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What is Divination?Divination is the attempt to gain knowledge relating to future events or otherwise 'occult' information through paranormal or supernatural agencies. Anthropologists have observed that divination is a universal cultural phenomenon which has been present in many religions and cultures throughout the ages right up to the present day. Some (but far from all) forms of divination include astrology, cards, dice, dowsing, graphology, palm reading and scrying. Links to each of these methods, and others, can be found below. Acquiring knowledge from supernatural powers can be divided into two classes:
A 'Fortune Teller' is anyone who tries to predict the future using any means at his or her disposal, be they cards, horoscopes, crystal balls, palm reading and so on, normally for financial gain. The kind of topics on which predictions are made by a fortune teller, particularly in the Western world, include future romantic, childbearing and financial prospects. Fortune tellers may also be consulted to aid in decision-making regarding plans for marriage or divorce, job opportunities and the prognosis of illnesses. 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 a social character, usually within a 'religious context', while fortune-telling is more of an everyday practice for personal satisfaction.
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.
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'.
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Methods of DivinationSome most amazing and unusual items have been used with the majority of the numerous methods of divination. Many of these methods end in 'mancy', from the ancient Greek 'manteia' (divination), 'scopy', from the Greek 'skopein' (to look into, or to behold), or 'ology' from the Greek word 'logos' (study). Several of the more common methods used in divination today are shown below in alphabetical order. Please note that this list is far from complete there are literally dozens more! Click HERE to see a full list of the different methods of Divination. Click on any of the links below to read further details on the chosen subject matter. A poem relating to Prediction can be read from my Poetry page.
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Mother Shipton Mother Shipton is perhaps Englands most renowned
soothsayer,
although the method of divination she used to foretell the future does not
appear to have been recorded, or has been overlooked by her 'biographers'. My personal theory, and I stress personal, is
that she may have used water from the nearby 'dropping well' (like the petrifying well in Matlock Bath in Derbyshire) for
scrying purposes,
scrying having been the method adopted shortly
before her death by Michel de Notredame (Nostradamus). Whether or not he took a leaf out of her book, or whether the legend of Mother
Shipton came about as a result of his life makes me ponder, for another marked similarity between these two 'prophets' to take into consideration
is the fact that he, like Mother Shipton, wrote his predictions in verse format, albeit always in quatrains (4-line verses).
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 my 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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In 1997, a book was published which changed the way the world looked at prediction. This book was The Bible Code written by
Michael
Drosnin (which was followed by The Bible Code 2: The Countdown in 2002). In The Bible Code, Drosnin tells us of a code
that exists within
the Bible (written 3000 years ago) which predicts events that (in retrospect) have already happened, are happening now, and are still to
happen. The Bible Code was deciphered by an Israeli mathematician (Dr Eliyahu Rips), using a computer-programmed 'skip sequence',
which, after eliminating all spaces between words, then looked for key words encoded in the text.
This is just one example taken from hundreds, all in 'code' which is fully diagramatically explained in the book. I would like to show some examples of such here but copyright
laws prevent me from so doing. However, having said that, for those who have not read any of Drosnin's books, copies of many examples are being flaunted openly
on the internet. Book 2 opens with the predicted destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001. A third book, The Bible Code: The Quest was scheduled to be released in October 2007, but until 19 October 2010 I was still eagerly awaiting my pre-ordered copy. It has finally arrived under a new subtitle of Saving the World. Drosnins 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 massive rock perched above the dropping well was formed in precisely the same manner as a stalactite, i.e. by running/dripping water leaving a
vast deposit of minerals which build up over a period of time. A great underground lake is the source of that water. It travels
approximately one mile underground along a thick layer of heavy mineralised rock (from which it dissolves those huge amounts of different minerals)
before emerging as a spring behind the well, gushing over the top at a reputed rate of 700 gallons per hour (3100 litres for younger
readers). It is claimed that it takes as short a period as 3 months to turn a child's small, cuddly teddy bear to stone! Many artefacts
on display in the small museum were left by celebrities to undergo the process of petrification.
The fable of Mother Shipton's life begins in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire in 1488. I use the word 'fable' because no-one knows for
certain whether or
not Mother Shipton actually existed, but if she did then it was most likely as Ursula Sonthiel. The legend tells us that the woman who attended her birth
reported hearing a tremendous crack of thunder followed by an exceedingly strong smell of sulphur as Ursula came into this world. She was
born in a cave close to the River Nidd, the cave itself (now a very popular tourist site) having been formed approximately 12,000 years earlier through a
collapsed deposit of minerals, supposedly created by the same spring that now flows over the dropping well. The baby was apparently so
hideous it was rumoured that her mother, a young girl of fifteen called Agatha Sonthiel, had actually been seduced out of wedlock by the Devil
himself.
There are many sites on the internet where you can read all of her prophecies, but it has long been established that they are hoaxes, the majority
having been written after the events happened. Despite this, her legend has been passed on through the generations and Mother
Shipton, just like King Arthur, Robin Hood and the unicorn has now become part of English