WHY IT’S GOOD TO HAVE A PSYCHE BACKGROUND AS A DIVINER
I recently had a divination client who asked me about their current relationship and the many issues she came to discuss. By all accounts, the relationship was stable. However, as most know, stability is not the only important thing between a couple. There was a lack of intimacy and focus on priorities in a way where this person was not a priority. I answered all the questions about their relationship.
However, my assisting spirit made me feel strongly that there was a deeper communication issue. So, I put my tool down and talked about what I saw in their communication and the need for clarity for her sake so that she could feel more emotionally safe and secure in the relationship. This is what prompted this post.
Should diviners be counselors or psychotherapists? No. There are many reasons why the two things should remain separate for most emotional or spiritual issues. Especially if a diviner is not psychologically trained, they can cause enormous damage in addressing a client’s emotional issues—beyond urging a referral to a mental health professional.
However, being psychologically trained helps me differentiate the two issues. Even if someone has an issue containing spiritual and emotional problems, they must be addressed separately. No ritual is going to entirely and magically remove an emotional problem and vice versa. An exception is when, for example, a spirit is the root of the emotional distress. But even then, sometimes a person will need counseling or therapy to deal with the damage that spirit caused so they can move forward with their life more healed from the wounds of that.
The other reason this sort of background is good for a diviner is because I have to know when an issue requires divination and when it requires counseling. I depend on my divining spirit to identify the issue, but then I take the reins and unpack—in the case of the aforementioned client—what concrete steps need to be done to ameliorate her situation. I spoke about the need to set more timelines so the person was not in a limbo of multiple years waiting for their partner to get their shit together. I talked about the importance of her internal deadline, which is how long she would let things go the way they are before she decides she has given it a hero’s try.
Lastly, a psychological background was initially crucial to my day job as a bereavement counselor and chaplain. At the beginning of my career, I would see people’s mental health problems, but I didn’t understand what I was seeing and why they were behaving that way. Years later, with experience and training, I can assess that and adjust my approach to create the best chance for them to get what they need from me to help themselves. I have seen this so much that I have long felt that my training has paid for itself many times over.
This is to say that if you desire to become a diviner in any system, I strongly encourage you to find a method of studying psychology to strengthen your divinatory and assessment skills. Trust me, you will be glad you did.
