Artomancy methods of divination demand practice in order to really learn them and get comfortable with them. There are a few rules attendant with each form of artomancy, and ways of interpreting various signs and symbols, but these are just a springboard for your own intuition and your gut-hunches, upon which artomancy methods are heavily-dependent. With artomantic methods, you may come to develop a personal vocabulary, or glossary of symbols which have meaning to you alone. For instance, over

In time, with smoke divination, you may find a certain behavior of the smoke heralds a particular sort of event.  Same thing with bird divination, chicken divination, wood divination, wax divination, or over-the-shoulder divination. Artomancy is extremely free-form and more dependent on the diviner’s interpretation. I’ll tell you flat-out, there’s very little material I was able to find on the subject, and I think that is because smoke divination is a form of divination so heavily-dependent on the diviner’s own experience, that beyond a few rules of thumb, there’s not much else they can tell us about it! Smoke divination is probably one of the oldest forms of artomantic divination there is, and one of the toughest to master. May it bring you mostly good news!

EXERCISES

  1. Line up four different kinds of incense: small stick incense, large-stick incense, cone incense, and loose-powder incense, the sort you throw on a charcoal brick. (All these could be found through Amazon, and possibly Etsy. And if you get the loose-powder incense, save yourself a lot of trouble and purchase the self-igniting charcoal disks).  At first, don’t ask or think any questions at the smoke; simply light them one at a time, and observe how each burns. Was there any one of these varieties of incense you preferred most for divining?
  2. Pose a question to each smoke-source out loud, and see how the smoke reacts.
  3. Think of a question or issue silently in your mind while each incense burns. Did you observe any change in the smoke when you did so?
  4. The next time you are attending an outdoor fire, try causinomancy. Have a small vial or jar of sesame seeds, poppy seeds, bay leaves, or some combination of the three (you can break the bay leaves into smaller sections if that will help) on your person. Or you might want to try wood chips or wood shavings, particularly cedar. When you have the chance, throw your burnable material on the fire and observe how it burns. Did it give off smoke? How was it different from trying to divine with the incense?
  5. Go for broke. If you still have some of the loose-powder-type incense, try throwing that on the fire. Did it work better on the outdoor fire than it did on a charcoal brick?
  6. After all this experience, did you prefer causinomancy over regular smoke divination? Why or why not? Given your experience with smoke divination, is it a divination method you could see yourself using again? Under what circumstances would you use it?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buckland, Raymond. The Fortune-Telling Book. Capnomancy. Canton, MI.: Visible Ink Press, 2003. p. 85.

Dunwich, Gerina. A Wiccan’s Guide to Prophecy and Divination. Capnomancy. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1997. pp. 28-29.

Shaw, Eva. Divining the Future: Prognostication from Astrology to Zoomancy. Capnomancy. N.Y.: Facts on File, 1995. pp. 35-36.

Shaw, Eva. The Wordsworth Book of Divining the Future. Capnomancy. Ware: Wordsworth Reference, 1997.

Pages: 1234567