Scrying Bowls & Mirrors

First of all, what is scrying?

Scrying is the occult practice of using a medium, most commonly a reflective surface or translucent body, to aid perceived psychic abilities such as clairvoyance. The media often used to “see” are water, polished precious stones, crystal balls, or mirrors. Scrying, in this context, uses a “visual” process. There are some who believe the art of scrying is not limited to the use of “reflective” or “translucent” bodies only, but includes other media. Scrying has been used in many cultures as a means of seeing the past, present, or future; in this sense scrying constitutes a form of divination.

Information received varies with the type of scrying one is using to get answers. Information can be objective, message given that are independent of the scryer – or subjective, determined or influenced by the scryer. Scrying can also be viewed as a form of mediumship, messages allegedly coming from another realm. This all goes to the scrying tool used and the interpretation of the symbol shown.

Scrying comes from the Old English word descry meaning “to make out dimly” or “to reveal.” Adding the prefix/suffix ‘be’ (often ‘gye’ in Germanic languages), gives us the modern word ‘describe’.

From www.crystalinks.com/scrying.html

My first scrying bowl, which I’ve had since 2009, is made of resin and features a beautiful Dragon holding the bowl. I painted the inside of the bowl black to make it more effective for scrying. (Click images to enlarge)

However, as beautiful as this bowl is, it’s not very practical to travel with as it is rather heavy and fragile so I decided to refurbish another bowl to make it suitable for scrying so I could easily carry it to Full and Dark Moon Circles whenever our group is going to be doing any water scrying exercises.

Many years ago one of my sons found some old silver bowls that were being thrown out on a council cleanup in a nearby street. He rescued them from the gutter where they had landed after someone else had rummaged through the pile, and brought them home for me because they were silver and had Dragons on them (though the silver plating was very thin and worn and they were badly marked and stained). I have been using one of them as an incense burner for a few years (see right).

I searched my cupboards to find the other bowls to see if anything there would be suitable to use as a scrying bowl as I will need to take one to my Dark Moon Circle this coming Friday. I picked the largest of the bowls and cleaned and polished it as best I could, but it still looked very stained, especially on the inside where a lot of the silver had been worn off completely and patches of the bronze underneath would be visible (and therefore distracting to me) when it was filled with water for scrying. Silver bowls can be used instead of black for scrying, but I felt this one was too badly marked, so I painted it black on the inside.  I also covered the whole thing in several layers of automotive grade clear lacquer to protect the silver from tarnishing and to form a strong barrier over the black acrylic paint so it wouldn’t peel off once water was added to the bowl.

I’m rather pleased with my “new” scrying bowl. It had been so long since I looked at all the bowls my young son brought home for me all those years ago that I’d forgotten that this bowl even existed but when I saw it again it just seemed so appropriate to use because it has three Dragons around it which form the handles and legs of the bowl — the Dragons of Sea, Land and Sky! 😀

(Click images to enlarge)

I have a black obsidian scrying mirror which I might as well include a photo of here also (shown below along with one of my pendulums and my athame) . 🙂

Sometimes I’ve had good results with my scrying attempts (eg. Through the Scrying Bowl) but at other times not so good results, where I just can’t quite get into it. I definitely need more practice at this particular occult art!