Finding Gnosis: 4 Steps from Belief to Knowing
Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Tara Sanchez, author of the new Urban Faery Magick.
Gnosis is a word that drifts in and out of fashion, mostly because people forget to prefix it with the words “personal” and “unverifiable.” If we are to be true to ourselves, all we can ever say is that our Gnosis is just that: deeply personal and provable only to our own hearts and minds. However, this leaves some of us in an awkward position: if the Gods or Spirits we are working with do not want to put on a visual display, they jolly well won’t. So, how do we “know” that what we are experiencing is real if it cannot be seen?
Take working the with the Fae, for example; full corporeal manifestation is not as common as people might think. A lot of the interactions you will have with these amazing, inspiring, and sometimes downright terrifying beings will be intangible: a shiver down the spine, a sense of vertigo, flashing lights, or the sensation that someone has just walked right by you. Actually, that sounds just like a full-blown migraine attack there, so let’s start with step 1:
Step 1: Check in with yourself. Ask yourself honestly if there is any chance that what you are sensing/feeling might be internal to you. Ill health, wishful thinking, fear, imbalance: these are not things to be ashamed of, and once you have identified the difference between those feelings and an outside presence the world suddenly becomes a lot bigger, not smaller.
So, what other steps can we follow in our journey towards knowing?
Step 2: Try and reproduce results. This isn’t as easy as you might think; once you believe there is something lurking in the parking lot at the end of the street, it is going to be very hard for you to un-believe it, and the body will produce similar chemical responses in anticipation. Try visiting contact sites multiple times at different times of day, year, or weather conditions. Is your response the same? Are there deviations? If so, what are they? Analyse this honestly.
Step 3: Try and establish physical contact. Verbal communication is something the beings of the Faerie world are capable of, but more often than not in the early days you may have more successful results if you use items such as a pendulum or even tarot cards. Dowsing for faerie activity is particularly easy as a small pendulum is something you can a) carry around in your pocket and b) use discreetly.
Step 4: Verify the unverifiable. The satisfaction of having a third party validate your work is immense. Of course, you don’t need it, but the joy of an experience shared is more than double. It’s fairly easy to do as well; ask an open-minded friend to see what they can pick up in the area you’ve been working. Give nothing away, and if you want to be even more empirical in your research then take them to several locations with only one being “the” spot. Ask them to describe or draw what they sense.
Following these steps systematically will lead to a strong consistent practise, and knowing, a Gnosis that no one will be able to challenge.
Our thanks to Tara Sanchez for her guest post! For more from Tara Sanchez, read her article “Three Simple Ways to Connect with Urban Fae.”
