PrefaceThere comes a point in every old witch's life when she must either accept that her students have begun faithfully repeating mistakes instead of lessons, or sit down and write a book.
This is mine.
Before continuing, propriety demands that I state my qualifications, not because I find titles especially impressive, but because every other volume on Divination begins by informing the reader that its author possesses "remarkable gifts." I have always preferred evidence over adjectives.
My name is Agatha Blackbriar.
I serve as Head of the Blackbriar Coven, one of the last surviving covens in Europe still devoted to the study and preservation of Divinatory Magic in all its forms.
Should that name mean little to you, I shall not take offence. Covens have never sought fame. We have generally preferred to be left alone.
Within our halls reside practitioners of Farseeing, Seeking, Dreamwalking, Echo Reading, and the rarer prophetic disciplines. The last prophet widely acknowledged to have understood both the burden and proper use of genuine prophecy counts herself among our sisters.
If there exists a body of living knowledge concerning Divination still preserved in Britain, I am confident that some part of it has passed through our hands.
I have practiced the art for sixty-three years.
I have taught it for forty-one.
I have watched three successive generations declare the discipline dead while continuing to misunderstand what it is they have buried.
It is therefore my intention to commit to parchment not merely the practices of Divination, but the principles beneath them, lest another century pass before someone remembers that magic, when properly asked, is perfectly capable of answering.
Should you seek a method of predicting tomorrow's Quidditch scores, I fear this book will disappoint you.
Should you wish to understand why your crystal sphere has stubbornly remained nothing more than an expensive ornament…
…then perhaps we may begin.
— Agatha Blackbriar
Head of the Blackbriar Coven
Chapter One On Crystal Spheres
Before we begin, I should disappoint every merchant who has ever attempted to sell you an outrageously expensive crystal sphere.
The crystal is, by and large, the least important part.
A clean sphere of good-quality glass serves admirably for instruction and occasional use. Unless you intend to dedicate years of your life to mastering Farseeing, spending a small fortune on flawless mountain crystal is an extravagance better reserved for those with considerably more Galleons than sense.
Crystal merely remembers its enchantments more readily than ordinary glass. That is all.
If you are only experimenting with the discipline, a glass sphere will answer just as faithfully.
Should you eventually discover that Divination truly suits you, then you may begin searching for proper crystal.
Until then, save your money.
Should you happen upon an authentic crystal sphere at a village market, however…
…buy it immediately.
If the seller knows what it is, you have acquired an excellent instrument and your purse feels the pain of it.
If the seller does not know what it is…
…you have acquired an excellent bargain.
Either way, you leave wealthier than when you arrived.
Most beginners make precisely the same mistake.
They place the sphere upon a table and dim the lights and then they stare.
Sometimes they stare for several minutes.
The particularly determined have been known to stare for hours.
The sphere, displaying commendable patience, continues being a sphere.
This surprises them profoundly even if it should not.
A crystal sphere possesses no more ability to reveal distant places by itself than your teapot does.
Magic is performed by witches and wizards.
The sphere merely assists.
A proper sphere performs three services for the practitioner.
First, it provides a focus.
Second, it stabilises the flow of mana.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, it gives your mind somewhere to look.
The first two are matters of magical craftsmanship.
The third is a matter of human nature.
Your senses are remarkably stubborn things. They insist that your eyes may only observe what lies before them. A crystal sphere politely convinces them to relax that opinion for a little while.
It does not create the vision.
It merely gives your mind permission to accept one.
Do not underestimate how important that is.
I have watched accomplished duelists fail repeatedly at the simplest exercise in Farseeing because they refused to accept that their eyes were no longer the organs doing the seeing.
Likewise, I have watched children succeed on their first attempt simply because nobody had yet convinced them that such a thing ought to be impossible.
Age grants many advantages.
Flexibility of thought is seldom among them.
The first exercise most instructors teach is also the first they teach incorrectly.
They tell the apprentice to look into the sphere.
Do not.
Close your eyes.
Place one hand upon the sphere and allow the smallest thread of mana to enter it.
Not enough to enchant.
Not enough to cast.
Merely enough for the sphere to recognise that someone has begun asking a question.
Then decide what it is you wish to see.
Not everything.
Not something.
One thing.
One place.
One question.
The sphere cannot answer a question you have not yet asked.
Beginners invariably choose something grand.
The Ministry of Magic.
The Headmaster's office.
A dragon reserve.
Do not be one of those beginners.
Choose your own front door.
If you cannot find your own home, you have little business attempting to observe somebody else's.
Should you fail…
…try again tomorrow.
Farseeing is not an art that rewards frustration.
Magic has always displayed a curious reluctance to cooperate with people who insist upon shouting at it.
The distance between you and your chosen destination is of surprisingly little consequence.
The connection is what matters.
You already know your home.
You remember it.
Magic remembers that you remember it.
This memory serves as the bridge.
Many apprentices mistakenly believe they are sending their vision across the countryside.
They are doing no such thing.
Magic has no need to travel.
It simply follows the path already established between yourself and the place you seek.
This distinction appears philosophical.
It is not.
Understanding it will eventually save your life.
At this stage, you are not attempting to observe events.
You are merely proving that you can establish a stable connection.
The difference is rather like learning to open a door before attempting to walk through it.
Many witches and wizards never appreciate that there are, in fact, two entirely separate acts involved.
Locating.
Observing.
These should never be confused.
One may locate without observing.
Likewise, one may observe only after successfully locating.
Every advanced form of Farseeing rests upon understanding this distinction.
Most modern texts fail to mention it at all.
I have never understood why.
This also explains why wards interfere so effectively with Farseeing.
Contrary to popular belief, most protective enchantments do not prevent observation.
They prevent location.
There is a considerable difference.
An Unplottable dwelling does not become invisible to magic.
Rather, magic finds itself unable to establish a sufficiently precise connection from which observation may begin.
The result appears identical.
The mechanism is not.
History records that the earliest Unplottable enchantments were devised to keep magical settlements from appearing upon Muggle maps.
Within a generation, witches discovered another, considerably more valuable consequence.
Farseers could no longer peer comfortably through their windows.
A fortunate accident.
The best kind.
A sufficiently accomplished diviner may eventually force a connection through such wards.
I strongly advise against attempting this.
Should you possess the ability to overwhelm centuries of protective enchantments through sheer magical strength…
…you have almost certainly progressed far enough that this book has little left to teach you.
On Wards and Other InconveniencesBy now, the attentive reader has undoubtedly arrived at an objection.
"What if the place I wish to observe lies behind protective wards?"
An excellent question.
The answer, unfortunately, is that someone considerably older than either of us asked the same thing several centuries ago.
The resulting magical arms race has occupied Diviners and Wardmasters ever since.
Most permanent protective enchantments interfere with Farseeing in one of two ways.
The first prevents the Diviner from establishing a connection altogether.
The second permits the connection but refuses observation beyond the boundary.
The latter is considerably more common.
Should you attempt to observe a properly warded estate from outside its protections, you will generally discover that your vision reaches the ward itself…
…and no farther.
The interior remains frustratingly absent.
Many an apprentice has mistaken this for failure.
It is, in fact, success.
You have found precisely where the ward begins.
Fortunately, every lock encourages someone to invent a better key.
If the Diviner already possesses a sympathetic connection within the protected boundary, the matter changes considerably.
A gift.
A ring.
A walking stick.
A lock of hair.
Even a pebble quietly resting in a flowerbed may suffice.
Farseeing follows connections.
It has never cared particularly how they were established.
If your focus already resides within the warded grounds, your point of observation begins there.
The wards have no cause to object.
After all…
…nothing has entered.
It was already inside.
This naturally leads many ambitious apprentices to conclude that they should simply post gifts to every witch and wizard they hope to observe.
While I admire the enthusiasm…
…I do not recommend announcing your intentions by owl.
Apart from being deeply impolite, such behaviour has historically resulted in duels.
Several of them quite memorable.
Likewise, planting an object upon another person's belongings without their knowledge is generally considered espionage.
The magical community has never displayed much affection for spies.
If discovered, you should expect consequences entirely unrelated to Divination.
The truly accomplished Wardmasters anticipated these inconveniences centuries ago.
It is therefore common for important estates to inspect all incoming objects before permitting them beyond the boundary.
Some simply strip foreign enchantments.
Others isolate suspicious magical signatures.
The oldest houses employ wards that politely refuse to acknowledge unknown sympathetic links at all.
Such protections are neither inexpensive nor easily maintained.
They are, however, remarkably effective.
An amusing consequence of these developments is that the strongest wards are rarely tested by enemies.
They are tested by relatives.
Entire branches of magical wardcraft owe their existence to grandmothers determined to keep well-meaning family members from "just having a little look" through the crystal sphere.
Never underestimate elderly witches.
History certainly has not.
Remember always: wards do not hate Divination. Wards hate unauthorized Divination. Their purpose is not to blind magic, but to teach it the difference between invitation and intrusion.
On Looking Backward and ForwardOne of the more unfortunate habits of modern Divination is the insistence that all forms of seeing concern themselves with the future.
They do not.
Indeed, if one were to rank the three directions by reliability, they would stand thus:
The Past.
The Present.
The Future.
In precisely that order.
The past has already happened.
Magic remembers.
The present is here, go ahead look around
The future, however…
…has not yet made up its mind. It's constantly changing and splintering into possibilities.
That simple fact has frustrated Diviners for millennia.
Seeing the PastLooking into the past is considerably easier than most imagine.
Magic lingers, this is common knowledge. Every spell leaves echoes.
Every life leaves impressions.
Every sufficiently significant event marks both place and object.
A trained Diviner may learn to observe those echoes.
Do not misunderstand.
You are not travelling through time.
Nor are you changing it.
You are merely observing memories that magic itself has retained.
Think of footprints left in fresh snow.
The traveller may be long gone.
The trail remains.
The further back one attempts to observe, the fainter those echoes become.
Conversely, events of tremendous magical significance may remain visible for centuries.
I once observed the magical residue of a duel that had taken place one hundred and eighty-four years before my own birth.
The duelists themselves were long dead.
Their magic, however, remained surprisingly articulate.
History is considerably easier to verify once one learns where to look.
Seeing the FutureThis chapter shall disappoint many readers.
The future cannot be observed in the same fashion.
It does not yet exist.
One cannot remember tomorrow.
Nor, I should add, can magic.
What many apprentices mistake for "seeing the future" is usually one of three things.
Wishful thinking.
Coincidence.
Or remarkably poor tea.
This is not to say genuine prophecy does not exist.
It most certainly does.
I have witnessed it.
I have lived beside those burdened with it.
The last true Prophet of the Blackbriar Coven has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that fragments of what is yet to come may indeed be perceived.
Unfortunately…
…that does not make the visions understandable.
Prophecy does not arrive politely arranged in chronological order.
It has no obligation to explain itself.
Nor does it distinguish between certainty, possibility, metaphor or warning.
A prophet may witness a burning crown.
Whether that signifies a king's death…
A ruined kingdom…
A victorious rebellion…
Or simply an unfortunate accident involving a fireplace…
Often remains unknown until afterwards.
Those who imagine prophecy to be a convenient means of acquiring tomorrow's newspaper have clearly never spoken to a genuine Seer.
Should you lack the Third Eye entirely…
I advise leaving prophecy to those unfortunate enough to possess it.
No quantity of determination shall compensate for an absence of the gift.
One cannot teach oneself to hear colours.
Likewise, one cannot simply decide to become a Prophet.
The gift either awakens…
…or it does not.
There do exist charms, rituals and disciplines intended to improve one's judgement regarding future possibilities.
These are valuable.
They are not prophecy.
Confusing the two has led to a truly astonishing quantity of very expensive funerals.
On Seeing That Which Has Not Yet ComeThe past is a memory.
The present is an event.
The future is an argument.
That distinction is the first lesson every competent diviner should learn.
Young practitioners often believe that seeing the future is merely a more difficult version of seeing the past. It is not. The two disciplines share almost nothing beyond the tools used to perform them.
To observe the past is to examine something that has already surrendered itself to reality. It has happened. The event possesses shape, weight and consequence. Magic remembers such things surprisingly well.
The future remembers nothing.
It has not yet become.
When an apprentice pours magic into a crystal sphere and attempts to look ahead, what they usually perceive are not events but possibilities. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions. Most vanish before the spell is even completed, replaced by others born from choices made by people entirely unrelated to the diviner.
This constant flux is why most attempts at mundane future sight amount to little more than expensive guesswork.
Only those born with what the old covens called the Third Eye possess any reliable hope of interpreting these shifting possibilities.
Contrary to popular fiction, the Third Eye does not magically reveal the future.
It reveals significance.
Imagine standing upon a mountain overlooking a forest. You cannot count every leaf, yet your eye is immediately drawn to the great rivers, the roads and the smoke rising from villages. The insignificant disappears. The important remains.
The Third Eye performs much the same miracle.
Where an ordinary diviner sees an impossible storm of futures, the Seer instinctively perceives those that matter.
Even then…
Interpretation remains notoriously difficult.
A vision rarely announces itself politely.
One Seer may witness a burning crown.
Another, falling snow.
A third, nothing more than a raven refusing to fly.
All three may describe the very same event.
There are, however…
Rare exceptions.
Fixed Points.
I do not use the term lightly.
Every generation produces scholars who insist no future can ever be inevitable. They are usually clever people who have simply not lived long enough.
Most futures are rivers.
A Fixed Point is the sea.
You may delay reaching it.
You may approach from another direction.
You may arrive soaked, triumphant, broken or laughing.
But arrive you shall.
These events possess such tremendous magical and historical inertia that reality itself appears to bend around ensuring they occur.
How?
I have no answer.
Neither, I suspect, does anyone else.
Fortunately…
They are exceedingly rare.
Were history composed entirely of Fixed Points, free will would be an illusion.
It plainly is not.
The overwhelming majority of futures remain wonderfully uncertain.
People choose.
Kings hesitate.
Dark Lords make mistakes.
Children ask unexpected questions.
One act of kindness may prevent a war.
One insult may begin another.
The future breathes because people do.
That is precisely why it is so difficult to observe.
If, during your practice, you believe you have discovered a Fixed Point…
Close the sphere.
Make tea.
Sleep.
Then attempt the observation again tomorrow.
Nine times out of ten you have merely mistaken conviction for certainty.
The tenth time…
Pray you are wrong.
There exist certain constants by which one may judge the health of a world.
A castle called Hogwarts.
A Ministry, however named.
The Wandmakers.
The Phoenix.
The Veil.
Should a traveller ever arrive in a world where too many of these are absent…
Leave.
Ask no questions.
Stay nowhere after sunset.
For such worlds have slipped beyond the attention of Providence.
Chapter TwoOn Cards, Coincidence and the Extraordinary Capacity of Witches to Invent TraditionsThere exists an amusing misconception among modern witches and wizards that Tarot was invented by diviners.
It was not.
To the considerable annoyance of several distinguished magical families, it was invented by artists.
More specifically, by wealthy artists.
Bored, wealthy artists.
The earliest surviving decks depict kings, fools, saints, devils, harvests, lovers, towers and every other subject their creators found sufficiently interesting to paint. They were commissioned by noble houses for entertainment, conversation and games.
Nothing more.
Indeed, the oldest known records make no mention whatsoever of fortune telling.
The cards were simply beautiful.
As all properly expensive things are expected to be.
Curiously…
The first recorded individual to read the cards as though they possessed meaning beyond the painted image was not a witch.
She was, according to surviving records, an entirely ordinary noblewoman with not a shred of magical ability to her name.
That fact caused no small scandal.
Not because she claimed to predict the future—people have always claimed such things—but because she developed an unsettling habit of being correct.
Far more often than chance comfortably permitted.
She never claimed the cards spoke.
Nor that spirits guided her.
She merely insisted that the cards "felt right."
It would take nearly three centuries before witches examined why.
The answer proved unexpectedly elegant.
Not the paint.
Not the parchment.
Not even the symbols themselves.
The lacquer.
The woman, entirely unknowingly, had purchased a finishing varnish whose recipe included the sap of Moon Ash.
A thoroughly unremarkable magical ingredient.
Too weak for potions.
Too unstable for wandmaking.
Almost entirely ignored by magical craftsmen.
Almost.
The lacquer retained just enough magical receptivity that it accepted minute impressions from the aura of the individual handling the deck.
Not instructions.
Not thoughts.
Impressions.
Emotional weight.
Intent.
Expectation.
Fear.
Hope.
The deck itself did not become magical.
Rather…
It briefly remembered the shape of the magic touching it.
This discovery forever changed how magical society viewed Tarot.
The reader contributes no magic.
Or at least…
Very little.
The questioner does.
As the cards are shuffled, handled and finally drawn, the querent's own magic quietly influences which cards reach their hands.
The reader merely interprets what that unconscious magic has already arranged.
That distinction cannot be overstated.
The deck does not answer the question.
The questioner does.
The cards merely provide a language in which the answer may be read.
There is therefore an old saying among professional card readers.
Never blame the cards.
They were arranged by your own soul.
Once the magical nature of the earliest decks had been understood, witches and wizards did what they have always done when discovering a useful magical object.
They improved it.
Or at least…
They attempted to.
Decks began appearing crafted from dragon parchment, moon-birch veneers, silverleaf paper, basilisk-treated vellum and every other material fashionable magical craftsmen insisted would "enhance divinatory resonance."
Many undoubtedly did.
Some accepted magical impressions more readily.
Others held enchantments for decades without noticeable decay.
A handful became works of magical art worthy of museums.
None of this made the cards easier to read.
This disappointed an extraordinary number of wealthy collectors.
A deck may become more magical.
The reader rarely does.
No quantity of enchanted lacquer, phoenix feather fibres or rune-pressed card stock can explain why The Tower appears beside The Star instead of The Hermit.
Nor can the deck explain why those particular cards matter to the person before you.
The cards present.
The diviner interprets.
These are not the same profession.
Indeed, one of my more entertaining students once presented me with a deck fashioned almost entirely from unicorn hair, moon silver and enchanted crystal.
It was undeniably magnificent.
It was also entirely incapable of compensating for his dreadful judgment.
The reading remained dreadful.
The deck deserved better.
This is perhaps the greatest misunderstanding surrounding Tarot.
People imagine that wisdom resides within the cards.
It does not.
Wisdom resides within the conversation between the cards, the questioner and the reader.
Remove any one of those three…
…and all you possess is beautifully illustrated cardboard.
This peculiar limitation has led magical craftsmen to discover something entirely unexpected.
Although superior materials scarcely improve divination, they make remarkably capable magical foci.
Many duelists conceal individual cards within their sleeves.
Several famous curse-breakers have employed rune-bound decks instead of traditional focus stones.
There exists an entire French school of spellcraft whose practitioners cast almost exclusively through enchanted playing cards.
I have never personally understood why anyone would willingly chase their wand across the floor after an ill-timed Expelliarmus.
Still…
The results speak for themselves.
None of these innovations, fascinating though they are, improve one's ability to read Tarot.
That remains stubbornly dependent upon the same quality it always has.
Understanding.
If a card presents your fear…
…yet you refuse to admit that fear exists…
…what exactly is the deck expected to accomplish?
If The Fool appears because you stand upon the threshold of change, yet you insist your life is perfectly ordered…
…who, precisely, should perform the understanding in your stead?
Certainly not the cards.
They have already done their work.
A Tarot deck does not tell you who you are.
It asks whether you possess the courage to answer honestly.
Chapter ThreeOn Seeking, Choosing, and the Virtues of a Good StickIf you learn only one discipline from this book, I recommend this one.
Practical Divining is perhaps the least impressive branch of our art.
It will not show you distant kingdoms.
It will not reveal forgotten events.
It will not provide mysterious visions for your descendants to misunderstand three generations after your death.
What it may do is prevent you from walking directly into a troll's cave.
I have always considered this the more immediately useful accomplishment.
Practical Divining is the art of asking one's own magic simple questions and permitting it to answer.
That statement requires some explanation.
Older magical practitioners have understood for a very long time that our magic appears to know considerably more than we consciously do.
I say appears deliberately.
Ask ten magical theorists what magic actually is and you shall receive eleven answers, followed by an argument concerning terminology.
I shall therefore make no claim as to why this phenomenon occurs.
I merely state that it does.
Your magic reacts to things before you consciously recognise them.
It recoils from certain dangers.
It reaches toward familiar things.
It recognises sympathetic connections that your ordinary senses cannot perceive.
It sometimes distinguishes hostile magic from benign magic before you have identified either.
Indeed, Practical Divining could not function otherwise.
The difficulty is communication.
Your magic may know that something unpleasant waits beyond the left-hand path.
Unfortunately, it possesses no mouth with which to tell you.
This is why we give it one.
A coin.
A stick.
A pendulum.
A handful of stones.
A needle floating upon water.
Your wand, if nothing else presents itself.
None of these objects possesses knowledge you lack.
They are simply methods by which knowledge inaccessible to your conscious mind may be translated into something you can understand.
Left.
Right.
Yes.
No.
Toward.
Away.
That is Practical Divining.
Do not make the mistake of asking too much.
The simpler the question, the more reliable the answer.
"What should I do with my life?" is a dreadful question.
Your magic may know considerably more than you do, but there are limits to what may reasonably be communicated through a falling branch.
"Which direction is home?"
Much better.
"Which of these paths leads toward the object I seek?"
Better still.
"Is there something magically dangerous beyond that door?"
Excellent.
You have reduced a complicated problem to an answer your chosen instrument can actually provide.
This is the fundamental skill upon which every form of Practical Divining depends.
Not power.
Not prophecy.
Knowing how to ask a good question.
There is another reason I recommend every witch and wizard learn at least the rudiments.
Practical Divining is extraordinarily difficult to prevent someone from performing.
Confiscate a Diviner's crystal sphere and you have inconvenienced her.
Take her cards and you have annoyed her.
Take her wand and you have made matters considerably more serious.
Yet if she retains a Knut in her pocket, she may divine.
If she can find a straight branch, she may divine.
If neither is available, give her two stones and sufficient imagination.
The instrument matters very little.
The magic is yours.
This simplicity is also why forms of Practical Divining appear repeatedly in Muggle folklore.
A traveller dropping a stick at a crossroads.
A lost child spinning something upon the ground to choose a direction.
Coins tossed to settle uncertain choices.
Pendulums swinging above maps.
Rods used to seek water.
How many of these practices began with Muggles imitating something they once witnessed a witch perform, and how many began independently, I cannot say.
Most do nothing when deprived of magic.
Some work for entirely mundane reasons.
A surprising number become quite effective the moment a witch picks them up.
History has an irritating habit of remembering the gesture after forgetting its purpose.
There is, however, one rule I insist you remember before attempting any of the exercises that follow.
Ask what is, whenever possible. Do not ask what will be.
Suppose two forest paths lie before you.
Do not ask:
"Which path will get me home safely?"
You have just asked your magic to examine an uncertain future involving yourself, the forest, whatever lives within it, the weather, your own subsequent decisions and potentially every person you might encounter along the way.
All with a stick.
Be reasonable.
Instead ask:
"In which direction is my home?"
Then perhaps:
"Which path contains the greater present danger to me?"
Those are questions about things that exist now.
Your home has a location.
The paths have directions.
A hungry troll lurking beneath a bridge is already a hungry troll lurking beneath a bridge.
No prophecy is required to establish these facts.
This distinction has saved my life on seven occasions.
It has saved members of my coven considerably more often.
It has also, regrettably, informed me on three separate occasions that the safest available direction was backwards.
Magic is under no obligation to provide adventurous answers.
When it tells you to go home…
I recommend listening.
The Humble StickWe shall begin with perhaps the most sophisticated instrument required for this chapter.
Find a stick.
Preferably a straight one.
That second requirement is not magical. Crooked sticks are simply irritating when one is attempting to determine where they point.
A walking staff serves equally well and has the advantage that you need not explain why you are carrying a branch through Diagon Alley.
The principle is simple.
Hold clearly in your mind something whose location possesses meaning to you. Your home is ideal for a first attempt.
Do not imagine the journey.
Do not imagine yourself arriving.
Do not ask how long reaching it will take.
Think simply:
Where is home?
Allow a small amount of magic to enter the stick.
Then release it.
Observe where it falls.
Congratulations.
You have performed Practical Divination.
Do not immediately begin assigning significance to every bounce.
Beginners are particularly susceptible to this.
The stick bounced twice because it was dropped upon a stone floor.
This does not signify two great obstacles upon your journey home.
It signifies that you should have listened when I recommended practicing upon grass.
There are, however, genuine variations.
A stick may hesitate strangely before falling.
It may turn slightly after striking the ground.
Repeated attempts may produce slightly different headings.
It may point strongly in one direction when seeking a person, then gradually shift over the following hour.
These things may possess meaning.
Experience teaches the difference between magical behaviour and an inconveniently shaped patch of ground.
That distinction is why a master Diviner may obtain considerably more information from a stick than an apprentice.
The master is not necessarily performing more magic.
She simply knows what she is looking at.
This principle applies throughout Practical Divining.
Power improves very little if understanding does not accompany it.
A novice sees the coin land upon its edge and declares the spell failed.
An experienced practitioner asks why the magic refused either offered answer.
A novice sees a pendulum circle instead of swinging toward either choice and tries again.
A master stops asking the question.
Sometimes the most important answer magic provides is:
Neither.
And a sensible Diviner learns very quickly not to argue.
Coins, Pendants, and Whatever Happens to Be in Your PocketA stick is useful.
Unfortunately, witches have an irritating habit of becoming lost in places where suitable sticks are unavailable.
For this reason, I strongly recommend learning to divine with objects you already carry.
A coin is excellent.
A pendant is better.
A ring suspended from a piece of thread works perfectly well.
Your wand may serve in an emergency, though I personally dislike dropping mine upon the ground merely to discover which direction I ought to walk.
The important lesson is this:
Practical Divining should never depend upon possessing a particular instrument.
If you require a silver pendulum carved beneath the full moon by a seventh daughter before you can determine which of two corridors is safer, you have rather missed the word practical.
The CoinCoins are perhaps the simplest tools for answering questions with two clear possibilities.
Every witch and wizard understands the principle.
Heads.
Tails.
Yes.
No.
The difficulty lies not in flipping the coin.
Muggles accomplish that quite successfully.
The difficulty lies in asking a question simple enough that your magic can meaningfully influence the answer.
Take an ordinary coin.
It need not be enchanted.
Hold it between your fingers and establish beforehand what each face shall represent.
Do not decide this halfway through the toss because you dislike the answer.
That is cheating.
More importantly, you are only cheating yourself.
Focus upon your question and allow a small amount of mana to pass through your fingers and into the coin.
Then toss it.
Catch it if you wish.
Let it fall if you prefer.
The technique matters considerably less than consistency.
Do not ask:
"Should I trust this person?"
Trust is complicated.
Your magic may consider him trustworthy concerning money, untrustworthy concerning secrets, perfectly trustworthy regarding your physical safety and an absolute menace around your wine cellar.
A coin possesses only two sides.
Have some mercy upon it.
Ask instead:
"Did this person knowingly lie to me about the matter we just discussed?"
Now you have given your magic something useful to answer.
Even better:
"Is the statement I just heard inconsistent with what this person believes to be true?"
The distinction may appear pedantic.
Divination rewards pedantry.
A coin may also refuse the question.
It may land upon its edge.
It may slip strangely from your fingers.
You may repeatedly receive contradictory results despite maintaining the same question and conditions.
Do not immediately declare yourself the discoverer of some great omen.
First check whether the table is uneven.
Then try again.
If the behaviour persists under controlled conditions, consider the possibility that your question does not possess the simple answer you have demanded of it.
Yes and No are useful answers.
Neither, Both, and I Cannot Tell are answers as well.
Unfortunately, coins are rather poorly equipped to spell them.
Pendants and PendulumsA pendant possesses one substantial advantage over a coin.
It can answer in more than two directions.
Many witches already wear necklaces. Consequently, an emergency divining instrument may be hanging around your neck while you are busy complaining that you have nothing suitable with which to divine.
Remove the pendant.
Hold the chain loosely between two fingers.
Allow the weight to settle.
Then establish your language.
Forward and backward may mean yes.
Side to side may mean no.
Clockwise may mean uncertain.
Counter-clockwise may mean neither.
Those are merely conventions.
You may establish your own.
What matters is that you know what the movements mean before asking the question.
Magic is remarkably accommodating.
It is not, however, responsible for rules you invent after receiving an inconvenient answer.
Pendulums are particularly useful for Seeking.
Suspend one above a map while holding your target clearly in mind and allow your magic to influence its movement.
A novice may receive little more than a general direction.
An experienced practitioner may narrow the area repeatedly until only a village, street or building remains.
A master may notice considerably more.
The speed of the movement.
Hesitation.
Changes in direction.
Whether the pendulum pulls strongly toward a location or merely settles there reluctantly.
Whether the sympathetic connection strengthens as the map becomes more precise.
These subtleties are not additional spells.
They are experience.
Two witches may perform precisely the same act with precisely the same pendant and receive precisely the same movements.
One learns that her missing sister is somewhere north.
The other learns that she is north, moving east, magically concealed and probably underground.
The difference is not power.
The difference is knowing what one has been told.
This is why I recommend choosing one or two ordinary objects and practicing with them regularly.
Not because the object becomes essential.
Quite the contrary.
Familiarity removes uncertainty.
You learn how your coin normally falls beneath magical influence.
You learn the natural swing of your pendant.
You learn what hesitation looks like when it actually means something and what it looks like when your hand is simply tired.
Eventually the instrument becomes almost irrelevant.
You are learning the habits of your own magic.
That is the true purpose of Practical Divining.
The coin merely gives it something to move.
And I'd have Agatha end this subsection with something wonderfully mundane:
My own preferred instrument is the pendant I have worn for fifty-seven years.
It possesses no Divinatory enchantments whatsoever.
My granddaughter bought me a considerably more sophisticated one for my hundredth birthday.
It remains in its box.
The old one and I already understand each other.
Chapter FourTea Leaves, Omens, and Other Reasons I Prefer CoffeeI had considered omitting this chapter.
Unfortunately, doing so would undoubtedly result in letters.
I dislike letters more than I dislike tea-leaf reading.
So here we are.
Tea-leaf reading is real.
There.
I have said it.
Now perhaps we may dispense with the theatrical gasping, black tablecloths and insistence that every vaguely canine arrangement of leaves foretells imminent death.
It does not.
If everyone who discovered something resembling a Grim at the bottom of their cup promptly died, Britain would have run out of witches centuries ago.
Tea-leaf reading is one of the simplest forms of passive Divination and one of the most irritating to interpret correctly.
Its basic principle is straightforward.
The drinker prepares and consumes the tea while their magic naturally permeates the cup and its contents. When properly performed, the remaining leaves settle under that influence.
What they tend to represent is the nearest sufficiently significant event capable of altering the drinker's present course.
Please read that sentence again.
I have spent forty-one years teaching students who did not.
I did not write:
The worst thing about to happen to you.
Nor:
The greatest event of your life.
Nor:
The manner of your inevitable and probably gruesome death.
I wrote:
The nearest sufficiently significant event capable of altering your present course.
That event may indeed be terrible.
It may also be wonderful.
It may be neither.
You may meet someone.
You may lose something.
You may discover something.
You may receive an unexpected offer.
You may miss a train.
You may find a book.
You may quarrel with your sister and consequently attend dinner elsewhere, where you meet the person who employs you twenty years later.
Which part of that sequence should the leaves depict?
Precisely.
Welcome to the problem.
Why Tea Leaves Are So DifficultUnlike Practical Divining, tea leaves are poorly suited to precise questions.
A coin may answer yes or no.
A pendulum may indicate there.
A stick may tell you that way.
Tea leaves instead have the irritating habit of saying:
Something relevant is approaching.
And then expecting you to determine what they mean.
This is why experienced readers are considerably more reliable than beginners despite performing almost exactly the same magic.
The difficulty is not producing the omen.
The difficulty is recognising it.
Suppose the leaves form something resembling a bird.
A modern reference guide may confidently inform you that a bird signifies news.
Nonsense.
Which bird?
What was it doing?
What does that bird mean to the drinker?
Does she keep birds?
Does she fear them?
Did her mother call her "little sparrow" as a child?
Is her family crest an eagle?
Did a goose attack her last Tuesday?
Context matters.
Symbols do not possess universal meanings merely because someone printed them in a convenient table.
This is the great weakness of tea-leaf dictionaries.
They attempt to convert a subjective magical language into an objective one.
Dog — loyalty.
Snake — betrayal.
Ship — journey.
Skull — death.
How wonderfully convenient.
Also frequently wrong.
A snake appearing in the cup of a Parselmouth may possess an entirely different significance from one appearing in the cup of a witch terrified of serpents.
A ship means little to a sailor who sees one every morning and considerably more to a woman who has never left Derbyshire.
And a skull may simply mean that your Healer appointment on Thursday is going to become unexpectedly important.
Symbols acquire meaning from the person whose magic arranged them.
Ignore the person and you are attempting to read half a sentence.
Why Everything Appears to Foretell DoomThis deserves its own explanation because apparently no century has yet managed to rid us of the habit.
Tea leaves do not possess a particular fascination with death.
Readers do.
Fear makes symbols memorable.
Tell someone that the crooked line in their cup suggests an unexpected acquaintance and they will probably forget by supper.
Tell them it resembles the traditional mark of violent death and they shall remember you for forty years.
This has produced a remarkable selection bias in the surviving literature.
Generations recorded the frightening readings.
The mundane ones were forgotten.
Consequently, anyone consulting certain modern books might reasonably conclude that drinking tea is the most dangerous activity available to a witch.
It is not.
Usually.
The Problem of SignificanceThere remains an uncomfortable question.
What constitutes a significant event?
I don't know.
Neither do you.
Your magic apparently does.
And before some clever reader writes to inform me that this explanation is unsatisfactory, allow me to save you the postage:
I know.
Tea leaves occupy an awkward territory between introspective and predictive Divination. They appear sensitive not merely to what will happen, but to what presently possesses enough probability and personal significance to leave an impression upon the drinker's magic.
That is why readings change.
Perform one today and repeat it tomorrow, and the leaves may show something entirely different.
Perhaps the first reading was wrong.
Or perhaps you changed.
Perhaps someone else made a decision.
Perhaps an event that yesterday possessed a ninety-percent likelihood now possesses twenty.
The future moves.
The leaves move with it.
And this gives us a beautiful little rule for Agatha:
Tea leaves do not show destiny. They show the next bend in the road.
Unfortunately, they are remarkably poor cartographers.
I think that should almost be the thesis of the chapter.
And there's one other thing I'd establish before we finish tea leaves: the closer the event gets, the better the reading generally becomes. Not because the leaves become more powerful, but because the future has fewer opportunities left to diverge before reaching that event.
Something three hours away may produce a surprisingly coherent symbol.
Something three months away could look like somebody sneezed into the cup.
Which would fit perfectly with everything we've already established about your future: distance in time isn't merely distance—it means exponentially more opportunities for the future to change.
Closing RemarksIf you have reached this page expecting me to reveal the great secret of Divination, I fear you shall be disappointed.
I revealed it in the first chapter.
Use magic.
That is all.
It remains somewhat astonishing that an entire magical discipline should require a book to remind witches and wizards of this fact.
The crystal sphere is glass until you reach through it.
The cards are pictures until magic gives their arrangement significance.
The stick is a stick until you ask it where to fall.
The leaves are wet vegetation until the drinker's magic leaves something behind worth interpreting.
The instruments differ.
The principle does not.
Do not mistake this simplicity for ease.
Learning to ask a question is simple.
Learning to ask the right question may occupy the remainder of your life.
Learning to understand the answer may take longer.
That is why experience matters more to a Diviner than elaborate equipment.
Nor should Divination ever replace good judgement.
If your divination tells you to walk north while your eyes inform you that north contains an angry dragon, I recommend considering both pieces of information before proceeding.
Perhaps your divination has failed.
Perhaps you asked the wrong question.
Perhaps something considerably worse waits south.
Whatever the explanation, the decision remains yours.
Magic advises.
You choose.
And when you receive an answer you dislike, resist the temptation to ask again until magic becomes sufficiently exhausted—or you sufficiently dishonest—to produce the answer you wanted.
That is not Divination.
That is arguing with a coin.
The coin will eventually win through sheer patience.
I have spent sixty-three years practicing this art and forty-one teaching it.
I know considerably more about Divination today than when I began.
I also possess considerably more questions.
I regard both developments as encouraging.
There are things magic knows that we do not.
There are things it remembers that we have forgotten.
There are things it can show us from across oceans and centuries.
And, occasionally, there are things it seems determined to whisper about events that have not happened yet.
I cannot tell you why.
Anyone who claims otherwise with absolute certainty is either considerably wiser than I…
…or selling something.
So take your sphere from its velvet cushion.
Shuffle your cards.
Drink your tea.
Pick up a stick.
Then stop waiting for these objects to perform magic for you.
You are the witch.
Act like one.
— Agatha Blackbriar
Head of the Blackbriar Coven