Components of a divination

[Vampigato]

I recognize two skills the magician should develop if interested in divining: the first seems to be able to get information through magick in the form sHe chooses, in other words, interpreting symbols to answer the stuff sHe wants to know.

The second skill (as Crowley says) seems to be to know when you have interpreted the smbols correctly, because most of the time, specially with classical forms of divination like tarot or i ching, you get SOME kind of information. It seems important, however, to know when such information can be considered correct, we all should know some times divinations fail...

Any ideas for developing this second skill? I usually get a feeling of rightness when I focus a lot on it, but sometimes when I want to force it I get a confused feeling and become lost

[HYPOCRTRITE]

Divinatioon has ejected into a work of art, you can divine form Object Concentration, colecting trash newspapers, flicking through cable ans satrtelite channels, finding rubbish on th gound. Take it back to your home if you are lucky to gret one and pastche them togehter - see what happens.[

[8 Wasps]

The second skill (as Crowley says) seems to be to know when you have interpreted the smbols correctly, because most of the time, specially with classical forms of divination like tarot or i ching, you get SOME kind of information. It seems important, however, to know when such information can be considered correct, we all should know some times divinations fail....

Yeah, I never focused the problem this way.
If you discovered something in this direction please let me know.

Meanwhile I tell you this.
A friend of mine, a natural sensitive (who decided not to explore her skill), sometimes read tarots to friends, just for fun.
Form a complete tarot pack she decided to take only major arcanas, because, she said, too many cards were dizzing her.
This suggests the strategy of using reduced set of symbols (Futhark, Major Arcanas,...) and to let the mind (ot the mind's eye)
do the rest.
What "the rest" would mean, still I cant' grasp.

[Isis]

Divinatioon has ejected into a work of art, you can divine form Object Concentration, colecting trash newspapers, flicking through cable ans satrtelite channels, finding rubbish on th gound. Take it back to your home if you are lucky to gret one and pastche them togehter - see what happens.[

Seeing might also involve the ability to close one eyes in time.

[Irony]

^_^ I think the hardest part in divination is being able to see the present. I spend way more magical energy trying to sight in on what state am I currently in than I do on how that state is going to change over time. I would say the ability to gain awareness of those two things are the two skills you need in divination.

With the caveat that "you get out what you put in"--sincerity for sincerity, strength for strength, confusion for fear and mockery for spite--I find that different methods of divination work better depending on my motives for divining. The I Ching works very well for me when I'm doing something with an organized, thoughtful, careful mind--like planning my finances or deciding which classes to take in school. But this works best for me when my questions have to do with things happening in the spiritual world or effects I wish to obtain using spiritual means.

And while it's true that I can (and do) take as "freebie" divinations all sorts of random little events, in the same way the ancient Greeks watched the movements of birds, I don't like to rely on those when I want to make an important decision. Then I tend to go for the forms of divination with which I've had the most practice. For example I was recently so frustrated with a situation that had developed between myself and some close family members that I dug out my Rider/Waite and used a Tarot spread I invented 'way back in high school, which I hadn't done in almost a year. XD

The best way to probe a divination result to study the symbols and ask yourself "what interpretation can I put on this result that will make it turtles all the way down?" In other words, symbols which possess the greatest interconnectivity with other symbols which are also germane to a particular state of affairs in manifest reality, have the greatest predictive value for the likely future state of those aspects of manifest reality. ^^;; I don't really know how else to put that, though, and for the life of me I can't think of a concrete example at the moment.