Spirit Communication, Part 2: Physical Methods

This is a continuation of this text post, explaining the most basic step in communicating with spirits - believing in your ability to!  In this post, I’ll be going over five different tools I know are used frequently to communicate with spirit companions.  So, let’s get started!

Pendulums

These little tools are awesome, easily accessible, and easy as heck to use.  A pendulum, for the purposes we are using it for, can be described as anything with a weight attached to a cord or chain.  It could be an actual pendulum, a necklace with a chain and pendant, or a rock tied to a string!  Pendulums can be used with a Yes/No/Maybe/Unsure board, an alphabet board, or a combination.  One such board might look like this:

To spell out words on a pendulum board, you can stop the pendulum in between letters, or let it change at its leisure.  When I let the pendulum do its own thing, I find that it will swing at its letter of choice a few times before moving.  To get a real accuracy on which letter it is choosing, I recommend closing one eye and using a pendulum with a point!

Before you get into using pendulums, I recommend keeping some basic tips in mind:

The pendulum doesn't move itself, and spirits don't move your pendulum.  Any entity "talking" to you through your pendulum is utilizing your small muscles in your hand to move the pendulum and swing it in various directions.  You can start from 0, which is no movement, and allow your muscles to provide the movement over a long period of time, or you can provide energy to the pendulum, if you use up-and-down movement or "cross" movement responses, by swinging it in a large circle and getting it to settle on swinging in a straight line.  Either way is going to give you results, there is no "wrong way."  There's also no need to punish yourself if your hand is twitchy.

​That being said, every pendulum and every entity that uses your pendulum may communicate differently.  This is why I recommend cleansing a pendulum between each use, and "programming" it between each use - that is, asking simple questions to determine what movements mean yes/no/maybe.  Start with a couple failsafe questions.  These are questions that cannot be answered incorrectly - such as, “is my name ____?”  “Am I using a pendulum?” “Does 2+2=4?” The immediate goal is to ensure that your pendulum, or really any Yes/No divination method, is working correctly and accurately.  I also recommend using alphabet boards for getting word responses if you ever want to go more in-depth, but ultimately you need to know what those basic responses are every time.

Now, knowing that, also know that if you're not in a stable state of mind (stressed, tired), if you're not grounded and centered, and if your space and self isn't warded effectively, pendulums are really sensitive to being influenced by entities that may not be the entity you want to communicate with.  All of these things I just listed should be addressed at the beginning of a pendulum session.  I know it can feel overly traditionalist and a little extra, but you should ward your space every time before you use your pendulum if you want to fully ensure that it's not being hijacked.  If your space's wards have faltered a little, or you're in a space that's not warded, local spirits are privy to drifting through.  It's not necessarily malicious - they just want to play with the fun communication device.​

Additionally, I'd also like to address the questions you choose to ask your spirit companion.  Phrasing is of utmost importance!  Imagine if a friend of yours initiated a conversation with you by saying "are you upset?"  It's not a great lead-in to a good conversation - automatically you'd be questioning yourself, wondering why your friend would be assuming you're upset before a conversation was even started.  I have really strong opinions about how the way you word questions in a pendulum session actively affect the outcome.  If you were stuck with a tool where you could only say yes or no, and started getting asked questions about if you were stressed/upset/angry before a conversation had even begun, I think you'd probably be confused or upset just from that.  Have you seen that episode of Black Mirror where the woman can only communicate through happy/sad buttons?  I like to think it's the same principle.  So try approaching with friendlier questions that are worded in a nice manner, how you'd approach someone in a text message - Are you feeling well today?  Do you wanna hang out?  Have you heard of this thing, do you want to try it with me?

And finally, pendulums, even at their best, are not known for being accurate tools.  They are known for being quick and easy tools, but at the end of the day, they are not a megaphone for a spirit companion, and they are not going to always give you your answers.  I like to recommend using them as training tools for the purposes of developing telepathy skills, rather than your only communication device.  The best way I recommend doing this is to have a journal with you during the session. When you ask a question, wait a good, 10 seconds and just notice how you feel, if you can sense anything, any colors or feelings, any words or images that drift through your mind.  Record them, and then swing the pendulum once.  Record if the pendulum confirmed or denied your feelings.  This way, it becomes a productive tool for informing telepathic skills instead of a lifeline for all of your communication!

Music Playlists

Shufflemancy is a very powerful and easy way for your spirit to communicate with you!  It involves making a playlist of music you find relevant, or music you just listen to regularly, and paying attention to the songs that come on. Sometimes you can do a certain number of “skips” to really choose randomly, or a song might come on and you feel the spirit manifest really strongly.

Source: @seraphickalmagic on Tumblr

When I welcome a new spirit into my family, I have found more than once that they will give me a strong vibe of their energy when a song comes on, and essentially claim it as “their song.”  I listen to the same playlist almost all the time while driving, and those spirits will play the songs just to let me know they are there (the playlist is also about 4k songs big, so there's a very small possibility of a coincidental replay).  Shufflemancy can also be used to receive answers to specific questions.  This is a great way to learn about your companion's tastes, while directly communicating with them - once you have a good amount of practice down, you can easily have full conversations with your companion using this method!

When utilizing shufflemancy, it's best to consider that you may not get your answer right away from listening to a song.  Like utilizing tarot cards, there are going to be aspects to the "reading" that require patience and interpretation.  There may be a specific lyric in the song that your spirit is indicating - when you listen to the song or read the lyrics, what words stand out to you the most?  How can you interpret this metaphorically, or how can you relate it to your situation?  A "sad" song may not always be a sad message.  Because many spirits have the ability to subtly influence electronics, shufflemancy is a great way to talk with them without putting a lot of strain on themselves, or you.

Astral Travel

Let's be real - I could dedicate an entire website to astral travel.  However, I'm happy to just go over the basics.  First of all, is astral travel a necessity to interact with your companions?  Absolutely not!  However, it provides you a way to interact with them physically, something we simply don't have direct access to on our realm, however far visualization may go.  If you have a more intimate relationship with your spirit companions, or if you wish to go on adventures with them, whether that is sharing a meal, or simply cuddling, astral travel may be the solution for you.

There are several terms in regards to astral travel that can be really confusing.  Everyone tends to have different definitions for them (such as the terms “projection” and “travel” being highly interchangeable), so let me explain the way I use these terms:

• Astral Travel is any form of non-physically visiting a place outside your body.  This can be somewhere on Earth, or somewhere else.
• Out of Body Projection, or OBE (Out of Body Experience), or Astral Projection, refers to having the sensation of “leaving your body” (or being pulled out, as you mentioned in your ask here), and traveling somewhere else.  It’s a very immersive experience.  For this reason, it’s considered the “golden standard” for astral travel, and for some reason it’s the first thing beginners jump to when learning how to astral travel.  I assume this is because it’s been popularized by woo-woo spiritual gurus selling books and guided meditation programs. 
  
  However, it’s the most difficult form of astral travel, and can take years and years of dedicated daily practice to attain fully.  It’s also extremely exhausting.  When people report doing OBE frequently (as in daily) on social media, I am usually highly doubtful that they are actually doing it - this is how outside the scope of regular astral travel it is.  I do not perform OBE because I personally consider it to be relatively dangerous in comparison to other forms of astral travel, and I have chosen to put my time into other fields of study in regards to my spirit work.
• Bilocation is a form of astral travel that feels extremely similar to daydreaming.  This is the simplest and easiest to attain form of astral travel.  I know several practitioners, including myself, who are able to bilocate while performing other menial tasks such as washing the dishes or walking.  When bilocating, astral experiences are slow and muddy, and they are not fully immersive.  A conversation of a 10-15 seconds in the astral can take 5 minutes here, especially when bilocating, because your brain has to work overtime to process things.
• Meditation or trance work is another way you can attain astral travel.  When entering a trance, you may feel vibrations behind your eyes, or generally feel sleepy or separated from reality, but you do not fully step outside of your body.  For beginners, I frequently recommend looking up guided meditations on YouTube that specifically relate to Astral Travel - they are free, after all!  I recommend looking up ones that specifically mention in the title visiting a “forest” or an “ocean” - actual places that they will envision you walking through.  I also know that another conjurer has recently made a series of guided meditation videos specifically for spirit workers - I haven’t tried their services myself, but if you’re willing to put forward a little bit of money for a small business, you might want to check out Meditation Grove.  

You can do as many or as few of these techniques as you like.  I tend to most commonly perform bilocation, with meditation as a hard second when I have the time and spoons to sit down and actually devote upwards of a half an hour to the session.

However, there are two big things I always like to point out to beginners when first trying astral travel:

You will not see things with your physical eyes.  This is something that kind of gets lost in the conversation when you see people talking about astral travelling, and especially spirit work.  They are not experiencing the things they are experiencing with their physical eyes, hands, nose, ears.  If they are, they were likely born with that ability and have been hearing or seeing things with their physical eyes their entire lives.  So expecting to do so automatically causes you to disqualify yourself from whole other worlds.  We are experiencing these things with our mind’s eye.  If you want to participate in astral travel, you should be working on basic visualization exercises and techniques, because you will be using these mind muscles to absorb your astral experiences.  

Additionally, you may notice, once you astral travel, that you cannot get the full picture in one moment.  When I astral travel, I often notice small visual details first, like someone’s lips, and then I hear the words.  The senses come to me one at a time.  Others I’ve talked to describe their astral travel experiences like a movie - something they are watching in third person.  Either way, this is not how you would experience our physical, Earth world.

Your experience will not be like anyone else’s.  You can’t base your own goalposts on the experiences of anyone else.  While I’ve given you some general ideas of the different kinds of astral travel, it’s up to you to tell yourself that you’ve gotten there.  When you start, you may be only able to astral for a few minutes at a time, and work your way up to maybe an hour or two.  I don’t recommend pushing yourself, but if you end up being able to astral for a really long time, that’s great!  But don’t give anyone else the agency of being to tell you what you are and are not experiencing.  Ultimately, you should be your own judge of success, and you should be the one to choose to believe that what you are experiencing is real.  As I mentioned, some forms of astral travel feel very similar to daydreaming.  This is where discernment comes in, in testing the boundaries of the astral reality and seeing where they lie for you.

Yes, spirits can help you learn to astral travel.  However, you should already be clear on how to communicate with a spirit first - you don’t want some random spirit whisking you away to a random part of the astral.  This should be a spirit you know and trust and have a strong bond with.  And second, you should not rely on a spirit for astral travel.  The most they should do for you is guide you to a place they want to show you, rather than pulling you out of your body.  Since you already know how difficult it is for you to “leave” your body willingly, I’m sure you can imagine how painful and dangerous it would be for a spirit to remove you from it forcefully.  So, make sure that when you attempt Astral Travel, you remain patient with yourself!

Automatic Writing

Automatic Writing is a tool that people have used to communicate with their guides or spirit companions for a very long time!  It’s considered to be a great way to inconspicuously communicate with your spirits, as well as get into the intuitive and open state of mind needed to perform more abstract forms of communication like telepathy.  The best way to do Automatic Writing the first time is to relax, and imagine the spirit's hand placed over yours, guiding your hand to write the words.  It takes a lot of practice, but it is not as difficult as some might think!

Automatic Writing takes a great deal of patience and perseverance to learn how to perform properly, as you need to be able to open yourself up to a form of channeling.  This can take a great deal of meditation and practice.  Automatic writing is also possible with typing, but I’d recommend doing it with a pen and paper first.  Why?  Because it's a lot easier for a spirit to move a big, clumsy muscle like your whole arm than each of your specific fingers individually!

When beginning automatic writing, here are some tips I recommend for starting out:

• Use a pencil or piece of charcoal, something that doesn't require pressure to write - no pens until you're comfortable with it.
• Your arm position should be the pencil held in a relaxed hand, with the tip of the pencil touching the paper, and your arm and elbow off the table.  The potential energy from not having your arm resting on the table is what allows the spirit to write. 
• Once you're sure the spirit is there, give the spirit permission to write.  Explicitly state, "I give you permission to use my arm and hand for the purpose of writing."
• Visualize the spirit's hand over or inside yours, guiding your hand along.  You'll probably feel your hand start to drift - don't fight it, just let it happen.
• Ask them to write something simple, like their name or "hello."
• Don't worry too much about words or letters at first - let both of you feel it out.  If all your spirit does is a straight line, or weird loops, that's something, and it's a start!

And most of all, don't punish yourself for not seeing clear, concise results right away.  It's a process with a learning curve, like all things!

Cartomancy

Tarot reading has become incredibly popular, and it is very easy for anyone to pick up and do!  One of the hardest parts about tarot reading is learning to let go of the predetermined meanings of the cards, and using your intuition. Incidentally, learning to use your intuition is also one of the most difficult things about being a spirit companion.  It takes a lot of practice and a lot of time, but eventually the people who work hard at it will eventually get it!  And there’s not to say you won’t always need guides - I personally still use resources when I get stumped, and I have been reading tarot professionally for over five years.

You can pick up tarot cards at any local bookstore, or on Amazon.  When picking a deck, there are lots of factors to keep in mind - can you connect with the art?  Is it a deck intended for beginners?  There are several free and paid smartphone apps available for not only “drawing” tarot cards, but learning how to read them as well!  Many websites will also draw virtual cards for you for entirely free, and it’s up to you to determine the meanings.  There is no real benefit or drawback to reading physically or digitally, although many people (including myself) tend to report that using physical cards helps you "connect" to the reading better, and makes the cards drawn feel less random and more guided by spirit.  Reading Tarot is very accessible, and while it can seem overwhelming at first, you may find that all you needed was the right deck all along.

Where others might recommend some books, the only resource I really think anyone needs to learn the basics of reading tarot cards are the cards themselves, and a little bit of intuition (which, yes, you do have!).  Many decks come with a Little White Book which explain the cards' meanings, and in some cases, they will also explain what the artist intended with each image.  There is also the matter of LearnTarot.com: It is an entirely free website with a little written course on how to read Tarot!  It heavily recommends journaling, and simply practicing. It teaches the basics of how spreads work, and it has a very informative guide on each of the cards’ possible meanings!  I sometimes prefer it as a resource over the Little White Book for some of my decks. 

Keep in mind that, while Tarot is a relatively high skill method of communication, if you are not well-practiced you may have a hard time understanding anything other than vague messages.  I recommend using it as a conduit to help you elevate your communication into telepathy.

So, now that we've got these more physical methods out of the way, let's move on over to Part 3: Telepathy.

(Part 1)