Divination by...Cut-Ups?
Photography by J. Jeffrey Minzey minzeyart.com
An amazing number of things can be used for divination. My friends and I made a “word bowl,” by writing down words and phrases on scraps of paper and gathering them in a large bowl. We would draw out and arrange a handful to get our “message.” Different people over time would add their own words and phrases. We would periodically remove inane words like “wheat” or “chair” though, because we wanted to keep it revelatory and esoteric.
I remember my friends and I got some very interesting messages from our “word bowl,” Someone once knocked the bowl off of a table and the next message drawn was, “Oh, all knowing word bowl fell.” There were plenty of other such examples. Sometimes we drew from the bowl with a specific question in mind, and sometimes we just asked for insight. The best messages, by the way, came when you laid them out without trying to make the words make sense.
We recorded the good ones in our “word bowl book,” which reads like a metaphorical stream of consciousness with a divination slant. Reading it can really be trance–inducing. The intuitive state of consciousness that arises makes the grammar irrelevant. Greater meanings come through regardless of word organization. It’s very Joyce-ian. Some of the messages were so uncanny and prescient, it makes you wonder, by whose hand were they written?
I later learned that these scraps of paper are called “cut-ups.” Often the words of a text or passage were cut and arranged in a different order. It turns out that David Bowie used cut-ups to help create some of the lyrics to songs he wrote in the ‘70s, like “Moonage Daydream.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgXUjXpf0Q0
The concept can be traced back to at least the 1920s and Dadaism (a movement that celebrated the experimental, dissident, humorous and anarchic elements in art.) Utilizing cut-ups as a literary technique was popularized by writer William S. Burroughs. A controversial figure, Burroughs believed in a magical universe, and was a practitioner of chaos magic. Disturbingly, it is said that by disrupting his written language he hoped to protect himself from possession by a demon he called “The Ugly Spirit.” Regarding the cut-up technique, he stated:
“I would say that my most interesting experience with the earlier techniques was the realization that when you make cut-ups you do not get simply random juxtapositions of words, that they do mean something, and often that these meanings refer to some future event. I've made many cut-ups and then later recognized that the cut-up referred to something that I read later in a newspaper or a book, or something that happened ... Perhaps events are pre-written and pre-recorded and when you cut word lines the future leaks out.”
That is an interesting take, indeed. This may show how divination has been linked to post-modernism (An umbrella term covering many non-related topics). The post-modern tenet most associated with divination is the concept that there is no absolute reality and also no absolute meaning contained within any symbol, that personal associations can override “proper” meanings. The subjective nature of perception is seen as influential in the creation of one’s “reality,” or better stated, “circumstances.” A part of me balks at this association, because there are many elements of postmodernism that devalue expertise, knowledge and science. Other elements encourage freedom of thought and individual expression. Let’s just say it’s complicated!
In modernism, each symbol was seen as having a fixed meaning. This is congruent with the philosophies of 19th and early 20th century occultists–think ceremonial magic with hard and fast rules. Postmodernism, however, suggests that a symbol can represent another symbol, which can in turn represent yet another symbol, and so on, ad infinitum. To say something has a singular meaning, therefore, is to deny the possibility of a greater web of meaning.
Most tarot readers, for example, would agree that getting trapped in one (strict) meaning for a card limits its application. Similarly, the word bowl allows the questioner to use their own perceptions in deciphering the meaning, which can make it more personal. This is similar to how dream interpretations other than the dreamer’s own aren’t as accurate because the symbolic meanings in dreams are subjective.
The objects used for divination act as a focal point, a “container” necessary for filtering out the infinite. By way of example, I once used silverware to do a reading for someone. He asked me for a reading and, as we both worked in a restaurant, I used what was at hand. The plate became a pentacle, the spoon a cup, the fork a wand, and the knife a sword. I then had him “cast” them onto a tablecloth. Based on how they landed, I intuited that he would soon have to give up a harmful indulgence. Stunned, he related that his doctor told him he would have to give up alcohol because of an ulcer. This illustrates that any set of symbolic associations can be used for divination. This also shows that a main ingredient of divination is the ability to trust your intuition.
So what’s the strangest thing you’ve used for divination? Please be sure to tell us about it in the comments below!
I just drew a message from the current iteration of the word bowl asking for a message for this blog. It reads, “Picture trees blowing in the wind. Mysterious fireworks, cold, clear air. Truth whimsy full of grace like Leonardo da Vinci. Olympian taboo gathered wisdom. I love you.”