“It is not every man who can see faces in the fire.” ~Edgar Allen Poe
A fire burning in a fireplace or a fire-pit is hypnotic, isn’t it? Its warmth draws us close. Then watching the play of the flames over the logs draws us in. And suddenly nothing else in the world is important at this moment but watching this fire burning. Embers divination is another one of those divination methods which is so old, it’s likely been practiced ever since the first species of humans who learned how to use fire, started building campfires to keep away the cold and the predators. The first embers-diviner could’ve been a Neanderthal sitting in a cave in Europe 40,000 years ago. Nobody knows.
The northern hemisphere of the planet is coming into a season where fireplaces everywhere will be puffing away, warding off the cold and the dark. (I acknowledge here, for some dedicated souls, outdoor fires are a 365-days-a-year thing). Perfect opportunity to become an experienced practitioner of this ancient art, embers divination. This is one of that category of divination methods which I term artomancy, that is, the ability to look at a natural substance in either a natural or controlled environment (such as a fireplace, a teacup, an outdoor café, or a path through the woods), and see images or messages there. Fire-scrying is a thing, and we’ll get to that later. In this particular form of fire divination, you’re focusing on the embers, the base of the fire where the burned wood is glowing red and turning to charcoal. Obviously, if you have a gas-fed fireplace, this divining-method won’t work, but sooner or later, we’re all around wood-burning fireplaces or fire-pits.