Divination, Counseling, and Spiritual Insight

Divination takes center stage in this conversation as the hosts explore how practices like tarot, scrying, and pendulum work function far beyond fortune‑telling. They challenge rigid systems such as astrology and numerology, noting how generic interpretations often fail to reflect real human complexity. Instead, they emphasize intuitive, flexible approaches that allow space for nuance, personal insight, and genuine spiritual connection.

The discussion shifts toward divination as a counseling tool within Pagan practice. Rather than predicting the future, divination becomes a way to bypass defenses, open meaningful dialogue, and uncover the real issues people bring to their spiritual leaders. The hosts highlight how visual symbols and interpretive freedom can help practitioners guide others with clarity, compassion, and grounded spiritual support.

Ultimately, the episode calls for a return to divination’s roots: a tool born from need, used to help people understand themselves and make better choices. Whether through cards, symbols, or intuitive reading, divination becomes less about “Will I meet someone?” and more about personal growth, ethical practice, and authentic human connection.

Join us on
Discord:  https://discord.gg/MdcMwqUjPZ
Facebook: (7) Life Temple and Seminary | Facebook

Transcript

Welcome And Quick Support Request

SPEAKER_03 0:15

Welcome to Taking Coffee Call. If you enjoy our content, please consider donating and following our socials. So it's been a while since we've talked about Devonation.

SPEAKER_04 0:30

Yeah, it's been a hot minute.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Yeah. So you want to revisit that and um see where it takes us?

SPEAKER_04 0:37

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

All right.

What Divination Means To Us

SPEAKER_04 0:40

What would you like to know about divination?

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Why do you always ask me these questions?

SPEAKER_04 0:48

I'm divining the future.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

I've divined that I have no answer to that question.

SPEAKER_04 1:00

First of all, there's different forms of meditation, all right? I mean, not meditation of divination, all right? Right. Some I like, some I don't. I don't tend to like the ones that there's no wiggle room there. When we get into um uh astrology or numerology, to me, they seem a little pre-packaged.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Okay. Where it's this, where it's this description and this description only.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

This description, right, and no others. Again, this is where I find that astrology type thing, where it's it's less of that intuition.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:41

I tend to like intuition over regular straight out divination.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Okay, so you're thinking more like scrying or tarot or pendulums or somewhere where the reader actually has some leeway to what in the world's being interpreted and how it's being interpreted.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Right. Well, don't get me wrong, like I understand tarot cards have certain meanings depending on if they're right side up or upside down, and they have traditional meanings, and you can use those if you want. I'm not saying you can't.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

I'm just saying I don't tend to like those because they're so generic.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Well, they're generic and they're rigid.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

There's not much room for interpretation, really. I mean, when you when you look at it.

SPEAKER_04 2:36

But it's kind of to me, when you when you're doing that, you're you're this is that you're you're looking in the paper, looking up your horoscope for the day. Right. You know, I'm sorry, I used to read these all the time, and the majority of the time it never matched up. It never did.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

No, not really.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

Rarely did.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Not really, no.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

All right. Well I was in there is beyond me besides taking up space. But this is where in the world I get this idea from because again, it's kind of

Why Astrology Can Feel Rigid

SPEAKER_04 3:06

right. I don't know about you, but I remember back in the day where remember when they used to have the um the Aquarius books or the Leo books. Oh, yeah. It was absolutely fascinating to sit there and read and how everything seemed to exactly match up with you. And if you read all the other books, they said the exact same thing to a certain extent.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

Yeah, pretty much.

SPEAKER_04 3:30

When you start to listen to it, it's so vague, you're kind of like, uh, this could be anybody.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

Right. That's you know, that's always been kind of my thing against things like astrology.

SPEAKER_04 3:42

Right.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

It's because I would look at the supposed descriptions of other signs and what their typical behavior and mannerisms and stuff were like, and I was like, you know, that could be me.

SPEAKER_04 3:55

It yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Or I've got some of that. I do I do that.

SPEAKER_04 4:01

Yeah, I do that too, and I do a little bit of that, and a little bit of that, and it it's not as clean as everybody would like it to be. No, and I understand there's some nuance there, the cusp and this and locations, and but at the end of the day, if I can buy a computer, if I can go and get a pay two dollars to get a reading from an AI that can do all of this. I I mean, are you with me?

SPEAKER_03 4:31

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

SPEAKER_04 4:32

Where's where's that, and I'm I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but where's that that touch of that divine, where's that touch of that something extra that we keep on claiming in craft?

SPEAKER_03 4:45

Right. I mean, I I suppose you could work away into that, but I mean, with the way it's laid out, I don't know how.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

Don't get me wrong.

The Con Artist Problem

SPEAKER_04 4:55

I I I don't know about you. Over the years, I I have done that where I've the the whole get your palms read here outside the house. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. I'm not pointing fingers at any one particular because I've been in some houses and they've been this ethnic, and I've been in this house, and it's been this no pointing fingers.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Right.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

But I'm sorry, when you're in there and you're in that situation, it's hard not to go, okay, this I could see where this could easily become a con. It's hard not to sit there and go, yeah, I could see where this person could take somebody for a ride easily.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Well, and I I think that's where the whole for entertainment purposes only thing came from.

SPEAKER_04 5:45

It did.

SPEAKER_03 5:45

Um, and it was for that reason because so many people were getting conned.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

Mm-hmm. When you call them up and none of the predictions come true, or the predictions are so vague, it can mean anything.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

I I I look at it kind of like um the show Mrs. Mazel, and Miriam's mom goes to see a psychic on her pretty much on a regular basis, and she sits down and she's like da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And they're just chatting back and forth, and she's like, Oh, I got this. Here's this little satchel, you do this, that'll be 20 bucks.

SPEAKER_04 6:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

You know. Well, I want to know, I want to know about her future. Is she gonna oh honey, don't worry about her. She's gonna meet a man. I I already see it. Here, that's another 30 bucks.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

I remember that because I remember I remember her walking outside the the place a couple of times and didn't want anybody to see her walk in.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

So yeah, I mean, it's it's easy to it's easy to get conned and it's easy to fall into that, you know.

SPEAKER_04 6:52

We're back to when when people when people feed into each other's egos, that's where this that's where this con starts.

Entertainment Versus Genuine Insight

SPEAKER_04 7:00

I realize that there are probably some people out there that truly believe and want to do and all this other stuff, but I'm sorry, doing readings for people are a whole lot harder than you think it is.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

Oh, god, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:15

Now, again, when you're sitting there, and I I'm gonna put this out there, okay. If you're sitting down and you're using some form of divination and you're thinking of it more as a psychological evaluation of a person, I'm gonna say you're more along the lines. I think we need to be down.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

The point there is to have that human connection, that extra something there.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Right.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

It's that great equalizer of, you know, hey, everybody has a future, everybody has to worry about it. What's the next thing that's going on? Everybody wants to leg up.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 7:56

But let's be honest. I mean, how many times have you gotten a reading from somebody in a bee exactly what you expected it to be?

SPEAKER_03 8:05

You mean bad?

SPEAKER_04 8:06

Well, I mean that any of it hanged through where any of it was actually right.

SPEAKER_03 8:12

I mean, most of the readings that I've had, I just I don't expect them to be anywhere near accurate. And I do, I treat it just like entertainment, you know. I'm paying for a show.

unknown 8:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

Every once in a while you get surprised. But um yeah, I think for the most part it's it's just it's hit or miss.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

I don't want to say to sit here and say we don't rely on them. I'm I'm gonna I'll be the first one to sit there and tell you to do a divination on a spell to see if you should even do it or not. Oh, sure. And I'm still gonna sit here and say this. This is just to give you an idea of how the spell is gonna go, not how it's actually gonna work out.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Right, because we can't know that. I mean, we can get a general idea, but you've always got to go into it with the understanding that uh it may not work out the way you intended.

SPEAKER_04 9:04

What do you expect when you put a thought out there into chaos and go, hey, chaos? Right? Hey, I want this to happen.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

Oh, you do?

SPEAKER_04 9:18

Okay. Well, we'll see what we can do about that. I'll put that on my list.

Divination As A Counseling Tool

SPEAKER_04 9:29

Should we expect more out of people doing these divinations, or should we expect more of a psychological profile? Should we expect actual insights into the or or should or should we look at the pagan community going, okay, y'all, we're gonna quit playing games here. This is nothing more than a tool to get a psychological evaluation with some extra thrills attached to it.

SPEAKER_03 9:55

Okay, but see, my thing with that is is if you're gonna do that, then there needs to be additional training. It needs to be a trained service, you know what I mean? You need to have um, like if you're gonna go for that, then it would be like going to see a psychologist. I would if I if that's my purpose and going to have a divination done for me or done on me. No, again, when I don't expect them to be trained, I expect it to be.

SPEAKER_04 10:27

No, I'm not a licensed therapist, but I'm just gonna say, especially when I'm doing a one-on-one divination, and things get a little bit more personal and all that in the conversation. Are you with me? That it it's it's not what happens when you're doing it at a party and everybody's kind of around you.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

No, and I get that, but I'm just saying, if if this is what you're doing for a living, right, and you genuinely want to help people, and people are genuinely wanting to get help from you, and it's not just entertainment for them. Like it would be mainly for me if I were to go, it'd just be, yeah, okay, this is a big this will be good for a laugh. Right. But I think that if that's if that's gonna be your outlet for for spiritual help, then yeah, no, I think it needs to be there needs to be like a school. And there needs to be training. It needs to be it needs to include um like it needs to include things like body language, it needs to include we're not we are training people to give spiritual counsel to people to begin with. Right, but I'm talking strictly divination.

SPEAKER_04 11:41

I am too. And the fact is that divination is a very good tool to sometimes do that because you're bypassing a lot of other things there that people in their personality will often do or fool themselves. Where if you have them doing a divination, you can sort of bypass that and go, Well, here's what I see from your cars. Because people have a tendency again, when you're sitting there and you're talking to them and all this, they have a tendency to want to lie to themselves about what the real issues are sometimes. Well, that's true. And this is why in the world I like this, is because I've had people come over for counseling and let's do a card reading, and that allows us to sort of jump that hurdle and get to actual problems that they're actually having versus that way. I can sit there and go, okay, your real problem isn't there, it's not a spiritual one. This is you need to go talk to your counselor about this now.

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Yeah, I can kind of see that. I just I don't know. I still think that if you're gonna do if you're gonna do more on a psychological level, then there needs to be there needs to be something else there besides, oh, I can read your cards.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

I'm not talking about psychoanalyzing somebody. I'm just talking about us giving regular spiritual training and counseling.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

All right. Not we're not trying to cure somebody's bipolar.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

No, I didn't, I didn't mean it like that. I'd I'm sorry if you took it that way.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

That's sort of where in the world it sounded like you were going. Oh no, no, you need if you're gonna use this like this, you need to be a trained therapist. Uh all I'm saying is no, as priest and priestesses, when we go through training methods, this is a tool we have. It is a good helping with counseling because it sort of breaks barriers and allow it allows a conversation to happen a whole lot easier.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

And

Training And Boundaries For Readers

SPEAKER_03 13:45

that that I can see, that I can get on board with.

SPEAKER_04 13:48

Versus it just being this, oh, we're gonna predict the future. No, it is a tool that we can use to help disarm certain counseling things, and we need to start, we need to kind of like promote this. This is this is a counseling tool. We need to use it more often, right? Doesn't matter if you're scrying, doesn't matter if you're using astrology or whatever. These things were basically the basis of most counseling, I believe.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Right. I mean, I I do think that they were originally designed to be a tool. Um, and when I say designed, I mean you know, when somebody actually came up with the idea, oh look, we can do this.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

Um, I think it came out of a place of need, as most other things do.

SPEAKER_04 14:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

And so yeah, I think it needs to go back to that instead of just being, oh, can you tell me if I'm gonna meet a man?

SPEAKER_04 14:47

Right.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Am I gonna meet this woman? Are we gonna have kids? Whatever.

SPEAKER_04 14:53

Right. Instead of asking, hey, you know, you know, are the are the gods happy with my sacrifices lately? Are the gods happy with my prayers lately? These are not the questions that they're asking. No, they're not. If you're a priest or a priestess, start thinking about these divination tools as more of a psychological evaluation helping tools. They can often get conversations started and people's defenses down to where you can actually talk about real problems and get to the root of them so we can actually find a solution to the problem.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Right. Yeah, definitely. I mean, especially if it's uh if it's some type of visual aid, um, you know, even something in the visual itself may help the, you know, they may see that and see whatever it is, and they'd be like, ooh, wait, I know what this is. Right. And then that could spark a whole new conversation.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

So well, I've even explained this when we've talked about spells. Is that normally when people come over and they're wanting us to cast a spell, we'll cast a spell for them, but we'll sit there and talk to them and do a divination reading. And again, this is a this is a counseling trick. It gives us a chance to counsel them, right? To find out what's really going on, to figure out, okay, are we gonna do this spell and they're gonna go away and be happy, or am I gonna see them come back next week?

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Right.

SPEAKER_04 16:24

When it doesn't work the way they expect it to, am I gonna have to counsel more? It's still something we do, even in that case. We're sort of trying to put a break on there, going, hey, do you really need to do this spell? Are you really thinking about this right? And again, it it's still being used as a form of counseling.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Right.

SPEAKER_04 16:47

So, I mean, just to sit there and to think, okay, Devonation is just for predicting the future or something like that, or to to de it's not. It is a counsel, it is a counseling tool, I believe.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Well, I think that's one of the many uses of divination for

Charisma Trust And Helping People

SPEAKER_03 17:05

sure. I think it's probably one of the better uses. You know, and uh I completely agree. I think it needs to go back to that. And especially if you're with the right person. Are are you are you with me? Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, if it's somebody, if it's somebody that you know and somebody that you can trust, then it's definitely gonna benefit.

SPEAKER_04 17:31

The person doing that being a little bit more charismatic and more attentive, and it goes a long way.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

Sure it does. I mean, if you've got somebody who's got resting bitch face, you know, are you really gonna open up to that person? Just saying.

SPEAKER_04 17:51

Yes, I can see love right here in your horizon. It's so excited. Are you excited? I am.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

I can't contain it.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

I can't contain it. It's not an iceberg on my ass, it's just frozen water.

SPEAKER_03 18:13

Yeah, yeah. No judging there. No, of course not. You know, a little charisma goes a long way for sure.

SPEAKER_04 18:19

It it really does. These are the things people need to think about when they're when they're actually sitting here doing divination, all right? What what part of the inside of this person's psyche are you actually getting a hold of? Right. Where do we need to help? Where do we need to look? Where do we need to dig into stuff?

SPEAKER_03 18:38

Right. What information can we pull from this?

SPEAKER_04 18:42

Right. Where can we help?

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Right.

SPEAKER_04 18:46

How how can we help this person be a better person?

SPEAKER_03 18:50

I mean, want to be a better person. What I was gonna say, and after all, isn't that why people usually come to us anyway? Asking for advice because they want to be better people. Isn't that what we're doing?

SPEAKER_04 19:03

Ain't that what we're supposed to be doing?

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Yeah, just asking. For a friend. All right, I'm ready for some coffee.

Coffee Sign Off And Links

SPEAKER_03 19:15

All right, let's get some coffee. Thanks for listening. Join us next week for another episode. Pegan Coffee Talk is brought to you by Life Temple and Seminary. Please visit us at Life Temple Seminary.org for more information, as well as links to our social media Facebook, Discord, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

We travel down the stroden path, the maze of stone and fire. Just hold my hand as we pass by a steel blazing fire. And still it is the end of our days, still off with me till morning break. And still it is the end of our days, still off with me till morning,