Tao_Equus said:
I have no doubt theres many a Christian who uses the bible no differently.
Regards
TE
Yep, it's called bibliomancy. Personally, I've had it work and I've had it not work, just like sometimes an oracle deck will put out something remarkably sensible and insightful and other times it seems (rationally in my mind) to be nonsense. I get little consistency when I use symbols and objects outside my own mind.
I think maybe we each just have to use what works for us and take up any moral concerns we have about it with God. I use prayer and meditation because it has the highest success rate for me. Personally, I feel little need to focus what I receive from God. If I'm discussing my concerns with God, I do some meditation and visualization, go into an inner sacred space, and see what I find there. It takes time and patience and sometimes it's months before I get a reply, but every time I go with an open heart and mind I do receive an answer, unmediated by cards, pendulums, runes, or other symbols. It is only the symbols that exist in my own mind. I've had messages through visions and dreams, some for which I asked and others that came unbidden.
However, I do not think it wrong for another to use the Tarot, I-Ching, runes or other. In fact, I know people who have had remarkable success with using runes or symbols they have themselves created. Furthermore, the injunctions against divination in the Old Testament were not necessarily as all-encompassing as many contemporary Christians believe. After all, casting lots was a perfectly acceptable way to contact the will of God during Biblical times, and that is a form of divination. Additionally, I don't put dowsing and other sundry environmental stuff in the same league with foretelling the future or communicating with spirits. Finding water and even ley lines is more about feeling neutral, non-personal energies (in my opinion and experience) whereas the two latter are more about communication with the flows of reality and spirit-entities, including God. As an aside... I find you do not necessarily have to communicate with a spirit or God, by the way, to have precognitive abilities. Telling the future and making decisions based on the flow of reality can be pretty much non-spiritual- more about the energy and timing of everything than about personal entities.
Folks
can use divination to communicate with spirits, but they aren't necessarily doing so. When people do, I do wonder sometimes with whom they are communicating. Not that I think it's wrong to communicate with spirits or ancestors, mind you. But rather that it is distinct (for me) from communicating with God. When I use a deck, I'm not sure who all I'm communicating with. When I simply open up communication lines without objects through meditation, I have a much clearer idea- generally a vision and distinct "feel" to it, be it an ancestor, nature spirit, or God. My sources aren't so muddled, if that makes sense. I have no idea how it works for others though and it's certainly likely that some people have a perfectly clear idea of who they're speaking with through runes or decks.
I think where I'm coming from in this thread is,
as a Christian, is it right to use a deck when we believe we can have direct two-way communication and relationship with God? If we are impatient and our minds are restless, and we choose to use objects to mediate rather than learning patiently how to do centering prayer, meditation, and open the lines of communication directly, are we cheating ourselves of a deeper, richer spiritual life? Using the decks doesn't concern me (I've done it before and I don't feel it was negative), but choosing, as a Christian, to use divination over direct communication could limit one's growth.
Or maybe we all just have to open that communication up in different ways, depending on the gifts we were given.
Thoughts?
