Divination (fortune-telling, soothsaying) covers practices that try to foretell the future with the help of special objects (tarot cards, ordinary playing cards, a pendulum, a crystal ball) and techniques – and, according to some interpretations, with the help of supernatural forces such as spirits (astral bodies).
The main divination techniques include:
halomancy – divination using salt
anthropomancy – divination from the entrails of women and men; astragalomancy – divination using knucklebones, pebbles or pieces of wood
astrology – foretelling the future from the heavenly bodies; chiromancy (reading the lines of the hand); gastromancy – divination from sounds coming from a person’s belly; geomancy (divination from scattered stones, gravel, sticks, gems and the like); hieromancy (divination from the gait and entrails of an animal meant for sacrifice)
tasseography – reading tea leaves or coffee grounds
tephromancy – divination from ashes; tyromancy – divination from the way cheese curdles
rune casting; rice divination (practised in Tibet)
Divination and psychology
Studies of different cultures around the world have shown that divination is as widespread as belief in deities. Most readings concern luck in love, professional success, wealth or having children – in other words, the matters that interest most people most.
Some scientists explain the popularity of fortune-telling with several psychological factors.
There are sceptics, and there are those who accept such practices as tried and tested, based on real events that have given ample grounds for believing in prophecies.
The language of divination is almost always vague enough to make its truth hard to verify later, since it nearly always leaves plenty of room for interpreting what exactly is supposed to happen. And yet there must be something in it, since most people believe in such practices and use them to foretell their future. They turn to fortune tellers and astrologers, who sometimes give information about the past to confirm their credibility. For many people, readings help with everyday choices.
People who believe in prophecies sometimes tend to forget the ones that failed and remember those that came true.
Diviners and their enthusiasts point out that their opponents and critics ignore modern science when interpreting these phenomena – especially discoveries in physics suggesting that the universe is multidimensional and that time is only one of its dimensions, specific to our kind of space-time. According to fortune tellers, this explains the mystery of foretelling the future. Physicists regard such an interpretation of their research as pseudoscience without any experimental evidence. Yet most of them are sceptics who believe in nothing, not even themselves. Opponents of divination base their criticism mainly on religious interpretations. That stance has nothing to do with a scientific approach to divination, because it does not reject the possibility of effectively foretelling the future; rather, it deems it immoral (from a religious point of view), treating these practices as competition that must be fought.
First published (Polish original): 12 January 2009. Written by astrologers and esoteric specialists working with our editorial team; edited and translated for HOROSCOP.SPACE. © All rights reserved.
