How Spirit Speaks in Language

Words as Divination: How Language Carries Messages

Words are spells, but not in the way you might think.

I used to believe that meant choosing perfect words to manifest what we want. But I've come to understand it differently. Words are messengers. They come in dreams, at the edges of thought, in songs that won't leave your head. Sometimes they arrive fully formed. Sometimes you pass them glowing on a street sign.

They carry energy—personally and collectively—not just in their literal meaning but in the vibration of their sound.

The Power of Simple Language

As a Chinese immigrant in Canada, English is my second language. I once believed that knowing complex words made me a better writer. But good writing isn't about vocabulary. It's about resonance. It's about letting your heart express what needs to be expressed and trusting it to choose the right words to carry that feeling through.

In the Poesis: Visions in Verse book, Megan King wrote poems by sitting with each Poesis Oracle card image, engaging with it like a mirror. She described it as writing from "the deepest well inside." There were no major edits. This was a practice in contemplation, not construction.

Poetry as a way of being carried by the words. When words come from that place, they hold medicine.

Using Words for Divination

Here are some ways to work with words intuitively:

• Ask a question. Open the Visions in Verse book at random. Let your finger land on a word or phrase.
• Write a letter from that word. Let it speak to you.
• Read the line out loud. Notice how it feels in your body.
• Use it as a journaling prompt or mantra for the day.

Spirit Speaks Through Songs

Sometimes spirit shows up in unexpected ways. Once, during a hard week, a nursery rhyme looped in my mind: "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream."

It reminded me not to fight the current. I made it my mantra. That's how messages arrive sometimes, in the most ordinary places.

Mantra as Vibration

It's not just the words. It's the sound, the repetition, the intention behind them. Even a simple song, when sung aloud repeatedly, can shift your energetic state. The vibration fills your body.

During the creation of the Poesis Oracle deck, I kept returning to the poetry of Rumi and Hafiz. I would read their words aloud to feel them more fully.

Try this:

• Choose a phrase that resonates.
• Speak it gently, then firmly. Put the accent on a different word each time until it feels right.
• Repeat it until something in you settles or opens.

The Hidden Codes of Mother Tongue

For those of us whose first language isn't the one we live in now, spirit sometimes speaks in the original tongue.

After my grandma passed in 2022, I tried to send her a message. The next morning, Chinese poems came to me, lines I hadn't thought of in years. They were some of the first things she taught me as a child. I could hear her voice through them.

What struck me most was how relevant those poems were to what I was going through in the present, not just the past.

Language can be a bridge to memory, to connection, across generations. Pay attention to the words that rise up in your mother tongue. They're part of your lineage. Language becomes a kind of ancestral technology, something passed down that still knows how to speak to you.

Closing

Words don't need to be big or clever to be powerful. They just need to be true.

Let the right ones find you, and let yourself be changed by them.

If this resonates, join The Circle for reflections and musings as I move through my own practice.