I'm a fan of divination, even though I don't really know what the word means. The dictionaries tell us that "the divine" is a god-entity, but that "to divine" is to discover by intuition or insight. Does that mean that we are being divine when we use divination techniques? I have no idea.
I have recently been listening to Robert Moss talking about Kairomancy, which he calls the art of navigating by synchronicity. I love synchronicity. What I especially love about Moss's approach to it, is that it is empirical. Play games, he tells us. Play with street-corner tarot, play with bibliomancy, play with throwing your questions to the night and listening to what the shadow side tells you.
Essentially what he says, in a playful way, is just ask the questions and listen for the answers. And what he doesn't say is that all the oracles, are like the original one: open to interpretation. I think that is the point. I'm with Rebecca Campbell on this. She says you are the oracle. I think what she means is that you are your oracle. Only you can interpret what the signs and symbols mean for you.
Moss takes a similar standpoint when he says create your own omens. He doesn't mean decide in advance what your omens will be, rather pay attention to what shows up in your life and where (if) there are connections. If x follows y, there is no necessary causality, but if x repeatedly follows y then there is at least synchronicity.
If we are to navigate by synchronicity, we have to accept that we are not looking for causality – we are simply navigating by probability. We observe that x often follows y, so if y, then x. Put like this it sounds like hocus pocus hippy-shit, but is it really any different from the way, say, weather is forecast? Or betting odds are set? Or our trust that the sun will rise tomorrow at a given hour? If June and northern hemisphere Earth, then about 4:45 a.m.
If we understand these premises, then a lot of the time when we enter into the world of divination we are (at some level) playing. That's not meant to be offensive to practitioners, any more than the word 'practice' would be. Professional tennis players, poker players, cricketers, footballers, they all play. Lawyers and doctors practice. Words are interesting in this context, are they not?
But I'll get back to the art of bibliomancy, which is a subset of Kairomancy, using the specific tool of books. There are a number of ways of doing this. You can use a specific book or you can choose a book at random. You can open the page at random, or by pre-selecting numbers. You can choose a line at random, or pre-set that number. You can hold the book and set your intention, your question, the thing upon which you want guidance…or you can simply ask what do I need to know?
Sometimes when we learn something new, it is new, unfamiliar, surprising. Sometimes when we are being taught something 'new' it is old enough for us to say oh,I do that – didn't know it was 'a thing'.
I didn't know that what I do had a name. Or is 'a thing'.
For a long while I have believed in whispers from the universe as a form of comfort and/or of guidance and when I have needed either I have sought them out. One method I have used is looking for answers on the page.
I actually have a book called The Book of Answers which invites you to ask a yes/no question and allow it to give you an answer. You might be surprised at how many possible answers there are to yes/no questions. And of course, it is up to us to interpret them in the context of our specific question. We are our own oracle.
I have used that book for years. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. Which you will tell me means random chance. And I won't argue.
Moss tells us that we should accept the answers, whether we understand them or not. We should never question the response, he says. We should never ask the same question more than once. I'm not sure I agree. As children, if we didn't understand the answer, would we not ask again? As students, are we not encouraged to ask and ask and rephrase and seek and seek until we do understand?
With the Book of Answers I evolved my own rule of 3. If the first response doesn't make sense, I am allowed to ask again or to ask for clarification as to what that response means – but I cannot seek more than 3 responses. Three wishes – isn't that the rule of fairytales?
But that's not my only delving into an art I didn't know the name for.
During the last few years of my full-time public sector work I spent a lot of time away from home. I spent a lot of time very stressed. In hotel rooms I would often pick up the Gideon Bible and open it at random and put my finger randomly on the page to see what it had to tell me. To be honest: nothing life-changing.
To be equally honest, there were more than a few Oh! moments– insights that played into my day-to-day.
Attending Robert Moss's class has shown me that you don't need a Book of Answers or a Gideon Bible. All you need is a book and a system.
The system might be setting a focussed question or a wider request for guidance in a specific area or simply 'tell me what I need to know'. The system might be to open the book at random and simply let you finger or your eye be drawn to a line, or you might use today's date: so the 27th of June would be 27/6 (or if you use the U.S. system 6/27). I'm UK, so for me it would be page 27, line 6.
If you're asking about a decision regarding a future event you might use today's date and the date of the event in question. If you're asking about a relationship you might use dates or other numbers relevant to the people involved. Using more than one numerical sequence is fun, because you're then mashing the information, the whole being more meaningful than the sum of the parts.
Whichever 'system' you use for opening the book, you also have options for choosing which book. Some are designed for the purpose, but I can see that there might be more powerful messages if you just pick up whichever one is nearest to you (the synchronicity of that being what you're currently reading) or pick one at random of a bookshelf - yours, the library's, a book shop shelf (the synchronicity of being drawn to something you might never actually pick up to read).
The final ingredient in the recipe is the ability to tune in to how the answers relate to you in the moment.
In the moment is important. If you asked the same question of the same book yesterday or tomorrow, there'd be a different answer, even if only because you would interpret it differently. Remember that synchronicity simply means things happening at the same time. The timing is therefore intrinsic to the equation, intrinsic to both the question and the answer.
Invited to play with the idea, I accepted the invitation.
I asked about a specific situation and was told:
it will bring you to the ultimate threshold of transformation.
Now there's a phrase to conjure on! My original thinking was that this scenario would take me as far as any teaching could, right up to the point where the rest of it would be up to me. My second sight said: the ultimate threshold of transformation is death – the reading is that this will stay with you all the way.
Being your own oracle doesn't make the prophecy any clearer. You just don't have anyone other than yourself to blame for the obfuscation.
Invited again to play, using specific relevant dates, I came across something which took only a tiny re-working into a found poem:
Depth of awareness
where there is reverence
for presence,
of what we call events and facts
in this quiet and secret world.
And just to prove it isn't always so profound, make what you will of this:
Almost a smile, too much for a sandwich to contain.
Maybe it’s telling me not to take any of this stuff too seriously – but then that is true of most things in life. We benefit from taking ourselves and life a little less seriously, a bit more playfully.
And so I invite you out to play. The ancient arts of divination are not spooky or sacriligious, nor are they religious (in any sense) - they are purely about bringing our awareness to our own life, seeing the connections that are there, or that we might wish were there, understanding how we think a little better. We will see the connections that seem to hold up, these will become the signs and symbols and omens that we can trust. It doesn't matter whether they emanate from another realm or whether it is simply our own subconcious telling us: pay attention to this, or this is a good idea, or erm, I really wouldn't...
Equally, we will see the ones that don't, that are therefore more likely figments of our own wishful thinking (guilty as charged, your honour!). They are equally useful for adjusting our approaches or mindsets in ways that serve our greater good.
So, whatever's on your mind, I invite you to phrase it as a question and pick up a book.
The "Book of Answers" is by Carol Bolt. My copy, photo'd for this blog, was published by Bantam in 2000
My first quoted divination and the 'found poem' both emerged from Anam Cara by John ODonohue.
The final mash-up came out of Julian Barnes' Booker Prize winning novel The Sense of an Ending.
