Imagination · “Feel It Real”
Tattva Scrying
Use a coloured elemental symbol (a Tattva) as a fixed focus and then a ‘doorway’ for sustained, disciplined visualisation — entering and exploring an inner landscape, the Golden Dawn’s core method for developing the visionary imagination.
Tattva scrying: Settle and gaze fixedly at a coloured elemental symbol without blinking. When its complementary-colour afterimage appears, close the eyes and let it glow. Make it a doorway and step through. Explore with all inner senses; summon a guide and set an intention; test what arises. Return through the same portal, ground, and journal every detail. Structured active imagination — vivid by design, your own mind by source.
What it is
“Skrying in the spirit vision” is the Golden Dawn’s name for disciplined active imagination launched from a symbol. In its basic form, Tattva vision, the practitioner gazes at a coloured elemental sign — a Tattva (e.g. a red triangle for fire, a silver crescent for water, a yellow square for earth, a blue circle for air, a black/violet egg for spirit) — until it generates a complementary-colour afterimage, then closes the eyes, enlarges that glowing symbol into a doorway, and steps through it into an inner landscape to explore.
The 25 element-combinations give 25 “doorways of perception.” Unlike a passive crystal-gaze, Tattva work is structured: a fixed symbol, a deliberate threshold, an intention, and a disciplined return. Mathers taught it as the order’s training ground for the visionary faculty, the same skill used in pathworking and “rising on the planes.”
The Method
Work in a quiet, dim space; settle the breath first (the Pentagram rite makes a good opening).
- Gaze. Hold the Tattva card a comfortable distance away and gaze fixedly at the symbol, trying not to blink. Breathe deeply and let the element’s quality fill your awareness.
- The astral colour. After sustained gazing, a complementary-colour afterimage appears around the symbol’s edge (a real optical effect — the “astral colour”). When it is clear, close your eyes and let that glowing afterimage-symbol stand bright in the mind’s eye.
- Make the doorway. “Imagine the symbol glowing on a doorway, or that it is a portal through which you can pass.” Enlarge it until you can step through.
- Enter and explore. Pass through the threshold and observe the scene with all the inner senses — landscape, figures, light. You may summon a guide (or call on your Higher Self) and frame a question or intention before entering.
- Test the vision. Treat what arises with discernment — the order taught testing visions (e.g. by elemental signs or by asking a figure to show itself in the light) rather than accepting them whole.
- Return and record. Come back through the same portal, return attention to outer sounds and the breath, open the eyes, ground, and record every detail in a journal — essential for refining the skill. (Sourcing note: a faithful composite of the Golden Dawn Tattva-vision instruction taught under Mathers; the gaze-to-afterimage-to-doorway sequence and the “summon a guide / test / record” structure are the order’s standard method.)
Source & Lineage
Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers (1854-1918) drew the Tattvas from contemporary Theosophical/Hindu sources and folded them into the Golden Dawn’s elemental curriculum, where “skrying in the spirit vision” became one of three core clairvoyant exercises alongside pathworking and rising on the planes.
The method is a disciplined cousin of older mirror- and crystal-gazing, but Mathers’s innovation was the symbol-as-doorway structure and its integration into a graded training in controlled visionary imagination.
It feeds directly into Qabalistic pathworking and the active-imagination lineage.
Common refinements
Straining to “see.” Let the afterimage and the scene come; force produces frustration, not vision. If imagery is faint, work with felt sense and the other inner senses.
- No discernment. Accepting every figure and message as oracle invites self-deception — test the vision and hold it lightly.
- Skipping the return and grounding. Always come back through the same doorway and ground; don’t leave the working “open.”
- Not journaling. The Atlas is where the skill (and the meaning) accumulates; skipping it wastes the session.
- Confusing vivid for true. Intensity is not evidence of objectivity — vivid imagery is the point, not proof of an external plane.