A kind of divination unique to Magical Taoism is sandwriting. It involves asking deities and spirits to send their messages or reveal the future through the sorcerer. Acting as a medium, the sorcerer enters a trance and writes the messages in sand.
Sorcerers must be specially empowered before they can act as a medium in sandwriting divination. An authorized medium --male or female -- petitions the deities to allow the initiate to perform the divination. A talisman that endows the initiate with this power is burned and its ashes are collected in a cup of water. After the initiate drinks the talismanic water, she is authorised to do sandwriting divination.
The equipment of sandwriting divination consists of a box measuring approximately four feet square that is filled with fine, white sand. The sand is carefully smoothed before divination takes place. Most mediums hold a stick that acts as a pen, but I have also seen quite elaborate sandboxes that have one end of the writing stick suspended over the box and the other end mechanically attached to a handle. The diviner grasps the handle to move the stick and write the words.
The divination begins with the medium chanting incantations and drawing talismans to ask the deity to descend into her body. The medium then falls into a trance and then moves the stick through the sand to write the words. Helpers stand by to record what is written and smooth out the sand so that the writing will not be disrupted.
Practitioners of sandwriting divination tell me that while they are in a trance they have no control over the writing stick: the stick seems to take on a power of its own and all they can do is hang onto it; moreover, the mediums do not remember what was written during the trance.
Sometimes the writing appears in archaic script – something that the diviners do not know how to write in their normal mode of consciousness. traditionally, illiteracy was one of the requirements for being a sand- writing diviner. This ensures that the messages from the deities are genuine.
The message delivered in sandwriting divination is sometimes cryptic, and an interpreter is often needed to decipher the message. Generally, the interpreter is someone other than the diviner, because the two tasks require different skill and disposition. One might say that the interpreter needs to have knowledge and intuition, and the medium needs to have power to hold the deity or spirit within.
A kind of divination unique to Magical Taoism is sandwriting. It involves asking deities and spirits to send their messages or reveal the future through the sorcerer. Acting as a medium, the sorcerer enters a trance and writes the messages in sand. 