In an interview with Sam Block from The Digital Ambler in the Glitch Bottle podcast, he said something about divination that has stayed with me for some time, and it is that divination is for seeing the bumps, or obstacles, ahead as we navigate down the river of life. This has been rephrased in my words as I don’t recall the exact wording of his statement but the sense is there. We ride down this River with a changing the topography and divination helps us see into what possible obstacles loom ahead. I find his assertion to be true. To divine is to peek through the patterns being woven around us, both by ourselves and others. It is to open a thin connecting line between diviner and the divine, so as to see more than. More than our daily sight-lines, more than our quotidian habits, our comings and goings.
When I look at it from the angle of fortune, as in telling fortunes, I see how each of us carries our fortune, that which is possible, whether through choice or circumstance. What is plausible within what is possible. Therefore to tell fortunes is to glean the probable but not yet formed. It is to gain sight so as to draw details of the terrain ahead in our map. In times of trouble and turmoil telling fortunes, divining, reading the cards, provides “space” for strategiz-ing around agency, creation,and imagination. If we can see facets of the terrain ahead, we can imagine and create ways around or through to move forward.
Omen logic, or the logic of omens, and reading the cards from this position while also within the context of navigating the River, points toward learning how to see and read the meanings of the unfolding terrain. It is a surfacing of a language that is in direct converse with the landscape (terrain) interconnected with our moving, experiencing, sensing, bodies rowing along the River. It is a surfacing from the world of spirit, which you can also name imaginal. This surfacing can be read as an omen that we interact with and ascribe meaning to in relation with the ways in which our current place reveals what lies ahead down the River.
I should probably define, from my perspective, River. By river I mean life, living, the things we need to do, want to do, our accomplishments, responsibilities, and relationships. All facets of living are subsumed in the River. We are the ones rowing down this river, encountering boulders, waterfalls, setbacks, curves, diverting tributaries, etc.
When traveling along this River, omen logic can be seen as the universe noticing us noticing the universe noticing us. I say this and am reminded of Derrida’s signifier. Always pointing toward the signified but never managing to penetrate the boundaries. In a way it is a tension of unmet desires. Reaching yet never grasping. This tension also fits in this rhizom-atic omen logic. Sitting with both premises, there is no inherent meaning in whatever revelations divination affords since we all formulate it with words that are equally incapable of grasping what is signified, and also we are all inundated in a landscape of meanings within a web of connections and interconnections, that is the River, the rowing along, the water below, the edges around the water, the trees, the boulders, waterfalls, tributaries, and curves. We move onward and describe through our own experience of doing and seeing. And so we come back to reading the cards in times of… trouble , turmoil, upheaval, pain, suffering, unrest, pain, loss. In all our living, telling fortunes is useful because it opens up ways of seeing, ways of moving, possibilities for revealing angles/corners around looming obstacles/difficulties ahead, while also allowing us to create new routes.
With all this said, I do hope you are keeping safe, fighting the good fight. For me to say Black Lives Matter is an understatement, as a person of color from the Caribbean, I know Black Lives Matter. As a way of contributing, from afar, to the flourishing of local communities within this upheaval, I’ve offered readings for donations for the next week or so. No money passes through me, just donate $9 minimum to a local organization. send me a snapshot of the donation with a question to my email mistandaether(at)gmail(dot)com and I will respond with the reading. With this offer on the table, I’m going to go ahead and share a frequently updated document that has links to incredible organizations that are working to be present and provide aid at the local level within affected communities: Reclaim the Block.
In other updates, I’m currently refining the website as well as my content. I’ve decided to move my auguries unto social media, IG and twitter to be exact, and post them weekly, looking at the week ahead. My website will continue to offer the same content, occasional deck reviews, talking tarot, books, with the addition to more Saints, while also opening up a bit more about what I do and what I think around these topics of what I do, the witch, the spiritism, the animism as an embodied web of interconnected living/being, and everything else in between. I hope you continue to read and enjoy what I write, also sharing your thoughts and ideas, whether on here through comments or by sending me an email. I’m also available for a diversity of readings through my consultation page. Keep going.
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