So, the first thing you'll need is your chosen speculum. Speculum (Latin, "thing for looking") is just the category name for all scrying tools. (It also happens to be the name of the duck lips a gynecologist uses to look inside a woman's body. You won't be needing one of those.) Anyway, you'll take your crystal, bowl of water, mirror, and find a quiet place with a cushion or a chair to sit your ass down. You can also lie down flat on your back, but if you have any trouble staying awake, then it's not recommended. Plan on being undisturbed by phones, kids, spouses or pets for at least 20-30 minutes.
Next, prepare your body to enter a relaxed state. If you already have a meditation practice, then you probably know what works for you. If not, then experiment to find out. You can do yoga or stretching to relax the body and settle the mind. You can light candles or incense to create a special atmosphere. At the very least, you'll want to sit with your back straight and breathe deeply. Also place or hold the speculum in such a way that you can look at it for a while without straining any muscles or stifling your breathing. If you're of a religious bent, you might also want to say a prayer of protection and blessing for your efforts. You can ask a question, or leave it up to your unconscious mind to show you what you need to see.
And then just...gaze.
At first, you'll be just looking at the speculum. And perhaps, if you're new to this, feeling just a little but silly. You keep looking. After a while, any number of changes could occur, depending on the person and the session. (I know this isn't very helpful, so I'll name a few.) Your eyes unfocus, so it feels like you're looking through or beyond the reflective surface rather than at it. You may dissociate from your body somewhat--looking at your hands, they no longer look like your hands. Maybe you see your face or objects or lights from the room reflected in the speculum, and they begin to morph into other shapes. Maybe you see clouds or mists swirling about. (These optical phenomena aren't the same as spontaneous visions--although a resourceful scryer can certainly use them as a handy springboard into a visionary state.) As you continue to gaze, you slide gently into a trance or self-hypnotic state. You're still fully conscious, but you're also completely open--open to all the images that are bubbling up to your attention. The visions you see are not in the crystal or the water or the mirror--they're in your mind--but the scrying tool allows you to relax and concentrate enough to receive them.
See anything? Great. Write it down. You don't have to compose quatrains like Nostradamus--keeping even sketchy notes will prove invaluable as you learn and grow. Some people swear by voice recorders, which let them quickly record experiences after (or even during) a scrying session. No matter how vivid your visions are, they will begin to fade almost immediately, and most will vanish completely unless you do the follow-up.
This is just the bare bones of scrying technique, obviously stripped of any ritual embellishments. In the thousands of years that humans have been up to this, we've concocted a whole mess of practices and preparations that are supposed to improve the scryer or the speculum--but we'll cover some of those in a later post.
Now for a little troubleshooting:
I can't sit still and/or focus.
This is where habitual meditators are at a real advantage. Scrying (and arguably magick) requires entering a liminal state that's qualitatively different from ordinary waking consciousness. If you can't quiet your thoughts and relax your body at will, then you aren't going to have much success until you learn to do so. Fortunately, it gets easier with practice. Try gazing for just five minutes at a time, then slowly working your way up to 20 minutes. Or, alternately, commit yourself to sitting with your speculum for 20 minutes, even if you don't see anything, even if all you do is breathe. Personally, I think scrying, where you allow yourself to observe and follow images as they arise, is a lot more forgiving for the beginner than Eastern-style "blank mind" meditation. Patience and persistence will be rewarded.
I've tried to scry, but I don't see anything.
Read the above, then realize that human physiology and psychology are on your side. Countless studies have shown how our brains love to make images where there are none. Remember that everyone has dreams (two to three hours per night!) and that learning to scry is not all that different from learning to dream with your eyes open.
Doing visualization exercises is one way to improve the clarity and duration. There are many such exercises. Some examples are trying to visualize a familiar object as concretely as possible, or trying to recall a group of objects seen once and then hidden away (Kim's game).
If you've put in an honest effort to develop your powers of visualization and still come up blank, then you may just want to consider that some people are more visually oriented than others. Are you so determined to achieve sight that you're ignoring other senses? When you scry, notice if you perceive any sounds, voices, smells, or physical sensations that are out of the ordinary. Maybe your psychic senses are stronger in one of these forms. You want to be persistent and self-critical, but not so much that you're banging your head against the wall when there's a door to your left, you know?
I see images, but they don't make any sense, or they don't seem to relate to me.
I think the dream analogy is helpful here, as well. For example, one night you have a dream that accurately foretells a future event. The next night, you dream that you're riding elephants on the moon while being chased by zombies. The point is, the subconscious burps up a lot of a stuff and not all of it is Grade A psychic information. But some of it is. If you have visions while scrying, then write them down. You just might be amazed when that McDonald's apple pie wrapper you saw last night shows up on the sidewalk tomorrow. (True story.) Sure, we'd all like it if our psychic senses gave us profound revelations all the time, but sometimes they latch onto the ridiculously mundane. One more point: Some scryers see images that literally correspond to people, places and events--but many, perhaps most, do not. Instead, they rely on symbols to convey the necessary information. Again, keeping a careful record will help you develop an understanding of your mind's own symbolic language.
I see things, but they're frightening and/or disturbing.
On the one hand, there are ugly and terrifying things in all the worlds that we have access to, and the seer's job is to approach them fearlessly and without judgement. On the other hand, magickal and visionary work is not for everyone. People with uncontrolled psychic sensitivity--as well as people with severe past trauma, addiction, and mental illness-- ought to approach this practice carefully, if at all. If the balance of your visions leans toward the grotesque rather than the beautiful, or if the disturbing content is spilling over into your regular life, then stop it. Learn some ways to cope with your challenges, and take a break from occult work if its forcing you to confront crap that you know you're not ready to deal with.
I fall asleep while scrying, or immediately afterward.
Maybe someone has some good advice on this one? Because this was my biggest hurdle as a beginner, and still is a problem from time to time. It's just too easy to slide from a nice deep trance into a drooling, snoring puddle of bliss--a bliss puddle which likely won't remember anything when it wakes up. I would recommend sitting upright (as mentioned earlier), getting plenty of sleep at night, and maybe incorporating a cup of coffee or tea into the relaxation ritual. (Though some purists eschew all drugs in spiritual practice, caffeine has been shown to improve concentration in studies, and has even been rumored to help keep a person awake!)
Hope this helps you on your way,
-M
Very useful and funny too! I appreciate your candor and directness. Thanks.
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