Much of time and happening – the unfolding intersection we call “fate” — flows like water: a process of dynamic co-creation, in which your hand in the stream shapes that which comes after.
But some moments are rocks in that stream, what I often call “the hard lines of fate.” Knots in the Norns’ weave, the scratch of the shears against the thread. I’ve been a diviner for a long time, so I can tell you a little about the rocks shaping the streambed.
There are big ones we can’t avoid: birth and death, vast shifts and endings. There are small ones, which don’t seem to make sense at the time. And, in my own life, I can see in these moments a peculiar shine in the air and feel a giddiness like the one that hits you before the thunderstorm comes.
That giddy shine is how I recognize the arrival of one of these hard lines of fate, the shaping-rocks of time.
Years ago – probably 2003-ish to take a guess, although I’m bad with years, dates and pretty much any form of measurement — I was thinking of buying a Turkish instrument called a cumbus saz. It’s known as a “dulcimer banjo,” although it’s more banjo than dulcimer. And it was reasonably priced in the Lark in the Morning catalog, which was my holy book of utmost desire. I was all set to buy the saz.
And then, that night, I had a terrible dream: If I bought the dulcimer banjo, my father would die. The dream rang with a dire feeling of truth, a strange shine of its own. So I didn’t buy the cumbus saz, wouldn’t even consider it after that.
Fast-forward to this spring, when a very large box unexpectedly arrived in the mail, courtesy of my dad. I felt a strange giddiness and a shine in the air as I opened the gift, although I chalked it up to the excitement.
It was a dulcijo – a dulcimer banjo, although more dulcimer than banjo. And just a few weeks later, my father was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. The wonders of modern pharmacy are keeping that cancer in check, thankfully. But the arrival of the dulcimer banjo and my father’s terminal illness were somehow knotted together in the tapestry of fate, foretold by a dream and the shine in the air.
A variety fun pack of spiritual gifts
Terms like “spiritual gifts” are relatively uncommon in Pagan community, although the concept assuredly is not. People might use terms such as “psychic skills,” “magick,” energy-work. Oftentimes, we will just specify what specifically we mean: seership, divination or “the sight,” spell-casting, healing, path-working. In Pagan community, many of us assume that everyone is at least potentially capable of these feats, and of the subtle senses required to perceive them.
There’s not a lot of Christian terminology I appreciate, but I actually like the term “spiritual gifts,” so I will use it. For one, it’s plural – and, in my experience at least, spiritual gifts tend to come bundled in a variety fun pack that varies from person to person. Second, “spiritual” can be read as both pertaining to the larger sacred and to spirits in general. Third, I think it’s just nicer to regard these skills as gifts rather than burdens, whimsies or proofs of mental instability in a materialism-based world.
My spiritual gifts are these: I can hear the Gods; visit the Otherworld in trance; gain deeper insight and tell the future through divination devices and direct inspiration; walk in dreams; and shape fate through voice, sound and word. While I don’t have the healing gift myself, I can certainly sense it (and other forms of energy-working) when it’s being used within, say, a 10-foot radius, and I can “ground” living creatures in calm and peace, provided that they are within range and have some measure of the subtle senses themselves.
That last is completely ironic, in that I myself am about as calm as a thoroughbred racehorse.
I recognize that this list may seem fanciful and delusional to the atheists of this world, and demonic to Christians. But to Pagans, well, they’re an ordinary Tuesday.
My gifts aren’t particularly uncommon in the community except, potentially, for the dream-walking, and my rather mundane gift with words that allows me to describe complex and subtle realities as a whole. If I seem to have more spiritual gifts than the average practitioner, it’s likely because I have been practicing some variant of these arts for as long as I can remember; to borrow a concept from Malcolm Gladwell, I got my 10,000 hours in super-early. And from my earliest childhood, I have approached these experiences with wonder and curiosity, not with fear or turning-away.
So, what to call this phenomenon as a whole? I hate the word “psychic” for reasons I outlined years ago. When pushed, I will define my primary gifts as “seer” (one who sees) or “diviner” (one who interprets messages from the Gods). “Oracle” probably works, although that makes me feel like a computer program. I hesitate to use concepts such as “shaman” because the original Siberian term implies a community role that is lost to us in the West. I’m good with Witch, although I am not currently Wiccan.
The proper term is actually file, which means “poet” or “scold/satirist” in modern Irish, but comes from a root that means “seer/one who sees.” Poetry among the ancient Celts involved seership and trance abilities, particularly the use of imbas forosnai, or “illuminated inspiration.” Poets – as satirists – were also quite capable of casting hexes, a concept preserved in the modern Gaeilge word.
So, yeah, my ability to write poetry is intimately linked with my ability to tell the future. The process I use in divination – say, reading Tarot cards, which I used to do as a quasi-official side-gig – is the same one I use to write my nightly poem, down to the mild trance-state.
Shattered glass
So, I thought to come up with a new intermittent series – “notes from a seer,” let’s call it, that will explore these concepts. Of course, I fully intend to write more in “notes from a poet,” too, and finish watching Cobra Kai, but I haven’t gotten around to either yet. I’m great at starting projects, but not always great about follow-through unless given a deadline or defined purpose.
(I’m particularly bad at watching television series to the end or an entire sequence of movies, even if I’m into them, because – well – it’s a TV show. There’s no real purpose.)
Sooner or later, I will describe the actual process of divination and poetry-creation, and how aikido – at least during my rare good night – also draws on this process. And the dream-stuff. And maybe more one-offs from the wacky and intricate world of semi-practical polytheism.
But because I like poems and prose to wrap up in neat little rings, I will end with an anecdote sandwich about the shine in the air. During my days as a working journalist, I encountered the hard lines of fate from time to time. I lived 20 miles outside Manhattan at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and I can tell you that the glorious morning air – long before those planes took flight – sparkled like diamonds, and a weird hysteric giddiness led me to wake up uncharacteristically early.
That’s a dark story, though. Let’s end with something lighter and a bit more inexplicable.
I do a Tarot reading for myself on the weekends, and the cards usually give me hints about how the week will go: friendships, work dramas, potential car trouble, that sort of thing. But not that long ago in the span of years, I was getting the same series of cards over and over: far-future, near-future, RIGHT NOW. I forget precisely what the cards were, although the Nine of Swords was involved; they seemed to be talking about some kind of stressful incident, although I couldn’t figure out precisely what.
I reshuffled. “What can I do to prevent this?”
“Nothing,” came the reply.
A day or whatever later (once again: bad with time), we went to aikido. At the end of class, while we were tidying up the dance studio where we rented space, I lofted one of the mats to the top of the pile. I felt a little giddy.
And time stopped. The air shone. The edge of the mat shattered the window.
It seems so silly, doesn’t it? It was stressful; I had to pay for the damage, and that random act forced us to leave that rental space. The dojo landed in a nearby church where, thankfully, I have not broken any windows.
I am not sure why, in all iterations of the multiverse, breaking a dance studio window was a hard line of fate. Why that one particular rock broke the surface of the water. But so it was. And if you have any insight, I am all ears.
White Cat Grove 
Love your work.
Thanks for reading! I know most folks come here for the poems, and not my weird little rambles.