GROUP OVER-THE-SHOULDER DIVINATION
This divination technique can be practiced alone, but it might be more fun and helpful to do it in a group. This is another one of those divination methods which could double as a Fun Party Game. Other people could help with the interpretation part if the first things you noticed when you turned around were the Ior rune-card, the Picasso sculpture in Chicago, and a pink bow, and you’re stumped as to how these three things constitute an answer.
The down-side of a group exercise is, you don’t want others to influence what you focus on. You don’t want someone to laughingly-suggest the Eiffel Tower would constitute a ‘nice’ answer, when you’re asking yourself question number 7 below. Then the Eiffel Tower will be the first thing you notice, whether you want to or not. Too much humor will mess with the energies. Everybody’s got to agree not to try to influence the answer. You may want to re-arrange the objects between each question, to keep the randomness in play.
PERFECT DIVINATION METHOD FOR THE BLIND OR VISUALLY-IMPAIRED
This divination method is perfect for someone legally-blind or visually-impaired, so long as the tableau is a set of 3-D, tactile objects arranged on a table in front of them which they can touch and grab, like your small-objects divination set, your divining stones, Runes, Ogham, Greek Alphabet oracle, figurines, tree ornaments, etc. Because they will be ‘seeing’ with their eyes, they will need to grab things from the tableau, and hand them to someone for setting-aside. Let them feel the boundaries of the tableau, so they know what size of field they’re grabbing-from. After they ask their question, they shouldn’t think, just do it. Grab things at random, don’t spend any time trying to feel what it is and hand them to another participant, who will line them up. It will be up to the inquirer how many objects they grab. When they feel they’ve grabbed enough, they’re done.
Tell them what they grabbed. Hand them each item if they like, so they can get a better feel for what they grabbed, and proceed with the interpretation part. The order in which they grabbed things may or may not be important, but here’s a helpful hint for interpretation: if you could sum up these items up in a sentence, how would that sentence read? Is there any commonality to the items they chose, a sort of theme running through it? Was there any distinguishing feature about any of the items? For example, let’s say they grabbed a heart. Was it stone, wood, ceramic or metal? Plain or elaborate?
The ‘sighted’ members of your group may prefer this approach too. That’s fine, so long as they keep their eyes shut or they’re turned-away while you’re re-arranging the tableau and they’re asking their question. The tableau will have to be rearranged each time, after each question. Over-the-shoulder divination’s power lies in it’s deliberate randomness.