Clairvoyance is the art and science of being aware of facts, objects or situations by psychic means when they are not available to ‘ordinary’ awareness. The word is generally used to cover all such psychic awareness; but strictly speaking, clairvoyance means experiencing such awareness in the form of visual images, clairsentience means experiencing it in the form of bodily sensations, and clairaudience means experiencing it in the form of heard sounds.
Take the example of what is known as a ‘crisis apparition’ — when a person undergoing a sudden emotional trauma (such as death or a violent accident) manifests in another place to someone who is emotionally in tune with him or her. (There have been many confirmed cases of this in wartime, when a woman has ‘seen’ a husband or son at the moment when he is killed in action.) In the strict sense, a clairvoyant might see the person standing in the room; a clairsentient might feel a familiar hand on the shoulder; and a clairaudient might hear the familiar voice.
In this book we use the word clairvoyance to cover all these forms, unless we specifically say otherwise.
Precognition is also a form of clairvoyance, when the event perceived lies in the future.
Divination is ‘clairvoyance using tools’ — that is, with the aid of Tarot cards, a pendulum, the yarrow sticks or coins of the I Ching, rune stones, molten lead poured into water, tea-leaves or any other physical accessory.
Scrying is the use of a crystal ball, a pool of ink, a concave black mirror or any other device for defocusing normal vision, to aid clairvoyance in the strict sense.
To a certain extent, the physical aids used in divination work as triggers to the intuition. The person using them makes contact with intuitive awareness which is hidden in the Unconscious by offering it something onto which it can project that awareness in the form of images or symbols, which an experienced diviner can then interpret; much as a psychiatric patient projects elements of his Unconscious onto the ink-blots of a Rorschach test card, for interpretation by the analyst. Such triggers are useful devices for bypassing the censor which stands on the threshold between Unconscious and the Ego. This censor is a necessary element in the psyche, because without it the Ego-consciousness would be overwhelmed by a flood of incoming data; it enables the Ego to focus attention selectively, which is the essence of consciousness. But in the unintegrated psyche, the censor is a rather rough-and-ready mechanism. With expanded awareness, and improved communication between Unconscious and Ego, the censor becomes more helpfully selective; and what the experienced diviner is doing (whether consciously or not) is instructing the censor to let through intuitive data relevant to the problem in hand.
This triggering process is the main feature of such divinatory methods as gazing at tea-leaves or at molten lead which has solidified in water, or the ancient Roman method of examining the entrails of a sacrificed bird or animal. Scrying, too, is a triggering process; the scryer’s defocused eyes and light-trance mind are in a suitable state for visualizing what the censor is letting through. The physical action or ritual involved — whether it is the swirling and draining of a teacup or the arranging of a crystal ball in suitable light — also becomes, with use, a triggering-signal, inducing the right state of mind and inviting the Unconscious to communicate.
The unconscious resources which the diviner or clairvoyant is tapping are far wider, in the occult view, than those of the individual Unconscious as envisaged by Freudian psychology. Jung came much closer to the occult concept with his teachings on the Collective Unconscious, though he carefully limited those teachings to deductions from his experience as a clinical psychologist. But unlike Freud, Jung was a man with a very open mind, and one senses that he knew perfectly well that there were vast fields yet to be explored. His writings on synchronicity (see Bibliography) in particular reveal this.
Occultists and witches see the Unconscious itself as clairvoyant and telepathic. The Personal Unconscious, for a start, contains the buried memories of all the individual’s past incarnations. And as a unique outcrop of the Collective Unconscious, it has potential or actual communication with other outcrops, with the Personal Unconscious of other human beings — and also potential access to the Akashic Records, the astral ‘recordings’ of everything that has ever happened. ‘Reading the Akashic Records’ is an advanced technique, of which only adepts have real mastery; but every clairvoyant does it in flashes (as we probably all do without realizing it, from time to time).
So the clairvoyant or diviner is not just asking his or her Unconscious: ‘Tell me the things which I have forgotten or only subliminally noticed.’ He or she is asking: ‘Lift the veil on the things I need to know — whether they are buried in my own subliminal awareness, in my or other people’s incarnation memories, in or via the Collective Unconscious or in the Akashic Records.’
And the more skilled and confident one becomes, the more clearly the Unconscious answers.
The Ego and the Unconscious can be likened to a farmer and his dog. The dog, like the Ego, is far more acutely aware of his immediate surroundings than the farmer. His physical senses are much sharper, and he is primarily absorbed in what those senses have to tell him. The farmer, on the other hand, has sources of information which are incomprehensible to the dog. He knows that more sheep will be arriving tomorrow because he has arranged it by telephone. He knows that his neighbour has put up an electric fence, which the dog has to learn about by painful experience. He knows that the dog must have an injection because the vet has warned him that there is parvovirus in the area. He knows that his sheep must be moved off a particular piece of rough grazing because work is due to start there on a new bypass. All these things affect the orders he must give to his dog, and some of those orders may puzzle the dog, because the data on which they are based are outside his awareness-capacity. The farmer knows friends from enemies; but all the dog can do is bark at strangers till the farmer has categorized them for him.
If the dog fears and resents the farmer, their co-operation will be forced and minimal. But if there is love and trust between them, so that each can contribute his own special kind of awareness, their co-operation can be almost magical — as anyone who has watched shepherds and sheepdogs working together knows.
Similarly, the Unconscious has sources of information of which the Ego knows nothing. And the sooner the Ego realizes this, and co-operates with that which it cannot directly apprehend, the better the team (which is the total psyche) will work.
This communication of the Ego with the Unconscious is what alchemists and occultists have called the Great Work. Aleister Crowley at first called its aim ‘the knowledge and conversation of one’s holy guardian angel', and later ‘the knowledge of the nature and powers of one’s own being’. Geoffrey Ashe, in his stimulating novel The Finger and the Moon, speaks of ‘the idea that a guardian angel, a spirit-watcher, a higher self as it were, does hover near each one of us’ and ‘is linked with the conscious mind through the Unconscious’. But he suggests a simpler hypothesis: ‘The Unconscious, so-called, and that other self are the same. Or rather: what Freud and Jung found in each person’s psyche, beyond the reach of waking awareness — what they therefore called “subconscious” or “unconscious” — is really an aspect of the life of another being within him, another self from which the ego has split off, but which is still there, still active, still thinking, still in its own way conscious. Viewed under a different aspect, that inner being is also the guardian angel. Scientists may be right when they contend that you and I (meaning what those words commonly mean) have no preternormal powers. But we each carry within us an allied being who has. That is why occult phenomena continue to happen…. The first step is to think of your mighty invisible companion as present, inside you. And the first commandment which follows is: LISTEN, LISTEN TO THAT COMPANION.’
This commandment (capitals and all!) is the secret of clairvoyance and divination.
For most people, the best way of learning the art is to start with divination of some kind. The presence of the ‘tools’ (Tarot layout or whatever) helps to give one confidence; it offers one something concrete to interpret, and thus primes the pump of the intuition. One tries an interpretation, and with increasing practice one begins to realize that genuine information is coming through, and confidence is further reinforced.
The rules are very similar to those we gave about judging apparent incarnation recall: namely, let it all flow with an open mind, and keep records — certainly in the early stages and for what you feel to be important readings, particularly those where precognition seems to be involved. Do not try to pass judgement on the material as it is coming through. There is nothing so inhibiting to clairvoyance as asking yourself step by step, ‘Is this purely subjective, wishful thinking or genuine?’ That is an important question, but it is one to ask afterwards, when the session is over.
That divination works in ways which transcend mere ‘triggering', no one with experience of it can doubt; and the discovery of this fact is very encouraging to the beginner who perseveres. One becomes impressed by the active co-operation (one can call it no less) which a Tarot layout or an I Ching reading, for example, can give. The cards or hexagram texts will use everything from puns to startlingly direct references to point in the necessary direction. We have even known more than one case (and we swear that this is true) when a puzzling Tarot layout has prompted us to pick it up, reshuffle the pack thoroughly and deal a new layout — which turned out to be exactly the same as the first one. The chances against this are astronomical, but the Tarot seemed determined to reemphasize its point. On other occasions we have done the same thing, and the second layout has been almost the same, but with differences which clarified our questions about the first one.
Again, we have found that ‘nagging’ the I Ching over a single problem frequently produces Hexagram 4, Youthful Folly:
At the first oracle I inform him.
If he asks two or three times, it is importunity.
If he importunes, I give him no information.
which needs no interpretation — and we have never known Hexagram 4 to turn up inappropriately.
By far the best version of the I Ching is the Richard Wilhelm translation, rendered into English by Cary F. Baynes (see Bibliography under Wilhelm). It has the added advantage of a Foreword by Carl Jung, who was profoundly impressed by the system and had some illuminating things to say about the way it works. (Francis King once described the I Ching to us as ‘the only cook-book method of divination which does work', and we know what he meant. All divinatory systems require some intuitive interpetation, and so, when it is used properly, does the I Ching; but no other system gives such precise and detailed answers.)
But it is the Tarot which is the witches’ most widely used method of divination, and the one most deeply involved in the whole Western occult tradition. The archetypal symbols of the Major Arcana, and the elemental progressions of the Minor Arcana, are endlessly rich, both in their individual significance and in their limitless combinations. Every witch should be familiar with them, and they are the ideal starting-point for a beginner in divination; they produce results from the very start.
With the renewed fashion for things occult, more and more Tarot packs have appeared on the market. (We ourselves have a collection of over thirty.) Some are good, some are atrocious. The generally accepted standard is the Rider (or Waite) pack, designed by Pamela Colman Smith for A.E. Waite early in this century. The artwork looks a little dated now, but the symbolism is excellent. An attractive pack of basically the same symbolism is that designed by David Sheridan, with instructions by Alfred Douglas, and published by Mandragora Press, London, in 1972; so if you like the Rider pack’s symbolism but prefer a contemporary design, try this one. Perhaps the most beautiful pack is the one designed by Frieda Harris for Aleister Crowley and published years after his death by Llewellyn Publications, St Paul, Minnesota, as the Thoth Tarot Cards; but the symbolism is very much Crowley’s own and would confuse anyone trying to learn the mainstream tradition.
As for books on the subject — the classic work, which is naturally based on the Rider pack, is A.E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Waite is sound but can be annoyingly pompous. An excellent modern authority is A Complete Guide to the Tarot by Eden Gray; it, too, is based on the Rider pack.
For those who want to compare the various designs and interpretations of the Tarot, a very useful book is Bill Butler’s The Definitive Tarot. For each card, Butler describes the symbolism of up to nine different packs (including the three we have mentioned) and summarizes the interpretations given by a dozen or so different authorities.
For the symbolism of the Crowley pack, read Crowley’s own work The Book of Thoth.
To start your study of the Tarot, we recommend the Rider pack and the Eden Gray book. They will give you a reliable norm by which you can judge the others.
But any Tarot pack will very soon develop meanings which are personal to you. There is no cast-iron, orthodox, ‘right’ interpretation of any card — but once you have built up your own set of meanings, the cards will speak to you in the language of those meanings. It is a good idea to keep a notebook of the meanings which appeal to you; we have a loose-leaf one, each page of which is headed by miniature colour photographs of the relevant Rider and Sheridan card (because Janet prefers the Rider and Stewart the Sheridan — the choice is always personal). The photographs were easy; we simply laid the packs out in blocks of thirty, photographed them and cut the resulting prints up into miniatures. Underneath we note the meanings that have crystallized for us out of years of use; some of the cards have even acquired nicknames, such as ‘Busy-Busy’ for the Eight of Wands and ‘The Sad Lady’ for the Queen of Swords. We are still adding notes to it.
Sometimes a concept from another discipline will throw new light on a Tarot card. For example, we now relate the Chariot card to ‘the parallelogram of forces'; look it up in an elementary textbook of dynamics and you will soon see why. The charioteer has harnessed and understood apparently divergent polarized forces, and their resultant takes him where he wants to go.
Each page (like most books on the subject) also gives a meaning for the card when it appears reversed. But we find that most books on the Tarot fail to point out a possible source of error here. We would say that a reversed card can have one of two meanings, according to its context: either the opposite (or negative aspect) of the card’s upright meaning, or the upright meaning still in a state of unrealized potential. The rest of the layout, and your own intuition, will usually tell you which of these two interpretations should be given to it.
Layouts are many and various, and again the choice is personal. The Celtic Cross layout (given in most of the books, including Eden Gray) is perhaps the most popular, and it is very straightforward and clear. We tend to use it when we are delving into the past, present and likely future of a problem. If you make use of the Cabala, you may find, like us, that a Tree of Life layout is very helpful for some problems — particularly for analysing an individual’s personal make-up and the factors affecting him or her. For those who are not familiar with the Cabala, the layout of the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, with their Hebrew names, is like this:
| 1. KETHER | ||
| 3. BINAH | 2. CHOKMAH | |
| 5. GEBURAH | 4. CHESED | |
| 6. TIPHARETH | ||
| 8. HOD | 7. NETZACH | |
| 9. YESOD | ||
| 10. MALKUTH |
If ten cards are laid out in this pattern, for just such a personal-analysis reading, the very much simplified interpretation from their placings would be:
Kether The Self; the person’s quintessence — or perhaps present stage of karmic development.
Chokmah The person’s present driving force or dominant motivation — whether conscious or unconscious.
Binah The formative aspect; that which is giving shape and effectiveness to the energy of Chokmah.
Chesed The organizing, administering aspect; the person’s ability to cope with practical situations.
Geburah The energetic aspect; the person’s capacity for positive action.
Tiphareth The key factor which interrelates all the others — whether effectively (co-ordination) or ineffectively (disruption).
Netzach The emotional aspect; instincts and feelings.
Hod The intellectual aspect; mental categories and concepts.
Yesod The astral sphere; the creative imagination; intuition; the bridge between Malkuth and the other planes.
Malkuth Everyday consciousness; physical factors; the person’s practical situation as it now stands.
Even a passing knowledge of the Cabala will of course enrich these aspects or their interrelationships; but the above is a basic guide on which to experiment.
We usually follow a Tree of Life layout with three Qualifying Cards — the next three dealt off the top of the pack. These give a guide to future developments and the possible course of action.
Layouts apart — the drawing of single cards to answer single questions can often be helpful. The pack is shuffled and spread face downwards, and a card drawn by the diviner, or by the querent (the person for whom the reading is being made) if there is one.
(As an experiment, having written thus far, we drew a card to ask ‘What shall we explain next?’ The card was the Four of Swords, upright — our notebook interpretation of which is ‘Rest from strife or labour; prudent truce.’ In other words — time for a break — and it is five to eight in the evening!)
… And the clear light of morning is a good time to discuss scrying, even though one needs dim light actually to do it.
The best-known method is of course the crystal ball. It can be bought from any occult supplier, and the larger it is, the better — but also the more expensive. A home-made alternative which many people have found satisfactory requires a spherical flask from a laboratory supplier, filled with a copper sulphate solution (dissolve the crystals in water till the blue-green colour pleases you). Get rid of all bubbles (careful boiling helps, but let it cool before sealing) and then cork it firmly, wiring the cork in place, making sure that no air is inside.
A still cheaper scrying device is the black mirror, and some people find this easier to work with than the crystal. For this you need a clock glass — the convex disc of glass (plain, not a lens) which protects the face of a mantelpiece clock. Again, the bigger the better — but five inches in diameter is a good working size. Any shop which repairs clocks should be able to sell you one. Clean it thoroughly, and then paint the outside (the convex side) with matt black paint — several coats, drying of course in between coats. Aerosol spray paint is the handiest for this. The concave side will now be a shiny black mirror.
The method of using crystal ball, flask or black mirror is the same. Seat yourself comfortably, preferably inside a Magic Circle, with your scrying device cupped in a black velvet cloth in your hands or on a suitable stand. The room should be dark and candlelit, with the candle or candles so arranged that no reflections are seen in the ball or mirror. All you should see to begin with is an empty, featureless pool in space. Relax, empty your mind, allow your eyes to defocus naturally but keep watching that pool. After a while you may find the pool going milky and then clearing, before presenting you with images. But do not be impatient; it may not happen in your first session, or even your fifth or sixth. Perseverance will bring the break-through.
Once the images start coming, they should be recorded. Notes made immediately afterwards are better than nothing, but the ideal is either a patient working partner or a cassette recorder, receiving your running commentary. In this, as in many magical practices, a sympathetic but constructively critical working partner is a great asset; you take it in turns to support each other; and when it comes to interpretation, two minds in tune with each other can often achieve what may be called a stereoscopic vision of the symbols which come to the surface.
(We would remind you again that, in Wicca, a working partnership means a man and a woman, for all the reasons of psychic polarity which we explained in Section XV, ‘Witchcraft and Sex’. Even for assistance in scrying, this is desirable, if only because the ‘stereoscopic vision’ is likely to be much deeper. But a helper of the same sex is better than none.)
When it is not in use, the crystal, flask or mirror should be kept wrapped in its black velvet, which should not be used for anything else. Tradition and our experience both say that a scrying device should be protected from bright light; if it has been so exposed (or when it is first acquired in any case), it should be recharged by bathing it in the light of the full moon.
Many people have their own very personal scrying devices. One of our witches has a 2½ pound lump of reject Waterford glass which she was given when she lived near the factory at Kilbarry; it is beautifully clear but rough and shapeless, and most of us could get nothing from it — but for her it almost talks. Janet has a rock crystal pendant no bigger than a fingernail which would be much too tiny for most scryers; but again, it works for her.
Two of our women witches make a regular practice of using wild plants as clairvoyant triggers. These plants, understandably, put them in touch with the nature spirits concerned, from whom they get information on the processes, and the needs, of the local environment of the plant being handled. (This information is sometimes clairaudient). That may sound over-imaginative, but living as we do in close contact with the area where these two work their plant-scrying, we can confirm that the information they gather in this way proves to be highly relevant.
One woman witch who keeps a couple of ponies finds that some of her sharpest clairvoyance arises spontaneously when she is mucking out the stable of one of them, a twenty-four-year-old dun gelding called Oakie who has been with her since she was a teenager. Unlike the plant-scrying, this clairvoyance usually relates to human and family affairs, presumably because of Oakie’s lifelong involvement with her.
Talking of Nature — dowsing is a highly specialized form of psychic awareness which really comes into the clairsentient category and is, we would suggest, particularly concerned with the sensitivity of the etheric body. It would take a whole Section even to summarize it, and for those who want to experiment with it we cannot do better than to recommend Tom Graves’ excellent handbook Dowsing: Techniques and Applications — and, for its relevance to the earth mysteries, ley lines and megalithic lore, his later book Needles of Stone.
Psychometry is the obtaining of psychic impressions from a material object by handling it. A good psychometrist can tell you a great deal about the history and associations of an object in this way. The etheric and astral bodies of the object are brought into contact with those of the psychometrist; for every physically manifested phenomenon, whether it is a human being or a lump of rock, has its corresponding existence on the other levels of reality. As a Persian poet wrote a long time ago, Life is ‘sleeping in the mineral, dreaming in the plant, awakening in the animal, and becoming conscious of itself in man’. Or to put it another way — everything is alive, but over a vast range of frequencies. The life-frequency of a mountain is infinitely slower than that of a mouse. Even within the animal kingdom, this can be observed; the life-frequencies of a sloth or a tortoise and of a squirrel or a humming-bird are near the two extreme ends of the animal spectrum, just as red and violet light are at opposite ends of the spectrum of visible light. Radio waves and X-rays are of the same nature as light, but because they are outside the frequency-range of our eyes, we cannot see them.
Similarly, ‘normal’ human life-awareness is limited to the animal and plant spectrum of frequencies. Anything outside of that, most people regard as being lifeless. But occultists and witches realize that this is not so and work to extend their spectrum of awareness — either directly, by picking up the higher harmonics of the slower frequencies, or indirectly, by observing the effects of low-frequency life on high-frequency life.
An example of the second approach is astrology, which studies the life-frequency of the solar system by observing its effects on the human life-frequency.
In a sense, psychometry is concerned with the first, direct, approach. A diamond ring, for example, is alive on the frequencies of its gem and its gold, which are both far slower than that of the woman who wears it. But there are harmonic frequencies between the two, just as striking top C on a piano with the pedal down will cause the bottom C string to hum (and all the intervening Cs, plus related notes to a lesser degree). If the ring is on her finger for years, all the events on her non-physical levels will cause a harmonic response in the corresponding levels of the ring, and the ring will ‘remember’ them. A sensitive psychometrist, handling the ring, will pick up these ‘memories’ by the same harmonic resonance. (This is why it is very difficult to psychometrize plastic objects; being neither organic nor a natural mineral, plastic has virtually no life-frequency of its own.)
All this talk of life-frequencies may seem an unnecessarily technical digression, but it is important for two reasons. With regard to psychometry, it helps to remove the psychological block created by the Ego’s whisper: ‘How can a dead piece of jewellery tell me anything of the history of a living woman?’ And on a wider scale, it helps the Ego to accept consciously the idea that the whole universe is alive, without which awareness little psychic development is possible.
But to get back to the actual practice of psychometry. Some people merely hold the object in one hand and close their eyes. Others prefer to hold it against the ‘third eye', which occult tradition locates in the pineal body, in the centre of the forehead just above eyebrow-level.1 Those who hold it in one hand often prefer the left hand, because it is linked, physically and etherically, with the right-brain intuitive function. Only experience will reveal which method works best for you.
Apart from that, the rule is the same as for scrying: let the impressions flow, and voice them without inhibition, leaving analysis till afterwards.
Psychometry is particularly suited for developing by means of coven co-operation. Members can give each other objects to ‘read’ and tell them immediately afterwards how accurate they were. This process will not only reveal naturally gifted psychometrists; it will help the ones who have to work harder at it (which means most of us) in the key problem of distinguishing between subjective and objective impressions, thus improving their overall clairvoyant ability. The advantage of psychometric exercises between friends is that it trains this discerning function much faster.
Reading the human aura is a special case of clairvoyance in the strict sense of the word; but as that is particularly relevant to healing, we will leave discussion of it till Section XXI.
Divination — ‘clairvoyance with tools’ — is, we would emphasize again, the very best way of training yourself in ‘clairvoyance without tools’. It builds up your confidence; it teaches you to trust your intuition, while at the same time teaching you to distinguish between the genuine and the self-deceptive; it provides a format within which a coven or group of friends can practise together; it gradually convinces you of the synchronicity (or meaningful coincidence) of which the ‘tools’ are capable, and thus helps you to understand the principle of synchronicity in general; and it teaches you to interpret symbols.
Even for those who have an obvious clairvoyant gift already, divination is a healthy exercise; because such spontaneous gifts (especially in today’s world where they are not recognized or intelligently encouraged) are often undisciplined and erratic and may actually be frightening. The discipline of divinatory practice brings the gift under control and makes it discriminating and serviceable.
One of our witches, when she first came to us, was clairvoyant to a degree which overwhelmed her, taking on neurotic proportions. She had no idea how to control it or how to switch it off when necessary. For her, divinatory training turned what had been a burden into a useful talent. She is now an excellent Tarot reader, an often surprising telepath and helpful at alerting us, by her precognitive ability, to developments which might otherwise take us by surprise. Her gift is as powerful as ever, but it is now under her control.
Clairvoyance is a natural attribute of every human being. Like every other human attribute, it can be developed and trained. If we deny or repress it, we distort our own psyche. And if we allow it to run to waste, we are incomplete.
But a note of warning should be added: clairvoyant activity should never be allowed to dominate one’s life, twenty-four hours a day, however well developed one has made it. It is only one of our awareness-faculties, and it should be kept in balance with the others. Round-the-clock clairvoyance, or running to the Tarot every five minutes for decisions which only call for common sense, can drain the energies, often weaken the gift and warp the Personality on which the immortal Individuality depends for experience and self-expression.
Over-indulged, psychic awareness can make us neglect our other senses when they are most needed. A close friend of Stewart’s parents, before the war, was a Christian Science practitioner of considerable psychic power and healing ability. She died in the prime of life by crashing her car with no apparent cause when she was driving alone. Those who knew her intimately (including her husband and Stewart’s parents) were convinced that she had been concentrating her thoughts and her psychic effort on a healing case when she should have been watching the road. An extreme situation — but most psychics have had experience of the same risk at a less alarming level.
An integrated psyche means a balanced one. So sharpen your clairvoyant faculty to a keen edge — but never allow your other tools to deteriorate.