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 The
art or practice of foretelling the future, discovering hidden
knowledge, finding the lost and identifying the guilty by using a
wide range of techniques involving the conscious or unconscious
use of spirit beings.
Divination has
existed throughout history and in all cultures; it is usually the
responsibility of a priest, prophet, oracle,
witch, shaman, witch
doctor, psychic or other person with
claimed supernatural powers. Techniques fall into two main
categories: the interpretation of signs, omens,
portents and lots, and direct communication with the spiritual
world through visions, trance, dreams
and possession. See astrology, augur,
dowsing, i ching, prophesy
and tarot.
types
of divination
Because dramatic effect is important, divination takes many
forms and employs a wealth of devices. In a general way, it may be
said that inductive divination employs nonhuman phenomena, either
artificial or natural, as signs that can be unambiguously read.
The prime condition is that the signs appear to be genuine, not
manipulated. Interpretive divination commonly combines the use of
nonhuman phenomena with human action, employing devices so
complex, subtle, or fluid that the special gifts of the diviner
seem required if the meaning is to be known. It is here that
divination takes its most characteristically dramatic forms.
Intuitive divination usually places little reliance upon
artificial trappings, except for dramatic effect. The impressive
performer may exhibit gifts like those that in a different context
would have made him an effective actor, writer, or political
leader. Where the diviner can produce voices other than his own,
the impression is that the gods or spirits are speaking.
inductive
divination
To speculate that inductive divination from natural phenomena
must be very old--i.e., that it arose from early man's
intimate acquaintance with nature--is tempting. In fact, however,
evidence of an awareness of nature as a system among preliterate
peoples is spotty, and this is particularly true in respect to
astral observation. Divination from the skies is concerned
preeminently with the future but presupposes a concern with cycles
of time and history. Quite distinctive attitudes were taken toward
the celestial clock by the ancient Maya astronomers and those of
Mesopotamia; and distinct but related forms of astrology were
developed in the Western, Indian, and Chinese civilizations. But
the relation between astrology and scientific astronomy is quite
apparent, and the two "sciences" were inseparable in the
West until early modern times.
 Associated
with the observation of the heavens is the reading of signs in the
weather and the movement of birds. The interpretation of lightning
as a decipherable message from the gods--not simply as an outburst
of divine anger--was brought to the level of a pseudoscience by
the Etruscans. Winds and clouds, being suited to less exact
observation, invited interpretive rather than inductive
divination. Weather phenomena were also conceived of as in a
special status relative to man, in that rain, drought, and natural
disasters are forces that man seeks not simply to read but to
control. Nonetheless, Hindu scripture discusses the art of
interpreting "castles in the air"--celestial cities seen
in towering clouds.
Augury, the art of interpreting omens, is the attempt to
discover divine will in phenomena of animate nature. In
Mesopotamia, augury was associated with sacrifice and perhaps
developed from it. As the priests watched the rising smoke to
divine the answer to a ritual query, they observed the movement of
birds as auspicious or inauspicious. As a further augury the
viscera of the sacrificial victim were examined, particularly the
liver,
which (rather than the heart) was conceived as the vital centre.
The discipline
of augury mapped cosmic space with the sacrificial altar at the
centre, and each sector was assigned a definite meaning. Every
event in the heavens could thus be charted and pondered.
Similarly, haruspicy, the study of the liver, was developed by
mapping it as a microcosm and reading it as one may read the palm.
Inductive divination from nature is associated with the reading
of artificially contrived events, such as the movement of
sacrificial smoke, the fall of an arrow shot upward, or the cast
of dice or lots. A much-used natural-artificial technique consists
in the braising of bone or shell to produce a system of signs.
Scapulimancy--divination from a fire-cracked shoulder blade--was
widespread in North America and Eurasia. The related but more
elaborate Chinese technique of tortoiseshell divination was
inspired by the idea of equating the carapace (back) and ventral
(lower) shell with their view of a rounded sky over flat earth.
Only the "earth" was inscribed and heated to produce
signs. In general, however, artificial systems of signs are likely
to be manipulatory, as they will be used in an artful way by the
professional diviner--and in such cases interpretive techniques
have to be taken into account.
interpretive
divination
Interpretive divination involves, in the main, the reading of
portents, omens, or prodigies. To the scientifically minded, no
event is without a cause. Yet, the apparently arbitrary event does
occur in an ordered world and thus is subject to various
interpretations. Manipulated events are an element of interpretive
divination, but the less active forms depend upon projection,
introjection, and free association--thus being associated, to some
degree, with intuitive techniques.
Pyromancy, divination by fire, may be highly dramatic in a
society dependent on fire for light and safety at night. In some
trans-Saharan societies the diviner may test an accusation at a séance
around the fire, which will suddenly explode upon the
"guilty" one. Elsewhere, objects may be overtly cast
into the fire and signs read in the reaction. Hydromancy,
divination by water, is usually less dramatic, ranging from the
reading of reflections in a shallow surface, in the manner of the
crystal gazer, to construing the movements of floating objects, as
in the reading of tea leaves.
 A
range of related mantic practices may be grouped under the terms
cleromancy, divination by lots, and geomancy, which may involve
the casting of objects upon a map or a figure drawn on the ground.
Cleromantic practices in trans-Saharan Africa may rely on the
supposedly magical--or indeed horrifying--qualities of objects in
the diviner's bag or basket. When they are thrown, the proximity
of one piece to another--for example, a dried bit of intestine
from a murdered child and a man-eating animal's tooth--may be
regarded as having meaning; or the position of a particular
piece at the centre or apart from the others may be picked out.
Often, the diviner must first prove his ability by discovering the
client's problem, through a line of patter accompanying the
throws--suggesting this, questioning that, leaping from one matter
to another until the reactions of the client betray his interest.
Here the diviner may be said to introject ideas and attitudes,
while the lots act for the diviner and client alike as a
projective device, the meaning of which is only half-formed in the
objective pattern cast. A far more elaborate practice is the
geomancy of West Africa, in which elegant equipment is combined
with impressive erudition to produce a séance in which lots are
used to select verses, wherein the client is expected to find his
answers. The nature of the lots employed, the number lore on which
the selection of verses is based, and the verses themselves are
entirely distinct from their counterparts in the Chinese yarrow
(an herb with finely dissected leaves) tradition embodied in the I
Ching, but the general equivalence of the two elaborations is
noteworthy. The parallel has perhaps been obscured by the use of
"geomancy" in China to signify only a specialized art by
which propitious locations are selected.
Sometimes a diviner can be said to interpret signs so
characteristic of his client that the practice falls between
interpretive and intuitive arts. Somatomancy, body divination, is
clearly interpretive in most forms, whether in China or the West,
though the system of signs employed comprises private attributes
of the client's physique. Examples are phrenology, employing
features of the head that are normally unnoticed; and the reading
of moles, where the body is treated as a microcosm bearing
astrological signs. But oneiromancy, dream interpretation, employs
explicitly psychic phenomena; and here the diviner may be said to
assist the intuition of meaning by his client as often as he can
be said to introject. The Ojibwa and Bella Coola Indians of North
America were characteristically preoccupied with the meanings of
their dreams.
intuitive
divination
![[bloodletting image]](images/mayan.gif) The
prototype of the intuitive diviner is the occasional shaman or
curer who uses trance states. These are achieved idiopathically (i.e.,
arising from the self spontaneously) or induced by drugs or by
autokinetic (self-energized) techniques, such as hand trembling
among the Navajo, a large North American Indian tribe. As a mantic
art, trance is associated with oracular utterance and spirit
possession. An impressive performance will be taken to represent
the actual voice of a god or spirit addressing the client
directly; and divination in this mode is known from diverse
religious traditions, including Christianity. The idea that the
gods may be importuned to speak on a matter of temporal human
concern seems to be very ancient. In early Egypt incubation was
practiced--i.e., sleeping in the temple in the hope of
being inspired by the resident god. The idea behind Maya maiden
sacrifice was the same: a number of maidens were cast into a
sacred cenote or deep well, and those who survived after some
hours were brought back to recite the messages received during
their ordeal--a virtual enactment of the journey into the
underworld. As oracular utterance became regular, special
techniques or contraptions were developed for making the god's
image show assent or denial or for amplifying the sound of an
unseen priest's voice. In nomadic societies today, however, the
diviner may still achieve personal authority by passing into a
trance before his fellows, trembling and speaking "as if
possessed"--that is, as if his own spirit had ceased to
inhabit his body and had been replaced by another.
Related to possession is the conviction that malevolent persons
are essentially unlike innocent ones, though not in outward
appearance. When a test is devised for discovering malevolence,
commonly conceived of as witchcraft or as a nonhuman force
disguising itself in human form, the test takes the form of an
ordeal. This may be a demonstration of invulnerability to harm,
the presence of blessed qualities being viewed as inconsistent
with malevolence; among the many types of ordeal are walking on
coals and retrieving an object from boiling liquid. The ordeal may
even involve death: in the ordeal by water, a witch was expected
to float and so be spared for burning, but an innocent person
would be accepted by the water and drown. In trans-Saharan poison
ordeals the innocent person is expected to survive.
Intuitive divination may also be a wholly private affair. A
Roman might hear a warning from the gods in a piece of
conversation; the Aztec might discern a portent in an animal's
howl. The North American Indian who sought a private vision
through isolation, self-mutilation, and fasting would preserve the
memory of that vision throughout life, turning to it as his unique
guardian spirit.
divination
today
The immense popularity of horoscopes in the urban West today
illustrates the almost exclusive concern with individual
fortune-telling that characterizes divination in a mobile and
competitive mass society. Chiromancy, Tarot
(fortune-telling) cards, and crystal gazing represent respectively
body divination, sortilege (divination by lots), and trancelike
performance in styles suitable for what might be called a
half-serious attempt to learn one's fate. Necromancy, in its
modern spiritualist form, represents a slightly more serious and
sustained effort to establish contact with extramundane beings.
But astrology, in its various popular forms, is the form of
divination best suited to mass consumption, since it is based on a
well-articulated body of lore, touches matters of high destiny as
well as individual fortune, and "personalizes" its
introjective advice without the client's having to be interviewed.
On the other hand, the more esoteric mantic arts have the appeal
of discipline--an individual may enter into the lore deeply until
it becomes a part of his own worldview. Study of the I Ching for
divinatory purposes can involve this sort of commitment.
Bibliography
William Barrett
and Theodore Besterman, The Divining Rod: An Experimental and
Psychological Investigation (1926, reissued 1968), with a
bibliography of water divining; William Bascom, Ifa Divination:
Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa (1969);
Auguste Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans
l'antiquité, 4 vol. (1879-82, reprinted 1975), a classic
work; Henry Callaway, The Religious System of the Amazulu
(1870, reissued 1970), with an analysis of their divinatory
practices; André Caquot and Marcel Leibovici, La Divination:
études recueillies, 2 vol. (1968), by specialists in many
fields; Georges Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion, 2 vol.
(1970; originally published in French, 1966), with an appendix on
the religion of the Etruscans; Robert Flacelière, Greek
Oracles, 2nd ed. (1976; originally published in French, 1961);
William A. Lessa, Chinese Body Divination: Its Forms,
Affinities and Functions (1968); Michael Loewe and Carmen
Blacker (eds.), Divination and Oracles (1981), nine studies
covering the ancient and Oriental worlds; René de
Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and
Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities (1956, reprinted
1976); Victor W. Turner, Ndembu Divination: Its Symbolism &
Techniques (1961, reprinted 1969); Evon Z. Vogt and Ray Hyman,
Water Witching, U.S.A., 2nd ed. (1979), an ethnographic
study; and Helmut Wilhelm, Change: Eight Lectures on the I-Ching
(1960, reprinted 1973; originally published in German, 1944),
studies of Chinese divination.
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