Intuition Card painting © 2009 Linnea Vedder Shults. All rights reserved.

Seers and psychics have abounded since the beginning of time, using their intuition to help others. Perhaps the most famous was the Pythia of Delphi, a priestess who delivered oracles from her shrine in ancient Greece. But Greece had other well-known oracles, including a seer from Cumae known as the Cumaean sybil, who was dedicated to Hecate and lived in a sacred cave; the selloi at Dodona, priests of Zeus who interpreted the whisperings of the great oak that grew there; and the legendary Cassandra, a doomed Trojan prophetess in the Iliad, whose words were never heeded. During Biblical times, visionaries like Joseph interpreted dreams for their kings. Ancient Chinese diviners threw oracle bones, as did the amathambo (bone throwers) among the Zulus in southern Africa. The baru — Babylonian and Hittite psychic readers — used oil and water to “alchemize” visions for their people.[1] And ancient Islamic geomancers read sand patterns as a means of understanding the universe.

In fact, psychic adepts have existed in every culture: Diné (Navaho) stargazers, Nepali shamanic healers called Jankri, Euahlalyi diviners in northeastern Australia, Hispanic curanderas (folk healers), the Tibetan kuden or state oracle, and Vodoun priests and priestesses from Haiti. In the West during the last century, famous psychics such as Madame Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, and Edgar Cayce also gathered many followers.

People often think of intuition as a hunch, an impression, or a feeling of certainty that they can’t explain logically. But I want to expand that definition to mean a direct channel to inner wisdom. It can materialize as an inner vision, an inner voice of insight, or an inner feeling of affirmation.

My Experience
My friends’ psychic gifts have occasionally given me insight into personal dilemmas. I value their abilities and have treasured the wisdom they’ve channeled for me, but I rarely seek them out when I need guidance. I know that I’ve internalized the self-reliance in our “do it yourself” culture. But I also believe that trust is essential in a psychic consultation, and I trust my own instincts most when it comes to my issues and challenges. So I generally rely on my own intuition, whether I discover it through an oracular technique or in a more direct way.

The intuitive processes described here take a direct route to your innermost thoughts or feelings. With no intermediate activity, person, or object, you address your intuition for an answer to your query. This may seem like a daunting task, but actually it's what you undertake with any divination method, except that you usually focus your attention outward, toward clouds, eggs, clay, waves, dancing, sounds, etc. In contrast, Intuition offers two methods for becoming directly aware of your inner guidance.

Second Sight
Use a pair of discarded glasses to tap into your inner vision

Anytime • Anywhere • Sitting • Sight

Tools and Ingredients
• A pair of glasses
• Paper and pencil or pen to record your oracle

Until I discovered the work of Dawna Markova,[2] I never understood why guided visualizations stimulated black-and-white sketches for me rather than the technicolor movies my friends saw. Markova describes three basic perceptual modes — visual, auditory and kinesthetic — which each of us integrates in different combinations. Reading Markova, I discovered that since my perceptual mode is V-A-K (consciously visual, subconsciously auditory, and unconsciously kinesthetic), I tended to see snatches of images when I participated in a guided meditation. As a result of this difficulty, I decided to devise a playful method to tap into my inner vision that involves an old pair of eyeglass frames without any lenses. You can also use a discarded pair of sunglasses, a pair of kids’ clown glasses, or even a pair of reading glasses, as long as you return them to their normal purpose once you've finished with them.

Steps

My Experience
I ordinarily charge my glasses with oracular power by using both hands to hold the frames around the lens holes, then feeling energy flow through me into the holes. Depending on your perceptual mode, you could use a number of different techniques to transform your glasses into a divinatory tool. You could repeat several times — either silently or out loud — “These glasses will allow me to see deeply into my inner knowing.” Using a mantra like “om” to fill them with divinatory insight might work as well. If sight predominates your other perceptions, you could visualize the light of your inner vision streaming into them. Or you could present the glasses to each of the directions to be filled with oracular power. Of course, if you’re in doubt about what works best for you, you can always prepare your glasses using all of these techniques.

Surprisingly, I have found that often the light dims more and more as you slowly descend into the inner realm of wisdom, as if your inner eyes are getting heavier and heavier as you hypnotize yourself. This may or may not be true for you.

What happens when you open your inner eyes also depends on how your visual sense operates. Some people see brightly lit scenes, as if they’ve turned on an inner TV that televises the oracle they need. Some people view dreamlike places where people interact with each other. Some perceive images or visual icons that point towards an answer to their question. Others see colors. Whatever happens, your Second Sight visualization will indicate a divinatory solution. Your vision may involve words or feelings instead of sights. It may seem obscure or detailed. Remember to accept whatever comes as the guidance you seek, and don't forget that sometimes it takes time for your inner wisdom to respond.

If you’ve gone into a deep trance, you can use various gentle means of returning to ordinary awareness. First, you can lightly pat your skin. This sensory stimulus will remind you of the limits of your physical body and focus you once again on your outer reality. Second, you can say your name out loud three or four times, bringing your everyday identity to mind and recalling yourself to full waking consciousness.

One final suggestion: If you use your everyday reading lenses for this divination, remember to return them to their normal state by reabsorbing the oracular energy you originally infused into them. You can do this by seeing or feeling the light of your inner vision flowing from your glasses back into your body or by stating three times out loud that “These glasses will now return to their ordinary function as reading glasses.” If you don’t do this, you may see more than you expect for the next few hours.

I have found that when some people put on their “oracular glasses,” they experience a magical moment when insight or inner vision comes. But more often than not, my visual wisdom needs a little more help than just donning oracular glasses, so I’ve created a few more steps for deepening into visual intuition. If you’re visual when it comes to divination, there may come a time when you don't need "magic glasses" to tap into your inner vision. Instead you will begin to combine a playful attitude toward seeing and a deep reverence for your inner wisdom. Eventually your visual imagination will be able — on its own — to access the realm of mystery, where all answers lie.

The Still, Small Voice Within
Imagine your ear canals extending into the vital energy at the center of your body in order to tune into your intuition

Anytime • Anywhere • Sitting • Words & Sound

Tools and Ingredients
• Pen or pencil and paper to record your oracle
• A quiet place where you won’t be disturbed

In spiritual circles, people often talk about “listening to their inner wisdom.” In the context of oracles, I use this term with a more literal meaning. Hearing the still, small voice within is an auditory ability you can develop, just as you can improve your visual skills for divination.

My Experience
Since I'm predominantly an oral person, I had to think long and hard about a method for directly accessing my inner voice. What I usually do is ground and center myself, ask my question out loud and then listen. What I hear sometimes comes in the form of a noise or words that my outer ears perceive, and sometimes as an inner voice or sound. For instance, when I asked what I needed to know as I was editing this entry, my inner guidance told me, “You’re ready to go. Just watch your posture so you don’t end up with back pain.” If such an abbreviated technique sets the hurdle too high for you, here’s a method of auditory divining that will allow you to move step by step into the inner chamber where your wisdom resides.

I have found that depending on your perceptual mode, your oracular guidance may come as sounds or words, as a vision, or as a physical sensation. It may also arrive when you least expect it. Insight has its own timetable.

Steps

Notes

Graphics Credits

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