With this post we continue a monthly chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by Eliphas Lévi, the book that launched the modern magical revival. Here, as we have over the four years now past, we’re plunging into the white-hot fires of creation where modern magic was born. If you’re just joining us now, I recommend reading the earlier posts in this sequence first; you can find them here. Either way, grab your tarot cards and hang on tight.
If you can read French, I strongly encourage you to get a copy of Lévi’s book in the original and follow along with that; it’s readily available for sale in Francophone countries, and can also be downloaded for free from Archive.org. If not, the English translation by me and Mark Mikituk is recommended; A.E. Waite’s translation, unhelpfully retitled Transcendental Magic, is second-rate at best—riddled with errors and burdened with Waite’s seething intellectual jealousy of Lévi—though you can use it after a fashion if it’s what you can get. Also recommended is a tarot deck using the French pattern: the Knapp-Hall deck, the Wirth deck (available in several versions), or any of the Marseilles decks are suitable.
Reading:
“Chapter Twenty-one: The Science of the Prophets” (Greer & Mikituk, pp. 377-386).
Commentary:
Divination, the theme of the next to last chapter of our text, is also the most popular branch of the occult sciences. This is as true now as it was fifty centuries ago. For every person you can find today who practices ceremonial magic, you can easily find twenty who know how to read tarot cards and a hundred who now and again check their horoscopes via a smartphone app or get a friend to do readings for them. It’s one of the constants of human culture.
When Lévi refers to divination as “the priesthood of the mage,” he has two things in mind, for a priest (or for that matter a priestess) always faces, like the Roman god Janus, in two directions at once. One face always turns toward the divine, however envisaged, and the other toward the community of worshippers the priest or priestess serves. (This is what differentiates the priest or priestess from the monk or nun, whose whole face is turned toward the divine.) On the one hand, the mage as diviner exercises divine power and attains divine knowledge—in a small and very human way, to be sure, but nonetheless in a way that is real. On the other hand, the mage as diviner listens to the questions of clients and offers them good advice.
Look at the great mages of legend and you’ll find that same pattern repeated over and over again. Merlin, to cite only the most famous example, is much less famous in the old legends for magical powers than he is for his ability to know the past and future, to see the unknown, and to penetrate even the most deeply held secrets of human beings. His chief role in the Arthurian legends is as Arthur’s counselor and adviser, offering him crucial guidance all through the vulnerable early days of his kingship—and it is when Merlin departs to his crystal cave, never again to be seen by mortal eyes, that Arthur’s great attempt to bring peace to a war-ravaged land begins to fail.
To see the hidden is a much simpler thing than it might seem—though here as so often, “simple” is not the same thing as “easy.” As our text points out a little further on, there are broadly speaking two ways to do it, the instinctive and the initiated. The uneducated child or peasant, who has never been taught to ignore intuitive insights, very often has this ability naturally; the mage has regained the ability through systematic training and initiation. It is those who fall in between—the “midwits,” to use a bit of current slang—who lack either source of insight and so blunder through life without intuitive guidance, not least because they try to use reasoning to perceive what reason cannot grasp.
The mage, by contrast, can know others because he knows himself. Having penetrated his own disguises and defenses, having learned his own weaknesses and faults, he can perceive those of others. As Lévi points out, most people betray their secrets at every moment by their words, their motions, their glances, and the very shape and stance of their bodies. When Freud wrote about slips of the tongue and the other odd habits of neurotics, he was discussing something that diviners have known and used since the most ancient times.
Yet even the person who has mastered his body, voice, and movements leaves traces of his secrets in the astral light. This is what sets the mage apart from most psychologists. (Those like Carl Jung, who used classic occult methods to access the astral light while veiling it all in terms such as “active imagination” and “collective unconscious,” are the exceptions.) The ability to read images in the astral light, using one or more of the technical methods of occultism, gives an even more detailed glimpse into the fears, habits, and intentions of others than the sort of close observation just discussed.
As our text points out, this deeper insight can be a very dangerous thing. Lévi spends two paragraphs sketching out the type of person that makes it dangerous, and in the process gives a good clear portrayal of a character type as common in our time as in his. When he writes that this “is a whole class of men, with whom the mage most often deals, especially in our century,” he speaks to this century as well. All those who have been public practitioners of occultism know the type, and most of us have at least some elements of that same type in our characters; again, we can know them because we know ourselves.
Lévi then suggests that a career as a diviner is a bad choice for the serious mage. His reasons are sensible enough—that the industry is full of clever frauds who use trickery to achieve astounding results, and the mage will have to do the same in order to compete with them. This is true, and goes considerably further than Lévi realized. The art of cold reading, as it’s called in the carnival business, uses careful observation and equally skillful canned readings to convince chumps that the old lady with the crystal ball really can see their inmost thoughts and foretell their future. There are many other tricks that fraudulent diviners use, with good results, to extract money from their customers and establish a reputation for omniscience
Even so, Lévi is not quite correct to say that professional divination isn’t an option for the serious occultist. An impressive number of occultists got through the Great Depression in good shape by casting horoscopes for pay; a significant number still do this, or find some other way to use honest divination as an income source. That’s easier nowadays than it used to be, because so many diviners have fallen into the habit of asking their clients, in effect, “what do you want the reading to mean?” Honest answers to serious questions are uncommon enough nowadays, and not just from diviners, that the astrologer, card reader, or other diviner who offers it may find a much larger clientele than he or she expects.
The methods of divination, to Lévi, are simply an assortment of ways to silence the chattering of the mind and direct attention to compelling symbols through which intuition can work. Here he sets out some of the methods that were especially widespread in his time. Scrying in a magical mirror, a bowl of water, or a blackened thumbnail are all variants of the same practice, along with the crystal ball made famous by a long string of carnival sideshows and media clichés. All these are instruments by which the mind may be cast into a shallow trance during which dream images surface before the conscious awareness.
Geomancy, cartomancy, and the tarot (a subset of cartomancy) all belong to another category of divination, which is technically known as sortilege: the use of random combinations of symbols as an instrument for divination. The geomancer uses various random or semirandom methods to generate four geomantic figures, each one a four-digit binary number denoted by single or double dots, and these are then used to generate twelve more figures, from which the answer is read. The cartomancer, using tarot or any other card deck, gets the same results by shuffling the cards, laying some of them out in a particular pattern, and interpreting the results. Another form of sortilege Lévi mentions uses the Bible; the diviner formulates a question, chooses a single-digit number at random, then opens the Bible at random and reads the first verse on the page that has the number he chose; this provides the answer to the question.
Metoposcopy, which is divination by face reading, and chiromancy, divination by palm reading, belong to another category, technically called physiognomy. In either case the conformations of face or hand are used to reveal character and destiny. These are not the only body parts that have been interpreted this way—one of the odder books I’ve ever read was a manual of breast divination, which claimed to be able to interpret a woman’s personality by the shape of her breasts—but for obvious reasons the more intimate body parts only get this kind of attention in very specialized circumstances. None of the forms of physiognomy, oddly enough, have gotten much attention in the modern occult scene; readers interested in pursuing something other than the usual forms of divination might consider them.
Another mode of divination that Lévi discusses is divination using a person’s preferences in animals, flowers, and colors, and their characteristic imaginations and dreams. Here again we have drawn close to modern psychology, and for good reason. What occultists call the astral light, psychologists of certain schools term the unconscious mind; for this reason, the methods that occultists use to reveal the former are very closely related, when not identical, to those that psychologists use to disclose the latter. If you know someone’s likes and dislikes, the stray notions that move through their mind and the images that haunt their dreams, you know a vast amount about them and can very often predict what they will do and what sorts of things will happen to them—this latter, of course, because so much of what happens to us is a product of our own thoughts, words, and deeds.
All these are effective methods of gauging the nature of personality and the flow of events. Less effective is the method to which Lévi devotes the last few pages of this chapter: the use of grand narratives by which the coming and going of historical ages can be measured. This is always a very popular approach, mostly because the age about to dawn is almost always painted in the gaudy colors of utopia, but it’s also guaranteed to flop in practice, because too few people recall that the word “utopia” literally means “nowhere.”
The specific system Lévi uses here is the scheme of planetary ages introduced in the sixteenth century by Johannes Trithemius, the teacher of Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. In this scheme history is divided into a repeating sequence of seven ages, each lasting 354 years and 4 months. These ages are assigned to the planetary archangels, in an order that goes through the days of the week in reverse: Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Moon, and Sun. Do the math and you’ll find that these seven periods add up (within rounding error) to two of the ages marked off by the precession of the equinoxes—for example, the Arian and Piscean ages. It’s an intriguing system that deserves more attention than it’s gotten, and it played a very large role in the belief—widespread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century occult scenes—that the Age of Aquarius arrived promptly in November 1879, with the coming of the current period, ruled by Michael, angel of the Sun.
The difficulty, of course, is that Lévi’s idea of what the epoch of the Sun would bring has far too much in common with the more recent notions of the Age of Aquarius, and far too little to do with the realities of human history. He expected France to found a worldwide political and religious empire after conquering East Asia, bringing peace and happiness to the entire planet. Obviously that’s not what happened, nor was there any reason to think that it would happen, but hope—or rather wishful thinking—springs infernal, no matter how many times it is contradicted by the calm logic of events.
Notes for Study and Practice:
It’s quite possible to get a great deal out of The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic by the simple expedient of reading each chapter several times and thinking at length about the ideas and imagery that Lévi presents. For those who want to push things a little further, however, meditation is a classic tool for doing so.
Along with the first half of our text, I introduced the standard method of meditation used in Western occultism: discursive meditation, to give it its proper name, which involves training and directing the thinking mind rather than silencing it (as is the practice in so many other forms of meditation). Readers who are just joining us can find detailed instructions in the earlier posts in this series. For those who have been following along, however, I suggest working with a somewhat more complex method, which Lévi himself mention in passing: the combinatorial method introduced by Catalan mystic Ramon Lull in the Middle Ages, and adapted by Lévi and his successors for use with the tarot.
Take the first card of the deck, Trump 1, Le Bateleur (The Juggler or The Magician). While looking at it, review the three titles assigned to it: Disciplina, Ain Soph, Kether, and look over your earlier meditations on this card to be sure you remember what each of these means. Now you are going to add each title of this card to Trump II, La Papesse (The High Priestess): Chokmah, Domus, Gnosis. Place Trump II next to Trump I and consider them. How does Disciplina, discipline, relate to Chokmah, wisdom? How does Disciplina relate to Domus, house? How does it relate to Gnosis? These three relationships are fodder for one day’s meditation. For a second day, relate Ain Soph to the three titles of La Papesse. For a third day, relate Kether to each of these titles. Note down what you find in your journal.
Next, combine Le Bateleur with Trump III, L’Imperatrice (The Empress), in exactly the same way, setting the cards side by side. Meditate on the relationship of each of the Juggler’s titles to the three titles of the Empress, three meditations in all. Then combine the Juggler and the Emperor in exactly the same way. Then go on to the Juggler and the Pope, giving three days to each, and proceed from there. You’ll still be working through combinations of Le Bateleur when the next Lévi post goes up, but that’s fine; when you finish with Le Bateleur, you’ll be taking La Papesse and combining her with L’Imperatrice, L’Empereur, and so on, and thus moving through all 231 combinations the trumps make with one another.
Don’t worry about where this is going. Unless you’ve already done this kind of practice, the goal won’t make any kind of sense to you. Just do the practice. You’ll find, if you stick with it, that over time the relationships between the cards take on a curious quality I can only call conceptual three-dimensionality: a depth is present that was not there before, a depth of meaning and ideation. It can be very subtle or very loud, or anything in between. Don’t sense it? Don’t worry. Meditate on a combination every day anyway. Do the practice and see where it takes you.
We’ll be going on to the final chapter of Lévi’s magnum opus, “The Book of Hermes,” on March 12, 2025. See you then!
At this link is the full list of all of the requests for prayer that have recently appeared at ecosophia.net and ecosophia.dreamwidth.org, as well as in the comments of the prayer list posts. Please feel free to add any or all of the requests to your own prayers.
If I missed anybody, or if you would like to add a prayer request for yourself or anyone who has given you consent (or for whom a relevant person holds power of consent) to the list, please feel free to leave a comment below and/or in the comments at the current prayer list post.
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This week I would like to bring special attention to the following prayer requests.
May Jennifer, who is now 38+ weeks into pregnancy with the baby still in breech position, have a safe and healthy pregnancy, may the delivery go smoothly, and may her baby be born healthy and blessed.
May Jack H’s father John, whose aortic dissection is considered inoperable and likely fatal by his current doctors, be healed, and make a physical recovery to the full extent that providence allows, and be able to enjoy more time together with his loved ones.
May Goats and Roses’ son A, who had a serious concussion weeks ago and is still suffering from the effects, regain normal healthy brain function, and rebuild his physical strength back to normal, and regain his zest for life. And may Goats and Roses be granted strength and effectiveness in finding solutions to the medical and caregiving matters that need to be addressed, and the grief and strain of the situation.
May Other Dave’s father Michael Orwig, who has been in the hospital since 1/20 with almost complete liver failure and 20% kidney function, have found the strength to survive and thrive when he recently came off of his respirator, and may he be blessed with robust healing that allows him to regenerate his failing organs to the fullest extent that the universe allows; may his wife Allyn and the rest of his family be blessed and supported in this difficult time.
May Kevin’s sister Cynthia be cured of the hallucinations and delusions that have afflicted her, and freed from emotional distress. May she be safely healed of the physical condition that has provoked her emotions; and may she be healed of the spiritual condition that brings her to be so unsettled by it. May she come to feel calm and secure in her physical body, regardless of its level of health.
May Viktoria have a safe and healthy pregnancy, and may the baby be born safe, healthy and blessed. May Marko have the strength, wisdom and balance to face the challenges set before him. (picture)
May Linda from the Quest Bookshop of the Theosophical Society, who has developed a turbo cancer, be blessed and have a speedy and full recovery from cancer.
May Frank R. Hartman, who lost his house in the Altadena fire, and all who have been affected by the larger conflagration be blessed and healed.
May Corey Benton, who is currently in hospital and whose throat tumor has grown around an artery and won’t be treated surgically, be healed of throat cancer. He is not doing well, and consents to any kind of distance healing offered. [Note: Healing Hands should be fine, but if offering energy work which could potentially conflict with another, please first leave a note in comments or write to randomactsofkarmasc to double check that it’s safe] (1/7)
May Open Space’s friend’s mother
Judith be blessed and healed for a complete recovery from cancer.
May Peter Van Erp’s friend Kate Bowden’s husband Russ Hobson and his family be enveloped with love as he follows his path forward with the glioblastoma (brain cancer) which has afflicted him.
May Scotlyn’s friend Fiona, who has been in hospital since early October with what is a diagnosis of ovarian cancer, be blessed and healed, and encouraged in ways that help her to maintain a positive mental and spiritual outlook.
May Peter Evans in California, who has been diagnosed with colon cancer, be completely healed with ease, and make a rapid and total recovery.
May Jennifer and Josiah, their daughter Joanna, and their unborn daughter be protected from all harmful and malicious influences, and may any connection to malign entities or hostile thought forms or projections be broken and their influence banished.
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Guidelines for how long prayer requests stay on the list, how to word requests, how to be added to the weekly email list, how to improve the chances of your prayer being answered, and several other common questions and issues, are to be found at the Ecosophia Prayer List FAQ.
If there are any among you who might wish to join me in a bit of astrological timing, I pray each week for the health of all those with health problems on the list on the astrological hour of the Sun on Sundays, bearing in mind the Sun’s rulerships of heart, brain, and vital energies. If this appeals to you, I invite you to join me.
I came across a video on you tube recently featuring RFK junior. He spoke of how he finally beat his drug addiction when he discovered Carl Jung, which lead him to spirituality and a much deeper level of introspection in to himself. He also seems to hint at some interest and perhaps a belief in the occult, but as this video was intended for the mainstream he does not come out and say that.
The most interesting thing is that he finishes with his belief in a kind of divination of coincidence. That you can seen your path, and get a glimpse in to the Devine through the appreciation of events that seem beyond the realm of physical understanding. He gives an interesting example in his life.
JMG, have you heard of much evidence that RFK junior accepts the occult in some form or another. He does seem very unusual for someone in the political class being both a Stoic and an Occultist if that is true, but a refreshing change if so.
Considering that the Sun is in its Detriment in Aquarius, it may explain the destructive tumult of this epoch we’re in!
Back when I was an Atheist Rational Skeptical Empiricist (aka ARSE), I read a book by a magician named Ian Rowland named “Cold Reading” which is a very snappy and thorough summary of the techniques at hand. I actually hosted the man when he traveled through Japan. A very nice fellow, very inspiring on many levels… and, of course, very close minded to anything magical at all. Which was, of course, fine– we got on well at the time. He considered any talented readers who genuinely believed in their own abilities as natural talents at cold reading. There may be more truth to that than people are usually willing to admit, though I am also reminded by Robert Mathiesen’s experiences that there is plenty of genuine overlap possible between the poles of cold/hot reading and “real” divination.
Hi, magi! 🤜
Sorry, JMG. Been wanting to do the for years.
Quin, thanks for this as always.
Clay, no, I haven’t heard anything other than his interest in Jung. If I’m correct, after all, Jungian thought is a branch of occultism in psychological drag, and I’d expect it to be the branch that public figures would embrace, since it’s more respectable than the other types.
Quin, oh, cold reading and intuitive divination go extremely well together. Every really good study of cold reading I’ve read has stressed that the competent cold reader doesn’t just use a canned script, but adapts the spiel based on cues received from the client and also his or her own intuition. Every competent diviner I know does the same thing, combining the clues from the cards (or what have you) with insights picked up from the client and intuitive flashes.
It’s sad that so many stage magicians are so hostile to occultism these days. That didn’t use to be the case — William Gibson, of The Shadow fame, was one of many early 20th century stage magicians who was also a practicing occultist, and wrote books on both subjects.
Your Kittenship, ahem. Yes, well.
JMG,
In other words, from the occultist’s perspective, the best cold readers are the ones who have actually become skilled with their intuition, and may end up doing some real divination despite themselves.
RFK Junior has stated that the 12 Step Program is a key part of his spirituality. He’s probably too busy now, but he was involved in those types of meetings on a regular basis probably at this stage in more of the helper, supporter mode. Which meant I think he was rubbing shoulders with more ordinary people instead of being buried in elitist company. I have encountered a deep human wisdom and spirituality in seasoned 12 Steppers.. so this augured well for RFK IMO.
Divination in my Christian experience has revolved around your own being, knowing of the Spirit and His Manifestations, hearing counsel from others, and providential circumstances as being the divining rod. There is a little bit of using objects in the Bible, once the laying out a fleece over night to see how wet and dewy it got, the use of the Urim and Thummin small objects carried in the high Priest’s breast plate. As far as I can see in the Bible they were used to indicate yes and no answers or which of two choices. In the NT there is the use of drawing lots to determine the replacement for Judas in the 12 apostles.
A modern example of this in the Russian Orthodox Church in the early 20th century was the drawing of lots from a golden urn to determine the first Patriarch of that church after a hiatus of nearly 200 years.
@ Quin (#3) and JMG (#5):
IMHO, cold reading is a learnable skill that competent diviners would do very well to understand and deploy. The late stage magician Robert A. Nelson wrote a couple of good short pieces on cold reading, as did the psychologist Ray Hyman. I have scans, and will upload them to archive.org within the hour. There is also an excellent bibliography of cold-reading by Doug Dymet, online at http://www.deceptionary.com
Slightly off topic, but speaking of Jung and drug addiction, the great occultist, er, I mean psychologist, was one stream of the spiritual impetus behind AA. The short version of it is that an alcoholic named Roland Hazard who had been associated with Bill Wilson sought any number of treatments, all failing, and finally found his way to Jung. The eminent, psychologist, er, I mean occultist, told him, something along the lines of “I can’t help you, you need to have a spiritual experience / religious conversion.” This became the linchpin in the whole 12 step philosophy.
Bill W. wrote to Jung with gratitude, the following:
“[Y]ou frankly told him of his hopelessness, so far as any further medical or psychiatric treatment might be concerned. This candid and humble statement of yours was beyond doubt the first foundation stone upon which our Society has since been built.”
So the connection between Jung and recovery movement is pretty strong.
Here are two sites that go into a bit more detail:
https://eastbayaa.org/aa-history-carl-jung-and-aa
https://www.jungpage.org/learn/articles/analytical-psychology/704-jung-and-alcoholics-anonymous
Quin, that would be my working hypothesis, yes. Intuition is a very common human capacity, and a great many people use it half-consciously at most: “Oh, I just sort of felt as though that was the right idea.”
BeardTree, that makes a great deal of sense about RFK Jr; if he’d spent time getting to know people outside the bubble of privilege, it’s not surprising that he got a clue. (I was delighted to read a few minutes ago that the Senate passed cloture on his nomination; his chance of being approved at this stage is very high.) As for divination, the whole point of the technical methods is that they help you get to the point of not needing technical methods. I hope the Christian churches get over their terror of divination, and come up with some suitably Jesus-centric means of practice; it might spare them any more of the self-defeating decisions they’ve made so many of in the last century or two.
Robert, I heartily agree. I learned about cold reading during my studies with Cat Yronwode — she encouraged aspiring hoodoo practitioners to learn about it, partly so they could recognize it and partly to up their divination game — and have a modest collection of PDFs on the subject; I’m not especially good at it, but it’s helped.
Justin, hmm! So Jung also did the Zen master trick from time to time, and whacked people over the head with a stick to knock them out of dysfunctional patterns. Good to know. (I wonder if Jung got the idea from William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, which talks about the role of religious conversion in recovery from alcoholism…)
Speaking of divination and Christianity, I’ve been working with the I Ching the past year +. In my research I found a website from a Christian group who are doing I Ching. They referred to as a method as being similar to “casting lots.” Since casting lots is pretty much all over the Old Testament and also in the New, they figured the I Ching was in line with their faith. Anyone who is interested can find more here:
https://www.christianiching.org/
Casting lots is apparently called cleromancy for anyone who is interested. Might be good thing for Christians to pick up again.
I knew an elderly woman deeply Christian, a prominent leader in the local recovery meetings scene and a credentialed trained therapist/ counselor. Active until her early 90’s and after a year of weakness passed on. She could read a situation or a person in a heart beat, moved in synchronicities, had deep practical wisdom in everyday affairs, kind and patient but firm, and discerned things of the Spirit. She got there without physical technical methods as a bridge. I can see how those methods would make you focus on and develop your holistic intuitive side. The Bible and the traditions and history of the church make little room for the use of physical objects going straight to the non physical use of the inner person, expectation and knowing of the Spirit’s leading and providential circumstances, developed practical earthly wisdom – which in my mind includes listening to your intuition. So I don’t see Jesus based physical oracular methods arising as a bridge. The Christian world is diverse and divided into endless subgroups and organizations and a number of them in my experience are adept in “divination” Others, not so much.
Hi John Michael,
🙂 I’m pretty sure you were discussing yourself there at one point in the essay! Nice one.
Last week you posted an image of Valinor, and if that’s utopia, I want nothing of it. Blessed realm, sure, but it looked uninhabitable to me.
I’ll tell you a little secret, which I recount often enough when things go astray (despite my best efforts) that it’s probably not really a secret. Here goes: The wealthiest people I know, pay for good advice, and then act upon it regardless of their own misgivings.
The responses from everyone else who choose otherwise, is pretty telling. Often people treat good advice as if it is merely an optional extra, or that they know better. I’m never quite sure what to make of that poor response, but presumably you’d see that as well in your line of work? Limits anyone? 🙂
Cheers
Chris
In describing the mage as Janus, having faces in both directions, for some reason (I’m not even Catholic), I thought of the Tridentine mass, and how the priest starts with facing god (along with the entire congregation), then turns around once the divine work is complete, to distribute the energy amongst the people through communion. Whoever designed it knew what they were doing in terms of polarity.
Of course, it’s been lost now, and what turned me off the current pope big time is his insistence on the Novo Ordo. Pope Benedict XVI is more endearing, he tried to bring it back.
Speaking of divination,
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464
What the government economists did not do is “Having penetrated his own disguises and defenses, having learned his own weaknesses and faults,”
The economy has shifted around from when those government measures were originally devised, so some of the systematic errors are due to that. But if the statisticians had gotten outside D.C. and looked as the author finally did they would have noticed, assuming they were honest enough to admit it.
I don’t have an opinion on whether tarot cards would work on economic issues, but chicken entrails would at least give you a clue as to what people could afford to feed the chickens and whether the birds were allowed to reach maturity before they were eaten.
PS. the inflation rate spiked up to 6% (0.5% per month). The economists whiffed that one too.
Justin, I’m delighted to hear this. The I Ching is as unsectarian oracle as I can think of, and it reliably offers good advice.
BeardTree, there are always talented people who can get there without the helps that matter so much to the rest of us. If Christians restrict intuitive skills to those who fall into that category, that’s unfortunate.
Chris, my career is a very traditional one! As for that exceptionally useful secret, of course most people don’t want to hear it. One of the great secrets of wealth is that most people choose to be much poorer than they could be. Watch how they spend their money and you can see that choice in action.
Peter, the Tridentine mass is a very well-crafted ritual working; Dion Fortune used to call it the most widely practiced ritual of white magic in the world, and spoke approvingly of the radiant power of Catholic churches in her day, especially those in which the Host was reserved. Nowadays? My late wife, who was raised Catholic, used to talk movingly of when the light went out in her church in Spokane, Washington; it was, to be precise, a few weeks after the diocese was finally bullied into adopting the Novus Ordo mass. She cut her last ties to the church not long thereafter.
Siliconguy, John Kenneth Galbraith used to say that the main function of economics was to make astrologers look respectable. I’d go a little further than that. Economics is a pseudoscience; it exists to churn out inaccurate but politically convenient predictions, and to churn out bogus statistics that say whatever the people in power want them to say.
Well in my subvariety of Christianity we agree with Moses who said, “I would that all of God’s people be prophets” -they that hear and know the voice of God and see the gift of the Spirit as a free empowerment. From the book of Acts “God says, “I will pour out my Sporit on all people, Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams (yeah, we need our sleep) Even on my servants , both. Men and women , I will pour out Spirit and they will prophesy” The art to learn is to walk in the Spirit.
So, this chapter on divination comes at a quite serendipitous time. A close friend of mine has expressed a deep interest in tarot, but has never even owned a deck. Apparently tiktok tarot readings are all the rage right now, where people put out readings into the algoritmic ether and pray they’ll find the person its meant for by way of sychronistic chance. I said that while that’s interesting, I feel its far better to do this in person. I offered to buy her a deck and share what I know, but… well, my knowledge of cartomancy consists of the spreads and interpretations one can find in the little guide book that came with my deck, plus what I’ve picked up from our journey through this book.
Since I don’t want the blind to mislead the blind, I thought I would ask for basic guidance. Aside from reading and meditating on this chapter, what would you recommend to a pair of clueless would-be cartomancers? Any decks you recommend over others? Meditative exercises to prepare for the divination? Special ritual flourishes to get into the vibe?
Your guidance is always appreciated.
I have no objections to people using various methods of divination using physical means but just see them as superfluous. In the way I follow Jesus is the door and way into that broader reality and knowing.
Hello JMG,
Wanted to use the occasion to thank you for editing the Doors of Tarot. This was the book that really got me into the practice of daily tarot readings. John Gilbert has the uniquely encouraging style of treating the reader like the budding expert one will become if one does the work. Highly recommended for anyone out there looking to pick up a daily practice!
Oops. I meant to type “Hi, Magic!” not “Hi, Magi.”
Can anybody recommend a good intro book to chiromancy?
There are a lot of them out there. I’m just wondering if anybody has read one that the liked.
The wealth / crypto Substack personality ‘BowTiedBull’ promotes a type of psychological divination using museums. They call it ‘Museum Madness’ and call it ‘a way to peer into your subconscious’: Enter a large museum, speak your question once, turn off your brain and wander aimlessly until you are attracted by certain art or themes: https://bowtiedbull.io/p/some-fast-career-advice-and-museums
An endorsement from a very, very strange source.
Hi John Michael,
Agreed. That’s exactly how things work out in practice for the vast majority of the population. It’s so consistent that I’ve often wondered where that thought entered the societal mind. Presumably conceiving of limits has a lot to say about the thought, but I don’t really know. Do you have any clear idea as to where the thought springs from?
But absolutely, it is an overwhelming goal for the vast majority of people, to increase their income. Clearly, this is not yours or my strategy, but my friend, we are in the minority here. It’s so much easier to reduce out goings. Man, this is a top down thing. Hmm.
Anywhoo, about a quarter of a century ago, after a very difficult period of time (basically I’d been a chump), I decided to delve deep into motivations and outcomes. Then set myself the challenge of diving by the art of cold reading. Sad to say, but the world today looks very differently to me than the rosy glow way back in those early days. It happens and I’m sure you’ve enjoyed a similar journey?
Cheers
Chris
Hi John Michael,
Oops. I meant divining, not diving… 🙂
Cheers
Chris
Dear JMG, Thanks for this. I read all these posts with interest. I’m really looking forward to your book about this book.
Dreams are all over the Bible too, and potentially a source of developing intuition and self knowledge for the Christian seeker. A few good books for Christian dreamers to read would be the following:
Dreams and spiritual growth :a Christian approach to dreamwork : with more than 35 dreamwork techniques by Louis M. Savary, Patricia H. Berne, Strephon Kaplan Williams.
God, dreams, and revelation :a Christian interpretation of dreams by Morton T. Kelsey.
Kelsey also wrote an interesting book on meditation from a Christian perspective called the Other Side of Silence. Both are good.
Speaking of dreams, I had a question about past life memories, sparked by a dream I had last night…
…is it common at all for the initiate to remember the time in between lives? This might be more appropriate for MM of course. I saw some things in the symbolic language of dreams that seemed to show why certain aspects of fate played out the way they did when I was younger.
…and speaking of long memory…
I came across a books by John Michell at work that had fallen out of the system yesterday, one I hadn’t heard of before. “At the Center of the World: Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic, Norse and Other Ritualized Landscapes.”
There was another one on the cart too, called “The Hollow Earth Enigma” by Alec Maclellan. He also wrote a book about Agharta apparently.
I have been meditation on the Polarian, Hyperborean and Lemurian ages at this point, so it made sense to me these books would arrive at my doorstep. Not only do I have some things to add to the reading list, but it got me wondering if the ideas of the Hollow Earth that seemed to gain popularity around the same time as the Atlantis meme was reactivated by Blavatsky… specifically it got me wondering if the Hollow Earth hypothesis is some distant memory of the Polarian and Hyperborean ages…
…local legend John Cleves Symmes Jr.’s variant of the Hollow Earth theory had openings at the North and South Poles. Anyway… I need to get up to his gravesite in Hamilton at some point. It’s only about thirty to forty minute drive from me.
Marvelous and very informative post. Thank you JMG!
I have a tendency (that some find annoying 😉 to attempt to correlate terminology from different occult traditions. Your essay sparked further a theory I’ve been meditating on that the astral light of the magician is the kundalini shakti of the yogi – it was that reference to bringing the unconscious to one’s conscious mind.
On another note, during my yoga teacher training, I remember a very wise teacher remark that a person’s personality traits could be gleaned from their legs! If nothing else it would indicate their relationship to gravity (high or low centering of pelvic floor) which says a lot about “grounding” or “spacey” orientation.
Yogaandthetarot Jill C
The four dreams that I had over the years that were truly revelatory had a weight of authority and taste of truth that impelled acceptance and action. The one rendered in symbols came with an immediate interpretation of the symbols. So I don’t pay much attention to my dreams as I think if one is important I will know that and understand it at the time or at least clearly remember it, if it’s truth and importance and meaning is to become apparent at a later time.
BeardTree, I’m certainly not trying to tell your denomination what to do. I simply note that it hasn’t worked that well so far.
Paedrig, there’s a book that covers all this: The Doors of Tarot, written by my teacher John Gilbert and edited by me. It’s based on workshops he used to do, in which he’d have complete beginners doing good accurate readings at the end of one day. The deck to choose, btw, is whichever one you like!
Tony, thanks for this! Studying with John did wonders for my abilities as a diviner, and it’s good to hear that his book does the same.
Your Kittenship, fair enough. Admittedly that makes more sense. In response I’d probably point somewhere, look vaguely biblical, and say, “Lo, magic!”
Weilong, it’s not something I’ve studied in detail myself, so I’ll have to leave this to others. Anyone else?
Kfish, that would work very well! Anything that blends randomness and subconscious motivation will give you a good reading.
Chris, diving as a way of cold reading would be cold indeed! (Splash.) As for why people choose to be poor, they’re manipulated into it by the corporate media and the other instruments of an immensely corrupt culture. Those who deliberately spend less than they make, and thus pick and choose what they want to spent money on instead of mindlessly doing what the television tells them to do, are a threat to the system: they’re hard to control and harder to exploit. Thus the constant pressure against them. Cold reading, well, being autistic doesn’t make that easy; I’ve studied it on and off as a way to try to get some sense of everything I’m missing.
C.M., thank you. It’ll be finished and on its way to the publisher in a couple of months.
Justin, hmm! Glad to know about these. As for memories of the intermediate state, yes, those happen now and again, though they’re less common than memories of past lives. The hollow earth — hmm. That’s an intriguing hypothesis. I wonder if Symmes’ local reputation had anything to do with local boy John Uri Lloyd’s remarkable book Etidohrpha, which also deals with a vast subterranean world.
Jill, the occult writings I know of suggest that kundalini shakti is one manifestation of the astral light. The more common equation in Western writings, at least, identifies the astral light in its broadest sense with the akasha tattwa, the immaterial “fifth element” present in all things. Leg divination strikes me as potentially very workable; I’d look to the knees, for example, to gauge rigidity or flexibility in response to other people.
I always did think it was interesting to have two prominent Hollow Earth people, (might as well as call Lloyd’s Etidohrpha that) be so closely linked in this area. Lots of caves not far away in Kentucky… I wonder if August Knapp got down in any of those caves for inspiration of his stunning illustrations of Lloyd’s book. Maybe just astrally.
Sometimes I play what Robert Moss called the “License Plate Game” -whatever the first personalized license plate you see while out and about is a clue for the day or whatever your question might be.
I also play the litter oracle. Sometimes, sad to say, I’ll find playing cards laying around. If I do I’ll interpret the one I find as if it were a tarot card.
Cledonomancy is also something I picked up from Moss and it is often instructive. This is a method where overheard random words or conversation are a clue to the query.
I took a look at the cold reading sources–thanks especially to Robert M. I think my initial fascination waned when I saw that most of them were about how to make people believe that you know a lot of stuff about them that in fact you are either generalizing or repeating back to them from information you encouraged them to divulge. What I was hoping for was something more along the lines of how to actually glean accurate information by observing people’s dress, activities, mannerisms, etc.
The sources did mention the importance of that, but it was then used as a jumping off point for fabrication of confidence. I think what drew me was the notion that we, and all we do, act as an oracle of sorts. The cold reader would agree. But I wasn’t a fan of the sketchy ethics. How would a practitioner of white magic use this? I asked.
First, in service of the truth and to enrich–not un-rich–people. We could see the deeper patterns at work, and be honest with the “client” about the observation rather than simply flattering them. Second, it’s an exercise in compassionate “listening” to really look so closely at someone and hang on their every word in an effort to understand if that understanding is used to humanize them and alleviate their suffering rather than trick them into paying you more money or lauding your abilities.
So one way of doing it would be to really pay attention to others (what each thing means changes a lot with the times, as I noticed from some older and no-longer-accurate examples in the manuals) to get a reading, see where the forces are carrying people, and subtly redirect them in the most positive direction available while at least warning them of pitfalls that they may choose to ignore. That way, cold reading would make a valuable supplement to divination and magic. I could learn to see what people are all about, add a divination to clarify certain questions, and craft an affirmation, an amulet, or less ethically, an “encouraging prediction” designed to make them believe they are capable of exactly the thing they need to do to improve their lives.
This same skillset would help the mage avoid troublesome characters.
That’s my afternoon-of-reflection take, and if I want to learn it, I think the best way would be to start paying very close attention to every detail of people’s appearance and manner and how that played out once I got to know them. But the cold reading stuff does sound like a fun party trick and a means of self-defense against other cold readers. Thanks for all the resources.
Hi John Michael,
So true, if you’re not careful with your own thoughts, other folks will definitely take more care of those thoughts. Not necessarily to a person’s advantage is it? 🙂
I spotted that the US health head honcho was appointed. We really are living in interesting times. It is possible that the vested interests in that industry took things a bit too far.
Splash! 😉 But yeah, you’d miss many signals, although. Proving things could be worse, a person can receive too many signals. Hmm. It’s one of those areas where you have to find a path which works for you. The Myers-Briggs framework suits how my brain is wired, and it provides a general guide as to what behaviour to expect from people. But then I have a gift for seeing motivations, and candidly it is no gift. You’d be amazed at the swampy morass. However, I cut people slack because it gets back to the point you made, who’s will is really in the drivers seat?
Cheers
Chris
Not divination, but an odd synchronicity: Today is Valentine’s Day, and as with every holiday, The Village is making a big to-do over it, complete with handing our red carnations to every woman on campus. As I put the flower on my altar in a bud vase, I was reminded that it was also Friday – Freya’s Day – Venus’ Day, and assuredly, this is a holiday that celebrates one of Her specialties.
(As well as being one of the great Salesmasses of the commercial calendar – marketing flowers, candies, cards, etc, of course. ” Omnia vincet lucrum.”)
Dear JMG,
Thanks for this fascinating essay. Since your post on Jung, I’ve been on a deep dive picking up on themes in your text and left in the comments. Instructive it has been – and certain themes appear again in your writing this week.
My first reflection was on the approaches shared between active imagination, shamanic drumming, past life regression, Quaker silent prayer, and consumption of psychedelics. You mention something similar this week, so I’ll assume my thinking is not incorrect.
My second reflection was how we seem to suppress, or have been trained to suppress, our inner voice (I think we can call it that, knowing it means much more). I recalled the book, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” and the idea that approximately 3,000 years ago humans interpreted their inner voice as external to themselves – as revealed through a study of ancient literature. After that time, we in western culture began to ascribe the voice to an inner voice and in many respects have learned, or have been taught, to ignore it.
Recapturing this latent capability seems to be an important capability developed in the practices I list above: G2P rather than P2G (god to person rather than person to god). I see through the exercises that you set out in your various workbooks, that’s its the safe and effective navigation of this that you enable. Thank you!
Yours kindly,
Boy
A comment regarding p380 of Levi: “The instruments of divination are thus simply the means of magnetizing yourself and distracting yourself from the exterior light in order to render yourself attentive solely to the interior light.”
In the translation I am currently working on (Der Student, 1837), Kerning/Krebs describes a set of conditions a father has placed on his son with regard to him attending university (I have also made a note on this on my dreamwidth recently). One of those conditions is that the son lock himself away from his friends and all distractions for at least one hour every day to do exactly what Levi is describing here: distracting himself from the exterior light in order to render himself attentive solely to the interior light. This becomes a significant plot point in the book as people become curious about why he would need to lock himself away and start accusing him of all sorts of nefarious deeds, because they are so removed from their own inner lights that they can’t comprehend the whole notion of attending to one. This looking inward is something Kerning/Krebs characterises variously in his works as finding yourself, finding your primeval/original human state, connecting with the holy spirit within, entering the kingdom of God (which is within you (as is hell)), communicating with the divine spirit, and/or knowing yourself. The connection with divination certainly appears in some of his works, notably in the stories in Key to the Spirit World which are focused on it as a consequence of such paying attention to the inner light.
I not-very-seriously practice the t-shirt oracle: whatever messages you see on people’s t-shirts, should be interpreted as God’s message to you. This can be hilarious (one guy’s shirt depicted a stick figure sodomizing a sheep), but sometimes eerie.
Justin, back in the 60s, or so I was told by people who were in the hippie scene, it was quite common to do license plate I Ching. You look at the first license plate you see, and since license plates in those days were pretty much all three letters and three numbers — ABC 123 or what have you — you convert the letters into numbers via A=1, B=2, etc., then treat them as odd or even, and you have a hexagram.
Kyle, interesting. Yes, I could see trying to bridge the gap between cold reading and Mentat training — to the extent that it wasn’t already bridged by Sherlock Holmes. 😉
Chris, yeah, we now have RFK Jr. in as secretary of Health and Human Services, and he’s announced a new and more honest system for reporting vaccine side effects.It’s going to be colorful, in much the same sense as any other bloodbath; if I played the stock market I’d be shorting pharma stocks in a big way.
Patricia, and a happy Freya’s day to you and yours!
Boy, you’re most welcome! Exactly; to my mind the most important part of prayer is listening, not talking.
KAN, Krebs was a very insightful guy. This is why I make daily meditation such a basic element of all the spiritual traditions I teach and practice.
Ambrose, I’m scratching my head trying to imagine how you interpreted that stick figure drawing as a message from the Divine… 😉
I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as a dumb question. I think I’ve tested that proposition because, while my social antennas are nothing to write home about, not even I could miss the cues ie facial expression, vocal tone etc. after some of my blurtings. You know, what normal people easily pick up on.
It appears that the so-called ‘educated’ are trained to understand this universe as one of unbending laws, where even when laws and their mathematical formulation make no logical sense (like quantum theory) these laws still work. I hear that the laws of quantum mechanics are deemed spectacularly successful. And maybe, within certain frameworks of fact and circumstance, they are. At least – not being a trained scientist – this is what I understand.
However, it seems to me that the universe is not compelled to comply with the behavioral norms of the allegedly ‘educated’ as to what a proper universe is supposed to do. And so these ‘educated’ seemingly ignore numerous violations in the form of phenomena that make it through this maybe not so tightly woven warp and weft of rules governing cause-effect, cosmic speed limits and the like.
But OTOH, the ‘uneducated’, not having had their perceptual faculties systematically dismantled by years in a classroom, are more prone to seeing what’s actually under their noses. And so, some of these ‘uneducated’, having gotten this notion that this universe can be cajoled, have the temerity to do exactly that. And I know because I’ve seen it. They ask for things that a rigidly behaving universe isn’t supposed to do. And the universe, if you ask really nicely, does what you ask. I’ve seen this too.
I know that this is Orwellian wrong-think verging on thought crime. Heck, what am I saying, it’s a face-first dive right into it. No matter, I saw what I saw. So, to me, this thing about divination doesn’t sound so outlandish. Why, given that this may be a universe of co-existing past-present-future, the future is there as real as us siting here in the present typing and reading. If that’s the case, what’s so unreasonable? Are there really no means of seeing what’s to come?
I know that there have been mages throughout the ages. And so, to test the proposition about dumb questions once again: one about divination. I can’t resist asking about this Nostradamus chap. Have you ever written about him? In your view, was he a fraud? I’ve never read his work. I hear that he even left instructions on how to do what he did. Do you think it’s worth a look?
I’d like to briefly riff on Boy’s comment. I’m about 100 pages into Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and had the same conclusion. I’ll add, it seems to me that bicameral humans were on the descending/involutionary/subjective arc (the one that occurs once human incarnation is achieved, so excluding the greater arc with mineral life). And now we as modern humans have to unlock an equivalent level of intuition on the ascending arc, this time with consciousness, .
I do get intuitive impressions of people (new coworker, for example), but it’s mostly an instantaneous “like them/don’t like them” reaction (and I’m almost always right in that spontaneous judgement). But getting glimpses of their past, or their personal hangups – no. I guess I’m just not interested enough in other people to pay sufficient attention to catch those things.
As for divination, I’ve been using Tarot cards since I was a teenager (the classic nerdy/moody teenager pastime, except I never stopped), but I never mastered the art of reading accurately for myself, even when I managed to set aside my emotions and expectations. And since the results of my self-readings were always so disappointing, I never felt competent enough to read for others… I wonder if I should switch to another divination method – after decades of trying and failing with Tarot, I think it wouldn’t be premature to move on.
One thing that always fascinated me was crystal ball gazing, especially after I read about the method in one of Raymond Moody’s (of Life After Death and Life Before Life fame) books. He built something like a sensory deprivation chamber for himself, only dimly lit, and either used a ball or a mirror (or even a pan filled with water… it’s been many years since I read the book, I can’t even recall the title anymore) to scry his past lives. He also let his clients use it, and claimed that basically everyone saw images almost instantaneously.
Of course teenage-me had to try this, but I didn’t see a thing! Maybe I did it wrong, though – are you supposed to see those images externally, i.e. *in* the ball/mirror/pan of water, or do you see them in your mind? If the latter, what makes them different from daydreaming? (I daydreamed excessively as a teenager, but I always knew those fantasies weren’t real, so of course I expected to see images outside of me when I used the spectacular, magical scrying mirror method.)
Well yeah–sometime’s God’s messages are hard to interpret! The t-shirt game produces a fair amount of “noise” as opposed to “signal,” but a determined exegete might come up with some symbolic meaning.
The real challenge is all those nonsensical-English messages from t-shirts worn by Asians (analogous to the random Chinese characters gotten as tattoos by Westerners). A few of them can be seen here, although the majority do have meanings (albeit very inappropriate ones):
https://www.boredpanda.com/funny-english-translations-t-shirt-fail-asia-broken-engrish/
For example, what could God mean by “Become door!” or “Australian hat she was thc wa / He wore a tooth from / And we will get / you out of here in”? “The pig is full of many many cats” is slightly better, but still puzzling.
Hi John Michael,
Yes, things sure are getting interesting. Is it my imagination, or is there a concerted effort in the media to build the bird flu story?
Sure, bird flu is a problem, but it happens almost every year with our avian friends. Some years are worse than others. The um, photos of mass culls from poultry farms are a gruesome sight, but my belief is that such things go on regardless, and is part of the cycle of that industry. The average lifespan of an industrially farmed bird is not long.
There’s a lot of confluence of events going on right now. There’s resistance to walking away from the caged bird egg practices, an unpleasant method of production in my opinion. Feed costs are going up. Labour shortages. Energy costs rising. The high cost of money. Property prices forcing up the capital costs of business. It takes a lot to supply a cheap box of a dozen eggs at the supermarket. And into that mixture, your health system is about to face a real challenge.
Strange days, huh? Those Limits to Growth are being discovered, slowly, bit by painful bit. Interesting times.
Cheers
Chris
Funny headline of the day.
https://indiandefencereview.com/american-crocodiles-thriving-nuclear-plant/
Crocodiles like warm water, what could go wrong?
Yet another funny thought for a snowy day. It’s from another site, not my own. Vance really did rile things up. Europeans of the “correct” social classes are deeply offended.
EUROPE – A lesson in explaining irony.
JD Vance – “Europe does not accept free speech.”
Europe – “ The JD Vance speech is not acceptable.”
Here endeth the lesson 🤣🤡
Off topic, but could be placed under “Refusing to divine the future” I recently once again sent an email requesting the specifics of what One Planet Living would actually look like in the island of Britain ( their location) to Bioregional.com, an organization that promotes One Planet Living complete with a ten point framework and cool You Tubes on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ0erjJFiCE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3NZ7cmR9v8
I even played the – I need this info for my high school Environmental Science class card. An opportunity to educate the minds of the future, to give them the vision of the possibilities! Apparently they didn’t like the lay out of their tarot cards. I have yet to receive a response after several weeks. I am not meaning to disparage tarot cards by the way.
@ Luke Z & JMG, I first saw reference to Origins of Consciousness on a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite books. Relooking at the list now (link below), I noticed Eliphas Lévi is on there too.
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/11/david-bowies-top-100-books
Dear ,JMG.
Can I translate you some articles and posts into Chinese?I will make sure that this will be shared for free to all who are interested and that I will not receive any benefit.
Thanks.
When faced with a tricky problem involving balancing several factors, I prefer to sleep on it. Often I will wake up with what seems to be the optimum solution. Would this be an unconscious use of intuition?
For beardtree, the Busby report.
https://www.after-oil.co.uk/
Unfortunately it hasn’t been updated in 20 years. It’s one of those things that should be redone every decade or so.
2 Siliconguy #52 Thank, you, but for some reason the link doesn’t work for me.
Siliconguy, link worked on my home server. Thank you
Dear JMG,
Terribly sorry to be years behind in the study, but in reading your commentary on Chapter 4, I am confused with your description of the figure on page 64. The text describes Azoth grouped with the Eagle and Air; and Mercury with Man and Water. Your commentary pairs those two differently. Azoth with Man and Air; and mercury with the Eagle and Water.
You later emphasize the importance of these bins using a stop sign analogy, so I was hoping for your help binning properly with the seasons and cardinal directions.
Thank you so much. Very much appreciated!