How To: Dark Mirror Scrying

In the context of a conversation about kiddush (the wine blessing), a colleague said to me: "I am told there are Chasidic masters and mystics who know how to view the pattern in the surface of the wine in the cup reflecting the candle light to see how the week will unfold but I have not been trained in such things."  I, of course, said "I can teach you how to do that!  It's really easy!"  Thus, this blog post was born.  While I'm going to specifically teach how to scry for future events on the surface of dark liquids, this method works well for other kinds of scrying (seeing far away places, or communicating with a spirit) as well, and can be done on any kind of reflective surface.  I learned it with a mirror.  You can also do it on plain white walls or ceilings.

First, you will need a reflective surface.  In general, you want a surface that's relatively dark (although I first learned to do it in a regular mirror), shiny, but not too reflective, and not completely flat.  Common tools are "black mirrors" (a piece of glass whose back has been painted black), a bowl of ink or red wine, a lake or pool at night, a shiny piece of obsidian, and crystal balls.  Different tools have different advantages and disadvantages.  In my opinion, the ideal tool is a powered down LCD screen; they're almost the exact amount of reflective, they're black, they have an excellent "depth" to them, and they're nearly ubiquitous in our culture.  Also, people are accustomed to seeing people stare at cellphones with a far-away, glazed over look on their eyes, so they're great for "stealth" scrying.  Everything I'm going to say will work with any kind of reflective tool, but I'm going to talk about doing it in a glass of wine in this lesson.  

To learn the method, you will need: some candles, a dark room at night, and a dirty window through which you can see far away things.  If it's raining, and there are water droplets on the window, that's even better!  Once you've developed some faulty with the technique (maybe about half an hour?) we'll move on to using the wine.

To begin, we're going to learn some physical skills for the technique.  

1) Look at the window.  Don't look through it, look at the window itself.  Focus on the smudges and water droplets.  

2)Now, look through the window, out at the world.  Feel how the muscles in your eyes move to make this happen.  Switch your focus from window to world fast, back and forth, several times, becoming familiar with the movement.  

3) Focus on your reflection in the window.  This will feel similar, but not identical to focusing on the smudges in the window.  Switch your focus from reflection to world to smudges several times, becoming familiar with the muscular movements in your eyes that produce this.  you might being to develop a headache if you do this too long or too fast.  Just close your eyes for a little while to let them rest if you need to.  

4) Now, try to SLOWLY slide your focus from window to world.  This will take a little practice, and may feel strange or unfamiliar.  SLOWLY, very slowly, slide back and forth from close focus to far focus.  This might make your head hurt. Unless the pain is unbearable, just suck it up.  You're not damaging your eyes (in fact, this exercise is good for your eyesight).

5) Once you are able to do this, close your eyes, and change their focus from near to far (you might imagine that you are looking AT your eyelids or through them).

6) Open your eyes again, and slowly shift focus from near to far.  Try to stop at a halfway point, where you are gazing through, but not yet focused on anything.  This might take some practice.  I find it easier to do this while changing from near to far, but try it both ways.

7) Now, stare (as best as you are able) at the tip of your nose.  (If you wear glasses, you might want to take them off for this; the frames can be distracting).  

8) Change focus from your nose to the window, feeling how your eye muscles move.  Switch back and forth several times, rapidly.  

9) Now, switch from nose to vista, without stopping at the window in between.  Feel how your muscles feel in each position.  When you've got that, switch back and forth fast several times.

10) Close your eyes, and do all three positions, feeling the motion.

11) Let your eyes relax for a little bit.  And then, very slowly, close them, feeling the way that feels in your eyes and eyelids.  Open them, and feel what that feels like.

12) With your eyes closed, imagine what it would feel like to close them a second time; close your "inner eyes".

13) With your eyes double-closed, slide your focus from near to far and back again, slowly.  Once you've gotten the trick of that, stop at the "open" focus (midway).

14) Open your eyes, without changing focus.

15) Open your eyes again, without changing focus.

THIS is state you want your eyes to be in while scrying.  There's no "magic" or mysticism to it, it's a physiological trick all humans (with undamaged eyes and optic nerves) can do.  It jut takes practice. You will probably want to practice the eye movements a few times, until you can slide into the "double-open eyes, open focus" state with some ease.  This should not take more than 3 or 4 practice sessions.  If it does, you might be doing it wrong; it's not hard.

Once you have facility with the "open eye" state, you still need to learn to see things that aren't there.  This part does involve a little bit of magic, but it's easy.  Details on that tomorrow (or possibly later tonight)