5 Important (and Lesser Known) Pieces of Advice to Awaken Your Psychic Abilities Through Scrying
Connect to your intuition by practicing one of the most ancient forms of divination
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Scrying is the art of gazing into something—a mirror, tea leaves, a crystal ball—and receive messages. Those messages can be about the future, a current situation, or can simply present themselves as advice.
The difference between scrying and reading cards it that, when we scry, we aren’t working with a medium that has an intrinsic meaning attached to it, the same way tarot or oracle cards do. Because of that, scrying can seem intimidating to people who are working on awakening their psychic abilities.
Even though methods vary from one practitioner to another, the basic guidelines from one method to another are pretty much the same. There are many tutorials and guides you can find out there on how to scry, but I noticed that some things that are very crucial to me as a practitioner are rarely discussed in most of the posts I find online.
So instead of giving a step-by-step guide, I’m giving here five important and practical pieces of advice that are crucial to my practice and that I think are beneficial to anyone interested in delving deeper into their intuition and psychic abilities.
1. Understand that ‘psychic powers’ don’t come from you
In my personal experience, any magical act is much easier and effective when I perform it thinking of myself as a channel rather than someone with psychic powers.
As human beings, we’re blessed with the ability to reflect on higher mysteries, such as God, the infinite, the cycle of life and death, and so on. Yet, it’s important to remember that individually, we are only a speck of dust in an infinite universe.
It’s important to stay humble and to take the time to build relationships with higher beings—spirits and entities that will help and guide us through our journeys into other realms of existence and who will help us develop our abilities.
Some people choose to tap into their religious faith, or in spiritual beings such as angels and archangels. Others connect more with an animistic perspective and drive power from the Sun, the Moon, and the Elements. It doesn’t matter which source you connect to the most, the important is to identify these connections and work on developing and strengthening them.
Channeling power is what can give us a sense of surrendering and letting go. When we reach this state, that’s when our scrying sessions become deep and meaningful, and when we’re able to see beyond what our physical eyes see.
2. Practice inner silence
To channel messages clearly while scrying, you’ll need to quiet down your inner chatter. We all have noisy voices in our head, and it’s usually when we try to quiet them down we realize just how loud they are.
Practicing inner silence means learning to focus our attention on ‘nothing’. In short, it’s a form of meditation. My favorite moment to practice inner silence is when I’m taking a walk. I simply start walking and focus all my attention, at least as much as I can, on the present moment. When I notice myself thinking about something, I simply tell myself ‘silence’ to shut the thought out.
It’s very, very hard to do at first, so don’t beat yourself up if you try it and can’t hold it for more than a second or two. But if you stick with it, you’ll see that something incredible starts happening: the feeling of separation between you and the rest of the world seems to vanish. In fact, the whole concept of ‘I’ disappears.
It’s an incredibly liberating feeling. Unfortunately, it usually vanishes as soon as your mind notices how good it feels, but that’s just part of the process.
3. Protection, protection, protection!
I know there are many sceptics out there, but I’ll assume that if you’re reading this, you’re at least a mild believer in the paranormal and the spirit world. So please, hear this warning…
The spirit world is no joke.
If you dabble into it without knowing what you’re doing, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. And if you dabble into it with fear because you know you don’t know what you’re doing, then most probably you won’t experience anything and you’ll just end up losing faith in your abilities all together.
One way or the other, if you can’t engage with the spirit world safely, you lose. So do yourself a favour and learn everything you can about how to protect yourself spiritually.
Protection is a huge topic so I won’t get into it here, but let me just say that burning sage or surrounding yourself with salt and protective crystals without knowing what you’re doing, or why you’re doing it, isn’t going to cut it.
A lot of protection will come from the higher powers you choose to work with (this is another reason why tip #1 is important). Some people have relationships with their guardian angels, others call upon their spirit guides, others choose to cultivate relationships with their ancestors. These are the spiritual relationships that have the power to shield you from harm and also teach you how to use herbs, crystals, and other tools for protective purposes.
4. Experiment with different scrying mediums
What’s great about scrying is that the materials you’ll need are usually cheap and easily accessible, so it’s easy to try your hand at a bunch of different methods.
Each scrying medium has a different feel to it, and depending on your relationship with the tool you’re using, each method will have something different to offer you.
When I first started, I enjoyed exploring and discovering all kinds of scrying mediums. Since materials were easy for me to find and affordable, I didn’t hold back on how much I explored.
I made my first black scrying mirror using some black paint and a pretty picture frame I found in a dollar store. I created my bone throwing set (which I still use today and is very precious to me) by taking walks in nature and collecting small animal bones and other small natural objects.
During the first phases of my learning process, I understood I could see faces and events much more clearly through water scrying than I could by throwing my set of bones. On the other hand, throwing bones seemed to open up a direct line of contact with my ancestors, which made it a powerful way of receiving advice and predictions.
So if you’re curious to start scrying, I highly recommend trying any method you feel attracted to and see how each one makes you feel. If you’re unsuccessful with a specific scrying medium in your first attempts, don’t discard the method right away. Instead, try to use it for different types of readings or in different circumstances and see how this affects your experience.
Sometimes, it’s not about finding the right method for us, it’s about understanding which method is right for a specific purpose.
5. Connect with your chosen scrying medium
No matter which medium you choose to scry, take some time to connect with it. When I put together my bones and curios set, I spent time handling each piece of bone, created a nice pouch to hold them, and even slept with the set next to me for a few days.
I still perform rituals in front of my altar to connect more deeply with my set. I run my fingers through it and anoint each piece with a special scrying oil. I take the time to feel what each piece has to tell me, reflect on why it’s there, and ask myself if it should stay or if it’s ‘asking to leave’.
The same way, if I have times when I’m engaging more in water scrying, I take the time to connect more deeply with the Water element. I’m lucky to live close to the Atlantic, so I make it an important practice to sit by the ocean and connect with its energy. If you don’t live near natural bodies of water, you can create yourself your own water connection ritual simply by taking a shower or a bath.
The more you connect with your scrying medium, the more secrets it will reveal to you, and the deeper the mysteries you’ll be able to tap into.
I use the word ‘medium’ to describe the materials used to scry the same way we use ‘medium’ in the art world to talk about different materials used by artists to create. This is because scrying is an art form. It’s also an ancient tradition found in every culture in one form or another and passed on from generation to generation for millennia.
With a little bit of patience and dedication, anyone can tap into their psychic abilities through scrying by taking the time to connect, meditate, and experiment.
I’m a practing witch focused on European and Scandinavian folk magic, as well as High Magick and sorcery. Check out my Etsy shop: intermundosmagicae.etsy.com
