I discuss an unusual technique for learning metaphysical necessities that I call the “Procedure of Imaginative Transfer” and note some ways it complicates Kripke’s case for the existence of necessary a posteriori truths. I warm up by noting that (on reasonable metasemantic assumptions) ordinary persons might be able to use the procedure to learn some Kripkean necessities, like that water is H20, a priori. Then I use the procedure to give two more general arguments. The first aims to show that Kripke’s arguments can’t be our first route to establishing any necessities a posteriori except on very specific views of metaphysical modality and its epistemology. The second aims to show that our judgments about Kripke’s examples are subject to an ‘epistemic illusion of aposteriority’ that parallels Kripke’s ‘modal illusion of contingency’. What is more, both forms of illusion may be harder to overcome than Kripke supposed so that ‘properly entertaining’ a Kripkean necessity is revealed to be a tricky and somewhat unusual cognitive task.