Witchery: How to Craft a Psychomanteum

Many witches look for ways to enhance their knowledge and to improve their understanding of the world and the universe around them. Witches seek to increase their knowledge and experience in as many different ways as possible.  One way is by use of a psychomanteum. A psychomanteum is a small, enclosed space in your home, which can be set up for the express purpose of communicating with those from beyond the veil of the living. An empty walk-in sized closet can be ideal in both size and privacy required. The space needs to be far from any and all distractions of sound, sights, and other people’s energy in general. If kids are in the household, get a family member, friend, or sitter to keep them far from this space until the working is complete.

First, start by cleansing the room of everything, all items inside, all dirt, all energy, negative, positive, personal, etc. strip it of all energy possible because you want this to be as blank a canvass to start with as possible. Then, bless and consecrate the space and everything that goes into it with Holy Water sprinkled off fresh rosemary twigs to purify the area and draw in the power of remembrance.

Inside the space, you will need to have a seat, which is comfortable for extended periods of use without allowing you to fall asleep, for safety. A small table on which to place a scrying tool of your choice. This tool can be a mirror, scrying bowl or crystal ball, etc. and a few yellow candles to use for illumination and to focus the communication.

Start to assemble the room. Place the table and chair a comfortable distance from each other, place your chosen scrying tool on the tabletop and make certain that the placement of the candles keeps them from being directly reflected in the chosen scrying tool. Nothing should be visible from the vantage point of the viewer other than a blank reflection of the ceiling and/or walls, typically just slightly above and behind  (when using a mirror) the viewer’s head.

On the table top you may also choose to have a few items belonging to the person you are trying to reach, which can be held and felt while concentrating on the person’s visage appearing to you.

Ground and center yourself, breathe deeply and concentrate on the person you are trying to reach. Speak the name of the one you seek quietly and wait for them to come to you. Repeat the name every so often until the person appears or until you are finished for this working.

Complete isolation and concentration is crucial, but even then, it may take several tries to reach the person. The psychomanteum can be left as is after each use and only requires re-cleansing if someone else enters the space, the wrong person tries to reach out to you, or once you have completed the working with the intended person and you want to move on and speak to someone else.

Using a psychomanteum can be a true pleasure for any witch who wants to accrue knowledge from those who have passed, or to re-visit a loved one who has crossed over.

Starbo’s Mirroring

Starbo was relatively new to the magickal life, he had been a seeker for the time that I had known him, but was not very experienced at mirroring as of this writing. He had only one incarnation that he had been able to see.

Starbo’s only vision was of a man with a long red beard and hair to match. The man was clothed in the style of ancient England. He was wearing a dark blue over cloak. The details of the clothes under it were not visible to Starbo, but the impression he received from the man’s carriage and demeanor seemed to imply that he was either a warrior or a bard,  he was getting vibes that the person was very confident.

Since those two professions were far removed from one another naturally, I assumed that the era is very important. There have not been many times throughout the history of this earth when the storytellers and the fighters have been able to tread the earth with the same amount of confidence between them. About the only era I can imagine it to have been would be during the days of feudal lords in England’s history. Anyone have other ideas?

Spiritwind Mirroring

Our friend, Spiritwind, though not a witch, had become a student of shamanism. As such, we decided to introduce him to the enjoyment of mirroring. He took to the practice very easily, but he also has a very unusual ability. When he mirrors, each eye can view separate aspects of the same incarnation with each or he can focus them together at the same time and see someone completely different who has some relation to the first person viewed.

For example, once, when he mirrored, the view with his right eye was that of a Native American male in his late 20s or early 30s without any special dressings, his face is clean and his long hair is flowing straight back down off his head. When he looked though his left eye he saw the same Native American male with his hair parted on the left and swept over to the right side of his head. There were feathers hanging down from his hair. He was, obviously, a warrior in full paint and the descriptions Spiritwind gave of the pattern of the war paint are exacting in the locations and shapes he used in different shades on his face and body. When he looked down, he saw the beaded leathers that he wore.

When he looked through both eyes he saw an outline of a Civil War era uniform from the bottom of the pants leg and then the vision seemed to travel up the body, he saw dark curly hair on the collar and the face was fuzzy or blurry.

We had not been able to figure it out in the beginning, then I hypothesized that the second vision, using both eyes, was allowing him to see the one who killed the warrior from the vantage point of the warrior’s own vision. Why else would the vision start at the feet? It did not do that otherwise for other viewings, at least not as he described the angle, for the view through either eye separately. In addition, the fact that the face seemed fuzzy and could not be cleared even when he focused seemed to support this theory. Was this because the warrior’s strength and eyesight was fading as he lay dying? We finally decided that it must be vague due to his death, or perhaps because “all you whites look the same to us” as one of my Abenaki friends used to say.

I asked Spiritwind to try to use some other methods and mirror deeper to see if I might be correct. What do you think?