Responsibilities of a Diviner
(Excerpt from Talking To The Spirits)
Divination for religious questions was endemic to the ancient world, and even during the medieval period (when it was generally considered the work of the Devil) bibliomancy was sometimes used to settle questions among monastics and theologians. As several of the scholars who responded to our surveys have pointed out, the ancients had their own divinatory systems set up to judge questions, and inevitably those questions would sometimes involve the personal gnosis of some ancient dissident. Unlike mainstream Abrahamic religions, Neo-Paganism’s long-standing (though not ubiquitous) discipline of using magical practice as part of spiritual ritual has given us not only a familiarity with divination, but a wealth of diviners of all sorts in our communities.
One reconstructionist author admitted in an essay that since the ancients had such processes of spiritual discernment, an authentic process should ideally be utilized as the way to slowly integrate personal gnosis even into reconstructionism, the most historically resistant of the Neo-Pagan denominations. After all, if it was an authentic practice to divine, judge, and integrate such things, then it should be allowed. He then sadly acknowledged that the real problem holding back such practices was more than just the problem of reconstructing authentic divinatory practices. It was the depressingly modern issue that within contemporary Pagan groups, we just don’t trust each other. Even those Pagans who acknowledge divination as useful and trustworthy as a practice – and not all do by any means – may not be able to bring themselves to trust any specific diviners.
Part of this is the spotty reputation of divination in this country. Illegal in many places as “panhandling” and relegated to the margins of society, the profession has overtly been the province of frauds and con artists. We continually see images of people trying to separate other people from their cold hard cash through “money-changing”, blessed candles, or just keeping someone on a 900-number call for as long as possible with promises of a sunny future. Given that there is no certification for this profession, and that even proof of effectiveness is by definition hard to come by, how is the average Neo-Pagan to figure out which of the spooky-looking people at the psychic fair is trustworthy, and which one is delusional, inexperienced, or just plain fake? When it’s a matter of using one or more of those spooky-looking people to help decide a crucial question of theology in your religious group, the average Neo-Pagan leader might throw up their hands in despair.
While we tend to think of the ancients as gullible, superstitious peasants, they did not necessarily take the word of anyone who threw some sticks and claimed to be a seer. Along with their time-tested and community-accepted methods of judging personal gnosis, they also had time-tested and community-accepted methods of judging diviners as well. Some of those methods were fairly harsh, in that the seer who have incorrect information too many times – especially when it impacted the community negatively – could be shunned or even killed. Tales abound concerning shamans or soothsayers who couldn’t predict the weather or the herds and were slain by angry villagers; one could consider it something of a dangerous job for that alone.
Murder aside, if we look to modern indigenous societies that use divination and have a respected place for their seers, we find two important threads: lineage and results. The most respected diviners have both – they were taught their trade by someone respected, and they get reliable and useful results more often than not – but those with no lineage can also be respected if word of their accuracy spreads. And, truly, this is the way that trusted diviners are “shared” in the contemporary Western world, and in Neo-Paganism – someone has good results over a period of time, and refers their friends to their favorite fortune teller.
Even the best diviner can’t guarantee that their signal clarity will be good on any given day, as we’re all human and psychic abilities and often limited by illness, exhaustion, hunger, stress, or emotional involvement with the subject. No matter what you say in circumstances such as those we’ve described, someone will be angry with you. In spite of this, you are obligated to tell the truth as you see it, even if it’s unpopular. People who received unwanted answers will revile your abilities, and questioners may grumble when you say that you can’t do it today because you just broke up with your partner and aren’t clear-headed enough.
What people want most in a diviner, of course, is a reliable track record, which in practical terms usually stems from a combination of inborn knack and long-term experience. Coming in a close second is some assurance of character – honesty, integrity, sanity, humility, and good professional boundaries. If leaders whose job is to judge personal gnosis should be held to standards of behavior in order for us to trust them with our spiritual inspirations, the diviners who may be used as the very tool by which they make their decisions had better be held to standards as well. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing; diviners who agree to follow a certain set of professional standards not only enhance their own reputation, but that of diviners in general.
Frankly, if we are ever to get to the point of trusting each other, we need to give each other good reasons for that trust. If a collection of community diviners were to agree to strive for a certain standard, and hold each other to it, we might begin to be able to build that trust, brick by brick. At the very least, it can’t hurt, and it gives the confused questioner something by which to judge those spooky people with their cards and stones and painted sticks.
Standards For Professional Community Diviners:
1) A community diviner should be well-trained. Ideally she should know more than one system of divination, because no one system works for every client. If she only practices one system, she should be able to adjust it to multiple different circumstances, people, and cosmologies. She should be experienced at each system, enough to be able to do it in times of stress and trouble.
2) A community diviner should be objective, including being objective about his lack of objectivity. He should be able to tell when his own feelings or opinions are getting in the way of giving a particular client the cleanest reading possible, and be able to humbly refer them to someone without his baggage.
3) A community diviner should have no ego or pride about their divination job. Ideally, she should see herself as a vessel for the spirits or the Gods or fate or whatever, but no more than that. She should understand that having her gifts does not necessarily make her a more superior or less flawed human being than the other flawed humans who come seeking her advice, laying their flawed lives out on the table for her to see. She is a public service and nothing more.
4) A community diviner should be constantly working toward better signal clarity, using whatever techniques he can find – meditation, grounding, stress-release, diet, herbs, drumming, whatever works. Signal clarity is crucial, for without it we are idiots talking to ourselves. He should be better than most people at putting aside at will any emotions and stressors that interfere with his signal clarity. At the same time, he should be experienced enough to know when those stressors have overwhelmed his signal with static, and be humble enough to step aside. See Rule 2.
5) A community diviner should be actively and constantly working towards being more self-aware and mindful, and shedding her psychological baggage. For us, every bag we carry is a possible monkey wrench in the signal clarity. Self-awareness maintenance should be a full-time avocation for us. She should be more aware of her problems than most people, and have better control over them.
6) A community diviner should be painfully aware of the state of his mental health, and do whatever is necessary to make sure that any aberrations in the chemicals therein do not get in the way of the signal clarity. As a corollary, he should take concerned comments on his mental health and the quality of his readings by people he trusts as things to seriously consider, and not thrust them aside without due thought, discussion, and maybe getting a couple of readings on the subject. He should welcome such scrutiny from those he trusts and respects, because it’s important outside perspective.
7) A community diviner should have some sort of regular spiritual path and/or discipline, and ideally some connection with Gods and/or spirits who help her interface with other Worlds and the information contained within. If her signal is good enough to get clean, clear information over the wire, it’s good enough to get Someone on the phone to crosscheck with in ways that human beings can’t.
8) A community diviner should take disbelief in his abilities in stride, and remember that no one is obligated to believe him. If he’s right, it will all come out eventually; he should see the skepticism of other people as part of a healthy lack of gullibility and not take it personally. See Rule 3.
9) A community diviner should stand ready to help those who ask, but should not push her gifts aggressively on others whether they want it or not. Sometimes it means more to a person to figure something out themselves the hard way than to hear it come out of some random seer’s mouth. If she is in doubt as to when to keep silent, she should get a reading from someone else on the subject.
10) A community diviner should make alliances with other diviners, and not just to have other people to refer folks to. He should make a practice of cross-checking dubious information with other diviners that he respects, preferably more than one at a time. The Gods don’t mind if you want a second, third, and even fourth opinion – they’d rather you got the message right.
11) A community diviner should be grateful for the presence of other skilled diviners, seeing them as peers and colleagues rather than rivals. There’s more than enough work to go around.
12) A community diviner should hold other community diviners to these standards, and aid them in achieving same. If divination is to be considered a dependable source of otherworldly information – perhaps the most dependable source – then diviners need to be openly committed to reducing error by whatever margin they can. There will always be error, but honesty, self-awareness, humility, and hard work can significantly improve things.