Making Connections

The Practice

1. Gather the beans and head to your favorite magical space. 
2. With beans in hand (whichever hand calls you), close your eyes and hold a question, situation, or problem in your heart.
3. Let your conundrum journey from your heart, through your chest, down your arm, and into your hand. 
4. With eyes still closed, bring the beans to your mouth, open your hand, and blow your that-which-you-hold-on-your-heart on them. 
5. Eyes still closed, cast the beans in front of you.
6. When you feel ready and your question now centered in your heart and hand, open your eyes and let them drift to the placement of the beans. 

The Alchemy

Peer into the pattern of the beans. Let your eyes dance over the layout. What do you see? What are the relationships the beans are having with each other? To you? What shape do they create? Is it a line? A mish-mash?

Gaze even deeper. Let your eyes float to the dark spots on each bean. What patterns, words, animals do you see? See if you can feel your way into a natural element, animal, and/or constellation that they create. Use your imagination to bring the arrangement of beans to life as an animal, constellation, or another natural element like a rock, river, insect, planet, or bird.

When you feel that gut-tinge of recognition, that intuitive “YES! That’s it!” spark, write that natural element—and all the other downloads you received about your question—in your journal.

NOTE: This part of the alchemy is complete. You can choose to end here or you can venture on. 

Now either take a picture or draw out the pattern of beans in your journal.

Sit with your rendering, your question, and the element/animal/constellation that presented itself to you. 

Focusing your attention on that element, what does the element itself have to offer up as answers to your question? If it was a bird, what does that bird intuitively mean to you? What images is it offering up to you? Listen to any internal words and sentences you hear. 

After you’ve gotten your interpretations and downloads down, then venture to look at what traditional texts and other teachers have to say about the element. Take a few moments to look up and read about what the element/animal/constellation means in the collective consciousness. Pay close attention to any other connections your element has to other mystical modalities. Does it show up in a tarot card? As an astrology archetype? 

Make notes of the connections and pay attention to how all the elements both your own and the collective show up in your life. 

Watch, listen, and feel how all these elements as a whole come together to weave a story that offers ideas and solutions to your question.

The goal of this praxis is to help you build connections from yourself to the tools and the tools to the world. 

When you feel complete, thank the beans and all the elements, animals, and/or stars that have shown up for you. Let everything settle in your bones while you keep your heart open to how all the elements that have shown up in your magic show up in your daily life.