Voices of the Otherworld

Sco K Smith
November 9th, 2023
This book sprang from a series of meditations in the Temple of Witchcraft called the 13
Day of Yule, created by Christopher Penczak. In December of 2022, as I usually do, I
observed the 13 days of meditation and small ritual magick. I was home in Los Angeles,
and then in Palm Springs, and then later in the deserts of Arizona. I had a deck of cards,
a cloth, and my phone which is both camera, recorder, and notepad, among other
things to record my experiences.
These meditations take us through the zodiacal year, starting with Mother’s
Night, the Great Goddess, and then through the 12 zodiac signs of the year to come. I’ve
been following these rituals now for 7, going on 8 years, and they provide valuable
guidance and insight for me, but this last series of meditations opened up a different
kind of voice in my practice. Rather than the usual inner guidance I began to hear a
story that was something more than just a personal narrative of things to come.
It began with the word Truth, and expanded over the course of a year, into what
would become oracular images, drawn from my own creative toolbox, and with some
help from friends, I took to a digital design process to flesh them out. The story became
images.
I invited Mary, who helped with all things Reiki as I re-wrote Reiki Spirit: A
Learning Manual for Reiki I Practitioners, which was technically the 8 th or 9th version of
my teaching manual, and she agreed to do the oracular exploration with me. We like to
learn new things together, and as we’re both on what I would call accelerated magickal
learning paths, it’s great to have a partner in exploration.
This is the result of that exploration.
Oracles

What is an oracle? What comes to mind when you think of the word, do you see an
ancient priestess, inhaling fumes, overshadowed by spirits, waiting to speak? Do you
think of cards, or coins, or other kinds of mediums that bring answers? Do you think of
something else?
For me, Oracle means a message, given in the shape of words, images, and/or
signs. It can be something spoken by a person who is communicating with the divine,
or the message can be interpreted as words into images, and so we can have ‘oracle
cards,’ which help us find our own divine messages. I think they all should give us
agency, as questions that cause us to think and look deeper, or elsewhere, or as
directions, highlighting things we have not considered in the right light, but because or
a pleasing or mysterious image, we now perceive something we did not before, at least
if we did, we aren’t in the same way.
Oracles give us guidance.
There are dimensions to oracles, and I think I’d like you to consider those.

1. The meaning of the image itself. The purpose of the drawing or image means a
thing, and not something else. For example, a card or image that means healing,
or growth, another that means endings, or death.
2. The personal meaning or interpretation of the oracle, or what it translates as for
you, in the realm to which is speaks, so what does that healing, growth, ending,
or death mean for you personally.
3. And a third option, the voice of the spirit talking, that Oracles aren’t just flat
images, however interesting, but doorways to a place where something else
speaks to us, and can give us deeper insight into the process, direction, or
meaning of the card as it relates to us.

Reading oracles
The Otherworld is Calling
This plant is of no world we know, an amalgama on of living, and dead, of berry and flower, of
twis ng flora, and unique all its own. It comes from the Otherworld, and it may not exist in the
same form again, for there is a power of strangeness in the land it comes from.
A song spirals out from the blankness behind it, the energy swirls with poten al. The
berries, petals and rings, are they medicine? Are they deadly? How can they be used?
The spirit of the plant speaks to our otherness, our strangeness, and encourages us to
break the norm, to walk the spiraling path in our own world by honoring our queer nature.
Queer, rooted in the words ‘to twist’, or bent, does not always follow the straigh orward path,
and the strange and beau ful nature within all of us, is talking.
Everything has an element, Earth, Fire, Air, Water, and Spirit, but the Otherworld card
has a sixth element, and it is experienced through the inner voice of intui on, and comes form
our strange, most primal, and wild magickal self. This remarkable otherworldly self that watches
all things in our life, that is composed of all the elements, and at the same me, is it’s own,
quixo c, essence to itself.
Touch the strange, open yourself the unrealis c, engage in the imagina ve, and what is
possible, however impossible it may seem, there is a voice speaking out from otherworld, it is
new, and it is you, for it’s talking through the deepest parts of yourself. Listen, what does it say?

Meaning: There is something twisted in all of us, something bent, or queer. Drawing this oracle
at this me is an indicator to look at our pa erns, and our desire, are they in harmony or
conflict? If they are at odds, how do we hold the hither-thither energy of two separate things
within us? There is power in polarity, in opposite, that creates a portal for our true selves to
speak.

Medita on: Providing a medita on? Sugges ng a media on to tune into the hidden self, the
inner landscape, and listen for the weird within. What does it say? What does it say about
anything? Do not edit, judge, or try to change it, let it speak and be free to listen.

Task: Break your rhythms. If something is too sterile, or s ff, do something dirty, and silly. Wear
a piece of clothing backward, or inside out, or bring color, fun, or absurdity into your day to day.
S ll working on this…

Magick: TBD. Poten ally the ritual journey of the card. Poten ally a ritual to honor your
strangeness.