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What is Divination?The function of divination is the attempt to gain knowledge relating to future events or otherwise 'occult' information through paranormal or supernatural agencies. It is insufficient to say that information gained from the diviner serves to allay uncertainty, locate blame, or overcome misfortune. Divination is motivated by the fact that information, whether spurious or true, will please a client. Unless one assumes that the information is ‘usually accurate’, one would expect clients to be displeased and subsequently skeptical. Two main kinds are general information about the future and specific information about the past as it bears upon the future.Anthropologists have observed that divination is a universal cultural phenomenon which has been present in many religions and cultures throughout the ages up to the present day. Some forms of divination include astrology, cards, dice, dowsing, graphology, palm reading, scrying, etc. Acquiring knowledge from supernatural powers can be divided into two classes:
If a distinction has to be made between divination and fortune-telling, then it would probably be that divination has a formal or ritual and often social character, usually in a 'religious context', while fortune-telling is more of an everyday practice for personal satisfaction. Will Parfitt has forty years’ experience of working with personal and spiritual development. On his web site http://www.willparfitt.com/faq-items/what-is-divination/ he explains divination thus: “Divination works on the principle that everything is connected to everything else. Through investigating one thing we can glean information about something else. Divination takes a divination tool the tarot cards, stones, sticks, patterns in tealeaves, and so on and relates the information revealed through its use to the life of the querant (the person for whom the divination is done.) The idea that pictures on cards or patterns of stones, for instance, might reveal information about someone’s life is strange to the Newtonian linear world view that has so influenced Western science for centuries. That world view is changing, however, as ideas from the New Science become popularised. Many people world-wide have heard of the notion that a butterfly beating its wings in, for instance, Hanoi could cause a hurricane in, say, Ontario, even if they don’t fully understand why. That is the nature of modern Quantum theories, we do not nor cannot understand what happens with our linear thought, not even the scientists who make up the theories can do that, but the theories describe things that do happen. As Fritzjof Kapra says in his book ‘The Tao of Physics’: ‘Particles are not isolated grains of matter, but are probability patterns, interconnections in an inseparable cosmic web.’ This statement forms the basis of the theory of how divination works, it is just usually described in more esoteric language.”
Divination at the end of the 20th CenturyThe immense popularity of horoscopes in the urban West today illustrates the almost exclusive concern with individual fortune-telling that characterises divination in a mobile and competitive mass society. Chiromancy, tarot (fortune-telling) cards, and crystal gazing represent respectively body divination, cleromancy (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 ‘personalises’ its 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 and make it a part of a personal worldview. Study of the I Ching for divinatory purposes can involve this sort of commitment.
More Recent & not so Recent Revelations![]() On 1 September 1994 Drosnin flew to Israel to meet a close friend of the then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, to ask him to pass on a letter that Drosnin had written to the PM, informing him of his predicted assassination. He also stated in the letter that the threat should not be ignored, providing explicit details of three previous assassinations also discovered in the code, those of the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and his brother Robert Kennedy. In the case of Anwar Sadat, both the first and last names of the assassin were also encoded. Tragically, on 4 November 1995, this other predicted assassination came true. Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a right-wing radical opposed to the signing of the Oslo Accords, officially called the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements or Declaration of Principles (DOP). Basically, the Israeli government had agreed to recognise the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people while the PLO recognised the right of the State of Israel to exist, at the same time renouncing terrorism, violence and its desire for the destruction of Israel.
Drosnin's books are excellently presented, with graphic proof of the text, and may well help to convince you that prediction is a fact. Our lives have been mapped out for us, but our futures, although predetermined, can be changed at any of the many different 'road junctions' or 'cross roads' we encounter along the route depending upon the action we take. Having now already read this third book it is to be hoped our world leaders heed its predictions. The same code has been tried on several other large texts, including War and Peace, but the results could not be repeated, i.e. no 'code' existed within these texts. It has been verified by a number of famous mathematicians at Harvard, Yale and Hebrew Universities, which has naturally helped to enhance its credibility. Drosnin tells us that the code has also been replicated by a senior code-breaker at the US Department of Defense, and has passed three levels of secular peer review at a leading US math journal, all of which seems pretty convincing and conclusive as to its 'existence'.
Mother Shipton (not so Recent)![]()
At this juncture, one branch of the tale tells us that Agatha died during childbirth, while yet another says she gave Ursula up at the age of two for fostering and went to spend the rest of her shattered life in a convent. Following our own research into Mother Shipton, this second tale seems far more plausible. As she grew older, Ursula started to show uncanny signs of both prophetic and psychic abilities. At the house where she was being fostered, on the outskirts of Knaresborough, crockery and furniture would move of its own volition in her presence, cutlery would fly across the room, and strange noises would be heard. As she continued to develop, so did her powers, although she reputedly used them only to help people, but it was probably because of her growing reputation as a witch, compounded by the fact she was so grotesque, that many locals lived in fear of her. But beauty is only skin deep, or so the saying goes, for despite those hideous features, at the tender age of 24 she married a carpenter by the name of Toby Shipton. Nobody seems to mention Toby's looks, but if he married Ursula simply to get the 'child benefit' of the time he lost out on the deal, for the marriage was childless, and his wife died nearly 50 years later in 1561. Mother Shipton wrote her prophecies during the reign of King Henry VIII, in the form of poems, and 'predicted' his victory over France at the Battle of the Spurs in 1513. Perhaps one of the most famous of her 'prophetic poems' is:
And accidents fill the world with woe. Around the world thoughts shall fly In the twinkling of an eye.... Under water men shall walk, Shall ride, shall sleep and talk; In the air men shall be seen, In white, in black and in green.... Iron in the water shall float, As easy as a wooden boat. What is claimed by many to be her most famous prophecy, which, fortunately for all of us alive today, did not come to fulfilment, is
In eighteen hundred and eighty one. The first known edition of Mother Shipton's prophecies did not appear in print until 1641, some eighty years after her death, but it was not until 1684 that what is considered to be the most important edition of her work was published. This was edited by Richard Head, and included her earliest biography. Richard Head invented much of the story of her life as well as the descriptions of her, mostly based on legend and folklore that had been passed down by word of mouth. Later writers also fabricated prophecies. Charles Hindley, for example, admitted that many of the predictions in his edition of 1862 had been concocted to fool the Victorian public, in particular those which would have been easily recognisable to someone of the time such as . . . . In England, but alas! War will follow with the work In the land of the pagan and the Turk. . . . . patently clear references to the Crystal Palace and the Crimean war.
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Methods of DivinationMany different methods of divination can be found around the world, and many cultures practice the same methods under different names. During the Middle Ages, scholars coined terms for these methods, some of which had hitherto been unnamed, in Mediaeval Latin, very often utilising the suffix -mantia when the art seemed more mystical (ultimately from Ancient Greek manteía, 'prophecy' or 'the power to prophesy') and the suffix -scopia when the art seemed more scientific (ultimately from Greek skopeîn, 'to observe'). Names like drimimantia, nigromantia, and horoscopia arose, along with other pseudo-sciences such as phrenology and physiognomy.Some forms of divination are much older than the Middle Ages, such as haruspication, while others (such as megapolisomancy or coffee/tea-based tasseomancy) originated in the 20th and 21st centuries. Several of the more common methods used in divination are shown below in alphabetical order. A description of these methods can be found by clicking on the relevant link. Please note that this list is far from complete -- there are literally hundreds more, many of which are shown in the second list!
Some Other Methods of Divination(This list is not exhaustive)
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