The twelve questions above are scored the way I score them. No email, no sign-up, and the answer appears on this page.
My name is Ren Kagetsuki. For fifteen years I was paid to put curses on people, which is the only reason I know what to weigh.
Below the questions are three physical tests. You can do all three tonight, with things already in your kitchen, and read the result in the morning.
Why a physical test at all
Answering questions tells me about your life. It does not tell me about the room you are sitting in.
For that, practitioners everywhere use the same trick. You put down something soft and porous, you leave it overnight, and you read what happened to it.
In the Americas that is usually an egg. In Japan it is salt, water and rice.
These are readings, not treatments. Nothing here will take anything off you. They tell you whether there is something to take off.
Test one: the salt
Coarse sea salt, nothing added to it. Dry hands.
Build a small cone, about the size of a thumb, on a white dish. Set it on the floor beside the head of your bed.
Leave it overnight and look at it before you touch anything else in the morning.
Reading it
- Unchanged, still white and dry. Nothing standing in that room.
- Damp, or slumped on one side. Note which side, and what is on that wall.
- Grey, yellowed, or collapsed flat. In a dry room, this is the one I want to hear about.
Photograph it. People describe salt badly and a photograph never argues.
Then throw it outside, into the street or onto bare ground. Never into the sink, and never back into the packet.
Test two: the water
A clear glass, filled with plain tap water, set on the floor under the head of the bed or as close to it as it will go.
Nothing in the water. No salt, no coins, no herbs. Those are for cleansing, and this is not a cleansing.
In the morning, lift it to the light before you move it.
Reading it
- Clear. Nothing to report.
- Bubbles clinging to the inside of the glass. Common and usually just the tap. Note it, do not weigh it.
- Cloudy, filmed on the surface, or with a smell. That one counts.
The water goes outside as well. Not down the drain, and nobody drinks it.
Test three: the rice
This is the oldest of the three and the one people find strangest, so take it or leave it.
A handful of uncooked rice in a small bowl. No water. Set it where you spend most of your time, not where you sleep.
Leave it three days and then look.
Rice is read for movement. Grains thrown to the edge of the bowl, a hollow in the middle, grains on the floor around it.
Nothing should move in a bowl nobody touches.
What a curse test cannot do
They read a room. They do not reach a person.
If something is being sent to you, it is travelling along a line from whoever is sending it, and salt in a dish has no opinion about that line.
So a clean result does not close the question. Plenty of the worst cases I have taken had spotless salt, because the work was tied to the person and went with them everywhere.
Which is why the questions above matter more than the dish does: the six signs I actually look for.
Send me your test result
Your score, the photograph of the salt, and roughly when all this started.
That is enough for me to tell you what I see, and it is the same reading I would write for a paying client.
Do not wait to see whether it settles. If you want the long form of the assessment first, it is here: the twelve questions, explained one at a time.
Write to me tonight, while the salt is still down.
