In this divination lesson, I admit failure. It started with Callia Underhill’s fine book on the subject, A Witch’s Book of Divination. My mischief started with Chapter Nine, page 183, ‘The Druid’s Wand.’ It is a form of Celtic Triad divination which she delineates in this chapter. The process is, you have to go out in nature, find the appropriate stick, pay proper compensation to the tree from which you take it, clean off the bark, mark it appropriately, consecrate it, then use it as a sort of measuring tool of the stars in order to arrive at the proper divinatory triad, and you can use it only once every twenty-eight days. ‘Dear me,’ I thought, ‘this is rather involved. How can I make Celtic Triad divination easier to use?’
Hunting down websites on the Internet with lists of Celtic Triads, I found a promising one with several hundred Celtic Triads listed in it. I printed them all out and started turning them into cards. A few Celtic Triads were frankly sexist and misogynistic, so I flat-out refused to use those. The problem is, even winnowing down a four-hundred-plus list of Celtic triads still left me with so many good and wise triads, it was near-impossible editing-out any unnecessary ones. So my Celtic Triads deck ended up with no fewer than 233 cards! But loathe to walk away from all this work, the PDF is below:
You’ll notice I added the design for the back of the cards as a separate PDF, so you can decide if you want to use it, go with another design, or leave it blank. If you have access to a cutting board, it will save you much time and labor with a pair of scissors. As always, I recommend spraying them with a sealant so the cards don’t smear.
STORAGE OF THE CARDS
I strongly recommend getting a 3-inch-wide by 4-inch-deep by 2.5-inch-tall (that’s roughly 7.5 cm wide by 10 cm deep by 6 cm tall in the Metric system) paper-mache, cardboard, or wooden box from your local craft supplies store. This size box will allow you to either stand the cards up or lie them down in the box, as shown in the pictures.