Full Moon: The elements of scrying

It's Friday. Hello. Today's thoughts are on divination, but not an analysis of a divination form that I practice. As ever, Salt for the Eclipse is a space where I both share things that I do (or know, or believe), and speculate on things I would like to do (or know, or believe).

Divination has hundreds of forms, and I've tried my hand at just a few in the past one to twenty-five years: astrology, tarot, runes, and pendulum. Also a bit of palmistry and graphology, but I fell off of those insofar as they're about as useful at psychological storytelling as astrology is but I don't feel as much resonance. Frankly, for creative personality interpretation I think astrology is about all I need. (If you haven't read that post I wrote about it, please do, since my attitude toward it isn't what you'd probably see if you just searched "astrology 101" on TikTok or picked up a book in the New Age section.[1]) Yet when it comes to adding more divination forms in the vein of tarot, runes, and pendulum — forms where I see the goal as intuiting situations and possible futures — I do have one longstanding curiosity that I have yet to pursue, which is scrying.

What's stopped me from exploring scrying so far has largely been insufficient disposable income to ever quite justify buying or making some of the tools I could try out. There are inexpensive options, but I would want something unique and beautiful. And the key phrase is try out — because I've had trouble gauging what would feel like "my" type of scrying tool. Choosing such a tool brings up various questions like the relationship between aesthetics and identity, or between somatics and executive function.

Now I'm a little better off, so I could maybe afford to invest in something to try first. At the end of this post, I may have made my mind up. To start, though, I'll clarify what divinatory practice I'm even referring to.

What scrying is or isn't

Scrying might be a well-known term among many dedicated ritualists, but perhaps not to all, and I think it could sound like mysterious jargon to people who are just getting their feet wet. As a word it's less recognizable or popular than tarot, for instance. But as far as what people raised in a European or Euro-colonial cultural context would be familiar with, we all tend to get exposed to scrying in some form or another. Crystal balls, magic mirrors, gazing pools. They're rife in popular media and in fairytales.

Scrying is essentially staring at something until the act of staring itself causes the viewer to see — in the loosest definition of seeing — an otherwise unknowable situation. At least, that's how I understand the matter. What I'm less clear about, and imagine few people can agree on, is what someone really sees when they scry.

Is the scryer really seeing the future, since often we see scrying depicted as informing prophecies or lower-grade destinies? Or is the art more about accessing one's intuition about how to handle what may come to pass? Perhaps the goal should even just be to deeply understand the present moment, or more radically to view a distant, invisible past. How much does scrying overlap with remote viewing and other styles of clairvoyance, and how much should just feel like meditation?

I certainly know where my inclinations go; following my pattern with other divination forms, I strongly doubt I would trust scrying to show me vivid, clear-as-day pictures of anything, never mind anything that was definitively going to happen, had happened before, or was happening now. I imagine it's an intuiting method above all else — and that's sufficient to interest me. But I'm not yet in a position to offer a definition of scrying from personal experience, so I won't draw such hard and fast boundaries as I do for something like tarot.

Hopefully this serves as an extremely elementary description. But element is an interesting root here, because when it comes to choosing what scrying tool would make the most sense for me, my considerations feel elemental.

Earth

In the earth we find the metals and minerals that can be shaped and polished into the likes of mirrors, crystal balls, and shining stones. Often a scrying mirror is also not a standard mirror but a black one, fashioned from obsidian glass or similar materials.

I do step into the occasional magic shop[2], and I'm instantly attracted to these scrying tools if they're on display. Almost regardless of quality, I find them aesthetically magnificent. Where crystals are concerned in particular, I think they make more sense to me for scrying than for anything else; I reject crystal healing outright but would still call crystals a good focal point for centering oneself because of how they attract and hold one's gaze.

However, I do harbor increasing ethical concerns about the provenance of various crystals — many reach the market through violently extractive processes — so lately I've been slower to collect beyond the ones I have. In turn, for a scrying ball or mirror I would want to have a particularly good idea of where the thing's material came from. I'm sure I would form a better relationship if I felt confident there was a healthier supply chain. This of course doesn't just go for a scrying tool but for all tools I buy in the future; I can't say I used to exercise this caution in the past.

But besides the ethical issue, one other thing that interferes with my immediate investment in an "earthy" scrying tool is the earthiness itself: the relatively static nature. I might gaze at or into such an object in order to ground myself, but could my intuition be stimulated by the stillness? For some people that might work, but I think I could fare better with something that moves. It's similar to how I find myself at my most meditative when I'm moving around, not sitting, and I am psychologically helped by kinetic activity more than by resting.

Water

In water we find that movement. I'm most personally familiar with water-scrying through some examples in literature and film. There is The Lord of the Rings' "mirror" of Galadriel, an elevated bowl that water is poured into and Frodo sees things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to pass. There is also a moment in Cold Mountain where the heroine Ada uses a normal hand-mirror to then stare backward into a well, where the natural ripples in the water there create the impression of flying crows and a future event that these crows will portend. Despite the metaphorical or literal incorporation of mirrors into these scrying processes, water is the true medium being used.

I've yet to find a bowl for this purpose in a magic shop, or a well that I can stare down any time I wish, but I could take or make any ordinary bowl for water scrying if I wished. The idea appeals to me significantly beyond the media where I've encountered it.

For the better part of a year, I've been striving — albeit not in any systematic way — to incorporate more water into my life, because I am a dried out person in more ways than one. Due largely to autism's interference with self-care routines, I'm almost always mildly dehydrated; and perhaps it's this low baseline that always makes me dry out even faster in the heat. The chronic mystery symptom investigation that I've been investigating for a similar time span may also come down to an autoimmune disorder affecting my salivary glands and tear ducts.[3] Meanwhile, I seek the resilience and adaptability that I lack through both my autism and trauma-scars, and I often frame the object of that quest as water because of water's mutability, water's place as the symbol of the Dao, water flowing around obstacles instead of trying to break them.

To the astrologically-minded it should be no surprise that I have almost no water signs in my entire chart, save Pluto in Scorpio (like my entire generation). Almost everything else is fire. But where scrying goes, I thus tend to ask myself whether I should really be seeking water as a tool, or instead going for the equally dynamic element of fire, which is not "me" as I wish to become but "me" as I currently am.

Fire

Fire can be little, or it can be great. If I chose to scry with fire, I might find or create special candles, or I could make use of this house's firepit for a larger, more complex blaze.

The mere fact that I'm considering either of these options says a good deal about how my attitude toward fire has changed recently. I was outright pyrophobic for my childhood into most of my adult life, and I still harbor irrational anxiety around handling or being near certain highly flammable substances. I learned how to start and build campfires, but hoped I'd never have to do it on my own. Candles were banned in my living spaces even without accounting for fussy landlords. However, it never felt right that I should be a human who can't tolerate fire at all, as we have evolved in tandem with fire-making and it's even probably our birthright from other ancestral hominids. It also never felt right to live this way while being a fire sign. Thus, ever since gaining the home with the firepit, I've started doing a little gradual, informal exposure therapy with myself and the results are paying off.

I can now light candles with a fuel lighter (not yet with matches) and I can stand watch over a fire in the pit without worrying too much. I no longer insist on dowsing such fires with water unless there's a directive from the fire department due to seasonal wildfire risk[4]; they're allowed to burn out naturally. And I'm even collecting scented candles, and I bought some wrought-iron taper holders to use during festive meals. I've learned to love watching a single candle flame dancing slowly, and also to stare at pulsating red embers and the thrashing orange tongues overhead.

So perhaps fire is the most intuitive scrying choice for me. But having said that, I also think more exposure therapy is needed. I feel about halfway there. If I want to start scrying before that's done, I'll inherently need to start with something different.

Input solicited

I know so relatively little about scrying that I can't easily imagine what scrying in an air-aligned way would be. I also suspect I'm leaving out several other tools that would align with the other elements. What I know for certain is that scrying interests me on the same level that tarot, runes, and pendulum do, and that I simply have to try my hand. But therefore, I welcome suggestions from readers about what scrying tool would best suit me, whether it's one of the things I've mentioned or something I've ignored. If nothing else, should you be a scryer yourself I would like to know what you use, and how you approach it.

That's the sum of it. Whenever I can make up my mind, perhaps I will finally become one of the witches who carries a crystal ball — and perhaps not.

[1] I did absolutely start, however, by picking up not one but two New Age section books as a teenager. They've followed me ever since.

[2] Ideally the ones that don't peddle white sage or dream catchers for white people, but sometimes there's no knowing until you're already in the door.

[3] This is only my primary diagnostic suspicion at the moment, out of several things my doctor has considered. I'll perhaps know more next month after I finally have some grotesquely overdue specialist visits.

[4] Wildfires are quite rare where I live, despite how we've started to receive atmospheric smoke from wildfires elsewhere over the past few years. However, fires can still break out, and our "danger" period is right now in the spring, when things are windy and warmer but still dryer than what summer humidity affords.

With that, I leave most of you till May. Thank you for reading. My post next Friday will address both Calan Mai/Beltane and the Last Quarter with some mental health and healing reflections in the setting of that holiday's energies. The week afterward will then be a meditation on the mystery of free will.