Skry

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of observing reflective surfaces to discover hidden insights or knowledge is a mystical practice in divination
2. A practice involving gazing into reflective materials to gain mystical knowledge or foretell the future
3. The process of using shiny surfaces as a tool to see visions or understand hidden truths in a spiritual context

Etymology: Scrying began as a sense of "crying out" rather than of looking into glass. In Old French, "escrier" meant "to cry out," and Middle English borrowed the idea in forms like "ascrien" and "ascry," which at first meant to shout to attract attention or to announce that something had been spotted. The word was then clipped down to "scrien" and "scryen," and its meaning drifted from calling out to catching sight of something, which is where the sense of seeing was born. The modern spiritual meaning developed from that act of seeing. Because "scry" had already been shaped by its close neighbour "descry," meaning to catch sight of something far off or hard to make out, the word settled into the sense of discerning things that are otherwise hidden. Gazing into a polished surface became the classic way of doing this, so the word's older idea of spotting something at a distance was carried into the practice of seeing visions.

Synonyms: divine