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This post was previously published as part of the 2014 Ostara Tarot Blog Hop.

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Our topic this time is creativity and what springs forth. Well, that’s my loose interpretation of our Blog Wrangler’s theme. Joanne Sprott charged all of the Tarot Blog hoppers to discuss creativity.

There is so much I could do on that subject.

Some months ago I decided to set aside years to skepticism and conscious non-attunement in the interest of developing my divination skills.  As I mentioned to one of the other bloggers on this site, part of that practice is by using the Lymerian oracle daily, to get a sense of how an established system works, particularly one that was used by my Hellenic ancestors.  However, I'm a money guy, so I've also been trying out coin divination, with interesting results.

That journey began with the purchase of a copy of Raymond Buckland's Coin Divination.  It's available for as little as one cent on Amazon, and my initial impression was one of being had, since there's only about six pages of original information in the book, and even that was pulled from previously-published works by the author.  Nevertheless, the few pages which aren't a rehash of the I Ching or an awkward attempt to use coins as if they were a tarot deck have some intriguing possibilities, so I have been exploring them.  It's been a very slow process of discovering a system for myself, and it's long from over, but it is has had unexpected benefits.

I feel a certain obligation to post weekly about the Pagan savings challenge, if only to remind readers that I am still plugging along, and to cheer on my fellow savers.  This week I did not have a topic at the ready, so when in doubt, do some divination!

Using the Greek alphabet oracle, I drew tau, the parting from the companions now around you.  I drew this tile separate from my daily divination, and despite carefully shaking the jar of letters, I got the same one both times.  Given the growing stream of money that is being diverted from my wallet to my savings, I believe the companions I am parting from are all named George Washington.

There has been some excellent online dialog recently around the question, "Should I charge for Pagan spiritual services?"  Most of the posts I've seen have been in support of money changing hands, but the comments usually show strong feelings on both sides.  Answering her question of, "Money is Bad, Right?" Shauna Aura Knight posited that the reason for this division is that, "Pagans (and people, for that matter) have a really unhealthy relationship with money."

As tantalizing that quote is to me, I have to lay it down for now.  Observant readers will already be wondering who the woman in the picture is, because it is clearly not Ms. Knight.

I watch the news with my mother sometimes. For the record, probably not something I would recommend, especially when I have more leftist leanings and she is surprisingly conservative for how open-minded she is on certain topics. I digress. No matter how different our perspectives are, we usually end up saying the same thing after a particularly heart-wrenching news story about yet another murder or tragedy: “What is this world coming to?”

I was raised Episcopal, so I would assume that the whole idea of “God must have needed that person in Heaven, so He took he/she away from us here for a good purpose” filtered into me, by osmosis since I don’t remember anyone ever saying that to me directly. Since I never had to deal with personal tragedy, there was no reason for me to ever hear this statement, so I didn’t really think of it much until lately. Yet I keep saying that good ole phrase in the back of my head: “There must be a reason for this.” What if there isn’t?

Divination is a gift from the Gods, a way to contact the Gods directly through oracles and seers. It was something heavily relied upon in ancient Hellas, and in its mythology: many war, quests, and epics started with a visit to Delphi. Especially in Hómēros, divination by way of birds features heavily, and it has had my interest for a long while. Almost a year ago, I wrote about oiônoskopos for the Pagan Blog Project, in a post about oracles, seers and divination, and from that point on, I've been teaching the art to myself. Today, I would like to share what I have discovered.

Oiônoskopos, like many of the divinatory practices, was considered a 'technical' or 'learned' art, opposed by 'natural' or 'unlearned' types of divination. Typically, natural divination was understood to include dreams and the reading of utterances of others or yourself, and to be the older and more reliable form of divination as these types were communicated more directly by the Gods. Aristotle and the Peripatetic philosophers found value only in natural divination. Technical means of divination was everything else; anything that depended on acquired human skills, such as the reading of entrails, the behavior of birds, or birthmarks. Most form of divination, called 'mantikē', playwright Aeschylus states in 'Prometheus Bound', were taught to us by Prometheus himself:
 
"And I marked out many ways by which they might read the future, and among dreams I first discerned which are destined to come true; and voices baffling interpretation I explained to them, and signs from chance meetings. The flight of crook-taloned birds I distinguished clearly—which by nature are auspicious, which sinister—their various modes of life, their mutual feuds and loves, and their consorting's; and the smoothness of their entrails, and what color the gall must have to please the gods, also the speckled symmetry of the liver-lobe; and the thigh-bones, wrapped in fat, and the long chine I burned and initiated mankind into an occult art. Also I cleared their vision to discern signs from flames, which were obscure before this." [477]

 This article originally appeared at www.tarotbyhilary.com.

I firmly believe that there is a tarot deck out there for everyone. I realized this as I was looking down at my Joie de Vivre deck and wondering, “What kind of person would choose this deck?” Someone that is fun-loving and appreciative of the whimsy in life.