GETTING INTIMATE WITH DIVINATION
Intimacy With Your Divination System Is Everything
Hello, Good People of the Internet,
I am going to do a new series with some tips on how you can get better at divination. Well, I guess I can’t guarantee that the ideas I will present in this series will work for you. All I can tell you is the things I did that made me better at divination.
This series started life as a BuzzFeed-inspired “Top 10 Tips that Will Improve your Divination!”, but when I started writing more than just headings, I felt it would be better served as single medium-length posts rather than a big, long, tiring post. It will be easier to write and hopefully easier to digest.
I am aware that I am a special use case in the sense that the divination system I use is one I created myself – The Forty Servants – and so a lot of my experiences may be unique to that. But ya know, no one is stopping you from coming up with your own system too (I’d heartily recommend it), but even not doing that, I reckon that at least some of what helped me would help others too.
Is that enough preamble? I think so, let’s get to it.
GETTING INTIMATE WITH DIVINATION
When I was a full-time sound engineer in my twenties, I pretty much used the same mixing desk for a number of years. I knew the desk inside out and knew its strengths and weaknesses. I knew exactly the flavour of the thing so that when I had to do something with it, get a particular sound, or solve a particular problem, or whatever, I never had to wrestle with understanding how to do it.
And so, I never had to think about how the desk worked. I only had to move my hands with muscle and ear memory to get the desired sound. I never had to stop midway through a soundcheck to look up what a button did.
The desk in one sense ceased to exist as a separate entity. It was more like an extension of what I was, or I became the desk, or something like that. It was a conduit for me to get the sound I wanted. There was the band on stage, and then there was me, and the desk just became the interface between us, but it never felt like a barrier. I may have to wrestle with the sound, but I didn’t have to wrestle with operating the desk itself.
It’s like driving. When I get in the car now, I stop thinking of myself as a person in the car and instead just operate as the car. The car becomes an extension of my body, and I start to think and move in car-shaped terms rather than human-shaped terms.
And all of this happens because of familiarity. It’s about knowing how to use something so well that the technical details or mechanics of it aren’t a factor in using it.
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When it came to The Forty Servants, it helped that I had already spent a few months creating the deck, so in my first readings with them, I already knew the meanings of the cards quite well.
However, it wasn’t until I did a number of readings with them and then nailed down exactly the spread that I use that I really got the feeling of them as an extension of me. That the actual meanings and technicalities of the reading were no longer a factor – I could go straight to the actual interpretation.
And so my advice is to get to know your oracle deck, the runes, the tarot, your bones, or whatever you use, so well that there isn’t ever a pause to work out what the card or position is representing. Really get intimate with them, and get to know them as much as you know yourself. While some of this comes from sitting with the definitions and memorising them, most of it comes from using them. So do as many readings as you can. Readings don’t always have to be for “big questions”, so take the pressure off and allow yourself to ask fun or frivolous things.
Once the cards are embedded in your soul, they reveal so much more to you than they could when you only half know them or have a vague sense of what they are. Really nail them down so that you know exactly what they represent as soon as they appear.
I would also suggest sticking to the same spread (or whatever is equivalent) so that all those positions become second nature to you. Once I started consistently using the same spread (a nine card spread, which I go through HERE), it really started to allow me to see the nuances and subtleties of the positions. Had I jumped around with different spreads for various questions, I don’t feel I would have got to the deep understanding and comfort of the very familiar spread I use. It’s like digging 10,000 shallow holes rather than one deep one.
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The whole idea here is to become so familiar with your system that all you are doing is seeing what is being revealed. You aren’t using any time or brainpower on working out definitions. All of that technical stuff disappears, and you just see straight to the story unfolding in the spread.
I am the best driver when I am not thinking of the mechanics of driving. I am the best sound engineer when I am fully dealing with sound and not the equipment. And I am the best at divination when I am just looking at the story that is being told and not when I am unsure of my definitions and placements.
The TL;DR is: Once the technical part becomes automatic, the real insight can be seen much more deeply.
Hope that helps, and talk to you soon in the next instalment.
And that’s it for this time, I hope you got something good from it. If you’d like to chat about it, you can leave a comment below, or come find me on Bluesky!
If you would like to support me in doing all the things I do, then feel free to join the PATREON, buy a FORTY SERVANTS deck, get me a book or something from my Amazon Wish List, or just send me some money via PAYPAL. It all really, really helps, and is very much appreciated.
So, until next time,
MAY YOUR BEST DAYS BE AHEAD!
Tommie