🔮 A Beginner’s Guide to Low Budget Divination 🔮
Palmistry - telling fortunes by reading the palm of someone’s hand. I have a palmistry tag in which you can find a bunch of different sources on how to read palms.Getting started in divination can be an expensive feat, especially if you want to try out a bunch of different methods. It gets slightly worse if you have to keep it hidden for any number of reasons. So I’ve compiled a list of ideas for (acquiring) tools and such, which might come in handy for those who don’t know where to start.This post will be focusing on a few popular divining methods, feel free to add more!Tarot
○ The cheapest possible option is making your own. You’ll need:
- two regular plain playing card decks. You might have these at home, or you can check thrift shops or dollar stores for cheap decks. You’ll need a total of 78 cards, which is why you’ll most likely need two decks.
- a pen
You can see where this is going. Grab yourself a list of minor and major arcana and write their names on the cards. You can add little drawings if you feel like it! It’s not the fancy pastel fantasy fairy deck, but it’s all you’ll need to get started.○ If homemade isn’t for you, check thrift shops and yard sales for used decks.○ Sometimes, the Rider-Waite goes on sale on Amazon, so I’d recommend checking that out. Also, the pocket-sized version is usually cheaper than the full-sized one (and easier to hide, if you’re practicing in secret), so keep that in mind.Oracle Decks
○ Again, thrift shops. Thrift shops all the way.○ If you want to do it yourself, I can definitely recommend using this tutorial as a guide. Making your own really is a fun exercise and leaves you with a very personal tool.Runes
○ Maybe I lied about thrift shops. They’re a bit of an unlikely bet in this case. I’ll be giving you five methods to make your own runes, though!
- collect smooth stones by the sea, a nearby lake or river, whichever is convenient. You’ll need 24 for a complete set of Elder Futhark runes, or 16 for the Younger Futhark. Write the runes on your stones, and there, you’re done. You can finish them off with any glaze you have available, if you want to. (Stones or rocks from anywhere else work, too, but they won’t be as smooth - it’s a matter of preference).
- make little disks out of modelling clay and carve the runes into them. These could turn out quite small if you want them to, making them very convenient for traveling witches (or those who need to hide their craft).
- if you happen to have wood-carving/wood burning tools available, you can also make runes from wooden discs.
- I know someone who knows someone who made her runes by writing them on bottle caps. Not the most orthodox method, but hey, they work.
- something that just sprang to mind: you could make them from old coins/pennies/cents/what-have-you. I never tried it, but that’s another idea.
Pendulums
○ The cheapest one I saw so far was at a local occult shop, for about $10. Maybe there’s something cheaper close to you, it’s worth checking.○ More often than not, I just use a necklace. Really, it doesn’t seem to make a difference. If you don’t want to use a necklace, you can make one by tying a ring to a piece of string. It’s a method I’ve seen mentioned by a lot of other practitioners, and it works fine.Popular Divination Methods that Don’t Require Special Tools
(or at least nothing you don’t have at home already)
Shufflemancy - a divination method which uses the shuffle function of any music player available to you; here is a handy little guide
Stichomancy - this method uses books for divination, check out this introduction
Further Reading:
○ this list of divination types, some of which you might not know about yet. Not all of them are still in use, but they make for a really nice overview nonetheless.
○ this fantastic compilation of links for beginners on popular divination methods
