January Portents

Hello hello good friends and cherished readers alike and welcome back to my realm! The realm of mystery, majesty, and misfortune all in equal measure. 

It’s been a bit so if you’re new to Portents hello and welcome. Join me as we pierce the veil of shadows and glimpse into the vast unknown that is our future! Each month I pick a different Divination tool to give you and me and everyone between a glimpse of the future, or perhaps we’ll get a dire warning, or even some simple guidance from the very fabric of the universe itself! Of course, the universe is a fickle mistress and oftentimes the message isn’t so clear but that’s all part of the quote unquote fun, innit?

Last time was bloody ages ago. Before break, even, and I gave you lot a tarot reading which resulted with… some nonsense or other. Can’t bloody remember, honest, but go pick up a back issue and figure it out for yourself, yeah?

This month I’m jumping back in and doing something that resonates a bit better with me as of late. Weird how this stuff comes ‘n goes, innit? One day you’re eating good with tarot then the next you’re feeling more runes or whatever. Just like life, you can’t eat bloody spaghetti for dinner every day. 

Right, so today I’ve got the appetite for some scrying. Normally I go all ‘oh what’s scrying you say’ then do the whole ‘I’m glad you asked’ bit and explain it all but I’ve done it so many times ‘round here you lot should have it down by now. Go ask your Divs prof or local librarian for info if you don’t get it yet.

Tonight I’m chilling somewhere dark and dusty and cluttered full of things the world long ago forgot. There’s a sliver of moonlight coming in from the thin windows nearby and a crystal ball on a delicate layer of velvet directly in front of me. I prepare myself… several heavy deep breaths to clear my mind. I let the day’s tension and weight just shuffle itself from my soul and I’m filled with a calm and quiet serenity.

My eyes slowly come open and I hunch over the crystal ball, my hands at either side of it as I search the dark surface for something. At first there’s nothing but I’ve done this so many times before and know I just need to be patient. I continue searching until it just sort of ‘clicks’ and the dark surface of the crystal ball takes over while the world around me fizzles into a puff of dark, blurry, static. 

What do I see? 



It’s dark. Night time. I’m on a long and winding road with rolling hills at either side and the world is a soft blue of cold moonlight. My disembodied form keeps travelling further down this road, the landscape sweeping faster and faster by me until a dark form comes into view on the road ahead of me and I suddenly stop. 

It’s a figure in long and flowing robes… robes constantly shifting with deep purples and blues and glowing softly but not from the moonlight above but rather a shimmering radiance that emanates from within. I get a discomforting sense of deja vu and realise I’ve seen this person before but can’t pinpoint where or when. Just a haunting familiarity at the back of my mind that I cannot shake. Perhaps they’ve invaded my dreams before or maybe I’ve seen them in a vision at one point or other but I cannot say for certain.

I manage to peel my eyes away from the figure and see that this person is standing at a crossroads but they do not seem especially uncertain or perplexed about which way to go. In fact, they seem strangely content here like perhaps they’re waiting for someone or something. Maybe even waiting for us?

My view then pans upward and I see that the roads on each of the branching paths lead to crossroads of their own. Then my view expands and I see that each of those branches has their own crossroads as do those branches and so on and so on. Before long I’m seeing an unending field of branching roads all spiderwebbing across the landscape below me, there must be bloody millions of them. I can almost see some sort of pattern emerge, like a vast elaborate tapestry, but then I blink and I’m back in the simple room with the dark crystal ball in front of me.

I lean back and take a deep breath as I ponder it over but seems kind of obvious, innit? A bit heavy handed, even. Yeah yeah yeah, crossroads out the ass, I get it. We’ve heard it billions of times before with the butterfly wings, tiny acorns, pebbles making waves, and all that. Small decisions we make today can lead to something huge later on blah blah blah. Taking a seat with someone you’ve never really talked to before could lead to you two becoming besties or taking the chance to open up about a shared secret could lead to becoming MORE than besties. Ask me how I know.

That’s obvious old people advice, though. Perhaps what it’s telling us is that real soon we’ll be facing some branching paths of our own. Some decisions to make that might not seem like much in the moment but lead to something huge in the future. Maybe it’s who you ask to the Hearty Party or which route you take to class or what you have for lunch? And what does the figure represent? Ourselves or some dark spectre lingering somewhere in our future?

Perhaps the message is rather more serious. More dreadful. Maybe you’ll be forced to pick a side. Be forced to choose between what’s right and what’s easy and all that. Will you stand behind your convictions or stay quiet and let others go unchecked? Will you do nothing and allow evil to triumph or will you stand up and fight for what’s good and right and just? 

With so many branching paths ahead of us how do we know which one’s the correct one? Fact is… we don’t. We have to rely on our gut and our heart and our brains to push us in the right direction but even then we’ll get it wrong loads of times. Failure is a part of learning and a part of life, after all. Only by picking the wrong paths can we know what the right ones look like so don’t be afraid of messing up every now and again. It’s the indecision that’ll really get you and I believe a great prophet and scholar once said “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” 

Well that’s plenty enough for this time. Keep an eye out for those branching paths because you never know where they’ll lead. Until next time.

-Riven Redwhisper



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