I’m gonna talk about discernment today.

Miriam-Webster says that discernment is “the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure”. In a specifically spiritual context, it means being able to sort the bullshit out from the things that make sense to you.

When you engage in the spiritual, inevitably you’re going to have experiences that escape standard explanation and it can be difficult to know what may be a message, or an omen, and what may be just normal stuff. With the popularity of different witch craft things and divination things, it’s more important than ever to make sure folks are engaging with a hefty dose of caution.

Often when I am seeing a client for a reading, they’ll talk to me about a youtube reading or a tiktok reading and how it was SPOT ON, and I think tarot/oracle readings are a good place to start.

My own thoughts about this form of divination have grown and changed a bit as I work more with clients and I will use my experiences to explain how I use discernment in my practices, in hopes that it aids in understanding for anyone reading this.

Over the years, I would generally only read for myself and I treated it basically as a way to look at an issue in a different way. It was less about true divination and more about creative problem solving, I think. Sometimes, we just need to look at an issue from a different angle, and the cards have always been a good way for me to do that.

When I started reading for others, I began to notice that sometimes something else was happening. I began asking for guidance before a reading. I say, “Grandmothers, Guides, and Goddesses” and then I ask for the ability to discern what the cards are telling me. I started to see more often that I would have a sense of energy and an ease with words while I read the cards that I feel pretty strongly did not come from my own head.

This is where discernment comes in handy, in a metaphysical sense. As an energy worker, I know that the things that happen during a healing session are not easily translatable. Like, I can tell you that when I’m working energetically on a client, I can feel an energetic kind of resistance on places or chakras that need special attention but I don’t know how to prove that to you. But I do know that enough of my clients report feelings that match what I’m doing, that I don’t question it too strenuously anymore. I have discerned that I am not imagining these things, that they are actually happening. And you, dear reader, will have to decide how you feel about these things.

There is so much mystical content on the internet, that we have to be super discerning in what we believe and how much of that we believe and incorporate in our lives. I also think it’s important to think critically about our own mystical experiences. Not everything has some deeper mystical meaning. But sometimes things do, even if only metaphorically, and only to you. The key is to balance a childlike wonder, with an adult’s skepticism for the purpose of creating and living a deep and meaningful life, in a way that seems good for you.