Aleuromancy
An ancient divinatory practice which utilized flour. Sentences were written on pieces of paper, each of which was rolled up in a little ball of flour The balls of flour were thoroughly mixed up nine times and then divided amongst the curious, who anxiously waited to learn their fate. The custom lingered in remote areas into the nineteenth century.
Apollo, who supposedly presided over this divination form, was surnamed Aleuromantis.
Alectromancy (or Alectryomancy)
An ancient divinatory for that utilized a cock. When practicing this divination a circle which was divided into as many parts as there were in the alphabet was drawn in a closed place. Then a wheat-corn was placed in each section beginning with the first letter, or A. Whoever placed the corn must recite a certain incantation while doing it. The time for this divination is when the sun or moon is in Aries or Leo.
The cock must be young and white. When his claws are cut off he is forced to swallow both of them together with a small roll of parchment made of lambskin upon which have been previously written words. Now the diviner holding the cock must repeat a certain incantation or conjuration. Next, when putting the cock with the circle, he must recite two verses of the Psalms, which are exactly the midmost of the seventy-two verses in the entry on Onimancy, and it should be noted on the authority of an ancient Rabbi that there is not anything within these seventy-two verses which is not of some use within Kabbalism.
The cock, being in the circle, is observed to see from which of the letters he peck the grains, and upon these others must be quickly placed because frequently some words often contain the same letter two or three times. The letters should be written down and assembled, for they will infallibly reveal the name of the person concerning whom the inquiry was made.
A story of doubt concerns the magician Iamblicus who used this divination to discover the successor of Valens Caesar in the Roman Empire. . However, the bird just pecked four grains that spelled “T h e o.” This left a great uncertainty. The letters could stand for “Theodosius,” “Theodotus,” “Theodorus,” or “Theodectes.” When Valens heard of this divination he had several persons murdered whose names began with these letters. The magician to escape his known fate drank a draught of poison.
This form of divination resembles the use of a planchette or ouija board.
Another form of Alectromacy is sometimes practiced when a cock crows or is heard crowing.
Another version of the above divinatory incident was related by Ammanius Marcellinus in the fourth century AD. In this version the ritual is described somewhat differently. Sorcerers begun by placing a basin made of different metals on the ground and drawing around it at equal distances the letters of the alphabet. Then the sorcerer possessing the deepest occult knowledge would come forth, enveloped in a long veil, holding in his hands branches of vervain, and letting forth dreadful cries which were accompanied by hideous convulsions. Eventually, almost immediately, he would stop before the basin where he became rigid and motionless. He, then, struck with the branch in his hand upon a letter several times, and then proceeded doing likewise on other letters until the sufficient amount was selected to form a heroic verse which was then given out to the assembly.
Wnen the Emperor Valens was informed of this divinatory ritual, he was so appalled that the infernal powers had been consulted concerning his destiny that he ordered that not only the sorcerers but all the philosophers in Rome be severely punished that many lost their lives.
Details of the performance of Alectryomancy are exactly and curiously described in the fourth song of the Caquet Bonbec, written by the 14th century poet Jonquieres.
Maria DeSimone on the topics of sagittarius, birthdays, astrologyIt’s your birthday and you’re ready to shout it from the rooftops! It’s not that you’re looking for adoration or a bunch of gifts — nah, that’s not your style. You, Sagittarius, are simply so darned happy and grateful to be on this planet and you want to celebrate the fact that you have another year of adventures to look forward to. For you, life is, has and always will be about the journey. With each birthday comes the opportunity to make that journey even more phenomenal.
Exploring your intellectual, physical and spiritual horizons are what make life worth living in your eyes. As a result, you’re always seeking a new way to grow whether through travel, study or a pie in the sky adventure. In addition, you tend to eagerly pursue insight the way other signs go after fame or riches. On your birthday you will most appreciate words of wisdom from a mentor you respect.
You’re zealous, optimistic and brutally honest. You may be short on tact however — especially when someone asks your opinion … or gets you a birthday gift you don’t like. You’re not one to sugarcoat the truth, and for some, that pill is hard to swallow! You might also have a self-righteous streak if you believe unflinchingly in one of your ideologies. Remember that everyone is allowed to have an opinion, and if it’s not in line with yours, it doesn’t automatically mean it’s wrong. On the bright side, you’re filled with faith and a happy go lucky attitude. You know things will always work out and that no matter what life throws at you, you’ll always land on your feet.
Magickal Intentions: Communication, Divination, Writing, Knowledge, Business Transactions, Debt, Fear, Loss, Travel and Money Matters
Incense: Jasmine, Lavender, Sweet Pea
Planet: Mercury and Chiron (though this is a moon of Pluto)
Sign: Virgo
Angel: Raphael
Colors: Orange, Light Blue, Grey, Yellow and Violet
Herbs/Plants: Fern, Lavender, Hazel, Cherry, Periwinkle
Stones: Aventurine, Bloodstone, Hematite, Moss Agate and Sodalite
Oil: (Mercury) Benzoin, Clary Sage, Eucalyptus, Lavender
This day is governed by Mercury. Wednesday’s vibration adds power to rituals involving inspiration, communications, writers, poets, the written and spoken word, and all matters of study, learning, and teaching. This day also provides a good time to begin efforts involving self-improvement or understanding.
What has traditionally been known as the World card points to the presiding intelligence, called “Sophia,” or Wisdom, which upholds life on this and all worlds. A more precise title for this card might be “the Soul of the World,” also applicable as a symbol of personal empowerment and freedom. In most Tarot decks it is a female figure that has become our standard World image. She originates in Hebrew, Gnostic and Alchemical lore, and stands between heaven and earth as the Cosmic Mother of Souls, the Wife of God and our protector from the karmic forces we have set loose upon the Earth in our immaturity and ignorance.
Where the Empress energy secures and fertilizes our terrestrial lives, the goddess of The World invites us into cosmic citizenship — once we come to realize our soul’s potential for it. Just as the Chariot stands for success in achieving a separate Self, and Temperance represents achievement of mental and moral health, the World card announces the awakening of the soul’s Immortal Being, accomplished without the necessity of dying.
This card, like the Sun, is reputed to have no negative meaning no matter where or how it appears. If the Hermetic axiom is “Know Thyself”, this image represents what becomes known when the true nature of Self is followed to creative freedom and its ultimate realization.
Your Rune For Today
Isa
The Ice Rune, represents stagnation and a passionless existence. Your life’s course may seem blurry at the moment, but if you persevere you will move onto better days.
Your Rune For Today
Naudhiz
Naudhiz may foretell needs unmet and friction in relationships. You may be in a time where you should be very careful in whatever endeavor you take on. Also it may be that you are about to learn some of life’s hard lessons and come out the other side of this period a stronger being.
Your Rune For Today
Uruz
Uruz is the Rune of harmony, order and inner strength. Often it marks endings and beginnings of periods in our lives. Uruz also symbolizes your ability to tackle new challenges by confronting them with the powers that lie within you. Opportunities probably abound for you right now.
Your Rune For Today
Naudhiz
Naudhiz may foretell needs unmet and friction in relationships. You may be in a time where you should be very careful in whatever endeavor you take on. Also it may be that you are about to learn some of life’s hard lessons and come out the other side of this period a stronger being.
Seek inner wisdom as giant Jupiter spins back
Tarotcom Staff on the topics of retrograde planets, Jupiter, cancer, astrology
Enthusiastic Jupiter, the happy-go-lucky planet of expansion and growth, slows down and turns backward in the sign of Cancer just after midnight on Nov. 7, 2013, lasting until March 6, 2014.
During this time, we may not feel as optimistic about things, and our plans to tackle big new ideas or endeavors will slow and perhaps stall. But Jupiter is a philosophical planet, so we can still use this time to contemplate our beliefs and expectations, and re-examine where we’re headed.
We all have inner wisdom if we take the time to listen to it, and Jupiter Retrograde encourages just that: Take a time out, slow down and listen to your inner voice. What is it telling you to do? It should be easier to hear now.
Do you like your job? Are you happy in your relationship? Have you been fooling yourself about something? Jupiter Retrograde asks those kinds of questions, and gives you more than three months to think about the answers before going direct.
Even while retrograde, bountiful Jupiter wants to help you figure out how to grow and change and become the best version of yourself. Use this time wisely — it’s a gift!
Although it has taken on a strictly romantic revision of meaning in some modern decks, traditionally the Lovers card of Tarot reflected the challenges of choosing a partner. At a crossroads, one cannot take both paths. The images on this card in different decks have varied more than most, because we have had so many ways of looking at sex and relationships across cultures and centuries.
Classically, the energy of this card reminded us of the real challenges posed by romantic relationships, with the protagonist often shown in the act of making an either-or choice. To partake of a higher ideal often requires sacrificing the lesser option. The path of pleasure eventually leads to distraction from spiritual growth. The gratification of the personality eventually gives way to a call from spirit as the soul matures.
Modern decks tend to portray the feeling of romantic love with this card, showing Adam and Eve at the gates of Eden when everything was still perfect. This interpretation portrays humanity before the Fall, and can be thought to imply a different sort of choice — the choice of evolution over perfection, or the choice of personal growth through relationship — instead of a fantasy where everything falls into place perfectly and is taken care of without effort
On ‘Hermit Day’ I want to look at the Hermit card, one of the most powerful cards in the ‘Tarot’ modality. On this card the Hermit stands alone on the top of a mountain with a staff in one hand and a lantern in the other. Mountains traditionally symbolize achievement, accomplishment and growth. The Hermit has reached a spiritual pinnacle and now wants to share that knowledge with others. He is a symbol of the ultimate awareness. His staff represents power and authority while also symbolizing the ability to influence the subconscious mind. The lantern represents sharing his inner light with the world. If you resonate with any of these qualities, keep an image of the Hermit close by. That way you will not only honor the wisdom within yourself but you’ll also be able to shine your own light on your own special path to find your own power within.
By Ellen Whitehurst for Astrology.com
I should know never brag on your servers, lol! We are trying to get the dailys out. But every time I go to post the site act. It is pitiful right now. You can tell that by looking at the Tarot Card post. No graphics! Words are disappearing!
I have never seem such madness, lol! Hang with us, hopefully this will end sooner! Thank you!
Traditionally, the Magus is one who can demonstrate hands-on magic — as in healing, transformative rituals, alchemical transmutations, charging of talismans and the like. A modern Magus is any person who completes the circuit between heaven and Earth, one who seeks to bring forth the divine ‘gold’ within her or himself.
At the birth of Tarot, even a gifted healer who was not an ordained clergyman was considered to be in league with the Devil! For obvious reasons, the line between fooling the eye with sleight of hand, and charging the world with magical will was not clearly differentiated in the early Tarot cards.
Waite’s image of the Magus as the solitary ritualist communing with the spirits of the elements — with its formal arrangement of symbols and postures — is a token of the freedom we have in modern times to declare our spiritual politics without fear of reprisal. The older cards were never so explicit about what the Magus was doing. It’s best to keep your imagination open with this card. Visualize yourself manifesting something unique, guided by evolutionary forces that emerge spontaneously from within your soul.
Good morning dear family & friends! I hope you are having a very beautiful Tuesday morn. As you are hurrying around to get ready for Samhain, we have a small gift for you. The gift is something that will set the mood for all your rituals. Guessed what it is yet? It is some Samhain recipes for divination, Scrying and etc. We haven’t found these on the net anywhere. So perhaps you don’t have these recipes. We hope you enjoy them.
Divination Incense
2 parts sandalwood 1 part orange 1 part mace 1 part cinnamon Burn during divination ritualsFire of Azrael Incense
1 part sandalwood 1 part cedar 1 part juniper ½ part saltpeter Burn prior to divination and ScryingMoonfire Incense
1 part rose 1 part orris 1 part bay 1 part juniper 1 part Dragon’s blood ½ saltpeter Burn for divination, love and harmonyScrying Incense
1 part mugwort 1 part wormwood Burn a small amount prior to divination.
Witches Sight Incense
1 part of each: Gum mastic Juniper Patchouli Sandalwood Cinnamon Few drops Musk oil Few drops Ambertris oil For Tarot readings, crystal balls readings, meditating.
Tarotcom Staff on the topics of halloween, tarot, insight
The images on some Tarot cards can be scary, especially when they come up in your reading. It’s mostly symbolism, though — those skeletons, devils and natural disasters should not be taken literally.
See for yourself with a Celtic Cross Tarot reading, and take a look at the history and meaning of the three Tarot cards that leave most readers shaking in their metaphysical boots: the Tower, the Devil and Death cards.
In a Tarot spread, The Tower Tarot card looks pretty grim. In practically all renditions of the card, disaster is striking or has just struck. The demons of madness and despair are released from ancient hiding places and nature conspires with human failings to destabilize a society. The upheaval is collective and impersonal. Let us remember, though, that these frightening images were originally created for the educated nobles and clergy, reminding them they had the most to lose if the hierarchy was toppled.
Lightning is a fitting karmic payback for the guilt of those whose fortunes come from the exploitation or abuse of others. A modern subtitle might be “revolution,” indicating that through drastic social change, oppressed people can find renewed hope of better times. The Tower experience comes like a flash of lightning to topple the hierarchy of the old order, after which everyone can have a fresh start on more equal footing.
In a reversed position, the Tower card suggests that the drama is over. All the leaning towers have fallen. Leave behind the issues and emotions that caused this to happen. Ask yourself what you can do now that the options of your past are closed. As you pick yourself up and begin again, you’ll find renewed energy for your next significant endeavor.
To look at the Tower simply, it means great change forced by those who have been made to feel powerless. On a personal level, it could mean confronting someone who is a negative influence in your life — either causing them to change, or banishing them altogether so you can focus your energy on more positive people around you. On a collective level, it could indicate a social transformation — like voters standing up for real change in a coming election. It’s not quite scary when you look at it like that, right?
The good news is, when The Devil Tarot card pops up during a Tarot reading, it doesn’t mean the recipient is going to go to hell or will be possessed by demons. What has traditionally been known as the Devil card expresses the realm of the taboo, the culturally rejected wildness and undigested shadow side that each of us carries in our subconscious. This shadow is actually at the core of our being, which we cannot get rid of and will never succeed in taming. From its earliest versions, which portrayed a vampire-demon, this card evoked the church-fueled fear that a person could “lose their soul” to wild and passionate forces.
The image which emerged in the mid-1700s gives us a more sophisticated rendition — that of the “scapegoated Goddess,” whose esoteric name is Baphomet. Volcanic reserves of passion and primal desire empower her efforts to overcome the pressure of stereotyped roles and experience true freedom of soul. As a part of the message of Tarot, this fearsome passion and power must be reintegrated into the personality to fuel the soul’s passage from mortal to immortal.
The Devil card in a reversed position suggests that you are enjoying creating chaos and resistance for no particular reason. Your sense of humor could be a bit twisted. Your motive may be vengeance or you are simply being an irritant. The juvenile prankster streak in you must be corralled and changed before it gets you into further trouble. Suppress those impulses until you successfully engineer a shift away from this careless behavior. Such antics will cost you in the long run even though they seem amusing in the moment.
Basically, the Devil card tells us what impulses we need to accept as part of our basic nature, what Sigmund Freud called the “Id.” We can only suppress it so far, but we can suppress it enough that it doesn’t translate into addiction or destructive behavior. It’s knowing who we are and our own limitations. A resolution that’s much better than an eternity burning in hell, certainly.
No card in the Tarot deck is as feared — and as misunderstood — as The Death Tarot card. What has traditionally been known as the Death card is not about literal death of any person. It may represent the death of something else, like a project, plan or relationship. It also points to a time of harvest, symbolized in classical decks by the reaping skeleton. Unless the fruits of summer are harvested, they are lost to winter’s harshness and the people do not eat. This card portrays the action of winter on the landscape — lush greenery is cut back, revealing the bones of the landscape. The season of dark and cold separates the annual plants — that live and die in one year — from the perennials, which can take refuge in their root systems until the following spring, to sprout anew. As the scythe cuts the cords that link us to the past, it liberates us to go forward without fear, because we have nothing left to lose. We can see that everything pruned away is recycled for the fertility of the future, so that nothing is really ever lost, despite seasonal cycles of gain and loss.
In the more modern decks, we see Death mounted on a horse and wearing black armor. The emphasis in these decks is on the punishment of sin — much like the way the medieval plague, which inspired the death image, was used to explain the wrath of God. Luckily, nowadays, we aren’t so encumbered with such a guilt-ridden philosophy.
The Death card reversed suggests that you might long for the cord to be cut, but unfortunately you have to persist and endure without the relief of an ending. It is not time for termination and closure yet. Be patient with the current circumstances without resigning yourself to a negative outcome. Coming changes may alter the way you feel about the status quo. Remember that harvest isn’t started until the fruit is ripe. Work at becoming wiser and mellower, sweeter and more nourishing, and your time of release may happen sooner than you think.
What has traditionally been known as the Devil card expresses the realm of the Taboo, the culturally rejected wildness and undigested shadow side that each of us carries in our subconscious. This shadow is actually at the core of our being, which we cannot get rid of and will never succeed in taming. From its earliest versions, which portrayed a vampire-demon, this card evoked the Church-fueled fear that a person could “lose their soul” to wild and passionate forces.
The image which emerged in the mid-1700’s gives us a more sophisticated rendition — that of the “scapegoated Goddess,” whose esoteric name is Baphomet. Volcanic reserves of passion and primal desire empower her efforts to overcome the pressure of stereotyped roles and experience true freedom of soul. Tavaglione’s highly evolved image (Stella deck) portrays the magical formula for harnessing and transmuting primal and obsessive emotions into transformative energies. As a part of the Gnostic message of Tarot, this fearsome passion and power must be reintegrated into the personality, to fuel the soul’s passage from mortal to immortal.
Witches Of The Craft® 
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