Spirit Communication, Part 3: Telepathy

Finally, it's here!  The long-awaited third part to my Spirit Communication Mega Masterpost.  By the end of this post, I hope you should have a more solid grasp on how to communicate with your companion in the way that is best for you. 

So: let's address the elephant in the room!  Telepathy.  The end-all, be-all of spirit communication that all the cool practitioners are talking about.  If you're not familiar with this idea, I'm sure something like this is going through your head:

Telepathy?  Isn't that when someone on TV can hear their friend's voice loud and clear in their head, just all echoey?  I've never done that with a friend, and I can't even see my spirit, so I must not be able to do that.  It's super advanced and there is no possible way I can develop it without a lot of practice or talent.

The fact of the matter is, as you might have surmised from most of what we're talking about, the depictions of various magical ideas and skills are extremely different on TV than they are in real life. 

Telepathy Myths

​So, let's address a few myths about telepathy.

If you weren't born doing it, you can't develop it.  Myth!  Telepathy, like most other psychic skills, is something that anybody has the ability to do.  It's very similar to practiced clairaudience.

Telepathy must sound very clear in your head.  Myth!  Like most psychic senses, telepathy is absolutely fallible.  Additionally, you don't "hear" it the way things would with your ears - that is, there is not a false signal tipping off your hearing brain cells.  Telepathy often sounds and feels like "talking to yourself" inside your head.  A huge part of developing telepathy is ensuring that you can discern the difference between your own internal voice and that of an outside influencer.  Sometimes, I'll get a message from my companions and I couldn't even tell you who said it!  Or, I might only hear half of a sentence.  Telepathy is an incredibly finicky and fuzzy form of communication, and especially when you're starting out, you might want to have a pendulum on hand to confirm that what you're hearing is actually correct.

Telepathy is the most difficult and advanced form of communication.  Myth!  While it might seem like it requires a lot more practice than other methods to begin performing telepathy, once you have it developed, it becomes absolutely second nature.  It's very easy to slide into telepathic conversations with your companions, and once you know how to properly discern, it takes almost no effort or energy to perform at all.

Telepathy: The Not-So-Golden Standard

Now that we've clarified that telepathy is not perfect or out-of-this-world difficult, let's address what telepathy is.  it's fickle as anything.  Telepathy should not be the only communication method you aspire to, nor the only one you use.  Why?  Because the moment you run into an issue with stress or mental health, your telepathy will become insanely more difficult to use.

If you've been practicing witchcraft for any amount of time, you'll be aware that you have ups and downs of energy.  Sometimes you are really able when it comes to sensing energies and performing magic - sometimes you'd rather just watch Netflix for a week and not engage with witchy things at all.  Spirit work is this way, too.  And that's okay!  You would probably get tired of feeling obligated to text a friend every hour of every day, and communicating with your spirit companions is the same way.  However, it's important to consider how mental health, and the external factors of the spirit's own life, can affect your spiritual senses:

Sudden absences from a companion can definitely be concerning, but we encourage you to consider other options and forms of communication. Normally, the entities conjured seek out long-term relationships with their companions, and are excited to begin and participate within a companionship.  If you're having trouble perceiving them, there could be a few possible factors:

1. Mental illness.  On your end or that of your spirit companion's, mental illness flare-ups can make it seem like certain spirits if not all of them aren't there when they are.  Bouts of depression and anxiety cause a great deal of self-doubt, and in many cases can weaken or deaden your metaphysical senses.  If you are feeling unwell or are in an unsafe or unstable situation and cannot feel your spirit companions, it's likely that they are quietly providing support from afar, but cannot contact you due to your blockages.  Don't fret - they'll stick around!  Take the time to focus on and care for yourself in the meantime.
2. Energy alignment differences. when you and an entity have opposing or conflicting energy types it may take extra work to perceive them clearly.  For example, if you are light aligned and the spirit in question is dark aligned, their energies may be overwhelming or muted to you.  Additionally, there may be personal blockages regarding specific types of elemental alignments or spirit types.  These blockages are something that can be worked through over time, with healing and patience.  It's up to you to decide if that sort of thing is a deal breaker or something you're willing to work at with your companion. This is why visits are so important when considering bringing a spirit home!  If you are unsure at all if the spirit will jive with you when they're brought into your life, never be afraid to ask the conjurer for a visit or for an interview.
3. Life happens.  It's possible that the entity or spirit has experienced a personal matter in their life and needed to take some time to themselves.  They may not wish to be reached their life matters are suitably sorted.  This can occasionally happen, as living entities and some other spirit classifications have their own personal life and home that they would still need to attend to in addition to your companionship.  Consider it this way: if a human friend chose to fall silent, and wasn't responding to messages, would you choose to stop being friends with them?  Usually, the answer is no. You'd probably be worried, but willing to let them work through their troubles.  When they're ready to include their friends and loved ones in whatever they're going through, they'll step forward again.  Just give it time.

Now that we've covered mental health and the fallibility of telepathy, let's get into practicing and developing your telepathy skills.

Practicing with a Pendulum

Believe it or not, a physical divination method, the easiest being a pendulum, will be your best friend for developing telepathy.  The key is to allow the divination tool to confirm what you are experiencing, instead of being a crutch to tell you every little detail.  Here's how I learned to use a pendulum to develop telepathy:

1. Set aside quiet time to practice, at least 15-30 minutes a day, preferably.  Ensure your wards are in place before you even touch the pendulum. Warding should be step #1, not after you have asked a question several times and realized that another spirit may be influencing the answers. Maybe make it a nice routine to schedule a pendulum session every day, ward first, ask second. By scheduling a consistent time, your companion will be more able to show up consistently. Spirits like routine, too.
2. After asking a question, don't swing the pendulum right away. Instead, take about 10 seconds to let the question settle, and pay attention to how you're feeling. Are you sensing more of a yes or no? Do you think any odd words or can you feel any expression whatsoever? Do you feel anything at all? Without this step you're actually not practicing your communication skills, you're just swinging a rock on a string.
3. Try to limit question asking to one singular time - that is, don't repeat the question if you don't get what you like. But also consider this: don't always take the answer you receive as accurate. Use a journal to record the answers and see if there's a pattern of consistency regarding what you are asking and what you are feeling. Don't take everything the pendulum tells you as fact - it's just a rock on a string that can be inconsistent and can be tampered with. It's a tool for helping to learn to communicate and should not be the end-all be-all of your process. Is it kind of stressful to know that not every answer is accurate? Sure. But that's just the fact we have to work with, and your intuition development is a thousand times more important than your pendulum skills.

As you continue this process, over time you'll find that the answers are more accurate, and come more easily to you.  Additionally, you may be able to start hearing inklings of a voice other than "yours" in your head.  But... what if you don't know what "you" sounds like?  I have another great exercise that might help you with that!

Practicing with Daemons

Daemon theory is a psychological method of practicing what telepathy feels like.  It was initially put together by some spiritually inclined members of the His Dark Materials fandom.  In those books, everyone has a physical animal representation of their soul that takes shape depending on your personality or nature, basically.  Several years ago when I first started getting into witchcraft myself, I discovered a website and forum that was based entirely on this idea. The concept was, you do a thorough analysis of your own personality and take your results and plug it into a giant list of animals with various personality traits.  But the animal is not the important part.

​So, you have your daemon.  What do you do with it?  This forum actually explicitly was based on the idea that you treat your daemon like a living, breathing creature.  Talk to it with your mind, as you're walking around, as you're doing dishes or whatever.  Don't worry too much about if it responds or not, or in fact, just let the stream of consciousness happen, and accept the thoughts as they come.  Is this starting to sound familiar?  By talking to your daemon, you're actually having an internal monologue with yourself, and you're aware of the fact that you're talking to yourself, and it allows you to explore your own psyche on a deeper level.

​​This practice and concept was absolutely fundamental to my understanding of how I interact with spirits on many levels.  First of all, it allowed me to know what my internal monologue sounds like, because I was paying so much close attention to it - the practice is based entirely on the fact that the daemon is you, it is not a thoughtform, it is not anything other than your own brain talking to itself.  This also branches out on the fact that when you're first starting out talking to spirits, it often feels like you're talking to yourself, which can feel silly - by practicing talking to yourself, you move past the silly.

Second of all, one of the biggest recommendations for interacting with a daemon is that you visualize it in your space - because there are no mistakes you can make with your daemon regarding appearance, placement, or movement, because the daemon is you, it's a safety-net version of sensing manifestations.  By interacting with an "imaginary friend" with a very focused, self-improvement goal, I actually was developing skills and performing exercises that are pretty common for opening one's third eye.

I think one of the biggest hurdles for beginners trying energy work is knowing that you should be practicing visualization, but not knowing what to practice with, and I think daemonism is a fantastic way of focusing that practice and developing a standard for what spirit interaction should look and feel like.

If you're interested in putting daemonism into practice, check out the official website, particularly the FAQ!  You may find this practice, although it doesn't relate to your spirit companion directly, will help you learn what interacting with an internal monologue with "yourself" feels like against an internal monologue that involves someone else.

Telepathy Moving Forward

The fact of the matter is, telepathy opens the doors into so many great things with your spirit companion.  By opening the floodgates of easy communication, you can talk with them freely about your wants and likes, about your goals and experiences.  It also allows you to eventually segue into channeling, or allowing your spirit companion to talk through you.  It takes a great deal of time, practice, and patience, but ultimately the payoff is so worth it. 

​Best of luck for you on your communication journey!

(Part 1) (Part 2)