We have decided to open up The Wizards’ Journal to First
Years students of magic (also known as "Beginners") by
including a special lesson just for them each month.
This month we explore the topic of Divination.
Divination - the discovery of what is
hidden or obscure by supernatural or magical means.
Divination is different from Scrying. If someone in the
audience of on-lookers lost his wallet, you would not use Scrying
to locate the missing wallet, but only to tell the future... will
the wallet ever be found?
We don't want our First Years learning the age-old art of
picking pockets just yet, so instead of using a wallet to
demonstrate Divination, we'll use something of value FROM the
wallet... a dollar bill.
You, as the Diviner, request someone to donate a dollar bill
for the demonstration. You take the dollar bill and hand it to
someone else to seal in a plain white security envelope. A third
person from the group is handed six more sealed security
envelopes and asked to mix in the envelope that contains the
dollar bill. Your task will be to use supernatural means to
identify which envelope contains the missing dollar. To make it
more interesting and add an aspect of danger, you might introduce
a flaming brazier and have the envelopes that do NOT contain the
dollar bill burned. This is optional, however, and only for
additional drama.
The main magical tools of the diviner are the pendulum, metal
divining rods, a water witching branch, and, of course, one can
always use the crystal and tea-cup for both scrying and divining.
However, to keep them separate in the minds of your on-lookers,
let us agree on the following discipline as First Years: except
for locating secret knowledge, let us reserve the crystal and the
tea-cup for scrying; use the water witching branch only for
locating underground streams of water or plumbing; and use the
pendulum and metal divining rods as your main tools for locating
lost objects. There is a nice article in the Wizard's Journal #2,
written by (ahem!) myself, which describes the use of the
pendulum as a divining tool, so I will add reading that article
to your load of homework tonight. For this Divination lesson at
hand, we will build and use a pair of metal divining rods.
The article goes on to describe the construction and the
secrets of the Dollar Bill Divination that many magicians refer
to as "Bank Night." In the course of this instruction,
the beginner is taught a very simple billet move.
