I decided to start scrying with a black mirror that I made at home. The thing is, scrying for me is pretty simple. I can, and have, contacted beings of other dimensions, crystalline entities, demonic figures, alien sentient shapes, and archetypes any time of day any day of the week. But what is new to me is contacting ancestors, actual spirits, and ghosts, and the dead. This is whom I want to make contact with now. So, I thought instead of using my regular scrying crystal, I figured I’ll go all Goth Martha Stewart, and make a black mirror from scratch.
These are the instructions I followed if you want to do the same: Scrying Mirror DIY
Let me first get into what scrying is. When you look into your crystal ball or whatever you are using, you let your eyes go very soft and relaxed. Eventually, everyone says there’s a mist. That’s one way of putting it. I think it’s like the periphery of your eye starts fuzzing in this way, and everything in the center is relaxed. It can look swirling. It can look like mist for sure. It can look like all sorts of things. Then visions start coming out of that mist or in my case, I get fully transported into another realm, another dimension. This transportation or arising visions happen in your imaginal realm of your mind’s eye. It’s at once within your scrying tool and inside of your head with your eyes fuzzed out and relaxed enough so no visual input is distracting your inner eye from seeing what it needs to see. If I’m looking at my crystal ball, there are crystalline entities in it that I need to always check in with, and talk to, and ask permission from, before I do any kind of work in there. I do readings for myself and other people from that place. That’s pretty straightforward scrying or crystal gazing.
I am not only trying to contact the dead, but I am experimenting with holding myself to a stricter visionary standard. The difference between actual vision and scrying vision is that like most of the “vision” is happening in your unconscious mind, somewhere behind your actual field of vision in your perceived headspace. I am trying to cultivate an eidetic imagery level of seeing the forms and the beings that I encounter. Eidetic imagery is a type of seeing that isn’t a hallucination but isn’t external visual input. It’s somewhere between the two. Children have it most often. When a child says they can see their imaginary friend, they really can. There have been. Really fascinating studies about it. It’s rarely kept into adulthood because somewhere along the way after being told your imaginary friend isn’t really there, you stop believing that part of your eyes and it fades. I have never lost this ability, but the good news is that it can be enhanced and even cultivated from scratch. There’s a lot to say about this that involves a Buddhist practice called Fire Kasina and a few other techniques, but perhaps more on that in another essay.
Back to my scrying experiment. Like I said, if I do that with more visionary material, I’m much better at it. But as far as contacting the dead goes, this is brand new territory. First time I tried, I didn’t have too much expectations. I began by darkening the room and lighting a candle a bit of a ways behind me. I made my protective circle (I like calling in the directions and the Lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram) and I called in my spirit team. I did a prayer to Jupiter, as it was Thursday and Jupiter hour in the evening. I often interact with Jupiter like this, so we are good, but I have never tried this kind of work at this time before. I sat down before my mirror, made my intention and relaxed into my zone. Immediately a couple poltergeisty things happened. My African Grey parrot, Sam fell off his perch, which never happens. He was fine thankfully. Then a moment later, the space heater I had on blew its circuit. It didn’t blow anything else out. It just turned off on its own. That was a little weird too. I persisted.
As I continued to sit there, I saw nothing in the mirror or around me. I resisted going into normal visionary mode and kept my eyes more focused. Yet I could feel that something was looking back at me, but I couldn’t see what it was. There was definitely the feeling of a cavernous opening within my space as well. I sat for quite some time and it was clear that was it. So, I closed up shop and decided to try a few days later.
On Saturday, March 30th, it was Earth Hour where everyone turns their lights off for an hour, which was held 8:30 to 9:30 PM local time. That happened to be Saturn day, of course, and it was scheduled for Moon hour. Perfect. I set up everything the way it was before. This time my spirit team arranged themselves along the four directions, which was the first time that has ever happened. Interesting.
I began to gaze at my mirror after setting my intention. I maintained a level of clarity within my eyes, like the actual functional part of my eyes. I need to mention here that earlier in the day I had a tattoo client who finished early. We did a gorgeous Hekate tattoo on her thigh and it was gorgeous. Since I had some time, I decided to work on a piece on myself (yes, I tattoo myself). I am creating an Atlas moth on my thigh. I had done a fair amount of coloring on its wings and the piece was still bleeding as I was sitting there at the scrying session. I felt a trickle of blood escape the bandage and run down my knee. I reached down by instinct and scooped it up with my finger and without hesitation, put the drop of blood onto the face of the mirror.
The thing that happened next was incredible. I have to insist that I saw this with my eyes. This wasn’t a “I saw it in my brain, and it’s happening outside of me as well” moment. I saw this happen with my actual eyes in my actual external vision. The second the blood touched the mirror, the surface crackled just like when you drop oil onto a super-hot pan. The blood multiplied and spattered, crystallized, then becoming blood droplets. The mirror kept bleeding these crystal and blood droplets for a few seconds. I thought to myself, “Oh. Well. That worked.”
Then a few moments later, I started seeing a plane appear within the mirror. Just a gray desolate plane. Not much going on but there was a realness to it that I could see within my actual vision. I started noticing that feeling that something was wide open, almost like a window in another room was leaking cold air. Then I noticed a shape very far off in the distance on the grey plane coming in from the left of the mirror. The shape moved and I could begin to see it a bit better as it drew closer. From the motion it was making I could tell it was on four legs and it was an animal. I thought to myself, of course it’s an animal. It’s always animals for me!
I patiently observed it coming closer. I could see its large solid body, it’s wide stocky build, it’s three heads. Oh my. I realized I was looking at Cerberus, the dog guarding the underworld. In my vision Cerberus was a beautiful gunmetal gray. He looked very fierce, but kind of lovable, and reminded me a lot of a pit bull – a very big, wide, giant, larger than life pit bull.
Cerberus and I looked at each other for a few moments. I wasn’t sure if I needed to say anything or make a pronouncement of some kind. Then as clear as day before I could say anything at all I heard, “Well, I can help you, but you need to get me dog treats.” I said, “Of course.” My mind was racing to try and think through my cupboards if I had anything that was akin to a dog treat on hand but all I have at home are cat and parrot treats. I’m not going to give Cerberus cat treats and most definitely not parrot kibbles. That just seems wrong. He’s not going to like them. Although pit bulls probably would just eat anything, but I can’t second guess this. Cerberus specifically asked for dog treats and dog treats he shall have. I’m going to go buy the guy actual, proper dog bone biscuits.
Returning to the moment with the Hound of Hell directly in front of me, I came back to my senses and everything I had been studying about grimoire magic flooded into my mind. “Okay,” I said to him testing the waters a bit, “I’ll give you half a treat first, and the second half when I’ve made contact with whom I want to make contact with.” He looked at me a little bit, and said, “Done. Deal.”
That was it. He walked back off into the distance, the plane disappeared with him and the mirror went blank. I knew that’s all I was going to get. I now find myself in a position where I have to go buy Cerberus, the Hound of Hell, dog treats. This, on many levels, makes perfect sense to me when I consider it. I always make friends with the animals first and it’s always ghost animals that follow me home. I have already purchased delicious high-quality dog treats for Cerberus, and I look forward to cultivating that relationship. Because you can’t get into the Underworld without being let in by the gatekeeper and if Cerberus wants to be my psychopomp, then I am totally into it. I can’t think of a better guide and ally in the Land of the Dead. I look forward to trying again when the dog treats come, and I will report back on how everything went. Until then.