Magical rituals, divination practices and occult traditions across cultures and history.
Tarot cards are a deck of 78 cards — 22 Major Arcana (major secrets, numbered 0–21) and 56 Minor Arcana (four suits of 14 cards each) — used for divination, psychological reflection, and occult practice. Despite a popular mythology of ancient Egyptian or Romany origin, tarot cards originated unambiguously as a game — the card game tarocchi — i...
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A sigil (from Latin sigillum, "little seal" or "mark") is a symbol created or used in magical practice to represent a specific intention, entity, or desired outcome. Sigil magic is the practice of creating such symbols, "charging" them (investing them with energy or intention), and using them to manifest desired changes. Sigil use spans two di...
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A séance (from the French séance, "session" or "sitting") is a meeting, typically of a small group, conducted with the intent of communicating with the spirits of the dead, usually through the mediation of a person designated as the medium. Séances were the central ritual practice of nineteenth-century Spiritualism — the most successful mass-r...
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Scrying (from the Middle English descry, "to perceive" or "to see clearly") is the practice of gazing into a reflective, translucent, or dark surface to obtain information, visions, or supernatural contact. The surface used — called a speculum (mirror) or scrying surface — may be a mirror, a bowl of water, a glass or crystal sphere (the crys...
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The Ouija board (also "spirit board" or "talking board") is a flat board marked with letters, numerals, and "yes/no" responses, used with a planchette that participants lightly touch — the planchette then purportedly moves to spell out messages from spirits or the unconscious. It is simultaneously a mass-market commercial toy (sold by Hasbro), a...
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Necromancy (from Greek nekromanteia: nekros, "dead person," and manteia, "divination" — "divination from or through the dead") is the magical practice of communicating with the spirits of the dead to obtain information, often about the future or hidden matters, or the practice of summoning and directing the dead to perform tasks. It is one...
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Blood magic is the use of blood — human or animal, drawn from a living body or from a sacrificial victim — in ritual, magical, or religious contexts. The use of blood in ritual is among the most ancient and universal of human religious practices, attested across almost every culture with recorded history, and its significance spans a wide range:...
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The black mirror (also speculum nigrum, dark mirror, obsidian mirror) is a form of scrying surface — a reflective tool used in divination, spirit communication, and magical practice — distinguished from ordinary mirrors by its dark backing or composition. Where a conventional mirror reflects a bright, detailed image of the viewer's surrounding...
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Automatic writing (also automatism or psychography) is the practice of writing produced without the writer's conscious control or intention — the hand moves and words or images appear that the practitioner does not feel themselves to be composing. Practitioners interpret this variously as: communication from spirits or the deceased; access t...
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Astral projection (also out-of-body experience, OBE; soul travel; etheric projection) is the reported experience of the conscious self separating from the physical body and travelling independently, typically in a non-physical form called the astral body, etheric body, or subtle body. During the experience, the individual typically perceives the...
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