By Ron Ruiz
Peek-A-Boo ITC You
Tips to help improve the Water ITC experience.
Most of us have heard of Scrying or Hydromancy. It is the attempt at divination to obtain visions or other ethereal information through the use of media such as water – crystal balls – mirrors – stones – etc. Its practice goes back well over 1,000 years with Nostradamous being the most well known practitioner of scrying.
Image Credit: Margaret Downey
Back in 2006, Margaret Downey introduced a variation of Hydromancy…aka…Water ITC that incorporates photography into the process as water in a bowl is agitated. An overhead light source provides reflective properties. Video or still pictures are taken during the experiment and upon review, images are found.
If you do a search for Water ITC you will find many methods that people use in their attempts to capture images of Spirit. A lot of them make use of a shallow bowl placed on the stove top, using the incandescent light of the range hood for reflection purposes.
I thought of ways to possibly improve these captured images and remembered that CFL lights have a flicker fusion rate between 10KHz and 40KHz; so I decided to try the process using the yellow bug light on our back porch as a light source in conjunction with the reddish auto focus light of my wife’s camera. When this proved promising, I set up in the laundry room so I wouldn’t be limited by time of day or night.
Here’s a slightly different way of taking Water-ITC images you may wish to try.
My setup is as follows:
I use a yellow fluorescent (curly cue) bug light in a ceiling fixture. The white opaque globe is re-attached to the fixture as one normally would.
A 12 quart stainless steel cooking pot with approx. 2 inches of water is placed on a TV tray
The camera is placed on a tripod in such a way as to allow for movement of the TV tray as I agitate the water by moving the TV tray side to side. A small 9 LED flashlight that emits a bluish-white light is available for use. These flashlights are widely available from your favorite department store and other places.
Sometimes Food Coloring is added for texture. There is also a red laser pointer which can be used to aim at crystals or other objects placed within the vessel.
I take approximately 10 seconds of video at a time. Media Player Classic is then used to review the video frame by frame and take screen captures of any images.
Here are some screen captures of images that were found upon reviewing different videos. Since the water is constantly moving, some images are slightly distorted.
Man with surprised look on his face. Etched plate placed on bottom of pot for angular texture. Image highlighted within red circle.
Slightly angry man. Blue food coloring added along with LED flashlight.
Woman looking over her right shoulder. Red food coloring and LED flashlight used.
Eye see you. Red – Green – Blue food coloring with LED flashlight. Image highlighted within white circle.
Young boy looking to his right. Clear water with LED flashlight. Image highlighted within red circle.
Old-Time Gentleman. Green food coloring – Crystal cluster and Red Laser. Image highlighted within white box.
Man with pensive smile. Clear water and LED flashlight. Image highlighted within green circle.
I’m not sure the flicker fusion rate of a CFL helped or not but I will leave that decision up to you.
If you think this technique produces nothing but Apophenia or Pareidolia, that’s fine with me. If you are curious and want to reach your own conclusions, I say go for it.
As always, many thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you give Water ITC a try.
Be well…
Ron