Avoid Cliches Like The Plague

For those that don't know, I recently attended a three-term evening class on Magic, Folklore and the Western Magical Tradition - a group from those classes also hold a gathering every two weeks, which I'm now going along to. Anyway, last night we did Water Divination. This works on the principle that a person can leave impressions or imprints of themselves on material objects (think of psychics trying to locate criminals, hostages etc through murder weapons and pieces of clothing). A bit like a psychic fingerprint, or maybe the after-image of your body's energy pattern.

Taking it in turns to dip our hands in a bowl of water, we then called out the images that came to us, the idea being that these would relate to the people that had already been splashing around in there. Now, we were originally going to do this in a secret order - ie one person would be picked to dip while the others kept their eyes shut, so when a reading was done, the reader would have no idea who it might relate to. As it turns out, not the easiest of things to accomplish in a small living room with eight people in it...

Of course, muggins here got picked to go first, and as I moved forwards, with fantastic timing, the phone rang - so one person saw me as she went to answer it, she brushed past another person who opened his eyes and saw me, the person next to me knew it was me because she could hear me move out of place (should have worn stealth sandals, obviously) - eventually, I think there was only one person in the room who didn't know who'd gone up. So he got picked to do the first reading. Now of course at this point, anything he says is assumed to relate to me, as I'd been the only one to touch the water (assuming that the water companies haven't been recycling down here - wonder what kind of imprints it'd contain if it had been *through* three people already...).

So what did he come up with, I hear you cry? An Indian. Well, I'm thinking, I could murder a curry, but no, this was the Native American type apparently, wise and venerable and everso slightly incongruous in a Cornish sitting room. Oh, he could be your spirit guide, someone suggested. So there you are, a Red Indian spirit guide, my very own astral cliche!