Divination
How to read cards, runes, and the signs around you.
I once asked the universe to show me a butterfly of a specific color as confirmation. For the next few days, I saw one every single day.
That's divination too. Not fortune-telling, and not handing your decisions over to a deck of cards, but a structured way to ask questions and notice what you've been missing. My own practice leans on four methods: synchronicities, tarot, runes, and dreams. Tarot is just one tool in a much bigger toolbox, so let's look at the whole thing.
Divination is the practice of seeking information or insight through non-ordinary means. That might mean reading symbols, interpreting patterns, communicating with spirits or your own higher self, or tuning into energy that exists outside conscious awareness.
It is not about predicting a fixed future. Most serious practitioners understand the future as fluid, shaped by current trajectories, choices, and energies. What divination reveals is the most likely outcome based on what's in motion right now, and more importantly, what forces, patterns, or blind spots are at play.
Think of it less like a crystal ball and more like a very honest mirror.
There are hundreds of divination systems that have been documented across history. Here are the ones most commonly practiced in modern witchcraft.
Tarot is a 78-card deck divided into the Major Arcana (22 cards representing major life themes and archetypes) and the Minor Arcana (56 cards representing day-to-day events, emotions, and patterns). It is the most extensively documented and widely practiced form of divination in the Western world.
Tarot is not about prediction. It is about pattern recognition. Each card carries a rich symbolic vocabulary drawn from Kabbalah, astrology, numerology, and Western esoteric tradition, and a reading shows which patterns and energies are most present in a given situation.
It takes time to learn well. The payoff is significant: a good reader can have a genuine, nuanced conversation with their own intuition through the cards.
Oracle decks are not tarot. They have no fixed structure, no standard number of cards, no Major or Minor Arcana. Each deck is its own system, created by its designer, with its own themes and meanings.
Oracle cards are often easier to begin with because you don't need to learn a pre-existing system. The guidebook tells you what each card means, and you interpret from there. They tend to be more affirmational and less confrontational than tarot.
The tradeoff is depth: because each deck is self-contained, you can't carry knowledge from one to another the way you can with tarot.
Runes are an ancient Germanic writing system, the Elder Futhark being the most commonly used set in modern practice, consisting of 24 symbols. Each rune carries a name, a sound, and a complex web of meanings drawn from Norse cosmology, mythology, and poetry.
Runes are one of the most demanding divination systems to learn because the meanings are not self-evident from the symbols; you have to study the lore. They're also one of the most rewarding. A practitioner who knows the runes well has access to a system with deep historical and mythological roots.
They're typically cast (thrown onto a cloth and read by which ones land face-up and where) or drawn one to three at a time for a reading.
A pendulum is a weighted object on a string or chain that moves in response to subtle muscle movements (ideomotor effect) shaped by the unconscious mind. It's used to answer yes/no questions and, with practice, more nuanced ones using charts.
A pendulum is the lowest barrier to entry of any divination method. You can make one with a ring and a thread. You don't need to learn a symbol system. You just need to calibrate your yes and no signals and learn to ask good questions.
The limitation is also its simplicity: it's binary by default. For complex questions, you need either a chart or a different tool.
Scrying involves gazing into a surface, traditionally a dark mirror, a bowl of water, or a crystal ball, and interpreting what appears. This might be literal images, impressions, feelings, or symbolic flickers that arise in the mind's eye while gazing.
Scrying is one of the oldest recorded divination methods and appears across virtually every major magical tradition. It is also one of the hardest to develop. It requires a level of trance-adjacent mental stillness that most beginners haven't cultivated yet.
That said, it's a natural fit for witches who are already visually intuitive or who have strong clairvoyant tendencies.
Astrology is a system of interpretation based on the positions of celestial bodies at specific moments in time. A natal chart is a map of the sky at the moment of birth; a transit reading looks at how current planetary positions interact with that natal chart.
Astrology is less about prediction than about timing and tendency. It tells you what kinds of energies are active, what themes are likely to surface, and what's being supported or challenged in a given period.
It's a significant investment to learn well; the symbol system is vast, but it integrates naturally with almost every other aspect of witchcraft.
Bibliomancy is divination by book: you hold a question in mind, open a book at random, and read whatever passage your finger lands on. Stichomancy is the same practice specifically using poetry. Both rely on synchronicity as the mechanism.
This requires no tools, no learning, and no setup. It's one of the simplest divination methods available and has been practiced across cultures for millennia. The Bible, the I Ching, and Virgil's Aeneid have all been used this way at various points in history.
Its limitations are real: the interpretation is entirely in your hands, and it's easy to dismiss results you don't like. But for a quick check-in or when nothing else is available, it's surprisingly effective.
There is no universally correct first method. But there are some useful questions:
If you have no idea, start with tarot. It is the most thoroughly documented, the most widely practiced, and the most transferable. The skills you develop reading tarot will improve every other divination method you pick up afterward.
The quality of your questions shapes the quality of your readings more than anything else. A few principles:
Avoid yes/no questions when using non-binary tools. "Will I get the job?" wastes a tarot spread. "What do I need to understand about this opportunity?" doesn't.
Ask about what you can influence. "What can I do to improve this situation?" is more useful than "What will happen?" You have agency. Good divination supports you in using it.
Be specific. "What should I focus on?" is too vague. "What's the most important thing to address in my relationship with X right now?" gives the reading something to work with.
Vague questions get vague answers. The more honest and precise you can be about what you want to know, the more useful the reading will be.
Regardless of method, a basic structure helps:
Consistency matters more than ritual complexity. A simple routine practiced regularly builds more skill than elaborate ceremonies done occasionally.
"Your first tarot deck has to be gifted." It doesn't. I've covered this one in Your First Tarot Deck.
"Tarot cards are dangerous." Cards are paper. The danger people attribute to them usually comes from treating readings as fixed prophecy rather than information to think with. A card cannot curse you. It can, however, tell you something you'd rather not hear.
"You shouldn't read for yourself." This is contested even among experienced practitioners. Self-reading absolutely requires more discipline; you have to be willing to see what's there rather than what you want to see. But it is absolutely possible and for many practitioners, it's the most valuable use of divination.
"You need expensive tools." You don't. A $15 tarot deck, a rock on a piece of thread, or a book you already own are all legitimate divination tools. The quality of a reading comes from the reader, not the price of the materials.
Once you've chosen a method and begun practicing, the next layer is learning the correspondences that deepen the work: timing your readings with moon phases, working with planetary hours, understanding how the elements map onto your tools, and integrating divination with the rest of your practice.
Tarot
You don't have to be gifted your first deck. Choosing one, cleansing and bonding with it, and interviewing it before your first real reading.
Read more: Your First Tarot Deck: How to Choose, Cleanse, and Start ReadingSpell Work
Candles, jars, sachets, and sigils each do something different. How to build each one, and why every spell starts with a clear intention.
Read more: How a Spell Works: Candles, Jars, Sachets, and Sigils ExplainedFoundations
Black tourmaline for protection, Friday for love. A correspondence is energy shared between things, and it's the idea that holds spellwork together.
Read more: What Is a Correspondence? The Concept That Holds All Spellwork Together
