DIVINATION 



1813 



DIVINATION 



the familiar one of the Roman general who 

 stumbled as he stepped upon the shore of a 

 land he sought to conquer; this would be a 

 bad omen, but he made it a good one by treat- 

 ing the misstep as intentional, with the words, 

 "I salute thee, mother earth." Xenophon men- 

 tions the incident that during an assembly 

 some one sneezed, which was taken as a favor- 

 able omen for the matter under advisement. 

 The tendency to systematize omens led to 

 more and more artificial devices, while their 

 incorporation into the general systems of magic 

 made of divination an elaborate art. 



When advice is sought for a particular issue 

 which is in doubt, the appeal to lot follows; 

 yet the answer is not regarded as chance but 

 as directed by hidden forces of a magical 

 nature. Such procedure may involve the 

 method of representation or symbol; thus a 

 tree is planted at the birth of a child, and by 

 its growth is divined the growth or early death 

 of the child. Similarly, a set of arrows may 

 be set up in the wind, each representing a 

 young brave, and the one whose arrow falls 

 last is chosen as leader. The casting of lots 

 by bones out of which grew dice, by spinning 

 of cocoanuts (a primitive roulette) and the 

 use of cards as a means of deciding issues have 

 a further interest in that they appeal to the 

 gambling instinct, which is also ancient and 

 widespread. That gamblers are proverbially 

 superstitious about their luck may point to an 

 underlying common habit of mind. But divina- 

 tion develops many varieties in which the "re- 

 ligious" implication persists; of such nature is 

 the pricking for texts in the Bible, to indicate 

 desirable or timely decisions. Names for bap- 

 tism might be selected in this way; though 

 superficially resembling the custom obtaining 

 among primitive people, who thus try to deter- 

 mine which ancestor has returned in the new- 

 born child, the custom has obviously a differ- 

 ent social status. 



Divination leads to fortune-telling in gen- 

 eral. The use of cards is typical. By attach- 

 ing one fate to each of the four suits and 

 further varieties of fortune to each of the faces, 

 endless combinations are possible and all sorts 

 of issues in love, in business, in travel, in specu- 

 lation, in life, in health and disease, in recover- 

 ing lost articles', may be provided for. Simi- 

 larly, all the varieties of objects and incidents 

 that occur in dreams, by far-fetched analogy 

 and an artificial distribution of fate, may be- 

 come signs of what is about to happen (see 

 SUPERSTITION). Whether referred to dreams or 



to daily life, the divining habit attaches sig- 

 nificance to trivial incidents; spilling salt, stub- 

 bing one's toe, stepping on cracks, forgetting 

 an article of attire, getting up with the left 

 foot foremost, and also such playful cus- 

 toms as pulling petals of daisies to see whether 

 "he loves me" or "loves me not," the lore of 

 hang-nails and the various divinations (in tea- 

 cups, in the flame of candles, in melted wax) 

 that are used on Hallowe'en (the night when 

 spirits return to earth) illustrate the vestiges 

 of beliefs in divinations. The systematic forms 

 of fortune-telling embody in crude and dis- 

 torted manner the lore of astrology and the 

 related pseudo-sciences, and have little inter- 

 est outside of this relation. 



A special interest attaches to the forms of 

 divination which play to the subconscious indi- 

 cations of the performer. The best known of 

 these is the divining-rod for locating under- 

 ground water. A forked hazel rod (the details 

 have only a superstitious meaning) is held 

 loosely in the hand as the diviner walks over 

 the ground; and where it dips water will be 

 found. The dipping is due to the subconscious 

 movements of the "dowser" (as he is called in 

 England), to the shrewdness of his reading the 

 surface indications of a proper place for a well, 

 and to the fair chance of finding water rathrr 

 generally in localities where the practice pre- 

 vails; also to the neglect of observing failures 

 and the exaggeration of successes, which is the 

 human habit. 



Special mention must be given to a form of 

 divination which invites the imaginative fancy 

 of the seer. The reading in a mirror or on 

 the surface of the water issues of events or 

 what is going on at a distance is a power 

 accredited to certain persons in ancient and 

 modern times; it has been given the name of. 

 crystal-gazing (also scrying). Its use in divina- 

 tion was directly to project the future, to see 

 what is going on at a distance and for such 

 concrete purposes as the detection of crim- 

 inals. That such visions are in reality the 

 projections of a vivid imagery (such as all c.m 

 command in limited measure with closed eyes) 

 is clear; that their definiteness is aided by tho 

 reflection; that the movements seem in a 

 measure independent of the control of the 

 gazer, but actually are contributed by subcon- 

 scious as well as conscious memories and de- 

 sires these considerations give the process a 

 psychological interest. The interpretation of 

 such visions as are prophetic or telepathic rests 

 upon a very different basis. They form pictorial 



