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How Does Divination Work?

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I pulled three ogham out of the leather pouch and laid them, one by one, onto the surface of my shrine. This divination would be the omen for all of the Solitary Druid Fellowship, a broad swatch of Pagandom that joined one another in a shared practice for the first time on the Winter Solstice. These three ogham would be the message for the whole lot.

Winter Solstice Omen

The ogham is a system of divination that still challenges me. I continue to rely on ogham experts to tell me what these little piece of wood mean. I don’t know them all by heart, either.

I’ll wait until the ritual is done to see what they mean, I thought. This felt like the right choice at the time, and I continued on with my personal observance of the High Day.

When the ritual was done, I sat at my desk. I opened my copy of The Solitary Druid to the page with the ogham chart. I got out the journal I use for my divination practice, and turned to a blank page.

There were three pre-written questions used in the SDF liturgy, and I copied them into the journal:

  1. How were my offerings received?
  2. How shall the Kindred respond?
  3. What more would you have me learn?

I found the ogham meanings on the chart, and copied them down as well.

  1. Fern (Alder):   Guidance
  2. Straif (Blackthorn): Trouble and Negativity    
  3. Ur (Heather): Healing & Homelands

 Oh, no.

Trouble and negativity? Really? Trouble and negativity?

I stood up from my desk. I looked at my shrine and the still-burning candles.

Perhaps I should do the ritual again, make more offerings, see if there’s a different omen.

But no, that wouldn’t make sense. The omen is for all of the group. What would one person’s extra offerings do to change the omen. And anyway, do I really believe that a few extra oats can change the minds of the gods? For that matter, do I believe their minds work like that? Do I think that the Kindred are that offering-hungry, or offering-dependent, or offering-influenced? Is that really how it works?

And why am I being so one-dimensional about “trouble and negativity?!”

All of these thoughts are racing in my head as I pace in front of my altar.

Then it hits me.

Photo by Danny Akright

This isn’t my omen to read.

These ogham were drawn for the entire group, and it’s up to the group to interpret it.

So yesterday, after all of the Fellowship had a change to observe the Solstice and share about their experiences on the SDF blog, I put up a new post. Imbedded within it was a Google Doc, and the solitaries of the Fellowship were all invited to help crowdsource the SDF omen.

The results have been pretty amazing. People who have no real connection to the ogham, or who don’t even see themselves as being skilled with divination, are offering their interpretations. And thanks to the cool tech that Google provides, some of this collaboration has been happening between multiple contributors in real time.

It’s super cool.

All of this has got me thinking about divination, though. When I read the tarot, a practice that is much more comfortable to me, I rarely (if ever) look at anyone else’s concordance of card meanings. I go with my gut, trusting my knowledge of the traditional meanings while holding that up against my impressions. It feels like a very natural, very organic way of reading.

I’m also not normally reading the cards as “the message of the Kinded,” or something like that. It’s my impression, my intuitive take. Sometimes the reading feels inspired, and the messages that come feel as thought they are not completely my own. But I never think of myself as a mouthpiece for the gods.

That would be kind of Pope-ish, wouldn’t it?

And yet, I approached the draw of the ogham with this sense of obligation to communicate the message of the Kindred to the Fellowship. That implies that there is one message, or that there is one correct answer, and I don’t believe that.

I wonder…

What if the questions we ask during a divinatory practice are simply designed to point our focus toward the divine, but the answers we receive have nothing to do with the questions? If we work from the idea that the Kindred, the divine in its multiplicity, are communicating with us, isn’t it possible – likely, even – that the messages we receive are designed to re-direct our focus away from the questions, away even from our preconceptions of the divine, toward….what? Ourselves? Each other? The world? Some holy task of being human?

What do you think divination really does? How would you describe its function and purpose? Is it a part of your practice? And if so, what do you think is going on during your divination? If it isn’t a part of your practice, why not?

Tell me —

How does divination work?

High Days: Reflections on Yule

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The ADF Yule Ritual I attended this past weekend was the second High Holiday ritual I’ve recognized, publicly. The celebration was informal – more communal than liturgical – and it left me longing a bit for the smell of incense and the dim, candle-lit ambiance of Samhain.

Yule does not invite the same somber, solemn tone that one might find at a festival honoring those who’ve passed, but it is High Day where we recognize the annual point of greatest darkness. For me, the rebirth of the Sun is only relevant when I am encouraged to rest with the darkness; to genuinely remember and honor the darkness. There is cause for celebration because we are in the act of surviving the long, cold Winter.

There was a moment during the Yule ritual where this type of remembrance became manifest. A participant in the ritual, holding up the horn of mead, payed her respects to (and I’m paraphrasing) “a really awful year”. I heard these words, and my heart ripped open. Her darkest day was felt, and through the very act of raising the horn in a toast she was calling for the light to return, to bring renewal and rebirth to a weary soul.

I don’t wish to sound dire or morose. I’m not suggesting that Yule be akin to group therapy, or that we all must poster our ritual space with signs of our pain and suffering in order to be joyous. I’m simply seeking a balance of light and dark, and sometimes that balance falls more on the dark side.

When I was a child, and very much surrounded by and nurtured in the Christian tradition, I did not understand why there was such an urgent need for a Savior. Sin, a cornerstone of the faith, was more than my little kid mind could grasp. Now, I’m less a little kid, and sin is still problematic. The concept does not really belong in the Pagan paradigm, but I’m reminded of it as I think about this idea of acknowledging the dark as we await the coming of the Sun.

Perhaps there is a parallel.

Our darkness – the pain and suffering we experience, the regret we feel over poorly made choices – it is real. We may not see it as a result of some original mistake by our mythic “first parents” – that myth may mean nothing to us. But, all people, regardless of creed or tradition, are subject to the darkness.

We are all in need of the Sun to return.

The first steps on a full, red moon

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Tonight is the Full Moon… and Yule… and a Lunar Eclipse…

All at the same time. How’s that for cosmic coincidence?

Tonight is also the night I take my first steps on a new path: the ADF Dedicant Path.

Thinking back to the preparations I’ve made over the past few weeks, it occurs to me that my first act an ADF Dedicant is called to perform – the First Oath – has already been written. I don’t think I realized that’s what it was when I was writing it. But, the words which came to me just before Samhain – words that speak to a lone seeker, standing underneath the moonlit sky, feet planted in the native soil, crying out to the night for a fire to be lit in his soul — if that isn’t an Oath, I’m not sure I know what is.

To sing this song is to remember that I am on this path, and that the Light which I seek is already burning within me. This light sustains me in the darkness, and is the source of my inspiration, the spark of wisdom gained and the promise of Divine guidance and love.

Tonight, in a little over an hour, I will walk outside, stand beneath a red moon, and declare to the unseen forces that guide my life that I honor them, I am committed to learned the Old Ways of worship and devotion to them, and I seek to live a life in service to the world using the gifts they have given me to the best of my ability.

I am a Pagan. I seek to live a virtuous, pious, studious life that connects me to the world, to my heart and mind, and to The Shining Ones, The Ancestors and the Nature Spirits.

So let it be.