, both with and without entheogenic amplification. Each person travels within their own personal energy-field form, and we may also create an imaginary vehicle for the shared group journey to the different realms. For journeys to the upper world realms the vehicle may be a spirit airplane, flying carpet, or space ship that can travel over terrestrial landscapes, as well as through the corresponding realms at the higher-frequency dimensions. For lower world journeys we may use an earth-diving vessel or vehicle of some kind.

In preparation for each excursion, we remind ourselves that we have the intention to explore these realms—without getting personally caught or trapped in them. In part two, Alchemical Divination, I wrote about the seven phases of divination rituals, which are summarized below. Attending to them with conscious intention will greatly enhance the depth and power of the divinations. Whether or not awareness-amplifying substances are used, the basic principles and the importance of preparation and integration are the same. The verbalizations need not be elaborate and should be spoken (or thought) in the person’s own voice and in a simple, natural manner. The preparatory and integrative steps may then be repeated—if only briefly—before each of the four phases of this Tree of Worlds divination journey.

Seven Phases of Divination Journeys

Phase One involves aligning with the spirits of the four directions and recognizing the spirits of the place and the spirits of the time—season of year, phase of moon, time of day.

Phase Two is to state the intention of the ritual, such as healing, obtaining guidance, or exploration. For the meditations described here, affirming the purpose of exploring the different realms of the Tree of Worlds is sufficient and appropriate.
Phase Three is to practice the yogic-alchemical purificatio: ignite a light-fire sun, about six inches in diameter, in each of the three main chambers of the body-mind—in the heart center, the head center, and the abdominal center below the navel. These are the focus areas for feeling-emotional awareness, thinking-knowing awareness, and sensing-body awareness, respectively. The purifying light-fire energy radiates out from each of these three suns in all directions. A fourth sun is invoked, situated above the crown of the head: this provides the main connection to the Great Spirit, Higher Self, or Inner Wisdom-Guide. This practice is illustrated in the alchemical illustration on page 559.
Phase Four is to invoke and name your spirit allies and helpers from the animal, plant, fungal, and mineral realms, particularly those with whom you have already established a connection through previous shamanic work or experiences. If you don’t have such a connection, you can consciously affirm your receptivity and interest in finding allies in these realms.
Phase Five (or the order can be reversed with phase four) is to invoke the names and affirm your connections with the spirits of your ancestors and human relations, as well as elders, spirit guides, and deities. Such connections are made with remembrance of previous connections and gratitude for blessings received. If specific healing and knowledge-giving deity spirits have previously appeared in your visions, it is particularly important and valuable to strengthen these connections by consciously recalling them and magnifying them with intentional awareness.
Phase Six, the actual visualization journey, is to think-speak the name of each of the realms that you are about to explore.
Phase Seven is to intentionally return to the Middle Earth human world from which you started, remembering and reflecting on what you experienced in this world.

We always start our guided excursions exploring the Middle Earth World. This corresponds to what I call our personal life-world—the web of all our actual relations and connections with other human and nonhuman beings; our families, communities, cultures, and societies; and the places where we live, the bioregions, cities, and continents. After each focused excursion to one of the other realms, we return to our human life-world, take stock of what we saw and learned, and ask how that relates to our intentions for healing, visioning, or exploration. In our divination journeys we have not gone to the two extreme poles of the world axis tree—the Deep Space World or the Earth Center Fire World—although in theory this would be possible.

As with the journeys in the Buddhist six realms and all kinds of divination journeys, it is essential to practice maintaining an attitude of compassionate equanimity toward self and others, in order to preserve the clarity of observational focus. To find the way into one of the other, non-ordinary worlds, we use our memories of dreams and visionary experience when we have been in that world in the past. We use selected recorded music to evoke the qualities of being in each of these realms. Some recordings we have used are listed in the notes at the end of the book.

The divination journeys on the World Tree, after the preparatory exploration of the Middle Earth World, are divided into four phases. In workshops over the past ten years, we experimented with different lengths of focused divination and rest periods. We settled on thirty minutes for each of the two upper and two lower worlds, and an additional five to ten minutes for rest and integration after each segment. We experimented with different sequences, always beginning and ending with the Middle Earth World, and alternating upper and lower world journeys. We finally found that the most useful sequence (after the Middle Earth World) was: (1) three Lower Earth Worlds; (2) Atmosphere Sky World; (3) Deep Earth World and norns; and (4) Solar System Planetary World. The divination journeys to the norns are generally the most productive in terms of getting answers to personal questions.

Divination Journeys to the Lower Earth Worlds

After the preparatory light-fire concentrative meditations (while in the Middle Earth World) and adopting an attitude of open-minded compassionate inquiry, you find or seek your own personal entrance to the first of the three Lower Earth Worlds—the realm of snakes, soil, roots, creepers and crawlers, mushrooms, and microbes. An entrance to this world may be a memory image of a rooted tree that you know somewhere in your personal world or some other cave-like or descending hollow area that you have come to use in shamanic lower world journey practices. Animal guides typically encountered here are those reptilians who live close to the ground or partially underground, including Snake, Tortoise, and Lizard; but also burrowing animals like Mole and Badger; and rodents like Rat and Mouse—both notorious for occupying hidden and inaccessible places in our world; as well as Porcupine, Woodchuck, and crawling insects like Ant and Beetle. Cave dwellers and hibernating mammals may be encountered here as well as in the Middle Earth World.

Alchemical emblem: The fourfold sphere rules this Work of Fire. (from Atalanta Fugiens, 1618)

Alchemical emblem decoded as purificatio practice.

We have found that the most useful and insightful divinatory journeys to this lower earth root world (as well as the other worlds) result when you first establish an agreement with one of the totemic animals of this realm and ask that animal to be your guide or helper. It’s quite analogous to visiting a foreign country or city after first finding a friend who can be your local guide.

From a psychological perspective, we could say this is the realm best suited to becoming aware of parental and ancestral root systems that have affected our lives from the beginning. Such root world journeys overlap with psychotherapeutic approaches to disentangling prenatal, parental, and ancestral influences. One may also encounter root systems stemming from past incarnations, karmic debts, or entanglements with others in this life. The key is to keep the focus both on what we are seeing and on the attentional awareness beam of light-fire that functions to process or dissolve these entanglements.

Dwarves or little folk, like the Irish leprechauns or Hawaiian menehune, may show up in connection with plant and root spirits in journeys to the Lower Earth World. In journeys with ayahuasca, which is a brew prepared from cooking together the leaves from one plant and the bark of another, the two kinds of animal spirits most frequently encountered are Serpent and Jaguar. In the paintings of Pablo Amaringo, an experienced ayahuasquero who painted many of his visions, there are giant serpents, some on the ground, some in the river, some flying in the air. These serpentine vehicles may have other smaller, elf-like or dwarf-like humanoid creatures riding on them. I have seen the “little green people” in several of my ayahuasca experiences, sometimes as females dressed in green robes, dancing along the leaves of plants, singing as they dismantled pieces of my body armor, promising to reconstitute it later.

On one striking ayahuasca journey I had, the little green dwarves were holding up a screen, like the frame of a picture, divided into two parts. They were showing me that this was like the binary judgments we superimpose on our experience—whether it’s a perception of another person, or a feeling we are having, or the behavior of another person, or our own behavior. They were showing me that we tend to impose the judgments of “good or bad,” “beautiful or ugly,” “right or wrong” on our experience. They assured me that our imposition of these judgments is a prejudice, a pre-judgment, that inserts itself before we really experience the event, dividing everything into black or white when there are really seven colors, seven flavors, seven shadings, seven notes on any scale of sounds (Metzner, 2014).

Another area of the Lower Earth Worlds that we can explore is the sea river world. This realm may prove to be particularly interesting and relevant for those who live near the sea or river systems and whose work (or recreation) involves being on the water a lot, such as sailing or fishing. Here the major totemic animals are Salmon and other hunted fish, as well as Dolphin, Whale, Seal, and Otter in the ocean and river realms; as well as Badger, Beaver, Frog, Toad, Snake, and Dragonfly in the streams, marshes, and swamps that straddle earth-world and water-world.

Whales and dolphins have had since ancient times a deep mythic affinity and alliance with humans, which I have myself also experienced in several dream encounters with Whale.

I’m on top of a cliff, looking out to sea. Huge waves are forming and I warn others that they might crash on land. There is an ominous deep rumbling sound, and crashing waves with high spraying water. An enormous whale leaps out of the water, flies overhead, and lands on the earth, thrashing wildly. I’m awestruck. I’m wondering and worrying whether it will need help moving back out to sea. But he pushes and throws himself back out to sea—swimming off into the ocean vastness (RM).

I was doing some sandplay therapy work with Dora Kalff, the Swiss originator of this psychological healing modality, and had been telling her about the dishonesty, backstabbing, and manipulation that was going on in the school where I was an administrator. When I told her the whale dream she suggested the whale was showing me that both he and I were not in our natural environment and he was encouraging me to leave it—which I eventually did.

I was also inclined to give an ecological reading of the dream: Whale was demonstrating the urgency of the need for us humans to change our habits in relating to wilderness, whether oceanic or terrestrial. He was willing to go entirely out of his natural realm in order to reach out to me. A few years later, I was participating in a guided visualization exercise led by John McLean, at a gathering of bioregional activists, when I had another significant healing-teaching dream encounter with Whale.

I find myself in a cave at the seashore, remembering my friendship with Whale. John McLean had said something about whales being in the sea the way we human animals are on land. I was feeling-observing the whales’ power and ease compared to my weakness and insecurity. Our human, skinny, two-legged frame seemed so puny compared to their massive strength. But Whale said to me, “You can be on land the way we are in the sea.” As I absorbed that teaching I started to feel that same easy strength in my relationship to my own human two-legged form (RM).

Practice—Whale Breathing

To enhance our sense of being unified or related with whales and dolphins, we can practice breathing the way they do. They are, like us humans, air-breathing mammals, whose ancestors were terrestrial until about 150 million years ago, when they eventually opted and evolved for returning to the sea. Every few minutes they need to come up for air, take a quick gulping inhale, then exhale and return to diving down under. To practice, take a deep fast inbreath and let it out in a propulsive “blowing.” Repeat several times.

A completely different set of helper and allied spirits, unlike most of the spirits we know in the middle earth realm, is encountered when we focus attention on the stone mountain world. This is the world of minerals, crystals, metals, and fire, of technical gnomes and skillful dwarves. They are the masters of the densest matter and of the fires necessary for the making of instruments, tools, ornaments, and weapons. Some people find themselves naturally and easily at home in this stone-and-metal realm and making connections with it. For others, this realm may appear alien and intimidating. For yet others, there is both attraction and also fear. Complex entangled issues around power and wealth may come up for processing in this realm—which can be immensely helpful if one stays centered with the light-fire of compassionate awareness.

There are powerful animal spirit allies associated with the mountainous realms—mammals such as Mountain Goat and Marmot, and high-flying birds such as Eagle, Falcon, and Condor. No ordinary animal spirits are associated with the realm inside stone, though the alchemists wrote that the salamander was the elemental spirit of fire. In their engravings they portrayed salamanders writhing among flames. My friend the poet-mythologist Dale Pendell has suggested that seeing a salamander lizard dart out from a burning log fire might have been the naturalistic basis of this association—which feels true. However, I also remember that during an entheogenic experience with magic mushrooms, a whole group of us had a shared vision of a miniature dragon in the flames of the fireplace: he had eight beams of light-fire blazing out from his head and open-jawed face, which was turning from side to tide, looking at us. We all had the sense you could ask this fire salamander divinatory questions.

Practice—Fire-Gazing

This practice is used during peyote ceremonies, where you are staring into the fire for hours, while noting the medicine changes in your body. It can also be used when the entheogenic ceremony is taking place near or around a fireplace. The practice consists of first centering your awareness in the head, heart, and abdomen centers, and energizing the internal light-fire energies in those centers. You then visualize a linkage between the fire inside and the fire outside. As you gaze at the dancing flames, you may begin to see the miniature dancing dragons or alchemical salamanders.

In this, as in the other lower earth worlds, personal memories of real-world or dream-world encounters in these realms may mingle with never-before-encountered places and beings, with whom silent alliances may be forged. Always, it is advisable and helpful, as one emerges from such encounters back into the here-now world of the Middle Earth World, to recall to mind the details of who and what was seen, the colors and shapes, and to ask with inner questioning for the names or identities of the particular beings encountered. This then establishes an ongoing agreement to explore these realms consciously and intentionally in future divination journeys.

Divination Journeys to the Atmosphere Sky World

As with all the divination journeys to the different worlds, lower and upper, on the great cosmic World Tree, we start by re-attuning ourselves to our own life-tree axis and reminding ourselves of our exploratory and healing intentions. We reenergize the meditative light-fire tools in the different energy centers on the central vertical axis, and tune in to the purifying and clarifying light-fire spreading out in all directions, and downward and upward along the central vertical axis.

As described in the previous chapter, those who have practiced shamanic journey work may have found and developed a preferred method of traveling intentionally to the first layer of the upper world—whether by climbing the cosmic tree, or by riding on a great flying bird, or by spreading wings and flying as a bird, or accompanied by a bird. Others may be able to access this realm by recalling to mind a vivid flying dream they’ve had and intentionally re-identifying with the world of that dream and how the body felt when flying.

Those who practice shamanic upper world journeys, supported by the drumming method, may have a bird or other flying spirit that they acquired in the course of their training and learning, and with which they engage in such journeys. Repeatedly and intentionally re-connecting with spirits already encountered before strengthens the practice and turns a spontaneous affinity into a working relationship or practical friendship. It is generally recommended, in shamanic work, not to disclose the identity of one’s power animal to others, as this may open one to malicious maneuvers from spirits or other human beings with destructive or manipulative agendas.

In general, one could say that shamanic spirit allies can assist the practitioner for any chosen purpose. Some shamans would say, however, and I concur with this observation, that the animal spirits of the middle earth realm are more likely to be helpful in healing projects that involve human relationship issues; whereas spirits of the lower earth realms are more relevant to healings that require delving into the microcosm of the body’s organs and cells, as well as subconscious memory imprints; and that connections with flying spirits in the Atmosphere Sky World are likely to prove especially helpful when one is looking for heightened perspective and visions of future possibilities.

Winged spirits, like birds, especially the high-flying raptors, like eagles, falcons, or hawks, are known to have phenomenal visual capacities, far exceeding human or terrestrial mammal capabilities. Owls have tremendous night-vision capabilities, which they use in their nighttime hunting forays; buzzards, ravens, and crows are also hunters and carrion feeders that fly through the upper layers of the middle world (or lower layers of the upper world) and can serve the shamanic practitioner with valuable insights into hidden circumstances and conditions.

Many people don’t allow themselves to “see into the future” because they believe it is impossible. I have often recommended the following practice to remind and demonstrate to oneself how a simple upward shift in perspective, to a bird’s-eye view, can enable one to see simultaneously into the past, present, and future.

Practice—Future Time Perception

Imagine you are driving along a winding mountain road, where you can’t see what’s coming around the next curve. Now imagine you are able to adopt a bird’s-eye view from a couple of hundred feet up in the air. Now the extended winding road lies in plain sight—you can see the parts of the road in the driver’s past and you can see into the probable futures of the driver below. For example, you may see the driver encountering a truck after a few more turns in the road. Notice that you are seeing probabilities and not predicting. Something unexpected could happen, like an accident, that generates new probability lines. Seeing lines of future probability and other possibilities does not detract from free will. On the contrary, by anticipating future conditions we are able to make better choices, to minimize mistakes and dangers, and to move more effectively toward realizing our purpose.

Such higher and wider perspectives can also be gained by tuning in with the angelic spirits associated with mountains, especially traditionally sacred mountains, like Mount Shasta in Northern California. Passionate climbers who love the mountains often know this intuitively, though most are hesitant to talk about it or even admit it to themselves. Artists, musicians, and practitioners of meditation within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition have found creative and spiritual inspiration by conversing with cloud spirits like the sky-dancing dakinis. Encounters with winged angelic messengers can reconnect humans with high spiritual healing and visioning capacities that are both their birthright and the promise of their destiny.

Memory Practice—Your Childhood Guardian Angel

All children have varying degrees of clairvoyant sensitivity that gradually diminishes with age under the pressures of conventional parenting and schooling, not to mention child abuse or neglect. But when parental figures are supportive of the dreams and visions their children relate, or if the child is exceptionally strong and self-confident in their spiritual gifts, then this capacity may remain and develop. See if you can remember having an “imaginary playmate” who you talked and played with as a child; or if you ever had experiences of inexplicable happiness where you felt safe and protected in nature, even though apparently alone at the time—that was the presence of your guardian angel.

After exploring the upper world realms, we consciously and intentionally return to the Middle Earth World and reflect on the insights and perceptions we received.

Divination Journeys to the Deep Earth World

As I wrote in chapter 1, I had been reading for some time about the mythic imagery relating to Mimir, the Guardian of the Well of Memory situated at the root of the world tree in Norse mythology, and about the three norns, goddesses of fate and destiny, before I realized that the divination methods of the ancient völvas and seers could still be used today. Asking questions of Mimir or the norns is in essence not that different from the divinatory questioning involved in rune casting, Tarot card reading, or consulting the I Ching. In fact, it is more direct since you are addressing the Inner Teacher-Knower without an intermediary oracular system. All divination methods are, of course, subject to interpretation and possible distortions due to egotistic fantasies.

In our practice, we always start with several minutes of meditative attunement to the central vertical axis and igniting, with intention, a light-fire sun in the three main energy centers—the heart, the pelvis, and the head. A fourth sun, stationed above the head, adds strength and light to the linkage between personal or inquiring self and Higher or Knowing Self (see page 559). We formulate, as specifically as possible, our divinatory question. Typically these may relate to issues of wounding or difficulty from the past, or of visioning and discerning a path of future development. The more specific the question, the more specific the answer likely to be received.

To reach the Well of Memory at the root of the world tree, we first ask permission from Mimir, the Keeper of the Axis and Guardian of the Well. Our personal tree axis is situated perpendicular to the surface and the gravity center of the Earth. At the same time, there is a structural analogy between our spherical energy field and that of the Earth. This is the analogical connection that we use to reach Mimir.

Divinations with Mimir and the Well of Memory

Working with the Well of Memory is a variant of the classic shamanic lower world journey. After tuning in to your own central vertical axis, think of extending the axis to the poles of the Earth—visualize a line from the crown of your head to the North Pole, and from the soles of your feet to the South Pole. If you are sitting, then at the root chakra is where the link between you and the Earth axis is strongest. Here you can ask to connect with Mimir and ask him for permission to access the planetary Well of Memory. He may ask you to explain your purpose—in which case you can tell him your divinatory questions.

He will also likely ask you what you are willing to pay for this consultation. As we know from the myths, Odin himself paid the steep price of one eye to obtain knowledge from Mimir. We do not need to give up binocular vision to obtain divinatory knowledge, but at the least, I suggest, we need to pay respect and pay attention. Interestingly, in German, one says die Aufmerksamkeit schenken—that is, give attention as a gift. Whether as a gift or as payment, attention is seen as something dynamic that one puts forth.

There are actually three distinct divinatory methods associated with the image of the Well of Memory, referred to obliquely in the poems of the Edda. One method of divination is looking into the water; another is drinking from the well; a third is immersion in the water of the well.

Drinking from the Well of Memory

After formulating your divinatory question about some issue or event in your past history, you take an imaginary cup (or make a cup with your hands) and lower it down the well a distance proportional to the time period you want to access. For example, if you are thirty years old and you want to access some event that occurred when you were ten, you can lower the cup two thirds of the depth into the well. As you lower it you may begin to see or recall a memory image of that time of your life. You gather memories, like you might gather water in a cup, then bring it back up to your mouth and drink it—that is, “take in” or “bring up” the memory images—and then feel-think how they can be integrated into the story of your life.

Looking into the Well of Memory

This is the method referred to in the famous lines of the Völuspá: “I know, Odin, where you’ve hidden your eye: in Mimir’s marvellous well.” Because Odin, the knowledge-seeking god, had given one eye, this eye is now looking back at him with self-reflecting knowledge. Anyone looking into the well of their past, sincerely seeking self-knowledge, will gain reflective understanding. This practice also can be targeted to view a particular time or particular place or personal interaction in our past experience. In a similar double movement the thought-perception-feeling is then brought back into the present heart-mind, head-mind, and body-mind to be reintegrated.

Immersion in the Well of Memory

This method involves total body-memory reactivation by immersion in the past experience. In the field of hypnotherapy, this method is called an absorptive trance; in German, it’s called Versenkung (“sinking-into-ness”). In the alchemical literature it is called solutio or dissolving, and is symbolized by a man sitting in a vessel of warm water, the vessel of transformation. Solutio furthers remembering because the barriers of forgetfulness and avoidance are dissolved. One can use a present problematic thought-feeling complex as the “affect bridge” into the past; or one can target a particular time/age/year. This method is particularly effective and applicable in prenatal memory work—because in the prenatal period most of our remembered impressions tend to be whole body-feelings associated with particular thoughts and images.

Divination with the Three Norns

When we have received permission from Mimir to proceed to the norns, we can then find ourselves in the presence of these Ancient Wise Ones. The three norns are usually visualized as shrouded and hooded female figures, wearing dark blue or deep purple cloaks, and indistinctly very old, very young, or ageless. It is quite possible however to go through the entire question-and-answer process with the norns without “seeing” them. Just asking, with sincere and respectful intention, gives us access to deep inner reservoirs of spiritual wisdom and guidance.

In group divination ceremonies with the three norns, awareness is amplified through the synergy among the participants. However, each person makes their own connection to the norns and is asking their own personal questions. In addition to asking personal questions about one’s own life situation, one can also ask questions about one’s family, community, society, and planet Earth.

With the norn Skuld, you can ask questions about a past situation, perhaps of your childhood, or the kinds of parental and ancestral issues often considered in psychotherapy. We have found the best results are obtained if one asks a specific question, rather than just a general “is there some karma I’m not aware of…?”

With the norn Verdandi, you can ask questions about what is the process most relevant for you to focus on at this present time. This present time could be this day, this year, this stage of your life cycle, this time in your family or community or world. Again, the specificity of the answer you receive will mirror the specificity of the question you ask.

With the norn Urd, you’re asking about your future destiny, the visions of your life, and how they may be realized. Usually in the divinations, the answers received do not mention units of time (years or decades)—but indicate waves of development. There may be visions of you and your children at a future age; or visions of the future of your community; or visions of the future of the bioregion or of the whole Earth.

We have found through experience that when doing future visioning of possible Earth changes, it is best to specify the particular place you are asking about, rather than just Earth in general. For example, if you just ask, show me the world in twenty-five years, and you get a vision of a lot of water, you could be looking at a region where there is normally now a lot of water. But if you ask, show me a terrestrial area, such as forest or grasslands known to you in the present time, and you see a lot of water, then you are seeing a future possibility or probability of flooding.

In one of our divination journeys in the year 1999, the last year of the millennium, one of the participants2 received a powerful vision of our planetary future and possible destiny. The medicine was jurema, a South American plant mixture similar in its effects to ayahuasca. The group was guided, when in contact with the norn Urd, to ask for future visions in five, twenty-five, and one hundred years. While five-year visions tend to be of personal and familial futures, at the longer time scales, societal and planetary changes are more likely to be seen.

In twenty-five years, I saw the world in chaos. We finally arrived at the point of population overload, global warming, environmental pollution, and a gaping ozone hole in the atmosphere. Technology was not able to keep pace with the environmental toxicities, and the result was like the great Biblical Flood. People were dying of all sorts of diseases and the rest were struggling to survive the economic collapse and environmental degradation. Technology increased primarily to expedite commerce and information, and not enough was invested toward environmental solutions and human survival. During this chaotic time, some did survive, and the human psyche was revolutionized and reoriented toward putting all the best human minds back in touch with Gaia mind, the natural world. Technology and nature were married in a symbiotic relationship mediated by humans.

In one hundred years, the result was that undersea cities were built where pioneering human survivors maintained life. On the surface of the planet, there were very few humans and mammals left, due to the toxic effects of pollution. The seas had risen due to warming, and many continents were flooded or reduced in size. Instead of shooting humans into outer space to survive, it was economically more feasible to develop undersea communities, a new Atlantis, to wait out eventual healing and cleansing of the Earth’s surface. Without the humans on the surface, Gaia would slowly recover.

In the meantime, these undersea communities would be in a delicate balance with the flora and fauna of the ocean depths. The collective psyche was oriented toward maintaining homeostasis and survival. We were able to communicate with insects, microbes, plants, animals, and minerals. This came about initially through the guided use of visionary medicines, which eventually evolved to other technologies to reconnect the human psyche to the natural world. The vision, although dire, was also beautiful. It was a death and rebirth of the entire human species, reorganized at a higher and more sensitive level of functioning.

Divination Journeys to the Solar System World

The upper world beyond the Atmosphere Sky World is the solar system world, which we can divide further into three levels or layers: (1) the Sun-Earth-Moon system; (2) the Sun with the inner, solid planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars; (3) the entire solar system, with all planets and moons.

(1) Sun-Earth-Moon system. We tune in with our primary cosmic environment, visible to the naked eye and identifiable by everyone. Sun and Moon are in the sky, an indelible part of our experience throughout all the days and nights of our lives. So common and basic is the awareness of these cycles (daily, lunar, annual) in our lives, that we recognize and honor them in the numerous rituals, large and small, in which we participate.

In the first phase of our divination ceremonies, even prior to invoking the personal spirit allies and animal guides that each person may have cultivated, we recognize and attune ourselves with the spiritual and life-supporting energies of the turning Earth, orbiting Moon, and central Sun. We tune in to our current phase of these cycles:

(2) We attune ourselves to the presence of the four inner and solid planets—Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars. Though identifiable by astronomers and amateur sky-watchers, and calculable in their motions by astrologers with their tables of ephemeris, the “wanderer” planets are not, for most people, recognized as different from stars. In our divination journeys we have traveled to these worlds intentionally, in our spirit spaceship, and practiced perceiving and sharing observations, similar to what Swedenborg reported from his journeys to the planets. One could say it is the consciousness field of that planet that we connect with or tune in with, while our physical body remains here on Earth.

(3) Our final target for this divination and exploration is to encompass the entire solar system as a whole, with the Sun and all the planets and all the moons. This is the field or system of our cosmic identity and consciousness. Were we ever to travel to other star and planetary systems, we might introduce ourselves to other cosmic travelers by saying, “Greetings, we are from the third planet out from the Sun in this solar system, in this particular sector of the Milky Way galaxy.”

After these journeys to the planets and stars, we return consciously and intentionally to the Middle Earth World of planet Earth and reflect on the insights and perceptions received.