Hey y’all! I just did a huge unfollowing spree of over 100 inactive blogs, soooooo, if you post any of the following, like this post, and I’ll check your blog out!
Sunny here, bringing you a crash course on one of the most critical parts of being a successful and safe spirit worker – discernment.
This was originally supposed to be a post on my spirit shop’s blog – but it closed unexpectedly. I have been requested to post this on my own blog, instead, since a lot of people liked it.
Humans have this peculiar habit of seeing what they want to see. You start looking for something, and suddenly you see the thing everywhere – it’s like when you buy a new car, never having recognized that car before, and suddenly it seems like every car on the road is the same model as yours. These ordinary things were there all along, but, now that you’re more aware of them, everything seems magical – and this is even more true when entering a new field of practice where things really are magical, like witchcraft and spirit work. This is why the key skill of discernment is so critical – to be able to separate the mundane from the otherworldly. When it is so easy to trick your brain into seeing the supernatural, how do you know when it’s really happening?
What’s that big word mean?
Discernment: the ability to evaluate information or situations to determine the underlying truth, the “real” from the “fake”, the “right” from the “wrong”. It is centered around an acuteness of judgment and understanding (x, x).
Okay, now you know what it technically means – you’ve got the dictionary definition under your belt. But why is this important for spirit work?
In the context of spirit work, discernment is used to define whether or not your experiences are “real”. It also plays a part in determining whether or not the spirits you are working with are safe or whether or not they are telling the truth. Discernment is also a critical component of vetting – verifying the identity of the spirit over the course of several months.
Though this may seem opposite to the entire point of discerning, I have personally found that strengthening my discernment skills has made it easier to notice when a spirit is attempting to interact with me. Since I have trained myself so heavily into seeking out all worldly explanations first, I have learned how to distinguish a spirit much more clearly – because sometimes there really is no worldly explanation for what happened. By teaching myself how to tell when my brain is just tricking me, I’m much more capable of determining what’s real.
This is something gained through practice and experience and is, in my opinion, a massively undervalued skill. It takes patience, practice, and time. So much time. This is why it can be so difficult to learn, and, more often than not, you end up learning the hard way why it is so important.
How can I tell if the “spirit” is just something ordinary?
Have you eaten enough? Have you had enough water to drink?
Did you take your medication, if you have any?
Did you get enough sleep?
Do you have any mental or physical illnesses or disorders? Does the “sign” you’re receiving from the spirit correspond to one of your symptoms? Do some personal evaluation!
Is there any physical explanation outside of yourself for the sign you have received? Ask questions like: Is the radio on in the other room? Is your neighbor outside mowing the lawn? Is this animal that I am “suddenly” seeing a lot of and interpreting as a sign actually just more active this time of year? Did someone just walk by wearing way too much perfume?
Do things happen when you think of them? If so, it’s possible you might be placebo-ing yourself into believing a spirit is causing this. Spirits act of their own accord.
If your answer to these questions after investigations was a firm “no” across the board, there could really be a spirit around. This is not a guaranteed way to tell, but the first step to spirit work is to remember that not everything is a spirit – sometimes it’s just your grandmother sneezing in the other room. You need to entirely rule out the mundane before assuming the supernatural.
Okay, I proved that it’s not something “normal” – but how do I learn how to sense and discern?
This is a difficult question to address, because sensing and discerning spirits varies so greatly from individual to individual. The only way to really tell if what you are experiencing is a spirit is through a lot of experience and trial-and-error.
Some simple pointers:
Investigate the “signs” you are receiving. Is there a pattern? If you ask for a specific sign (ex: “Show me three [animal that is not commonly seen in your area] in three days.”), does it show? Write everything down. Signs do not always appear within a few days – they could play out slowly, over a period of months, and you could miss them entirely.
Are you able to distinguish the difference between your own internal mental chatter and the voice of a spirit? This takes lots of time and practice, but it is a major component of spirit telepathy. Learn your own speech pattern and mannerisms – an actual spirit’s speech patterns and mannerisms are not likely to match up exactly to your own. Try this: listen to what a spirit is supposedly saying to you, and then attempt to repeat it exactly. Does it come out sounding garbled or feeling off? It might have legitimately been a spirit. If you are able to replicate their voice, tone, and words exactly, it may have just been your own brain trying to trick you.
Focus on learning how to differentiate energy signatures. A spirit may be able to change their physical appearance, but it is incredibly unlikely they will be able to change their entire energy signature – these are as unique as a fingerprint and equally as difficult to cover up. Check out this energy work FAQ, and read up on energy signatures – try out this worksheet, too. Here’s another post about how to read energy (and some expectations when you do it). Here’s some ways that energy can be sensed. Look up some exercises. Practice this as much as possible.
Attempt to communicate. This will also take lots of practice – keep going!
Use different methods of communication (telepathy, tarot, pendulum, scrying, astral travel, the list goes on…) to verify what the spirit is saying. One method is not enough. Cross-reference the spirit’s answers across the different methods used and see if everything lines up. If it does, you’ve got a real spirit on your hands. If everything seems jumbled and reads almost like gibberish, the spirit may not be present, but they also may not be communicating.
How do I determine if a spirit is telling the truth?
This is something that comes mainly through experience. No matter the species, energy alignment, or affiliation, spirits can and will lie to you.
Any spirit who is interested in working with you (or with any human) should be patient and understanding about the fact that you might have a little trouble believing if you are really hearing them – communicating to a physical being while you’re on a non-physical plane can be tricky, after all. If they really want to work with you, they’ll be willing to wait through the vetting and discernment process for you to properly detect them, get to know them, and determine if they are safe and honest about who they are and what they are capable of.
In addition, even if they are telling the truth, they may not have the best intentions. Evaluate what they want out of the working relationship. Does it make you uncomfortable? Does it seem realistic and achievable? Are they attempting to use you as a way to advance themselves or get out of a bad personal situation?
Educate yourself on manipulation tactics. There are a lot of techniques out there. Gaslighting is very common. People write and publish books on the art of influencing and manipulating people for all sorts of purposes. Social engineering and mindhacks are very real. The more educated you are on the techniques used, the more you’ll know what to watch for, and the more likely it is that you’ll avoid toxic people or groups.
If a spirit came to you and claimed that they’ve known you your entire life and had secretly been guarding and guiding you, would you believe them? Would you immediately trust a spirit who randomly appeared and started claiming to have been your best friend, partner, or mentor in a past life? The answer should be no – every single time, without fail. It’s very important to remember that spirits are not all-knowing, all-powerful beings. Do not trust blindly. Do not just “take [their] word for it”. Consider: why is the spirit coming to you, and why now? They could be telling the truth, but you do not want to rush things and assume. If they are truthful, they’ll be patient. Spirits could mislead you, and they could use your blind belief and trust in them to manipulate you. If a spirit shows up in your house and acts like you are destined to be friends and you enthusiastically accept their offer, you could be setting yourself up for much more danger than you know. Malicious spirits are not always outright malicious.
Take. Your. Time. Do not rush this. Jumping to conclusions and rushing the vetting process – which discernment is a major part of – can give a spirit the opportunity to trick you. It’s easy to put on a disguise and pretend to be someone else for a few weeks; it’s much harder to keep that act going for several months. When communicating with a spirit, it is also very important to avoid having a god or hero complex, thinking you will be the “best” for the spirit and by working with them you are “saving” them – and it’s important to not allow them to have that same mentality about you.
Doubt is healthy. Doubt can prevent a potentially traumatic spirit-related experience. Don’t be afraid to have a normal amount of doubt.
How does this apply to vetting and conjuring?
Are you a conjurer and/or a spirit companion shop owner? Great! This section is for you.
You, the conjurer, the shop owner – you are responsible for the safety of everyone who works through you, both human and spirit. This is very important to know before you even open your conjuring service. You need to be willing to put in the work – and this does not mean giving it the bare minimum. Your discernment skills need to be sharp, and your vetting needs to be intense. Any spirit who is truly willing to pursue companionship will be willing to go through this process – but you need to be insistent on making them go through the extent of it. If someone is meeting their future companion through your service, it is entirely on your end to do all of the discernment before they even leave you. Do not rush a spirit out – this could take months, or even years. It will be worth it. Take your time.
And the thing is, you shouldn’t be rushing spirits out. If you’re so impatient to throw up the listing of a spirit that you can’t fathom taking the time to get to know them for three months then I have to question how much you actually care. It might seem mean, but a shopkeeper should be willing to wait months and even years to match the spirit with the perfect person. By the time you post the listing of the spirit, you should be close friends with the spirit yourself. How else are you going to know what would truly be best for the spirit if you barely even know them past superficial friendships? And how else are you going to ensure that the spirit is safe if you barely took the time to get to know them?
[…]
But we also need to talk about an excuse that’s cropped up before in opposition to intensive vetting methods and that is how intensive vetting “hurts the spirit’s feelings”. If a spirit objects to undergoing a long vetting process then that should be taken as a red flag, not as you hurting their feelings. The intensive vetting is a necessity in assuring that the spirit is safe and when a spirit won’t agree to that then it’s easy to assume that the spirit wouldn’t be safe. Also, as mean as it sounds, the spirit’s feelings on whether or not they’re vetted shouldn’t matter. You have a responsibility to your customers to make sure that the spirit is fit for companionship, shirk that responsibility for any reason and you could very well be putting someone’s life in danger.
[…]
You are putting a spirit in someone’s inner wards, usually a beginner’s inner wards, and they’re someone who trusts you when you say that the spirit is safe. Don’t take advantage of someone’s trust in you just because you don’t want to put in the effort for an intensive vetting process when you chose to be a spirit shopkeeper.
(Read this post. Incorporate this into your practice. You should be settling for nothing less. If something happens that should have been discovered during the vetting process, it is your fault and is a sign that your process and practice has failed your client.)
Spirit work takes time. Vetting and discernment take a lot of time. If you are willing to learn and build a relationship with a spirit, and if you want to stay safe and avoid being someone’s lunch, you will need to be willing to put in the time and effort. Do not trust without questioning, even several months down the road of vetting. Take notes, and check everything the spirit says against those notes. Are there any discrepancies, or does their story just not make sense?
Leave no gaps. Take no shortcuts. By the time the vetting and discernment process ends, you should know the spirit well enough to call them a close friend.
Further Reading
Some of these are not specific to spirits, but these techniques, mindsets, and practices can also be applied to general spirit work.
This post is one of many out there about discernment. I heavily recommend, as I always do, to read more than just this post and the ones linked. I tried to branch out while researching, but I do have several favored blogs that I referenced – you should look for sources outside of these. My experiences, opinions, and views are not the only way that discernment is defined and my methods are not the only way to do it. Take everything I say and read further to form your own opinions. This post is not comprehensive and does not cover every possible method and definition of discernment. Remember, the posts linked above (and this post, too!) are people’s personal experiences and individual research, and, while there is major benefit to reading other people’s own original posts about the subject, you can never learn better than by learning on your own.
“I want to summon Shax, but I don’t think I need to follow the rituals in the Lesser Key because he either wouldn’t want to harm me or wouldn’t be able to. If I don’t believe he can, he can’t.”
I’ve seen it spread around that this kind of thinking is ‘UPG’ or ‘pulling from personal beliefs’, but both have been drilled into the New Age mentality. It’s been taught to every practitioner who has picked up an occult book from Barnes and Noble or Urban Outfitters (yes, I’ve seen them there and it hurts).
One of the New Age movements’ key points is that ‘YOU have the power to control EVERYTHING in the Universe if YOU just BELIEVE it and INTEND it’. Belief and intention. Both strikingly underlined in New Age operations, and both majorly absent in many old workings, like those coming from grimoire traditions.
New age witchcraft books have the same undercurrent of thinking, that if you don’t believe in something, you don’t give it power. Or if you intend for something to end up a certain way, it will. And that might be so when you’re staying within those systems and using New Age spirit methods like channeling.
But when you’re trying to apply them to systems and spirits that predate that thinking, you’re running into a fucking wreck. Those spirits don’t care about beliefs. They’ll make you go mad.
And I’m not even going to go into the fact that so much of the witchcraft pushed in pop culture is stemming from ceremonial magic, but has effectively been castrated because its practitioners have removed the ceremony, thus making it a system of beliefs without operation.
I’ll start off by saying that imaginary friends do nothing for gaining experience.
An imaginary friend is something you can control, they are a part of your imagination.
It doesn’t help you with learning on how to sense or communicate or interact with spirits, and it certainly doesn’t help with discernment.
I’d also like to point out that many of the people who want to count having imaginary friends as kids go back and end up counting the time between them having an imaginary friend and where they’re at now as years of experience. It makes as much sense as me taking a science class in elementary school and suddenly calling myself an expert microbiologist!
The only thing that should count towards someone’s experience level is years of actual spirit work, and nothing less than that.
Find a member of your family whom is seen as “wise” and who knows much of your family tree. It is a good idea to buy a note book and use it only for the names (and characteristics) of the dead.
It is also wise to get both sides of the family, so you may maximize the amount of spirits at your disposal.
If you are “in the closet” about necromancy you can rest assured that all you are doing is collecting names and dates as well as taking notes of what they were like in life. Nothing wrong with that.
You’ll need to mark down their birthdate, date and (if possible) time of death. Ask about stories and take notes on their personality. Ask for photographs of them and ask about their favorite food and drink.
Once you’ve written down all that you can, its time to divide them.
First make two lists,
One female and one male.
Next divide those lists into:
greater (spirits you know the most about) and lesser (spirits you know very little about).
Those lists will themselves be scaling from greater to lesser. The less you know of a spirit the less capable you will be to summon them. Knowing the favorites of the deceased will allow you to create more appealing altars and give your give better offerings during a ritual and knowing the personalities helps you choose what spirit you’d want to work and what to expect.
You should now have four lists, and a notebook full of names and knowledge of the dead. By doing this you have taken the first step into summoning a spirit.
When all other lights go down in an empty theater, a single light bulb remains lit onstage. The official reason for this is so that stagehands coming to turn the lights on in the morning don’t trip, but those who see the shadows in the catwalk and hear the creaking in the wings know the truth; every theater has a ghost, and every theater needs a ghost light.
The idea behind the ghost light is simple: If you leave a light on as an offering to the ghost every night, they will behave during the performances and rehearsals. I live on an extremely old, extremely haunted college campus, so I’ve developed an adaptation of the ghost light to help ease some of the activity in my building.
You Will Need:
A mini LED candle
Something to hold the candle, such as a lantern or votive holder
An object that you can use to connect the candle to the dead. Mine is a pinch of graveyard dirt and a necklace belonging to a deceased relative, but anything you feel carries “death energy” works fine
When I made my ghost light, I put a pinch of graveyard dirt at the bottom of a lantern, put in my LED candle, and then wrapped my necklace around the top of the lantern. I then simply said out loud: “Here spirits, this is for you”, but feel free to add your own incantation if that would make it more powerful for you. Every night before I turn my lights off, I turn my ghost light on and leave it on throughout the night. I’ve had mine up for a week now, and I haven’t had any weird activity since
(This post is my first in my Theatre Witchcraft series of spells and rituals inspired by the theatre and to help theatre witches. If you have any requests for theatre-related spells, hit up my inbox!)
It is strange to think but when we work with spirits of other worlds, especially that of pop culture, they are considered spirits in our world – and thus perhaps we are spirits in their worlds when we speak to them.
I bring it up because I made an offering of tea to a spirit I work with, some time ago.
When I was feeling terribly ill, the spirit, in turn, made me tea in their world, and somehow, as intangible as it was, it helped me feel a little better.
Thinking about it feels like a strange, faraway dream that sounds made up, but certainly most witchcraft does, anyway.
-Some demons are really cool and make awesome friends!
-Some demons want to kill you and do bad things to you
-Along the same lines, hellbeings can be very nice or very mean
-Some spirits look scary but are actually very kind
-Some spirits look sweet/cute but actually want to hurt you in the worst ways
-Not everything is black or white, evil or good, apples or bananas. Sometimes spirits can be in between, or off the charts completely.
-(The previous statement applies to their moral alignment, their ethics, their friendliness, their desire to hurt humans, and pretty much anything else)
-Spirit work is really fucking dangerous, but there are ways to be safe.
-Yes, spirits can affect your physical body. It happens, good or bad.
-Wards. Look up warding. Get a good handle on warding before you start practicing spirit work.
-Spirits are actual beings, which means that they have thoughts, feelings, and lives outside of you and yours.
-Safety should probably be your #1 priority in spirit work, unless you really have a death wish for yourself (or enjoy being in immense pain… I’m not going to judge)
-Spirits and spirit work are probably going to be different than your expectations.
-The spirit world is much different than ours, but can also be quite similar!
-Once you start working with spirits, more tend to show up. You kind of send out a signal that attracts other spirits once you flip that spirit working switch to the on position. Not all of them are going to be friendly.
-Spirits can be dirty lying decievers, but they can also be your best and closest friend, depending on which ones you meet. And sometimes you’ll think a spirit is ur best friend just to find out, days/months/years later, that they’re actually a dirty lying deciever! Don’t trust them right away!
Something that IS about magic: I’ve experimented for a few years now with what happens when I ask spirits that I work with where something is that I’m looking for. The results have been surprising and sometimes amusing. There are four different things that happen, depending on the situation.
Sometimes I am not able to find the thing after asking.
Either I don’t understand the instructions to find the thing, or I don’t get a clear answer, or the answer is incorrect. This happens 10-20% of the time, which isn’t a bad failure percentage at all considering how difficult spirit interpretation can be in some situations. An incorrect answer is rare and could easily be a case of “I didn’t actually understand the answer.” But I also believe many spirits can make mistakes too, or misunderstand our answers. Sometimes it’s a temporal mixup–I get told where the thing was or will be, not where it is now. When I get an incorrect answer or don’t get an answer, I explore why that happened so I can learn from it and improve my interpretation.
Sometimes I see it immediately after asking where it is.
When spirits help me find things, half the time it happens like this. The object/person/place will be the next thing I look up at after asking. Often that glance will not be in the direction I meant to look. It’s like someone turning your head in a specific direction to guide your vision, or replying to you by silently pointing where something is and then you look in that direction. In the case of pointing, since I don’t usually see spirits without heavy trancing, I wouldn’t usually see the pointing, but my subconscious can pick up on it and make me glance in the right direction.
Sometimes they tell me where it is and that’s where it is!
Almost every time this happens, the reply is “just around the corner” and sure enough that’s where the thing is. We found the airport info screens and Starbucks this way just this morning. I often expect it to be wrong because it seems unlikely that the thing I’d be looking for would be in the place they tell me… but if it was in a place I expected it to be in, I wouldn’t need the tip! I’ve learned over time to be more trusting and not disbelieve so quickly, but it’s amazing how hard my brain will try to dismiss the advice before taking it. Skeptic’s habits I guess. My main concern is making sure my initial disbelief doesn’t come across as an insult.
Sometimes there’s no rational reason for the thing to be where they say it is but it’s there anyway and that’s why spirits are shenanigans.
Many spirits can SUMMON objects as well as find them: many times something that would otherwise be lost will turn up where it has no possible business being. This happens probably 10% of the time, but it really just depends on what it is I’m looking for.
That’s the big takeaways! Experiment yourself and see what happens! Some spirits will have different abilities, and I find communication of this sort gets better with practice. But with the glance up or summon methods, you often don’t have to interpret spirit speech at all to get results.
Fun note: if you’re curious, when the spirits I work with find something for me, they are often pretty smug about it or just have a “yeah it turns out I’m pretty cool, aren’t I?” attitude about the whole thing. We have a long-term working relationship so they automatically get compensation on a regular basis for being on Felix Duty, so it’s not always an offering in return for each thing found if we’re already square. I make sure to give them recognition and thanks because that’s what keeps our relationships so chill and it’s part of why they perform the services they do for me.
Also, moments of attention are themselves offerings of your time and sentiment, and have value of their own.
Celestial spirits are spirits made of space itself. I’m not quite sure how they came to be, only that they are made of space, yet are similar to normal spirits. @thedragonslibrary answered an ask about them here.
Communication
They are skilled at verbal and visual communication, and will generally pick the method that is easiest for them in their current form, or what would be easier for the person they are attempting to communicate with.
Appearance
They can take the appearance of any animal or creature that they want, but most of them will still have markings that let you know that they are celestial spirits. These markings could be galaxies, nebulae, stars, or other celestial objects.
Candlelight-magick 