In, at, or through? Where to look when scrying

From watching movies and television, it's easy to get the idea that crystal balls and whatnot work pretty much like the TV itself.  You just tune it to the right channel, and then watch the pictures progress across the screen--clear, continuous, and illuminated by an LCD haze.  While this may describe some people's experience of scrying, it's certainly not the most common experience.  And this expectation can be a real stumbling block, especially for beginners who feel like they're doing it wrong because they're not getting 50 channels in HD video.

It's pretty obvious, but it's probably worth mentioning anyway--when you see something "in" your scrying medium, the picture is actually in your mind.  If you were to photograph the image, it wouldn't show up.  If someone was looking over your shoulder, they wouldn't see the same vision.  (Unless you were telepathically linked, or under the influence of the same entity...but that's another discussion.)  Basically, the vision is an induced hallucination that you are choosing to locate in or around the speculum for your convenience.

I recently heard author Geoffrey James express this concept very aptly while a guest on the podcast Thelema Now!  The show's host, Frater Puck, asked James for advice for listeners who had trouble scrying, and he gave this response:

Well, the main thing about scrying is that you have to plug the crystal ball into a USB port, or it doesn't work.  (Laughter.)  The problem that is involved there, when people say that they can't scry, or they say that it doesn't work for them is that they're expecting it to look like a television show.  They're expecting it to look like the movie where someone looks into a crystal stone, and then inside you see, like, teeny people doing things.  That's all convention, in terms of being able to show something like that.  And by the way, that's not new.  At one point, during Dee's work, they decided to use one of his sons, Arthur Dee, as a scryer--he was maybe eight or nine at the time.  And he looked into the stone and all he described some things: "Oh, it looks like there's these little round things coming at me," and eventually Dee looked at it, and there was just some little bubbles in the crystal that he was seeing.  So he was making the same mistake.  But the truth is that the visions occur in your mind, in your imagination--they don't occur as a physical thing that you see inside of the stone.  They actually might, if you were a schizophrenic. You might actually see things, because schizophrenic people literally see things. It's probably an occasion for worry if you actually saw little creatures inside the stone, you know, it's probably time to go get some meds because you're probably not too healthy if that's what's going on.  You have to think of it as more akin to a very focused sort of meditation rather than something that's going to be like the magic out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  That's just not how it is.  It'd be cool if it were, but it just doesn't work that way.  

On the other hand, some people are gonna say, "Well, it's only in your head."  What do you mean, only?  (Laughter.)  Hey what do you mean by that?  "Only"?  Everything's only in your head. Everythng that you perceive about the world, everything--it's all coming through your eyes and ears and through your brain.   So, "only"?  That's all you've got anyway! 

(Geoffrey James on Thelema Now! September 15, 2009.)

 Instructional books and articles offer many tips on how to approach the scrying mirror, crystal, or bowl.  They attempt to explain the technique to eyes used to watching screens:  "Look into it, not at it," or "gaze through it, like a window," or (my personal favorite), "look at it without seeing it."  All those diverse prepositions serve to highlight two essential facts about seership: It's hard to describe with words, and it's likely a little different for everyone.

Here's a list of some of the phenomena the scryer may experience:

• Clouds, mists, or lights which have no definite form, but may evoke thoughts and emotions.
• Flat, screen-like images of varying clarity projected onto the surface of the speculum.
• Events and objects in miniature, enclosed within the boundaries of the medium. (Like a snow globe.)
• Images that appear at a slight distance, as through a window.
• Images inside the speculum, but with portions of the vision extending out towards the seer in three dimensions.
• Visions which appear outside the speculum and seem to be in the room with the seer.
• Images seen in the mind's eye, while the open eyes are fixed on a point.
• Images seen behind closed eyes. 
• Reflections of actual objects on the surface of the speculum, which shift to form other sights.
• Non-visual information: sounds, words, emotions, physical sensations.
• Intuitions which occur directly to the seer, without sensory input.
• Visions which transport the scryer's consciousness to another place, not centered on the speculum.

And any combination of the above may occur in a single session!

What this means is that there are countless valid ways to receive information while scrying.  One is not necessarily better than another, and you can focus your eyes anywhere you damn well please, as long as the method allows you to be comfortable and undistracted.  It doesn't matter if your tools don't work like Jafar's--they will work if you are patient enough to find a good technique and flexible enough to accept the different modes of vision that may come to you.

Good luck!

M