i’m honestly not very experienced in spiritwork, so i couldn’t reliably tell you. i think……. @magicianmew might be?
@hamburgay i would suggest becoming very good at energy sensing. At least good enough that you can trust your impressions of spirits/deities. Its much harder for them to mislead you when you can tell they’re not who you wanted to talk to.
In my experience, the deities who….. hmm….. are already involved in your life, i guess, will be very easy to contact. For example, a whole host of Greek gods have been looking after me since I was very young. Peacocks and poppies galore and I never realized those were symbols. So when I reached out to the Greek gods, they answered quickly and were relatively easy for me to get to know. As opposed to say, Egyptian or Norse gods, which feel so distant to me that I have to put a huge amount of energy into contacting them. I’ve never had a problem with deities trying to pretend to be someone else. I have very solid impressions of the Greek gods and can “see” the energy of other gods enough to know them, even if i’ve never had a conversation with them.
If you already have a sense of the ghosties that haunt your household, you should be able to tell pretty easily if they’re messing with you. They may “look” different on the outside, but the core of their energy isn’t going to change. For me, when it comes to human spirits, I prefer to send sort of like a mental telegram to wherever I feel they are (heaven, elysium, whatever) and then wait for them to visit me. Most often they come down in a dream that night or within a few nights, but if you were very close to them in life you might find them randomly checking on you throughout the day once they know they’re welcome. I have tripped over many a ghost cat come back to say hello. For me it’s very important after a person dies to periodically send up “prayers,” reminding them that they are loved and missed and always welcome to visit if they want to.
The Chaos Bitches 