Book excerpt: A guide to direct communication with the spirits and the Gods • Offers practices for seekers and groups to learn to hear and respond to the spirits and the Gods as well as what to do (and not do) if you receive a message • Explains how to authenticate spiritual messages with divination • Discusses how to avoid theological conflicts when someone’s personal gnosis differs from that of their Pagan group For our ancestors the whole world was alive with spirits. The Gods bubbled forth from rivers and springs and whispered in the breezes that rustled through cities and farms. The ground underfoot, the stones, the fire that cooked the food and drove off the darkness, these all had spirits--not just spirits in some other dimension, but spirits in them who could be spoken to and allied with. In today’s world we are led to believe that the spirits long ago went silent and that spiritual wisdom can only be gained through established religious doctrine. Providing a guide for opening two-way conversation with the spirits of daily life as well as direct communication with the Gods, Kenaz Filan and Raven Kaldera explore how to enrich your spiritual path with personal gnosis--asking your Guides for assistance or teachings and receiving a response. They explain how to develop your sensitivity to the voices of the Divine, discern genuine spiritual messages from the projection of internal psychodrama, and what to do (and not do) with the messages you receive. Confirming their own personal gnosis with Northern Tradition Pagan beliefs and Greco-Roman, Celtic, Egyptian, and indigenous hunter-gatherer lore, the authors discuss how to avoid theological conflicts when someone’s personal gnosis differs from that of their Pagan group as well as how to authenticate messages with individual and group divination. Offering practices and principles for seekers and groups, they reveal that the spirits never went silent, we simply forgot how to hear them.