Divination and Magic
A divination system is a set of symbols that not only describes experience but can shape it. A divination shapes experience into a narrative, a story that we can tell ourselves or our querent. Sometimes, this story isn’t the story we want to act out, and that’s when we need more active options.
We can revise the story we live in with the same symbols we use to read it. The symbols the Anima Mundi uses to communicate with us may also be used to communicate with her. When she helps us read our story, we can also help tell our story back to her. In other words, we collaborate with the universe in creating our stories.
Not everything can be altered, if for no other reason than that we don’t really want to. Perhaps you notice in a reading that your business prospects look good but your prospects in romance seem less good. You could try to fix that, giving yourself equal success in both, and you may be successful. But if you’re the sort of person who would really rather spend extra time at the office, do you really want good prospects in love? Perhaps not, if they would distract you from your real interests. Magic requires that you learn what you really want, and divination can help with that.
You also may not want to modify your reading because you’re unsure of the ultimate results. I once interviewed for a job in another city. It paid well, the people seemed nice, and it promised lots of time to write. It wouldn’t be challenging, but it would be pleasant. I’d have to relocate, but I was single at the time and would have welcomed a change in scenery. I did a reading on whether I’d get the job after the second interview and the cards unambiguously said, “No, you’re not getting the job.” This reading didn’t match my experience. I nailed the interviews and felt confident.
On the flight back, I considered whether or not to do magic to get the job, just to make sure. I saw the lights of Chicago spread out under me as we approached O’Hare, and I started thinking about the deep-dish pizza I could get at the airport before I drove home. I really wanted the job. But I also realized that I liked the city I lived in and didn’t mind sticking around it longer.
I chose, instead, to do magic for a more general aim: to get a position that suited me in the Chicago area. The results were spectacular, but that’s another story, and I often think that if I had saddled myself with that other job, appealing as it was, I wouldn’t have the extremely pleasant (knock on wood) life I have now.
A lot of magicians perform divinations before doing any act of practical magic to prevent unforeseen side effects. The usual reason given is the monkey’s-paw syndrome. “The Monkey’s Paw” is a short story by W. W. Jacobs.31 In it, a family receives a dried monkey’s paw from a family friend, who claims to have gotten it from a holy man in India. It can grant three wishes, but they always turn out badly. The family wishes for money, then loses their son in a terrible accident and gets paid by the insurance company. In sorrow, the mother wishes for the return of her son, and they hear shuffling footsteps outside the door. Finally, realizing that his son has returned as a monster, the father wishes for his son to be back in the grave. The moral of the story is that fate rules our lives, and we should not wish for it to be different.
I’m not so convinced that the Anima Mundi is either so literal-minded or so malicious. One can use magic to cause harm, and one can accidentally cause harm through miscommunication, but I don’t think it’s worthwhile to regard the Anima Mundi as a monkey’s paw, nor is the moral of that story particularly apt for those of us who practice magic. After all, we change fate all the time: passive acceptance of chance is hardly a magical attitude. On the other hand, active acceptance of a situation is sometimes required. By active acceptance, I mean recognizing that sometimes we endure hardship in order to meet a larger good later. I just got back from my morning jog, and let me tell you, I’d have rather sat on the couch and eaten strawberries while watching reruns. But thirty minutes of panting and sweating is worth it if it improves my health and gives me more time to enjoy my life. Also, some hardships are unassailable. Sometimes bad things happen and we can’t do anything about them but learn to accept them. Magic will not solve all problems any more than any other technology can.
I think a preliminary divination is useful, however, because we can’t always know whether or not a greater good is in the offing. Staying in Chicago has influenced my life for the better in a way I couldn’t have predicted before. If I had willy-nilly forced myself into a position I was not suited for, I might have found myself much less happy. It’s useful to perform a divination not just before the magical ritual, but as part of it, to see what areas are likely to succumb to force and which are likely to remain implacable.
Practical Magic
But the role of cartomancy in magic doesn’t have to stop at divination alone. We can use the cards as a symbol system in their own right. There’s a long tradition of this practice in the tarot. For example, Donald Michael Kraig describes using the tarot in conjunction with the Qabalah as a tool not only for introspection but actual internal and external change.32 And Donald Tyson describes an entire ceremonial system working with nothing but the images of the tarot; this system, complete in its own right, could be an entire magical practice.33
As I’ve described elsewhere, I think of magic as a means of communicating with the underlying consciousness of reality itself through symbols. Seen in that light, divination is only magic going in the other direction. Magic and divination are two turns in a conversation, and we can use the same language the Anima Mundi uses to speak to us to talk back to her. We can ask questions, and we can also make statements. One of the advantages of using cartomantic symbols for magic is that one can carry them around easily; magic becomes portable. It doesn’t take much practice before a cartomancer can call up the image in memory of a detailed figure on a card at a moment’s notice. For this reason, many of my favorite techniques of cartomantic magic involve “street magic,” or on-the-fly enchantment.
There are as many things one can do with the symbols of cartomancy as there are magical practices in general. Rather than trying to provide an exhaustive, and exhausting, list, I’ll just mention some of the practices I have used.
The quantity of books on using the tarot in practical magic grows at a slow but steady rate. I highly recommend Donald Tyson’s Portable Magic, and Donald Michael Kraig’s Tarot & Magic. Some of the same techniques described in those books can be applied to the Lenormand. But the Lenormand particularly suits itself to a folk-magic approach, rather than the formal magic described in Tyson’s and Kraig’s books.
One of the great advantages of the Lenormand is that the decks are so inexpensive; you can get a classical Piatnik for twelve dollars. While it’s kind of hard to carry around tarot cards as talismans, you can carry around Lenormand cards and not worry about destroying them, because they’re easily replaced. Moreover, Lenormand cards are much smaller than tarot, which makes them convenient talismans.
And you can always simply draw the relevant images on a piece of parchment or paper, perhaps as part of a more formal talisman. A talisman is a written or drawn object, or sometimes a natural object, regarded as having some mystical power, usually protective or attractive. For example, there are folk-magic talismans to prevent harm while traveling, or to win at gambling, and so on. Many talismans are simply written on a piece of paper, either as a complex traditional seal or a more freeform collection of symbols. In Western magic, particularly that influenced by Hermeticism, the talisman must be activated in some way. Often this involves a ritual designed to create life in it the object. Folk-magic traditions are simpler: the talisman is simply treated as if it’s alive: in Hoodoo, it might be anointed with particular substances, or “fed” in some way. In other folk-magic traditions, the symbol itself is already regarded as alive or powerful.
If you wished to create a ritual to enliven a Lenormand card, you could apply the same procedure you use to create a signifier when reading the cards. For example, say you wished to use 4–House to protect your home. You might draw the figure in an inconspicuous place, then imagine it becoming the signifier of your home while you surround it with symbols of protection. In this way, the Lenormand can be used as a library of symbols to represent any particular need or goal.
We can also use the Lenormand in more direct folk magic, such as the practice of candle magic or setting lights. The Lenormand are suited to setting lights. Here’s a simple spell to give you a notion of how it works, and you can elaborate on it yourself if so inclined.
1. You need only a candle and a Lenormand deck.
2. You need to choose three cards. The first is your signifier, so that’s easy. The second and third represent your desire. Select these as a combination, so that the first represents your situation and the second the modification you wish to apply. So, for example, if you are blocked creatively, you might choose 21–Mountain to represent the block and 16–Star to represent overcoming the block and being more creative.
3. In selecting a candle, choose one that is of an appropriate color; several tables of correspondence between color and desire exist, but you can if you wish just follow common sense. Alternately, you can choose a candle related to a relevant saint, if you have them available in your location and wish to work with saints. I would choose a yellow candle to represent creativity; other people may prefer other colors to represent the same idea.
4. Begin by laying out the cards with the signifier at the top, the situation card to the left bottom, and the result to the bottom right. Place the candle in the middle of the triangle thus formed. Touch the signifier, then the situation. Feel the weight of the situation on your shoulders, then move your finger to the result and imagine the change occurring. Visualize some concrete sign of the change; I might see myself working again after a creative block. Try to imagine it as vividly as possible, and while holding it in your mind, light the candle.
5. Let the candle burn out. If you cannot do so (and it really isn’t safe to leave a candle unattended) you can extinguish it by smothering or pinching and relight it later. When you do relight it, as counterintuitive as it sounds, try not to visualize the effect you want. Focus intently on the candle instead, and the sensory experience of relighting it. Try not to think again about your goal consciously. Burn the whole candle for the spell, even after it seems to be working. This simple ritual can be elaborated as you like. For example, perhaps you want to add semiprecious gemstones on top of the cards, which you can carry in a gris-gris bag. Or you want to dress the candle with oil. Or you can put the cards on your altar and perform a rather more ceremonial ritual. You can draw the cards, or a stylized symbol of them, on a talisman. You can even invoke the figures on the cards in your imagination and ask them for advice on how to elaborate the ritual or make it more effective.
Revising a Reading
You can also mingle divination and magic. It’s not uncommon in tarot practice for people to rearrange cards after doing a reading. I’ve had good luck simply rearranging the cards I get into a more favorable position. The same events occur, but by rearranging them I’ve repurposed them. After rearranging the cards, I contemplate the new spread, not with the intent to interpret it but with the intent to send it as a message back. I like to attain a miniature trance here, just by concentrating intently upon my signifier. Then, once I feel the imperceptible shift that indicates my message has been sent, I’ll pick up and shuffle the cards, putting it out of my mind.
Sitting down to read the cards can itself be an act of practical, active magic rather than strictly receptive divination. When you sit down with the intent that the spread of the cards is a suggestion of what may happen, and you can and will modify it, you turn reading into practical magic. It’s helpful in such readings to have a layout that keeps cards “in store,” for you to manipulate during the reading. You can conceive of these cards as possible futures from which you will select as you read. A useful spread for that is as follows:
Charge place 4 with your signifier. Remember, that means project the image of your signifier on it mentally, but you don’t have to dig the signifier out of the deck. Cards 1, 2, 3, all indicate the past. Read them in combination. If it matches the past as you know it, then you know you’re on the right track. Card 4 is the current situation, or your current state of mind. Because it’s in a place charged with the signifier, you should read it as though it were a personal state, not necessarily a universal one. In other words, 25–Ring might mean an agreement or contract with yourself, probably not a contract between two other people.
Cards 5, 6, 7 all indicate the current likely future. In other words, if you walk away from this spread, this is what will probably happen. Sometimes, you find that comes out rather nicely—in which case, you have no need to do magic.
Cards 8, 9, 10, and 11, 12, 13 all indicate alternate futures, ones that are less likely but within the realm of possibility. Read each of them as combinations, then consider if one of them seems better than what you currently have. If so, put them over cards 5, 6, and 7. Perhaps you like the future depicted in 8, 9, and 10 better. Pick them up and let them cover the current future.
As you do so, name the cards in turn and describe how you want the card to manifest. So, for example, I might want to replace something grotty, like 21–Mountain, 36–Cross, 6–Clouds with another possibility, such as 26–Book, 33–Key, 1–Rider. As I cover the first future with them, I explain what I want them to mean. I’m speaking aloud, not only to myself but to the Anima Mundi:
“I find the knowledge (lay down 26–Book) to a secret (lay down 33–Key) that will help me move forward (1–Rider).”
Take away the other possible future, and now repeat three times what you intend to happen, touching teach card in turn. When you finish doing so, contemplate only the images on the cards, driving from your mind any meaning behind them. Three more times, touch the cards while simply letting the symbols sink into your mind. Now, finishing that, do the same again, but this time imagine the symbols expanding from the cards outward to fill the entire universe.
Then, pick up all the cards and shuffle thoroughly. You may also wish to perform a banishing ritual, although since the cards have become your magical tools and the invoked forces themselves, shuffling is usually banishing enough.
Since you have two possibilities, you may choose from either. You may also rearrange the orders of cards as you see fit, and perhaps you don’t want to replace every card in the future. The example above described a singularly dismal future; perhaps there is a silver lining in yours that you want to keep, but to emphasize. For example, maybe I don’t much mind a delay, or even a heavy burden depicted by 36–Cross, but I really don’t want to face confusion in the future. In that case, I might just replace 6–Clouds with 33–Key and do the same. I could even re-describe what I intend cards to mean: Instead of “delay,” maybe I will say, “I will find the solitude to focus on spiritual pursuits” to describe 21–Mountain and 36–Cross.
I’ll point out what is probably obvious to those who are inclined to magic: we can combine this spell-reading with the candle spell described earlier. The goal here is just to acquire a set of symbols to use in magic that are particularly well-suited to the task at hand. We could do the same procedure, if we liked, with the tarot or with another system of divination: runes, geomancy, tarot, or other oracle cards.
Like most topics in magic, the real way to explore this idea is to practice it. Experiment with using the cards for magic, and you’ll learn more—and it’ll be more relevant to your experience—than anything I could tell you in a book. Divination and magic based on it requires experimentation that fits your particular circumstances. One of the advantages of using cards like the tarot or the Lenormand for magic is that it strips us of our excuses. After all, it doesn’t take an elaborate temple. I don’t need to get out my special folding table. I don’t have to gather my wand and other tools. I just need to shuffle and lay out the cards on any available surface (which does, usually, involve shifting some piles of books—but not putting on a robe). By the same token, we can do much more elaborate things if we like.
Scrying
One of my favorite techniques is one that requires just an armchair and some privacy. The Golden Dawn called it “scrying in the spirit vision,” and despite the grandiose name it’s actually simple. It’s a bit like a nondirected fantasy. Jung described it as “active imagination,” suggesting that it was a method of taking advantage of one’s dream therapy in a more self-directed state. At the same time, it’s been called “astral projection” or even an “out-of-body experience,” although I don’t particularly care for that term.
In the simplest terms, what it comes down to is eliciting an extremely vivid, directed, but autonomous daydream. Daydream isn’t a strong enough word: perhaps “mental journey” might be more accurate.
For Jung, we begin with a dream which we revisit in a conscious state, nevertheless letting our unconscious create the environment and action of the dream. For example, perhaps I have a dream of going the store and not being able to buy anything because I forgot my wallet. I go back to that dream in my conscious state, and simply imagine myself standing in line again, realizing that I’ve lost my wallet. Then I let the dream continue, but this time I’m conscious of it. Perhaps my unconscious causes the teller to say something significant that helps me understand the tension that gave rise to the dream, or perhaps I notice that I’m buying stuff I don’t need and the tension is released. Whatever occurs, it’s an opportunity for the conscious mind to meet the unconscious mind on neutral territory, in which neither has absolute control.
What the practitioners of the Golden Dawn realized was that you don’t need to use a dream: any symbol will do to crystallize such a vision. For example, they used elemental symbols, exploring worlds related to the five Hindu elements. Other magicians have used symbols like the runes. And Donald Michael Kraig describes ways of using the tarot.
We can also use the Lenormand. For example, if we choose to scry 9–Flowers, we can explore the esoteric power of beauty in our life. Similarly, we can explore and gain power over the slyness of 7–Snake.
A lot of stuff—I’ll be polite and call it “stuff”—has been written about astral travel. Most of it makes the whole thing out to sound much more complicated than it really is. We are given, in at least some sources, dire warnings about deluding ourselves, or only exploring our own minds instead of the world at large. We’re told that if the “ray” isn’t concentrated enough it won’t be able to pierce the sphere of sensation, and other such profound-sounding bits of claptrap. And on the other side, we get stern statements that if you do it in this way rather than that way, you’re doing it wrong. Frankly, my attitude is, if you get results, you’re doing it right.
In reality, whether you explore your own mind or the world outside it, you are exploring the mind of the Anima Mundi. Yes, you will eventually have the awareness that you are receiving information external to yourself. Inevitably, you will begin to understand the position of your own mind in that of the mind at large. But it begins with an activity children do instinctively: imagination.
How to Scry a Card
1. First, choose a card. You can do this by drawing a card after asking, “What do I need to work on” but you can also select a card by reasoning it out. For example, if I wish to work on worry, perhaps I could use 36–Cross. But maybe I want to start a bit softer, and get some control of my fears and concerns first by working through 24–Heart.
2. Begin by relaxing, perhaps by using the fourfold breath or any other method that works well for you. Falling asleep while scrying isn’t a disaster, but it might be hard to remember what you experience if you do enter into a dreaming state in the middle of scrying.
3. Now imagine that you are standing up. You may begin by seeing yourself from the third person, as if watching a movie. Slowly build up detail, including your clothing, your facial expression, and so on. Jan Fries recommends starting in a misty environment that slowly clears, allowing you to activate each astral sense in turn,34 and this can be useful, but it’s also useful to build up a location that you can remember clearly and easily: perhaps a childhood location or even an imaginary temple.
4. Once your body is ready, move your point of view into it. You may have some trouble keeping this up—your mental eye might roam back to the third person from time to time. That’s okay: don’t worry about it. Eventually, you will stay more or less within the viewpoint of the so-called astral body. It really doesn’t matter to the efficacy of the practice as long as you can identify, at times, with the astral body. After all, we don’t always see ourselves from within our bodies: we often construct a mental third-person image of ourselves in our minds.
5. Let the mist clear, or open your eyes, and see with as much detail as possible the environment in which you find yourself. Activate all your senses: sight, hearing, smell, and touch. I have a mental temple with an altar that I set my hand on; once I can feel the chisel marks on the stone, I know I’m ready.
6. Visualize a door of some kind with the relevant emblem on it. With the tarot, this requires a good memory for images. With the Lenormand, it requires merely that you can visualize a version of the central emblem for which the card is named. For 24–Heart, this is a heart. It doesn’t have to be the specific image from any particular deck; a generic heart shape will do. I do like to visualize the number of the card as well, but this too is optional.
7. Once you have the door—or perhaps a curtain—open it and step through. Take note of your environment and begin to explore it. Remember the rule of fairy tales: everything is significant. At the same time, if you find yourself making stuff up, let go and let images and experiences arise, even if they don’t make sense.
An Example of Scrying
For example, imagine I’m dealing with the issue of gaining power over my emotions. I select a card—24–Heart—and familiarize myself with its look. After relaxing and imagining myself entering into my imagined body in a temple space, I activate each of my senses and project the image of the card on a door in front of me.
I step into the card and immediately notice that I’m on a dirt path in a forest. A path begs to be followed, so I follow it. I hear animal sounds in the forest: small, benign, Midwestern sorts of animals, like the woods where I grew up. I see a spindly shape bounding between trees: a spirit? No, a deer. Although, I reflect, a deer could also be a spirit.
A flash of color through the trees reveals a cottage. I approach. It’s a small stone hut, one room, with a thatch roof and a small door of rough, but thick, wood. I knock and there’s a shuffle from within. An ancient woman opens the door.
I learned this technique in a tradition suspicious of—well, everything. So I test her by sending the image of a heart flying toward her. The heart disappears and, if anything, she looks older. If she were a deception, self or otherwise, she would have wavered, faded, or changed when confronted with the symbol of the realm. “Come in,” she says.
“I’m here to—”
“No. First tea, then talk.” She pours water from a cast iron kettle into a ceramic teapot and lays a tray of little cakes on the rough wood table. The chairs look to be lashed together from railroad ties, they are so sturdy. I have to wonder how a woman this old can move furniture this large. She perches in the chair across from me.
“I’m not sure I should eat,” I say. “I don’t really know the laws of this place.” And I realize, when I say it, that it’s true. I don’t know the laws of the heart very well, or don’t think I do. I’m an intellectual, a scholar. And while I love and am loved, I am at—well, heart—a very analytical person.
Or am I?
“The laws of this place are change,” she says. “Today it is beautiful. Tomorrow terrible. Today I am old. Tomorrow I shall be young.”
“Is there anything that doesn’t change here?”
“There’s a flame in the middle of the woods. It’s ever burning. You could go there and see.”
I imagine a lamp on a stick, or a sort of eternal flame like that at some cemeteries.
“If it’s not an insult to you, I’d like to go there now. What is your name?” I normally think to ask this earlier.
“They call me Delphi.”
On the way out, I realize that “Delphi,” in addition to being the name of an oracle, contains an anagram of “phile,” a form of the root word in Greek for “love.” The D is delta or daleth, the letter associated in Qabalah with Venus, the planet of love. I turn to look back, and a beautiful young woman waves goodbye from the door.
I walk for some time, feeling more and more anxious. Finally, I wave down a cart and horse, hoping to ride. “No,” the rider tells me. “To get to the fire you have to step off the path.”
But I remember that stepping off the path is rarely a good idea when astral traveling. Again, I project a heart toward him. He shimmers and disappears. A deceptive image, then.
The path does lead, eventually, to a series of stone steps spiraling down into a crater in the middle of the forest. At the bottom of the crater, a great mass of magma roils and throws off smoke. This is the eternal fire. It beats with a steady rhythm, as if always on the verge of erupting.
I notice that people have carved petitions into the stone walls of the crater. I use my wand to write the Greek word Ataraxia on the wall. Ataraxia is a state of emotional calm and detachment, a thing I aspire toward.
A small man, almost a gnome, appears. “The way to achieve ataraxia is to leap into the fire.”
I project a heart on him, but he only grows a little taller.
“I’ll be destroyed.”
“Only part that changes.”
“What doesn’t change?” I say. “I’m all parts that change.”
He doesn’t answer. I debate what to do. The test revealed him consistent with this place, but that doesn’t mean he’s benign. Good and evil exist even in the astral world. But what he says does describe an initiation ceremony of sorts.
Finally, I fling myself into the caldera. But instead of burning, I fall through it and find myself hovering above the world. I can see Delphi’s cottage, as well as the forest and all its creatures. I realize that I have become the sun of this world, shining on it.
I’m not just shining on it: I’m shining in it. I can become a deer in the forest, a tree, even one of the merchants driving carts on the roads. I stream down light and once again take on a body, knowing that I can go back any time. Or, to be more accurate, knowing that I am always there: the real me is a sun always burning over the land of the heart. And the changes of that land are just reflections of my constant light.
I return to my temple by passing through the door once again. I perform a quick banishing ritual, return to my body, and open my physical eyes once again.
This entire experience raises the question: Am I really doing magic or am I simply engaging in some variety of homegrown self-therapy? But more to the point, does it matter? There are undeniable insights in this vision: for example, one doesn’t cure worrying by avoiding emotions; one cures it by experiencing the fear one is trying to avoid. Moreover, the idea of achieving ataraxia not by denying emotion but by embracing it is an insight that appeals to me, but doesn’t match my preconceptions. It’s intriguing. Moreover, I received from this vision information about my own emotional health I did not previously know: for example, the forest is healthy. That’s reassuring.
Even if just a sort of self-counseling, what is wrong with that? I grant that we don’t want to try to treat serious psychological problems without some professional help, and one shouldn’t substitute magic for psychological medication. But meditation and creative visualization can supplement a program of medical treatment.
Two particularly interesting cards to scry are the signifiers. You can approach these as Jungian archetypes, using the one that matches your gender as a way to explore your conscious and using the other to explore your unconscious. Jung asserts that our unconscious mind takes forms of the opposite gender as our own. A man, therefore, who identifies as male has an anima, a female unconscious who may take many forms. Similarly, a woman has an animus, a male unconscious. We can scry this image and speak to the person we discover to open up communication with our unconscious.
The power of this magical approach is that the cards become a two-way system of communication, and just as with any language or system of communication, we need to experiment and make use of it ourselves before we can become fluent. There’s a lot of room to move in the Lenormand. A lot of unclaimed territory still lies unexplored.
31. W. W. Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” Gaslight (orig. 1902) http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/mnkyspaw.htm.
32. Donald Michael Kraig, Tarot & Magic (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 2003).
33. Donald Tyson Portable Magic: Tarot Is the Only Tool You Need (Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn, 2006).
34. Jan Fries, Helrunar: A Manual of Rune Magick (Oxford: Mandrake), 1993.