An argument against using the unexpectedness of spirit messages as the metric of their validity
[I use "spirit" to also include gods and all entities]
Over the years I have heard something along these lines, many times:
"I know this spirit contact was valid because I wasn't expecting to hear any of it."
"It seemed like a valid message, but it was what I expected to hear. So it must have been just my brain projecting my desires."
"I don't believe it was a real message because it was what I thought they would say."
I don't think that using the unexpectedness of messages to judge their validity is a good idea. While it may be something useful to take into account, I think that should usually be a very small account, if anything. Here are my thoughts about that:
1. You're just not incompetent enough (common sense style)
In order for you to never accurately anticipate spirit contact experiences, this would require:
Zero insight into your current circumstances
Zero insight into conventional wisdom or common sense regarding your discussion questions
Zero understanding about the nature of the spirit; you would have no idea that Aphrodite would be likely to give a loving message, or that Mint would tell you it's good for money magic
But most importantly, I believe this would require:
A total inability for you to come up with actual good, helpful, and best-practices solutions for your own problems
And let's face it, my dudes. None of us are that incompetent!
Because if you can roll up to a spirit discussion with questions like:
"How do I get over my ex?"
"What are cloves good for in magic?"
"What should I study next in my practice?"
Then the valid answers from the spirits are very likely to be things you can TOTALLY anticipate, like:
"Invest time into hobbies and love into good friendships"
"Protection and attaining luxuries"
"Ah," you perhaps say, "but I have been feeling guilty this entire time for not getting into ancestor work, so surely this is a projection of my guilty mind!"
But perhaps you feel guilty for not engaging in it because you know this is something you need to be doing, and so the spirits are confirming that your suspicions are correct: this is what you should be doing.
Just about any one can come up with the association of protection (fiery warm!) and money magic (expensive spices; luxurious holiday treats) from clove. You see what I mean?
Surface level spirit contact is likely to give surface-level answers. These surface-level answers are likely already available to you.
That doesn't make the encounter invalid, but it does make many encounters relatively predictable.
2. The deeper spirit relationships get, the more you are soaked in that current, and the more you will understand on your own without having to be told
You may say, very well! Surface-level encounters may be easily predictable, but what happens when you get in deep with a tribe of spirits? Surely they will be telling you things that blow your socks off, things you could never have guessed before.
Perhaps so, but also, maybe not.
If you start working closely with certain gods and spirits, their power will tend to infuse your life. If you're calling spirits into your space, giving them places in your home, eating and praying with them, taking their advice and applying it in your life, and working with them to attain magical goals, then sooner or later your life will become saturated with those currents.
The power is not separate from the wisdom. The spells are not separate from the power. The communion is not separate from the spells. Your life is not separate from the communion. The power is not separate from your life. It goes around and around like that.
When you work with the power, you feel the teaching inside of it, even if you have to find the vocabulary words yourself. When you live with the spirits, you feel their opinions, even if you have to find the actions and behaviors yourself.
So when you call the spirits and ask, "okay, what is the real use for clove; the most true and best use," and they tell you what you've really been suspecting all along - then that may just be a pretty good indication that you are a part of the family, and you picked it up along the way - whether you knew it or not.
3. You're already magical enough (wizard style)
Almost never have I met someone who claimed to have power, who did not have at least some power.
I have met many, many more people who have claimed to have little or no power, when in my opinion they certainly did have more than they thought. They were just lost in the maze of invalidating everything according to rules of thumb, like, "my intuition told me oranges can heal, and a spirit told me that too, so the spirit contact was invalid and probably my intuition too, I must have just read it somewhere if I'm so sure of it."
Magic is great. Lots of potential tools in the grab bag, like:
Precognition (you kind of know what people are going to say before they say it)
Intuition (you kind of just know things)
Psychism (you kind of receive external messages, even without requesting them)
I believe all people are inherently energy-sensing and energy-using. To me, people who are not sorcerers are just living a magically sedentary lifestyle! When you start living a mildly to moderately magical life, I believe that you start gaining an intuition about these things.
On average, humans can see sights, taste flavors, smell scents, and feel energies. When you smell a strawberry pie and you intuit that it's very rewarding to eat, this is much the same as wondering what herb to use in a "banish my ex" spell and reaching for the Old Bay with a sense that it will be very rewarding to employ.
There's no starting from zero! Even beginner witches start out having lived a lifetime of energy sensing. And with a little practice, magical insight can be gained by leaps and bounds.
And with even a little magical insight, like, "hey, isn't it weird that I usually have approximate knowledge of what people are going to say?" then there is very little opportunity to be taken completely off guard by the contents of spirit conversations.
A little power is easily had, and a little power is all you need to see around a lot of nearby corners. And the more time you spend trying to convince yourself that you're starting at zero, the more time you'll be stuck at level 3 or 4 or wherever you actually started at.
