Looking for information on Celtic Elemental Scrying?!?

Question

I am looking for any type of information on Celtic Elemental Scrying?! It's a type of Divination used in Celtic times... Mostly how to use it and what I need to use it..... What it consists of and things of that nature?!

Hope someone out there can help me with this.....

Answer 1

I'm not familiar with anything particularly called that. The most common forms of Celtic divination involved observations of omens (either from natural phenomena, such as bird flights, or haruspicy, animal entrails), or semi-shamanic visions (including prophetic poetry and imbas/"vision-questing").

Now, certainly, the elements would be included in an observation of omens - everything from clouds in the sky to a particular orientation of rocks could be interpreted as relevant.

Imbas is a bit more tricky in regards to that - there's some exposure to the elements in some varieties, but not too much that lends to a direct connection with the elements. Some of the other forms of vision-questing, especially the ones with shape-shifting, have more of an 'exposure to the elements' theme, but again don't quite seem to qualify as a direct divination from the elements.

Prophetic poetry... you can perhaps make an argument about. That was typically seen as the realm of Brighid, and the poetic urge was often described as a "fire in the head." Depending on your take, you might call that as qualifying.

The important thing to remember is that the Celts did not use the classic Greek 4 element system of earth-air-fire-water. They did have an elemental system (with somewhere between 7 and 13 elements, depending on the source), but it doesn't seem to have held a high prominance. Instead, the three realms (sea, land, sky) were held as important - but they don't particular make good analogs to the elements.

That's about the best I can think of, really. I'm not 100% certain what you're looking for, and I've got to admit a certain amount of wariness, simply because there's a lot of folks out there who make false claims about the Celts to turn a fast buck. Best bet would be to keep an eye out for Erynn Rowan Laurie - she's one of the foremost experts on Celtic divination, and she's got at least one book out (I think she put a new one out fairly recently too).

Answer 2

This practice is the farthest thing from what I believe in, but at any rate, here's a link that may be helpful. I simply typed "Celtic elemental scrying" into the search engine...good luck.

http://www.concentric.net/~adowens/book/scrying2.htm