Alright, everyone! Don’t forget! Black Witch 4th anniversary Ustream vcast on June 9th at 10:00 PM EST! Be there! I’ll be taking questions via Ustream and twitter (@thisblackwitch).

Hello, my name’s Evangeline. I have thousands questions, but my two main concerns at the moment is how to connect with the Goddesses. I’ve been on the Pagan/Wicca path for about a year now. I haven’t truly dedicated myself yet. I’m leaning more to Diantic Wicca. I’ve put together a notebook and I’ve decided to choose 10 or so Goddesses that appeal to me and working with them each for a month. I’ve meditated on a few and I intend to continue doing so, but is this a good way to approach it and what do I need to know about them? What do I need to research? Also, I’ve been fascinated by Divination. I’ve dabbled in Tarot (Rider Waite deck), Runes, scrying, and I use a pendulum occasionally. My question is can I work with multiple Divination tools together?

– Evangeline

I recommend research. Reading is probably the best you can do to understand the deities you like and the cultures they come from, which is crucial in understanding and relating to how your selected deities work and their place in the universe. You can start by using Mythology Dictionary (which is in the Links of Interest) and going from there by researching their cultures and backgrounds.

Stay off of New Age-y sites, they’re full of nonsense written by people who possibly slept all the way through high school science and culture classes and possibly think fluoride is a toxin that’s put in our water. They’re not researchers, just really people who are more opinionated than they are educated. Stick with sites that actually go into the cultures of the deities you want to work with and make sure it’s not framed on the spectrum of Whiteness, that people from the culture are actually talking for themselves. And if the site describes the cultures as “barbaric”, “savage” or anything that basically translates to, “aren’t you happy you’re here and not there?”, it is not a good learning material because it is super biased. Even if it is a wiki page from Harvard, get off the site.

Also, read actual books. Internet doesn’t have everything. Go to actual libraries and read actual books. You’ll get a lot more information that way because you’ll see multiple viewpoints on the same thing, which is necessary. Research your deities there and their cultures and see what you come up with. Again, same stuff stands: Stay away from New Agey books (they’re possibly going to be incorrect), stay away from “spectrum of White” books (they’re inaccurate), books that treat the cultures like Western modern culture is the best culture ever and everyone else sucks (also wildly inaccurate).

You can use varying forms of divination together. You’ll be tired a lot, especially if you’re new to it, but you can do it.