How to Become a Witch (28 page)

Psychic Skills
Talents Beyond the Everyday

Because we are connected with all things and beings, humans have psychic skills. With rare exceptions, like the studies by J. B. Rhine and a few Russian scientists, they are ignored by science. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t real or cannot be developed with practice. Witches are very open to such things, since they dovetail with the magickal arts. Let’s look at several.

Intuition: This is a water element quality, as discussed in chapter 3. It is the most common, basic psychic skill of our species. Everyone has hunches, a sense that something is dangerous, or a feeling that someone can be trusted, or that the weather will change soon. Do you know when you’re being watched? Can you sense trouble waiting to happen? Do you hear a little voice say “uh-oh”?

Here’s one explanation: we take in more data than we consciously process or are aware of—but the subconscious keeps correlating data and finding patterns, even as our conscious minds are busy thinking about something else. You walk into an Old West saloon where there’s an ambush set: they’s a-layin’ fer yuh. Your mind is on whiskey, but your subconscious picks up subtle danger signs: the sudden drop in conversation, the bartender’s tension, covert glances from the card players. Suddenly you feel it: message from subconscious, “Danger, danger!” Trusting your instincts, you drop, roll, and come up with six-guns a-blazin’ at the varmints who just appeared on the balcony.

Pay attention. Trust your intuition, what Marion Weinstein called your “inner bell.” When you get a message, listen and act. Later, note it in your Book of Shadows, along with your response and the outcome.

Messages from your subconscious may come through your body: queasy stomach, tight shoulder muscles, a tingling on the back of your neck. Ask yourself: does this situation, person, or object psychically feel warm or cold, heavy or light, bright or dull, smooth or rough, perfect pitch or off-key?

You will probably misinterpret some of the signals, especially if you’re very intellect-oriented and in the habit of ignoring “mere feelings,” but over time you can hone your intuition to a fine edge.

Reading Auras: As we explained in chapter 5, everything has an energy field that emanates from it and surrounds it. With practice you can learn to sense the aura and tell high energy from low, health from illness, joy from anger, and much more. This particular psychic skill is very valuable to healers.

Healers will sometimes hold a pendulum over each chakra and interpret health from its movements. Some will hold their hands over a chakra and receive colors or images, as though they were scrying. You may sense auras by seeing, feeling, or hearing them hum.

It’s sometimes useful to read the auras of others, to get a sense of their emotional or physical state, but your main concern should be your own energy field, because it reflects your state of health and well-being.

Psychometry: This is the art of receiving psychic impressions or information from an inanimate object. You have done this a thousand times without realizing it. You have picked up a piece of clothing, or a book, and felt drawn to it—it just felt warm, inviting, or friendly. You may have touched some other object and recoiled—it had a bad energy, hostile or sad or pained.

Touch or hold something very old, with a lot of history. Center, allow your mind to relax and open, even go into a light trance; you may get impressions that are clues to its past. The object may be holding an emotional charge or a vague sensation of a place where it was kept for many years. You may receive a sense of light or darkness, moisture or dryness, heat or cold, trauma or peace. Smells may come to you, or sounds. You might even get a vivid image of a place or person associated with the object.

Shielding: You can arrange your energy field to protect you from negative energies, either random ones or those directed at you with harmful intent.

This latter situation is rare; there are very few magickal adepts around, and probably none who wish you harm. Yet there could be an occasional person, without any magickal training, who is angry at you and projects her or his feelings strongly. It’s not comfortable, but you can ward off that angry energy until you resolve the situation.

A greater concern is the undirected negative energy that floods the ether and affects anyone who is psychically sensitive. The emotions of fear, despair, frustration, guilt, anger, and hatred are very powerful. Most people are not very sensitive to such free-floating emotional toxins or have developed natural filters and shields. Sensitive natural receivers for emotional energy are called telempaths (as opposed to telepaths, who hear thoughts) and can be affected badly until they learn to shield.

A simple way to protect yourself is to ground and center, then inhale deeply and draw energy from the earth through your root chakra; inhale again and draw energy from the sky through your crown chakra; keep breathing and let the energies pool in your solar plexus chakra. Then mentally send the combined energies into your etheric body, the layer of energy that extends just beyond your skin. As that layer becomes stronger and denser, push it out an inch or so, and let it stabilize there. Do this often, until you have trained yourself to hold a strong, expanded energy field.

You can also shield somewhat with a protective amulet or talisman; for example, charge a silver pentagram pendant and wear it over your heart.

Many techniques exist for shielding, but your best protection is to keep yourself healthy and fit, keep a positive attitude, and avoid areas or situations that are toxic. A strong and healthy Witch sheds negativity and deflects hostility automatically.

Precognition: Precognition is the direct knowledge or perception of the future, obtained through extrasensory means. The existence of precognition seems to demonstrate that time is not linear but simultaneous; we only experience events in linear time because our brains would be overwhelmed otherwise. Witches are not necessarily more precognitive than anyone else, and most use divination to understand future probabilities. Two aspects of precognition are clairvoyance, the ability to see things removed in space or time that are not accessible to normal vision, and clairaudience, which refers to hearing sounds from the past or future, or at a great distance.

Time Travel: Though we don’t send ourselves bodily into the past or future, Witches do occasionally bend or transcend time when necessary. We use psychometry or past-life recall to gather information from the past, and divination to see future trends, and have been known to move a magick circle forward or backward in time for healing purposes or to avoid doing ritual at an astrologically difficult moment.

Past-Life Recall or Regression: Most Witches believe in reincarnation because they have experienced past lives.
Recall
indicates that one has recaptured memories from an earlier incarnation, usually fragmentary and with little emotion attached.
Regression
is a much more intense and complete experience, where one is immersed in that earlier life and can see, touch, smell, and hear everything around him or her, and relive the emotions that were part of that moment.

Because reincarnation is foreign to the Christian mainstream in the West, things like random flashbacks, déjà vu experiences, vividly realistic dreams of distant times and places, or unaccountable, obscure knowledge are shrugged off. However, a competently guided regression can be very convincing.

Exploring past lives can give you insights into personal issues with origins from before this incarnation. Past-life work can help heal lingering emotional scars, such as phobias or irrational prejudices. But it’s not a game to discover if you were someone famous centuries ago; you probably weren’t, because most of us have spent many lives as peasants, goatherds, or galley slaves.

If you choose to explore this hidden part of yourself, find a priestess, priest, or clinical hypnotist who knows what they’re doing. They will guide you into a trance state and, hopefully, ask objective, non-leading questions to help you be aware of the experience and gather information. Then it’s up to you to use that data to improve yourself here and now.

Necromancy: This branch of magick involves communication with the dead. Witches often do so at Samhain, contacting friends and relatives who have passed over. Some people seem to have a particular talent or calling for this. Occasionally a Wiccan priestess or priest will receive messages from the departed so consistently—and insistently—that they know they are called to be a psychopomp, one who helps guide the dead to the next life. Several techniques can be used for communicating: the pendulum, automatic writing, or providing energy to help the spirit manifest visually. Though most “ghosts” are not dangerous, it is a good idea to have an experienced Witch around if you try these.

Telekinesis: This is the ability to move objects with your mind. Although some people can move tiny, light objects, few—if any—have the power to do useful physical work with mind alone (even with a good wand—“Wingardium leviosa!”). If you want to try it, take a small, square scrap of paper and fold it crosswise and diagonally until it becomes a sort of umbrella shape. Balance it on a pin or needle stuck upright in a candle or lump of clay. Focus, and rotate the paper with your mind (make sure your breath can’t reach it). What this accomplishes is unclear, but it can be a fun exercise!

Deforming utensils with mind power

The famous psychic Uri Geller claimed to be able to bend a metal spoon with the power of his mind; magician James Randi said it was merely a trick, a clever stage illusion.

Amber once tried it and, indeed, mentally bent a spoon. She discovered later that one is supposed to use a comparatively soft silver spoon, not stainless steel (no wonder it took so long). Her conclusions: (a) it’s quite possible to psychically bend a spoon; and (b) why would anyone want to?

Dreamwork: Dreams are one of the easiest of altered states to enter (we all do it), and good information can be brought back to the conscious world if you work at it. You must build a strong intent to remember your dreams, and have a journal to write them in as soon as you wake up. You may want a dream journal separate from your Book of Shadows.

Life is simpler when it’s just consensual reality—“What you see is what you get.” It’s simpler when “the authorities”—scientists, radio talk-show hosts, government PR flacks, mainstream preachers—just tell you what to believe and experience, and what it means. But it means giving up your own beliefs, experiences, and meanings. Giving up your trust in yourself. Giving up your independence.

Witches won’t do that. Our universe may be weird to some, but it’s huge and endlessly fascinating, filled with wonder and magick.

If you want to develop your psychic gifts, it begins very simply with paying attention, listening, watching, and feeling the worlds around and within you.

The harder part is learning to trust yourself. When you intuit, sense, or feel something, it’s real—and yet it’s not necessarily what our culture says it is or what your mind thinks it is. We have to get past the prejudices of our culture (“There are no such things as ghosts!”) and also resist the rationalizations of our own minds (“That noise…? Aw, just my imagination—nothing really there.”).

The danger at the other end of the spectrum is believing too much, too easily, contrary to common sense and the evidence. Not everything glimpsed from the corner of your eye is a ghost, or a flying saucer, or Bigfoot. When something goes wrong in your life, it’s not usually a demon, a curse, or a psychic attack. The challenge is to find a balance of open mind, reason, observation, and trust in your own senses—including your psychic senses.

This means looking thoughtfully at evidence on both sides of any issue, including psychic phenomena. Often it means withholding judgment or belief. Sometimes the only appropriate response is “I don’t know.” Is telekinesis possible? I tend to think so, but I don’t know. Are there plesiosaurs swimming around in Loch Ness? Maybe, but I don’t know. Is that an astral entity hovering outside my ritual circle? Seems to be, but I don’t know.

On the other hand, if your own senses and experiences confirm the reality of telepathy or past lives, trust yourself and include those things in your reality. Maybe you’re just crazy, but unless there is real evidence for that from people you trust, you can generally discount that possibility.

Once your mind and senses are open, and you’re willing to explore and experiment with psychic skills, you can search for your own special gift. Many Witches have keen and accurate intuition. Azrael is very strong in past-life recall. Amber is a “finder” who can locate just about anything. Some Witches are naturals at energy healing. Clairvoyance, shielding, telempathy—what’s your talent?