This is a prompt from one of the Discord servers that I’m a member of.
“Do you cleanse your divination tools or anything else that you may use? If so, how often? If not, why is that?“

So, I know that the question is about divination tools, but I thought I would add a bit extra to the response as divination tools are not the only tools that get cleansed in my practice.

Ritual tools get cleansed and consecrated before each ritual (as opposed to spellwork tools, which might or might not get cleansed beforehand). This is because rituals are for sacred appreciation and connection with divinity. Spellwork is more about goals and intention.

Divination tools get cleansed when it feels like they need it. For me, this boils down to clairsentience and psychometry. My hands are very sensitive to energy so I can feel when energy I don’t want in the deck is there, and will cleanse it to resolve the issue.

This “unclean” feeling usually feels like a creeping cloying prickle/tingle feeling on the inside of the skin/beneath the skin starting in the palms and spreading through inside of forearms to outside of biceps. It can often create an urge to want to wash my hands. For cleansing during these instances, I use smoke cleansing, and go through the deck one card at a time, passing each card through the smoke while pushing my own energy through the card to “crowd out” and cleanse away the unpleasant energies I want to get rid of.

That said? I do minor cleansing of my decks when I use them just due to the fact that 1) I naturally push my energy through the deck during the shuffling process and 2) after having recently worn the finish off my wooden reading surface, I’ve shifted to using a selenite plate for shuffling and “knocking” of the deck during the shuffling process. I also have one in quartz, but I prefer the selenite one better.

Other divination tools are similarly done. If they feel “off” energetically, I’ll cleanse them with either selenite, smoke cleansing, or both while pushing my own energy through them.