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Gazing into the Dark: The Ancient Art of Scrying/Haunted And Waiting · Eye Opener Society

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Good afternoon, everybody. This is Anne Lund, coming to you from Haunted and
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Waiting podcast here on the Eye Opener Society podcast.
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First of all, of course, I'd like to thank Gary for having me host this little show on his venue.
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I really appreciate it. And if you don't know me already, my name is Anne Lund,
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and I like to share anything paranormal with a nice twist on hauntings and ghosts.
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So on to our first topic today, and that is scrying.
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I've discussed scrying in my blog several times, but I wanted to do a little
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show about it for those of you maybe that don't know what it is.
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Recently on my TikTok channel, also called Haunted and Waiting,
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I discussed scrying and a couple people wrote back saying, my goodness,
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I haven't heard about that in such a long time.
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So I wanted to discuss exactly what is scrying. Now, I always like to share
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true things that have happened to me or people that are close to me in relation
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to all the topics that I discuss.
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And when it comes to scrying, I haven't necessarily had any experience with
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scrying, but I did have a dear friend who did.
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And briefly to explain what it was with her was we would go hiking,
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and there was a lake at the top of this mountain near our home.
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And there was a portion of the lake that was under this huge oak tree.
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And in summertime, when you went there, and it could have been the brightest
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of days, the water under the oak tree was practically black because the oak
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tree was so huge that it cast a shadow on the water. So the water was very dark.
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And she claimed that when we would go up there, and we always sat under that,
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oak tree when we would get to the top of this mountain, that she could see faces in the water.
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This was probably about 20 years ago. I found it very strange.
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I would look into the water. The water was black. You couldn't see,
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into it. It was just completely in shadow, but she claimed that she would see
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faces and she would ask me not
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to talk to her and she would look into the water and that was about it.
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And I always wondered what that was. And I found out basically what she was doing was scrying.
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So scrying in general is when you use a dark glass-like surface.
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It could be a dark mirror. They do sell mirrors that are black.
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It could be a bowl of still water, which in my case, it was, like I said, the lake.
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It could be a candle flame that's flickering just enough so that you can kind
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of focus into the dark part of the candle.
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And for thousands of years, people have stared into these reflective surfaces,
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not to see themselves, but to see beyond themselves.
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And this was scrying, and it's one of the oldest and most misunderstood ways
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of accessing hidden knowledge.
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And what I like to express is this ghostly images that you can get through doing this.
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So tonight we're going to explore some scrying and where it comes from,
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why it appears across almost every culture,
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and how it terrified religious authorities across the world,
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and why modern experiments suggests that it might actually work.
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So scrying is a form of divination that involves gazing into this reflective surface.
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And through that, many people claim that they receive images, symbols, or messages.
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I myself, I like to meditate and sometimes when I get into that sweet spot, doesn't always happen.
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But for those of you that meditate, there comes a point where you kind of disattached
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sort of from your own thoughts.
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Into the blackness and you can start getting some images and
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i think scrying is something like that again i i've not
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done this i i don't have the ability to do this but
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unlike tarot or runes scrying is
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very passive so you don't manipulate the object you don't move it you just let
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perception shift into it and again some of the the more common scrying tools
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are polish obsidian i do have an obsidian stone that i use for meditating but
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i i hold it in my hand i don't necessarily to look at it.
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Black mirrors, still waters, wells, ponds, crystal spheres.
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Spheres will do that. Some people
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like to use smoke or flame or even like burning oil or even shadows.
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I did do a podcast on where people see images through or like faces in images.
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And a lot of people think that's pareidolia. But scrying can also be seen,
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in smoke. And so I did have that experience. So if you're interested in that, you can look at my blog.
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The blog is hauntedandwaiting.blog. I do a lot of educational information there
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about ghosts and the paranormal.
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But in that, I talk about an experience where my dog was breathing. It was nighttime.
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There was a light and the smoke, the mist that was coming out of her mouth,
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when I was looking, it almost looked like there was somebody standing there
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looking at her. It was very, very weird.
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So even shadows could be a form of scrying. And the goal is not imagination
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whatsoever. So you're not thinking this.
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It's what's coming to you through the images.
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So ancient origins.
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Scrying predates a lot of written history. So in ancient Mesopotamia,
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we know that priests use bowls of oil and water to receive messages. They would look into it.
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It was also very commonly used in temple rituals, often involving children.
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A lot of people believe that children are spiritually open to seeing the paranormal.
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I also did a blog on that, on children and the paranormal.
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But children were used in these rituals. They weren't harmed,
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but they were used to look into these objects to see if they could see anything.
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The Greeks also practiced something called hydromancy at sacred springs and
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underground caves, where they would look into the water.
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And there were several accounts of priests gazing into pools so dark that light
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could barely touch them and they would see things.
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The Celtic cultures, so the northern European cultures, also used sacred wells,
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blackened shields before battle, believing that they would be able to see into
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the next world, get images from those who have passed to help them in wars.
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So across civilizations, we have seen this, this scrying again through history.
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In the medieval times, scrying,
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became a form of like religious fear
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so by the middle ages scrying was thought
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to be very dangerous um not because it didn't work but
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because it worked outside of the church's control right so a lot of times churches
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um a lot of religions will put filters on what we should and shouldn't do um
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one of the most famous practitioners was a gentleman by the name of john d um
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he was an advisor to queen elizabeth um and believe it or not he used an obsidian mirror,
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likely an Aztec in culture I mean an origin and it worked,
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to record visions that he believed came from angels and he would give these
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images or report these to the queen,
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these things were kind of held secret again because,
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it was thought to be somewhere evil you know that it shouldn't have been allowed
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but the messages that he got were very disturbing and the entities demanded
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cryptic rituals and some moral tests.
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Eventually Dee was branded a heretic and his work kind of disappeared by the Queen.
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So how scrying may work. So modern psychology offers some explanation.
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Scrying they believe maybe induces a trance state.
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So like I said in meditation, I do sometimes get these images and.
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I can understand it. You're kind of detaching from your thoughts.
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And so it's believed, scientists believe, that maybe you're entering this trans
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state and staring into something that has very little stimulus, very little light.
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They relax the brain's filters and set it into some kind of a default mode.
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And it's thought that maybe some symbolism or symbolic thinking rises and the
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mind stops correcting perception because there's such so little perception there
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because of the limited light that then imagination comes into play but the problem
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with dismissing scrying.
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As imagination is why do
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people across time cultures and geography report the
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exact same experiences they all report seeing
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faces loved ones past um they
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report seeing movement in a surface that's otherwise flat
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um feel that scenes that feel external like something that they wouldn't understand
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wouldn't know of so it's not invented it's it's a truth that they may find out
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later on that that there was no way that they could have known it okay um and
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then of course there were some experiments so you gotta love the scientists
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they do the experiments and i'm all for that.
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So if anybody follows Raymond Moody, he does a lot of stuff on life after death.
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And in the 1990s, one of the most compelling ascribing experiments,
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he recreated an ancient Greek structure known as a psychomantium.
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So what that was, was like a chamber room used for mirror gazing to communicate with the dead.
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Now, Raymond Moody was very much into believing that there was life after that
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very much and he did a lot of um.
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Experiments or recordings of people that had flatlined or died and then saw
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what they saw in the next life and then came back to report it.
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So he was very much into that life after death sort of thing.
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And so he created this psychomantium, which was something that they did in ancient Greece.
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And people were placed in this room, a dark room alone, and a mirror was positioned
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so they could not see their own reflection directly.
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They were instructed to relax and gaze past the mirror, not at it,
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but as if they were looking through it.
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He said no drugs were used, there was no hypnosis, no suggestion at all of what
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they should be seeing, and the results were actually shocking.
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Over half of the participants reported vivid visual experiences.
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Many saw faces forming in the mirror, some reported seeing full apparitions
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stepping out of the mirror towards them.
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Others describe seeing scenes, voices, or conversations.
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In my own meditations, I see scenes, I see rooms, I see cities,
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I'll see streets. It's weird, but they're very clear.
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And so this is what some of the people were seeing. Crucially.
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Participants were told not to expect visions. They weren't told what was going
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to happen when they went in there, but this is what they saw.
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So psychologists observing the experiments noticed that the participants were
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all fully conscious, none of them had signs of mental illness,
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they didn't have any bias, they weren't allowed to speak to each other before
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the experiment, and Moody later concluded that the mirror does not create the
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vision, it removes the brain's resistance to perception.
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So what basically, in layman's terms, it removes the filter that we place on
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ourselves. Okay, it removes that.
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So whether it's psychological or paranormal, the experiment proves something
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unsettling, that scrying can be reliably induced, meaning if you're just willing
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to try and spend the time, you too can scry.
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Okay, let's talk about scrying in the modern world. So even today,
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spontaneous scrying does occur.
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People do report visions while staring into dark phone screens,
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staring into windows at night time.
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I have in my house skylights, and at night, sometimes when I look at the skylight
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into the dark sky, I swear I can see something there.
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People do say that they see things in low light.
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A lot of children, when they start looking into the paranormal,
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a lot of teen girls, let's say, they'll do the scrying in the mirror and they
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report similar things, seeing faces.
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Paranormal research suggests that scrying doesn't summon image.
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It, again, reveals perception.
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So you're not seeing something new. You're seeing what's usually filtered out.
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It's always there, but we filter out.
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And the scrying, because of the lack of visual stimuli, is bringing it out.
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Let's talk about fiction because scarring does come out in fiction and probably the most,
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Common, not common, but the one that most of us know about are Lord of the Rings, right?
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Where palanthropy, seeing stones, do not lie, but they reveal partial truth,
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often driving users towards fear or madness.
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The detail comes from scrying. Okay, so in Lord of the Rings,
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when they're talking about it, it comes from ancient scrying lore.
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Okay, so the danger isn't false vision, it's complete visions.
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So, in closing, scrying exists at the intersection of psychology,
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spirituality, and fear.
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And it asks a dangerous question. What happens when you stop looking at the
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world and start looking through it?
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Whether the visions come from the mind, the soul, or somewhere else entirely,
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scrying reminds us of something deeply unsettling, reality, may not be as solid as we think.
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You know, it may actually be haunted and just waiting. so
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in closing what are your thoughts i'd love to hear
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um again if you've listened to this podcast and
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you can comment i would love to hear your comments if you
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have time please find me on facebook haunted
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and waiting you can also find me on tiktok haunted
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and waiting um and of course here on the eye opener society and especially on
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my blog also called haunted and waiting dot blog where I'll have a transcript
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of this as well as links to resources for scrying as well as true stories.
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And then when you're there at my blog, take a look at some other things.
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I do have some true stories in there as well as some education,
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some paranormal education if you're interested and I'd be glad to see you there.
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In closing, thank you for listening.
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This is Anne Lund with Haunted and Waiting.