Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm making this thread here, as opposed to in ED M&R, in a bid to avoid the muppetry that's prone to plague threads like this.

I'm a dab hand at the Tarot. I use the I-Ching from time to time. I keep meaning to pick up the wood to make an Ogham set for myself, I even bought myself a wood-burning pen specifically for the task.

These are all crutches to use an ability I have that I neither asked for nor want. The selfish part of me says I'd turn it off altogether. The altruistic part of me knows that this would be stupid.

Sure, I've only managed to avert disaster once. Some of the time I've made things worse, most of the time it's like I had no effect whatsoever and once or twice it was self fulfilling prophecy (man they're a cosmic kick in the nuts)

I don't get glimpses of the future. I don't see the event. I just know it's going to happen. I can't give any of the actual examples because that would be in direct violation of priestly confidences.

There's no real explanation of it in Celtic culture that I'm aware of. There are just those with the second sight. I don't like the ability. I don't like the responsibility. I don't like the fact that it comes without an instruction manual. If other people could give an overview of what their various traditions have to say on the matter, it might help me make sense of it. I am starting to believe that it's just an effect of the universe, the shape of space-time or something. Quantum entanglement in themporality or something, because we all know it's scientific if it's got the word quantum in it (this is a dig at myself and myself only).

My mother has the disturbing ability to tell if someone has died in pain in a particular area. There are three instances I can remember. One, when my cousin tried to get her to buy a house. Mom refused, and kept asking what happened in the house, specifcly the garage, until my cousin finally told her the previous owner was an elder gentleman who broke his hip and died in his garage. It took him days to die. Another when we were at the fort in St. Augusten (spelling...), there is a room you have to duck down to get into. We went in and she nearly ran over two people go get back out. Then we found out by reading the plaque that when they unbricked to room, there had been a skeleton in it. The last one she told us was when she was a teen. Without telling her where they were going, some of her friends thought it would be funny to take her to Lizzie Bordens house. Mom refused to get out of the car. She said all she saw was red. From that house and the house next door. After they left, they told her who's house it was. She HATES her ability. I've had a few hits with my tarot cards, but nothing signifigant.

Sometimes I have dreams. Minor things, echoes of scenes yet to happen, and I don't have any way to differentiate the ones that are predictive from the ones that aren't so it's not very useful and mostly manifests in very strong deja vu. (And usually as soon as I realize it's happening I say, "holy crap, I dreamed this," which is never included in the dream-version.) It was easier to track when I actually made some attempt at recording my dreams. A friend of mine has dreams too, but hers are more apt or useful or timely than mine ever are, and she knows when they're significant or not.

I do better at recording tarot readings, but despite having been practicing it for about eight years now I don't feel like I'm very good at it. Sometimes I get really good readings and then forget about them until months later when I dig them up and go, "Oh. Well, that would have helped."

I don't really know what my tradition has to say about tool-less foreknowledge. There are several forms of tool-based divination, and I suppose the gods may reveal what They wish to individuals, but that's not really the same.

I always find it interesting that a lot of the time, those who most hunger for second sight or physical manifestation of spiritual phenomena have no idea what it would actually be like to bear that ability or audience.