Divination, Oracles, and Omens - Notes

Divination, Oracles & Omens

Introduction: Divination in the World: Making Sense, Using Augury

The past, present, and future are full of mysteries that are difficult to uncover through normal human understanding.
Humans use divination techniques to unveil the concealed and gain insights into underlying truths.
Divination can help diagnose present problems and empower decision-making about future actions.
People seek help in making decisions or justifying them, becoming clients of diviners.
The book introduces examples of divination from around the world and throughout history.
It offers a sampler of techniques used to access occult knowledge.
Occult knowledge means 'hidden', 'secret', or 'covered up'.

What Is Divination?

Divination is used to find answers to arcane questions, often about the future.
It addresses questions about the past or explanations from the past for present troubles, helping to identify the hidden cause or meaning of events.
Crucially, divination provides answers and guidance.
The same questions were asked of specialist practitioners in ancient Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago.
While often serious, divination can sometimes be approached light-heartedly.
Divination is dismissed as superstition in the West, although some people consult horoscopes.
Forms of divining are widespread in Western culture, from children's games to predicting the FIFA World Cup winner.
Divination is a common theme in popular culture, such as in J.K. Rowling's Hogwarts School.
Different types of divination are regarded in diverse ways, ranging from games to serious practices; attitudes can be juxtaposed in the same cultural tradition.
Patterns of usage reflect patterns of life, with gradations of seriousness.

Divination Spectrum

Divination sits on a spectrum alongside scientific forms of prediction.
Economics is sometimes compared to astrology concerning prediction success rates.
Scientific forecasting, like epidemiology, is generally more reliable.
Practices of forecasting and prediction are stochastic arts, derived from the Greek stokhos, meaning 'aim' or 'guess'.
Historically, stochastic arts included medicine and navigation and involved skilled guesswork.
Bodies of knowledge and practice deal with variable materials, so a measure of failure is expected.
Even the best physician cannot guarantee a successful outcome, but medicine is still valuable.
The cultural map of knowledge differentiates divination from scientific prediction.

Techniques of Divination

Divination comes in many forms, often involving interpreting patterns or clues in natural or human-made things via skilled methods.
Techniques may involve commerce with non-human entities.
Some forms use ceremonial paraphernalia, sacred objects, or mathematical tools.
Diviners vary in age and gender, holding societal roles similar to priests or physicians.
Individuals can divine for themselves, though auto-divination is sometimes frowned upon.
Divination is practiced in various places, from homes to sacred sites.
Technological developments have normalized remote consultations.
Divination apps are available, offering astrological charts or consultations with human diviners.
Opinions on these developments vary among professionals.

Scholarly Study of Divination

Scholars in various fields have tried to understand and analyze divination, which is a fraught field due to definitional challenges and confrontational questions.
The book aims to be inclusive in recognizing forms of divination.
The approach is critical and scholarly, avoiding normative questions about the 'truth' or efficacy of practices.
Historically, critical study has been linked to criticism of divination.
Cicero's On Divination is a famous critique and early scholarly study, presented as a dialogue debating the merits of different divinatory forms.
Cicero was skeptical, while his brother Quintus was positive about their effectiveness.
Quintus argued that signs of future events exist, and skilled individuals can recognize them.
Ignoring these signs leads to disasters, while utilizing them allows humans to approach the power of gods.

The Core of Divination

Despite popularity, divination attracts some more than others.
Many make decisions without assistance, but others seek help from diviners.
The focus is on these people and their diviners.

Diagnosis and Prediction

Prediction is a normal part of everyday life.
The success of commonplace predictions bolsters certainty in divinatory pronouncements.
Philosophical assessments depend on the tense of pronouncements, distinguishing diagnosis and prognosis.
Divinatory practice often covers both, but the distinction has philosophical implications.
Diagnosis concerns the past, seeking to unpick causal foundations and clarify hidden causes.
Diagnosis seeks to establish active agents in a particular case and looks backward.
Philosophers have worried about prediction, which seeks to identify future scenarios.
Prediction involves a double subjunctive; a prediction is uncertain at utterance, and there's an implicit stage of hypothecating.
Bad outcomes can be avoided by performing a specified action.
While the distinction is profound philosophically, diagnosis and prognosis shade into one another.
Diagnostic judgments have predictive implications.
Planning for the future requires understanding the past.
In some cases, diagnosis has clear prognostic implications, such as Huntington's disease.
However, medical diagnosis implications are mostly uncertain when applied to an individual.
Actions in response to a diagnosis have consequences; this can make it hard to assess the accuracy of predictions.

Medical Context

A further complication in medicine is that some have illnesses that are difficult not only to diagnose but also to treat, and these patients often seek second or third opinions.
Success in diagnosis is measured by apparent predictive efficacy.
By correctly identifying the problem, we can plan how to solve it.
If the problem is solved, we infer that the diagnosis was correct.
For most clients, once the problem has been solved details become irrelevant.
The action taken may have remedied a problem that had a different set of causes, or the problem may have rectified itself independently of any actions taken.
The success of a treatment does not necessarily justify the explanation given for how the treatment works.

Technical and Inspired Divination

Quintus and Cicero distinguish between divination based on nature and art.
Some types involve possession by a god or spirit, while others involve human operators using established procedures.
The first type can be called inspired, and the second technical. The book leans towards technical.
Knowledge in technical divination uses signs, omens, and procedures.
Procedures allow for communion with ancestors or demons.
Instances of inspired divination include ancient Greek oracles and medieval necromancy.
Cicero's distinction seems clear at first, but it can be less than helpful.
If the issue is the source of knowledge, there may be no difference between the two types.
Whether the spirit possesses someone or speaks through cards, they are the ultimate source.
Lunda diviners say they contact spirits when shaking baskets of objects, making the process both inspired and technical.

Explanation and Experiment

A distinction can be made between systems with local accounts of why techniques work and systems where the fact that it works is enough.
Premodern European and Ottoman astrology had sophisticated theories based on ancient thinkers.
Sometimes explanations are simple, or there is no explanation; past successes justify continued use.
Systematic record-keeping is rare, and few diviners follow up on their consultations or retain their consultations were positive which bolsters their sense of their own accuracy.
*Researcher’s questions about origins and sources until their informants provide answers. Gray areas exist.
*Practitioners' explanations of a form of divination may not be what their clients find puzzling or intriguing about it, and researchers, historians and anthropologists may have very different questions.

Ancient World

Cicero pointed out that ancient advocates of divination were influenced more by actual results than convinced by reason.
Theories explaining why techniques worked were less important than the fact that they worked for the people involved.
The explanation and epistemic status of divined knowledge is less important than its practical efficacy.

Expertise and Empiricism

Even if some forms of divination are not given a complex or nuanced philosophical explanation, their practice is nevertheless premised on the skill and expertise of the practitioner on the one hand, and the success of their methods on the other.
Divination techniques are empirical in that their practitioners have long collected data that sheds light on their efficacy, and perhaps only reports of success are recorded.
These reports and their records can serve as justifications for diviners of many different systems.
Divination had grown into an art 'through the repeated observation and recording of almost countless instances in which the same results have been preceded by the same signs'.
In medieval and Renaissance Europe, astrologers kept records of natural and human events.
In Cameroon, spider divination is tested on a regular basis with questions that have an obviously right or wrong answer
Necromantic rituals were called experiments for they were seen as techniques that could be improved with repeated use
If an astrologer makes a prediction that turns out to be false, they can blame their own failings rather than any underlying problems with astrology
After all, divination requires a specialist skill set and, typically, training of some kind, often an apprenticeship
Practitioners need to be skilled not just in the detailed practice of the system in question, but also in interpreting the results

Patterns of Popularization

Patterns of popularization in many cultures have made way for more opportunities for auto-divination, as clients are able to learn the basics of these techniques themselves and use them in private to answer their own questions.
Some diviners simply offer advice in their consultations, leaving their clients or other experts to implement their guidance.
But other diviners also offer to perform the rituals, sacrifices or treatments suggested by the divinatory response. In such cases there can be a perceived conflict of interest between the practice of divination and action taken on its advice.
Biblical Sortes involves a client choosing a verse from the Bible at random.
The diviner is but a messenger

Clients and Consultations

We are concerned with the individuals who make use of divination as we are with the diviners.
People consulted regularly, or only when they are at a crossroads or in a crisis, seeking not merely information but also guidance.
We regard divination as a technology that assists decision-making. Consultations function like therapy.
Practitioners and experts improve themselves and their lives.
Divination consultations involve conversations in which diviners and their clients work together to reach a mutually satisfactory outcome.

Audience Context

Consultations may occur in private or in public, whether in open with an audience or is knowledgeable about the divination system being used, it is likely to affect how the diviner explains what they are doing and how they have arrived at the results.
Historically, diviners have often been closely connected to the administration of states, The perceived accuracy of divination was always double-edged.
The issue here is not so much with the epistemic status of the information produced via divination as about its subversive potential.

Perennial Questions

*What are the questions that those consulting divination want to have answered, irrespective of the techniques used to provide answers?

The historical record sometimes comes through, with records of questions asked of English astrologers in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
These questions rangequeries about relationships and personal to business affairs, and more worldly events.

Sensitive Issues

In different traditions, however, there are questions that cannot or should not be asked.
*This may be because of political or religious sensitivities or because they close down future possibilities
Such issues are affected by whether the divination system allows open-ended consultations ('How am I?') or whether only specific possibilities, with yes or no answers, rather than generalities can be asked.
*it is now time to turn to the different type of divination explored in this book beginning with some of the oldest forms of divination and we end with the contemporary West, and instances between everything.

Jewish Dream Divination

*Divination involved consulting the Torah and interpreting dreams, as well as the use of bibliomancy and cledonomancy with schoolchildren.
*Cledonomancy. divination through the interpretation of chance encounters.

Mesoamerican Divination

Indigenous communities in Mexico and Guatemala today make use of a number of divinatory techniques to help those who might visit a diviner seeking clarity on personal issues, social conflicts or health concerns.
Divination in Mesoamerica changed dramatically with the Spanish invasion, but the survival of centuries-old divination codices can provide us with rich insights into these long-standing traditions.
Sixteenth-century ethnograhic accounts show that queries regarding the nature of physical pain or interpersonal conflict have usually been answered through the interpretation of a handful of maize kernels, dried beans or seeds that the diviner casts onto the altar table.
An egg may also be used, where the diviner cracks open the egg and pours it into a glass of water: the shape, colour and consistency of the yolk and albumen provide important clues for the reading.
Another facet of Mesoamerican divination found in both ancient books and modern practices are night ceremonies, sometimes referred to as veladas (vigils).
These are carried out under the guidance of a priest with the intent of gaining clarity on one's condition, the future and actions that need to be taken to achieve a desired outcome.

Ottoman Astrology

Astrology was a widely practised form of divination in the Ottoman world, both in a courtly context and among the broader public.
The rich textual corpus this office left behind shows that different branches and genres of astrology were in regular use in the Ottoman world.
The fundamental textual tool of Ottoman astrologers was the astronomical handbooks of tables (zij), which presented all the data and parameters astrologers needed for computing planetary movements and positions.
Multiple actors from diverse social backgrounds - including religious scholars (ulama), mystics (Sufis) and authors of ethical treatises - often raised concerns about astrologers and their practice.
Whether it was the learned version of erudite astrologers or the lay method that lacked mathematical refinement, astrological practice in the Ottoman world was predicated on the fundamental Hermetic principle that terrestrial occurrences are necessarily linked to the celestial world.

Renaissance Europe

During the renaissance, astrology offered glory to both the practicing physician and the discipline of medicine.
The excellence of astrology made those competent in the art superior to the uninitiated
Astrological medicine remained widespread in Europe into the eighteenth century, especially among the broader public.

Palmistry in Britain and the United States

Palmistry, or cheiromancy, is an art that seeks insights through consultation of the hand. Characters and fortunes are told by inspection and interpretation of both the shape of the hand and the lines on its palm.
an axiom informs all studies of cheiromancy: 'know thyself.
During the Renaissance, however, it moved into the margins of social acceptance, seen as one of the seven forbidden arts.
*Cheiromancy continued to be practised in Christian Europe into the medieval period.
*. In 1839 Captain Casimir Stanislas D Arpentigny published La chirognomie, a work of cheiromancy based on his research into Renaissance practices.
Cheiro, for example, enjoyed a colourful cast of clients, including the humorist Mark Twain, the French stage actor Sarah Bernhardt, President Grover Cleveland of the United States, the inventor Thomas Edison, the playwright Oscar Wilde and Edward, Prince of Wales.

*To read and record the story of life and death required patience and precision.
*Wilde's comedy presents characters who use and occasionally question Heron-Allen's key terms, his scientific approach to palmistry and his theme of duty ('know thyself').

*By the end of the nineteenth century, palmistry's popularity had faded, deemed a threat to the social order and retreated to the margins of society even if it never completely went away.

Zande Divination

Witchcraft (mangu) is the most common mystical cause, or explanation for why, rather than how, misfortunes occur.
Though oracles are often categorized as a method of divination, in the Zande language there is no connection between diviner (binza) and oracle (ka soroka, a verb meaning 'to consult an oracle').
Iwa, or 'rubbing board oracle', is portable and relatively easy to use.
The most prestigious oracle, the one used in royal courts, was benge
Wide range of questions are asked of oracles relating to illness and suspicions of adultery. Oracles are asked to confirm the results of other oracles.
Zande talk of the sa (tail) and ndu (foot) of an explanation