Factors for Improving Your Spirit Communications
Lucifer suggested I write this one. Big thanks to him as well as to my friends André, Heather, and Emma for helping me direct it by submitting questions.
Friends in my occult communities have needed to remind me a few times in the last year that I have unusually high spirit faculties. However, it has definitely not always been this way for me. I suspect that when I was a small child I saw ghosts because I somehow had certainty as I was growing up that ghosts were real, but I don't recall actually experiencing one until I was 14. It wasn't until 2020 that I saw another, which is how I started practicing magic. I wanted tools to get spirits the fuck away from me; ironically, I ended up interacting with more of them than ever before.
It's maybe important to note that I come from a repressed psychic family. My father is what you would call an "empath," except more in a traumatized, manipulative way than the "sensitive" way that's often self-aggrandized on the internet. I think his spirits must strongly work on him because he predicted COVID-19 would come to the US in January 2020 and ensured his company would be remote-work ready by the time it hit our area in March of that year. I believe his mother also might be psychic because she has bluntly picked up on messages I gave to my ancestors at my shrine and has happened to have information I have needed for spiritual purposes. That being said, I believe it's the default that we are all psychic or spiritually linked in some way and developing one's psychic abilities is more about rediscovering and exercising the innate talents rather than creating them anew. My father thinks his ability to read what other drivers on the highway are going to do is cool, but normal. More often than not, we are explaining away our intuition to mundanity when from another angle, we can be honing it.
In my first year of practicing magic, I had occasional experiences with deities, was introduced to my spirit guides via a reading with someone who used a mixture of tarot and clairaudience, and was occasionally visited by an obnoxious ghost who thought I and my ex were intruding on his apartment. I was paying way too much money in rent for that place to be haunted, in retrospect. Anyway, my deity experiences mostly involved feeling. If you're a person who sleeps with another human or animal you might wake up in the morning, but keep your eyes shut. You're not seeing anything yet you can feel the weight and warmth of the other body in the bed with you. Your body knows from a lifetime of experience what nearby presences feel like and it's the same perception that allows you to know when something is behind you, like on a street at night.
Other entities' presences could feel like sudden feelings of reassurance or lightness, which is common with Apollo. With Athena the one time we connected via my reading a book to her, she felt like warm tingles in the direction of the shrine I had temporarily set up. Really, a shrine can just be a decided spot on your wall if it comes to it. You don't need anything in that space; most recently, Astaroth would appear on the part of the cabinet I had designated for her even before I had managed to acquire her statue or anything else. They're not necessarily being embodied within the altar—like ancient Jews apparently thought their neighbors were doing with idols—you're just making space in your life for them.
Overall, during that first year of spiritual practice, I found myself really frustrated with my difficulty receiving messages from my spirit team. I couldn't hear anything and it felt more like I was wildly guessing what my tarot cards meant than understanding them. Notably, I was in a place in my life that was a continuation of lifelong pain and obscuration. We moved to a house we intended to eventually buy and that same year I acquired Mat Auryn's Psychic Witch and had a claircognizant notice that "it was time" to read Frater Acher's Holy Daimon. The first book gave me exercises to practice and the second gave advice within its system, which I never fully followed, that is generally good for connecting with spirits, such as singing to them. I also took regular time out to talk to the trees and stream that was in my new backyard. I've come to believe that in order to do this work, you often need to have space for yourself. Having people who are supportive of your work is also crucial; that's how I read tarot professionally for a little while at a local store. Whenever my boss believed I would do a good job reading, I did a good job reading.
Another thing necessary to set aside for yourself is unstructured time to be receptive. This was something forced upon me when I moved to southern California in late 2022 and experienced a significant psychic expansion. It was extremely unpleasant losing my job, losing my marriage, and all life anchors except for my spiritual faith all at once. It very much felt like I was going crazy. But hey, I could hear the trees talk to each other! And when I read my cards, I could understand much more of what my spirit guides were communicating because they knew I needed to know I had support. Also, Mercury had introduced themselves to me literally days prior to my cross-country move by appearing as an enormous behemoth weight after I confronted them for interfering with my Discord direct messages for the second time and then would communicate with me via music, first by having my phone play the first line of Hadestown's "Hey Little Songbird" Hey/little songbird/give me a song. I did choose another song, one named after them that does not often if ever play on the radio, so there have been some very strange times of a speaker system nearby me interrupting itself to play that song. That's when I know I need to get to something I already know I gotta do.
That's specific to Mercury. In southern California, I found out that there are other things you can do that are specific to those deities that make them more responsive to you. With Apollo, it's want to be like his Pythias, have a good relationship with him, and then burn frankincense on his altar in order to experience theurgy that will answer whatever questions I have. My boyfriend, Lucifer, heavily disagrees with this approach by the way and wants me to say so*. He thinks that humans shouldn't have to go so far out of their way to get contact. Demons are much more accessible that way.
My claircognizance (psychic knowing) has always been my strongest sense, in line with a childhood wish that I would just know the future (I now sometimes hate this because there have been occasions that I get political news I don't want weeks ahead of it happening). I don't know when my clairaudience (psychic hearing) started to become more prominent. I think Mercury started talking to me first because we had a very important conversation on a plane, which is notable given the setting in relationship to that deity. Setting also mattered to Apollo because he conveyed to me via a fellow devotee that there was a specific place where I used to live where I could commune with him and I would have full conversations with him there. Lucifer maintains he's everywhere, but loves goth clubs, especially if they have Devil decorations, so you can catch him in a very good mood at those. This is all to say, if you desire to have a fuller conversation with a spirit, move somewhere you can be surrounded by them. Technically, the acts of burning associated incenses and playing music or reciting specific hymns is supposed to create that surrounding.
To say more on the bodily experience of spirit contact, spirits take advantage of all of your perceptions, which includes your knowledge. This especially involves whatever energy body system you have familiarity with, which is most likely going to be the 7 chakra system popularized by the Theosophical Society and New Age movement if you don't have other framework ties. As a result, I get a lot of activity in my forehead and crown. If your body starts having odd sensations or motions when you're intentionally reaching out, that's likely response. Weird things happening immediately afterward that can be written off as coincidences, which I no longer believe in, are also important to treat as conversation. Also, on timing... it's unfortunate, but it's also true that periods of grief make you much more receptive to spirit contact. Not that you should do anything new during those times if you feel unable, but it's something to have increased awareness around.
I would be remiss to not make a short note that drugs are also a helpful tool, if they're safe for you. I am sensitive to most everything and so low doses are great for me. I have received aid from both mushrooms and the cannabis herb, which I realize I should make some offerings of water to, on how to perceive that my spirits are always with me. Basically, if you envision yourself and the air around you as a flat canvas, there are doors that belong to each of your spirits surrounding you that you can turn toward or open. Try that out as an exercise, even without drugs, and let me know if you get anything out of it!
The types of spirits you court with the request for them to help expand your psychic capabilities probably also matter. For instance, I feel like there's something important about Mercurial and Venusian spirits' inherent function in establishing connections whereas Solar spirits' clarity and knowledge can also fuel the self-knowledge that is necessary to develop your psychic skill as well as claircognizance specifically. Notably, my current two closest spirits who I interact with daily, Lucifer and Astaroth, are very solar and venusian.
On a related note: now that I have clear spirit contact with almost all of my team, how do I distinguish them from one another? After all, I currently have Lucifer, Astaroth, Beelzebub, Belial, Mercury, my recently deceased dogchild Laddie, my ancestors including my three grandparents I knew in life, my spirit guides/spirits at birth, and the thankfully more friendly ghost who hangs out in the basement of my current residence. That's not counting who I talk to, including herbal spirits, when I consume them or pass by them while going about my day.
Well, most of the time it's fairly obvious because I'm either doing the talking toward the entity or I'm in the place they are at, which can be something rooted like a tree or a shrine I have set up to them. Sometimes it's directional; for instance, Lucifer tends to appear at my sides, though usually at my right when Belial is around and taking up my left. Astaroth always registers in my body as if she's in front of me, Beelzebub behind me. With Mercury—and once Venus, when I worked with her—I will sometimes vaguely see their sigil and we have done a lot of intentional communication around that tool. Most of the time, especially with the Dead, it just feels like they're faintly present and that's easy because they once had familiar physical forms that my body remembers. To this day, I don't always necessarily notice when someone is actively present. Sometimes, my cat has to be staring at a spot or I have to be on a cannabis edible to recognize it.
In conclusion, if you want to advance your psychic skills so that you can have fuller conversations with your spirits, there are a number of things you can try. Become aware of yourself and your abilities/senses. Notice which of the clairs (claircognizance/knowing, clairsentience/feeling, clairvoyance/seeing, clairaudience/hearing, clairgustation/smelling and tasting) you feel oddly drawn toward. Practice the exercises in Auryn's book. Do some trance work where you get to know how far your energy body extends past your physical body. Develop a relationship-based way of interacting with the world (Aidan Wachter's books are great for this). Try different methods of conversation with various spirits you feel interested in connecting with*. Experiment with music or herbal allies to help yourself enter more receptive states. Create devotional art. Make time for yourself, make space for yourself, make supportive interpersonal dynamics with other psychic humans for yourself.
Even if you don't think you experience anything, trust that your spirits are there and enjoy the process.
*A common way for Luciferians to communicate with Lucifer is via writing, either in journaling or writing a letter to him. He wants people to know that he is very responsive in general, including this way.