Scrying

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Scrying is a practice known across many cultures, and is the practice of looking into a suitable medium in the hope of detecting significant messages or visions. Here a basic ritual outline will be provided, to which you may add particular prayers, evocations or barbarous words of power to where appropriate.

You can use an animated statue or eikon, but it isn’t necessary. Instead, you can focus the ritual on a gateway deity, such as:

  • Janus Pater, who is invoked before almost all sacrifices because it is He who opens the door to the Gods.
  • Hestia, who is thought to preside over the sacred fire just as she presides over the sacred hearth
  • The Great Mother, the Goddess of theurgy.

Alternatively, you can scry to Apollo.

 

Preparation

Gather what is needed

  • If doing a hydromancy, you will need a shallow silvery bowl that is very clean and brightly polished.
  • If doing pyromancy, you need an oil lamp or a candle. (Especially good if Hestia is the gateway deity.)

    • If using a candle, brown or black is best. You’ll also need a comfortable seat.

Purify yourself and the space you’re working in with khernips.

Make sure the only things on the working table are the incense and the scrying object (in front of an eikon or animated statue if one is being used.)

 

Step 1: Incense

Make an incense offering to the deity of whom you wish to have a vision, asking them a specific question.


 

Step 2: Dim the lights

Dim the lights.

  • If performing pyromancy, this is so the flame is the brightest thing that’s in the room
  • If performing hydromancy, until you can only just make out your reflection faintly in the water

 

Step 3: Stare

Stare at the scrying medium while consciously relaxing your body, starting from the head down to the feet.
Regulate your breath, perhaps using the fourfold breath, a method of rhythmic breathing which aids in calming one’s body so they may think clearly:
  1. Inhale for a count of four
  2. Hold for a count of four
  3. Exhale for a count of four
  4. Hold for a count of four

 

Step 4: Preparing for Visions

While you stare at the object of focus, you’ll potentially experience optical effects, including distortion and areas of your vision blanking. These aren’t visions, however they indicate that you are readying to experience them.


 

Step 5: Vision

You may, at first, experience visions in your imagination, and discern that they’re internal. However, the further one works with scrying, the further that these visions will externalize. Either way, if the vision ultimately delivers useful information, it doesn’t matter if the vision is in your mind or outside it.


 

Step 6: Further Perceptions

Furthermore, be ready to receive perceptions through other senses, including smell, hearing, and potentially your kinesthetic sense.


 

Step 7: Offer gratitude & end the ceremony

When finished, give thanks to the deity you have called, and then end the ritual as you would any other. It’s helpful to do do something mundane following this ritual so you don’t feel fatigued.


 

Bibliography

Dervenis, Kostas. Oracle bones divination: the Greek I Ching. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2014.

Dunn, Patrick. The practical art of divine magic: contemporary & ancient techniques of Theurgy. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd, 2015.

Opsopaus, John. The oracles of Apollo: practical ancient Greek divination for today. Woodbury: Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd, 2017.