Some of you might have been surprised to learn that I wrote about tree divinations in the latest Matrifocus. Actually I’ve been writing an entire book — The World is Your Oracle — in which I compile and create oracular techniques, a volume I trust will prove useful to practitioners of many faiths. Why? Because I believe that divination allows us to get in touch with our own inner wisdom. And because we have reached a point in our history where change is occurring so rapidly that we need to rely on our own know-how and skills, not just those of the “experts.”

In North America most of us associate divination with the occult. We know one or two oracular methods, at most three or four, including popular forms such as tarot cards, the I Ching and the Nordic runes. Stereotypically, the concept of divination conjures up an image of an old gypsy woman using her deck of playing cards to tell someone’s fortune. For most of us, the gypsy’s cards portend events that have yet to occur, a death in the family or the arrival of a new lover.

We don’t have to search far to discover the reason for our dominant notions about divination. The first definition in most English dictionaries states that it’s the practice of attempting to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge using occult or supernatural means. From my perspective, this is an archaic understanding of divination, one created during a time when we drew sharper distinctions between the everyday and the mysterious, the natural and the supernatural, between rationality and non-rational ways of knowing, and even between the present and the future.

In my life, I have often found the mysterious in the midst of the everyday and the supernatural within the natural; I have used both rational and intuitive practices to discover my own wisdom; and I’ve noticed that the future is often contained in the present moment, however embryonically. Instead of occult fortune telling of future events, I define divination as the active use of our intuition, employing a variety of methods for getting in touch with our inner knowing.

What I’ve discovered over the years is that a good oracle puts me in touch with myself. It lets me discover my motivations, feelings, and thoughts about a question I’m exploring. And it connects me with the atmosphere or environment surrounding my oracular question, like a fish who becomes aware of the water it swims in, but otherwise might overlook.

Perhaps in the past when our culture was more traditional, learning from experts using rationality, deductive logic, and analysis was the proper means of teaching and learning. But our world is changing so rapidly, that hand-me-down knowledge is outdated almost before it reaches us. Expertise may sometimes help us, but I believe that we also need to teach people how to tap their own inner resources, their own wisdom, intuition, and experience, in order to keep up with the change that’s taking place.

I find this to be especially true when it comes to my personal life. Then techniques that put me in touch with my own inner wisdom allow me to avoid relying on others’ judgments about my life, even if it’s just “common sense,” the general opinion of most people about reality. When I want to realize my personal dreams, send healing energy to myself or my loved ones, or understand an incident in my life, divination has provided a much surer method of tapping into my own intuition and, as a result, into my own inner wisdom. Divination has also helped me to discern my beliefs and discover what I needed in particular situations.

Recent studies show that to a large degree we reach our decisions unconsciously. Oracles put us in touch with the unconscious, and as a result, with our decisions before we make them. Scientists used to think that the unconscious was the dumb cousin of the conscious mind, driving most of the time on autopilot. But now we know that the unconscious mind constantly monitors both our external and internal environment. When it judges the information gathered to be important enough, it engages the conscious mind, and we become aware of something.

Research also suggests that unconscious thought processes often prove superior in many situations, because they allow people to integrate complex information in a more holistic way. As a result, the unconscious seems to be the source of our creativity, our insight, and often our memory as well. Oracular techniques give us access to these powerful faculties (See Kate Douglas, “The Other You,”New Scientist (December 1, 2007), pp. 42 – 46).

In today’s world we’re bombarded with visual and auditory stimuli and can’t always stop the noise to access our inner reality. Besides we often don’t remember to listen for the insight contained in the stillness within. In order to remind myself to check in on a regular basis, I began to look for ways to tap into the deeper layers of my mind. And that led to my book about divination methods –The World is Your Oracle.