Episode 46: A Curious Future: Divination with Kiki Dombrowski

Detail of “Divination” by Barbara A. Fisher. Mixed Media Collage.

One of the first types of magic I ever learned was the folk practice of divination.

Divination is the practice of finding occluded or hidden things—such as the future, the past, lost objects, underground water, the sex of an unborn baby—by supernatural means.

The root of divination is the same as the root of divine, which is that which pertains to God or a God or a spirit. So, one can also conclude that divination has to do with communication with spirits, God or Gods, or the act of divination is overseen by spirits, God or Gods.

The gift of divination is often seen as coming from some non-human entity, whether that be God, Gods, ancestral spirits, angels or devils.

What seems to be most interesting to me is it seems to have been with humanity forever, and is still practiced, at least in Appalachia, in our modern world.

I learned to dowse for water using a forked wooden branch from my Grandpa. That green stick, from a locust tree would twist and bend in my hand like a living snake when I walked across and unseen underground water source such as a spring. The practice was known as “water witching,” and Grandpa and I were both known as being reliable “water witchers.” We helped find folks places to dig wells that didn’t run dry on them all up and down the ridge where Grandpa lived.

Kikki Dombrowski got her start in divination with Tarot cards, and she’s been using divination to help others and teaching divination for years and years now. Like all good practitioners, she has lots of stories about how divination works in the real world, how it’s changed, how it’s stayed the same and how we can use divination to enrich our lives right here and now. Her book, A Curious Future , has information on just about every sort of divination you can imagine that is still practiced today, and it’s a fun and fascinating read.

And she herself is just as much fun as her book—I hope you enjoy this episode and will look forward to us having her come back for more episodes in the future.

If you like the cover art of Kiki’s book, her brother Johnny Dombrowski did the planchette image, and has it available as a pin on his website. I think it’s pretty awesome myself.

Kiki specifically mentioned Laurie Cabot’s book, The Power of the Witch in this episode. She also mentioned the books of Silver Ravenwolf, Scott Cunningham and Rachel Pollack as being formative texts in her development as a diviner and Witch.