Basic initiation into practical mental skills for divination and magick.
Preface
This is a basic introduction and initiation primer into practical mental skills that are useful for divination and building mental acuity. It's a fairly simple series of exercises with minimal overhead or dependence on previously learned skills, designed to give a streamlined and effective path to initiate into the esoteric arts regardless of practitioners' experience. This guidepost will walk you through basic meditations and practices that will strengthen visualization and comprehension skills that will be of great benefit to anybody.Basic exercises
First meditation exercise
This is the first exercise of this guide, consisting of the Clear Sky Meditation Technique, the foundation upon which all the practices and skills in this guide are built upon. This is a basic meditation that enables you to quickly clear your mind and improve your focus.To begin with, you should find a space where you can rest comfortably. This isn't ultimately necessary but it helps when you first start out. Once you have found your space, close your eyes and take a deep breath to start. Imagine your mental space as the sky, with all your thoughts and ideas as clouds. Any thought that pops into your head is a cloud, as all your thoughts are clouds. Once you have your mental image of the sky, find a point between the clouds, and focus on that point. Don't force away the clouds, just keep focused on the single point between them. As you focus on this point, the clouds will naturally dissipate and you will be left with a clear mental space. At this point be aware of what you feel both inside and out. Open your eyes, with your mental space clear, and you should be able to focus your entire attention on a single task or goal.
Repeating this exercise will gradually allow you to more quickly clear your mind and make it easier for you to direct your focus towards things. The next exercise will be strengthening your ability to keep your focus on things, as well as building your visualization skills.
Second meditation exercise
This is the second exercise of this guide, the Grandfather Clock Visualization Exercise, which builds upon your ability to visualize and maintain your focus on a single task or goal. It will be difficult at first for those not used to maintaining a visualization, but with practice it will greatly strengthen both your visualization and focus.To begin, use the Clear Sky Meditation Technique to clear your mind. Once your mind is clear, you must close your eyes and imagine an antique grandfather clock. Create that clock in your mind's eye, see the pendulum swinging, smell the lacquer on the wood, feel the cold brass fittings, hear the gears ticking as the hands move, ect. Once you construct a solid image of the clock, and can 'feel' the clock as if it were in front of you, hold the visualization for as long as you can. The goal here is to not only create the image, but to maintain it without letting it warp or deform in your mental space.
Repeating this exercise strengthens visualization and focus, and is an important step if you are following this simple initiatory primer to it's completion. Ideally, you should practice this exercise until you can hold the clock in your mental space without noticeable deformation or warping for at least ten minutes before moving on to the next exercise.
Third meditation exercise
The third exercise of this guide, the Urban Center Visualization Exercise, is designed to expand your focus and improve your mental acuity. It not only strengthens your visualization skills, but enhances the scope of what you can visualize. This exercise is also a first-step precursor to skills like remote viewing, but is greatly beneficial to anyone who practices mental techniques.Like to the previous exercise, you want to use the Clear Skies Meditation Technique to clear your mind. Once your mind is clear, close your eyes and imagine yourself standing in the middle of a city. It can be any city, like New York, Paris, Venice, St Louis, Hollywood, ect. The goal is to imagine it as it is as if you were there. Once you have a clear image of yourself in the middle of the city, imagine yourself walking around, and take in the sights you see. If the clock exercise is to let you focus on a single thing, this exercise is to let you grasp the world around you.
As stated above, repeating this exercise strengthens the scope of your visualization and expand your focus. Once you begin practicing this exercise, you should not neglect continued practice of the previous exercise, as both exercises are beneficial and strengthen different, but complimentary, aspects of your mental skills.
Fourth meditation exercise
The fourth and final exercise of this guide, the Conceptual Insight Meditation Technique, is a divination technique devised to be simple in use yet broad in application. This exercise is a direct scrying skill, useful for gaining insight into things based upon subconscious understanding, intuition, and the higher self. The applications of this exercise is useful for grasping knowledge of concepts, drawing sigils, discerning a person's motives, and any other task that requires pulling insight from nothing.As before, use the Clear Skies Meditation Technique to clear your mind. Once your mind is clear, close your eyes and fill your mental space with the concept of the subject of your meditation. For example, if you are meditating on one of the elements, you will imagine whatever the first thing to pop into mind when you think of whatever element you are meditating over. By holding the subject of the meditation in your mind, your intuition will spark and allow you to gain insight. Continue to hold the subject in your mind until you feel you aren't gaining anymore insight into the nature of the subject. After you feel that you aren't gaining any more insight, drop out of your meditative state and think about the new insights you have gained so as to broaden your understanding and add what you have learned into your wisdom.
As stated above, this is a divination technique built upon the skills given in the first three exercises, which is useful for many things. Once you master this exercise, you have completed this guide's initiation of basic mental skills.
