Word Finder - divination

definition

The act of divining; a foreseeing or foretelling of future events.

definition

The apparent art of discovering secrets or the future by preternatural means.

definition

An indication of what is to come in the future or what is secret; a prediction.

That they were employed in divination is consonant with the facts already noted.

We are justified in concluding, therefore, that among the Greeks and Romans likewise the examination of the liver was the basis of divination in the case of the sacrificial animal.

As man approached the gods in sacrifice and prayers, so too the gods declared themselves to men by divers signs and tokens, which it was possible to read by the art of Divination (q.v.).

Prophetic personality now moved in a larger sphere than that of divination, important though that function be in the social life of the ancient state as instrumental in declaring the will of the deity when any enterprise was on foot.

Like Leonardo, but with much less than Leonardo's genius for scientific speculation and divination, Diirer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the laws of nature and natural appearances.

Similar in principle is coscinomancy, or divining by a sieve held suspended, which gives indications by turning; and the equally common divination by a suspended ring, both of which are found from Europe in the west to China and Japan in the east.

It constituted the most common form of divination in ancient Babylonia, where it can be traced back to the 3rd millennium B.C. Among the Etruscans the prominence of the rite led to the liver being looked upon as the trade-mark of the priest.

Among the Greeks and Romans likewise it was the liver that continued throughout all periods to play the chief role in divination through the sacrificial animal.

Amongst his scientific, theological and grammatical works mention may be made of De diis, containing an examination of various cults and ceremonials; treatises on divination and the interpretation of dreams; on the sphere, the winds and animals.

All the world over it is held that such people can assume the form of animals; sometimes the power of the shaman is held to depend on his being able to summon his familiar; among the Ostiaks the shaman's coat was covered with representations of birds and beasts; two bear's claws were on his hands; his wand was covered with mouse-skin; when he wished to divine he beat his drum till a black bird appeared and perched on his hut; then the shaman swooned, the bird vanished, and the divination could begin.

He married a daughter of Tarquinius and succeeded to the throne by the contrivance of his mother-in-law, Tanaquil, who was skilled in divination and foresaw his greatness.

It had been predicted that he should die when he met his superior in divination; and the prophecy was fulfilled in the person of Mopsus, whom Calchas met in the grove of the Clarian Apollo near Colophon.

When the latter desired to double the number of the equestrian centuries, Navius opposed him, declaring that it must not be done unless the omens were propitious, and, as a proof of his powers of divination, cut through a whetstone with a razor.

Philochorus also wrote on oracles, divination and sacrifices; the mythology and religious observances of the tetrapolis of Attica; the myths of Sophocles; the lives of Euripides and Pythagoras; the foundation of Salamis.

But the great prophets disallowed this claim, and the distinction which they draw between true prophecy and divination is recognized not only in the prophetical law of Deuteronomy but in earlier parts of the Pentateuch and historical books.

Among all Teutonic peoples from the time of the Cimbri onwards we frequently hear also of holy women whose duties were concerned chiefly with divination.

On the side of the Stoics it was argued that if divination was a real art, there must be gods who gave it to mankind; against this it was argued that signs of future events may be given without any god.

Divination is practised in all grades of culture; its votaries range from the Australian black to the American medium.

Among the Australian blacks, divination is largely employed to discover the cause of death, where it is assumed to be due to magic; in some cases the spirit of the dead man is held to give the information, in others the living magician is the source of the knowledge.

We find moreover as emi-scientific conception of the basis of divination; the whole of nature is linked together; just as the variations in the height of a column of mercury serve to foretell the weather, so the flight of birds or behaviour of cattle may help to prognosticate its changes; for the uncultured it is merely a step to the assumption that animals know things which are hidden from man.

Haruspication, or the inspection of entrails, was justified on similar grounds, and in the case of omens from birds or animals, no less than in astrology, it was held that the facts from which inferences were drawn were themselves in part the causes of the events which they foretold, thus fortifying the belief in the possibility of divination.

Confined to higher cultures on the other hand, for obvious reasons, is divination by automatic writing, which is practised in China more especially.

The sand divination so widely spread in Africa seems to be of a different nature.

In other cases the impression is involuntary or less consciously sought, as in dreams, which, however, are sometimes induced, for purposes of divination, by the process known as incubation or temple sleep. Dreams are sometimes regarded as visits to or from gods or the souls of the dead, sometimes as signs to be interpreted symbolically by means of dream-books, which are found not only in Europe but in less cultured countries like Siam.

Similarly dice are thrown for purposes of sortilege; the astragali or knucklebones, used in children's games at the present day, were implements of divination in the first instance.

But where autoscopic phenomena play the chief part the question of the origin of divination is less simple.

Divination of this sort, therefore, may be due to observation and experiment of a rude sort, rather than to the unchecked play of fancy which resulted in heteroscopic divination.

On the mound grow cypresses, acacias, what is called " the crystal tree," said not to be elsewhere found, and the Achillea, the plant whose stalks were employed in ancient times for purposes of divination.

If not intended from the first for purposes of divination, it was so used both before and after Confucius, and on that account it was exempted, through the superstition of the emperor of the Ts'in dynasty, from the flames.

In matters of ordinary life on which divine counsel was prayed for, it was usual to have recourse to this form of divination.

Divination by means of flies was known at Babylon."' There are other cases of names compounded of Baal and an element equivalent to a descriptive epithet, e.g.

It seems that opinions may be formed of inquiry and study alone, which are then constructive; but where intuitive perception or the perceptive imagination is a robust possession, the fruits of research become assimilative - the food of a divining faculty which needs more or less of it according to the power of divination.

The reputation of the Laplanders for skill in magic and divination is of very early date, and in Finland is not yet extinct.

During his divination the wizard fell into a state of trance or ecstasy, his soul being held to run at large to pursue its Witch= inquiries.

They possessed several means for rendering a person invisible, and various peculiar and complicated methods of divination, such as Imbas forosna, tein laegda, and dichetal do chennaib, are described in early authorities.

Together with this idolatry there is also a firm belief in the power of witchcraft and sorcery, in divination, in lucky and unlucky days and times, in ancestor worship, especially that of the sovereign's predecessors, and in several curious ordeals for the detection of crime.

Among these are the names of the months and the days of the week, those used in astrology and divination, some forms of salutation, words for dress and bedding, money, musical instruments, books and writings, together with a number of miscellaneous terms.

These descriptive terms are applied to one of the methods of divination employed by the ancient Hebrews, which, it is now generally agreed, consisted in a species of sacred lot.

Similar modes of divination were practised, it would seem, among the pre-Islamic Arabs.

That this method of divination was not in actual use after the Exile is shown by Neh.

Even up to the present day men of intellectual eminence like Dr Richard Garnett have convinced themselves that astromancy has a foundation of truth, just as there are still believers in chiromancy or other forms of divination.

Just as this latter method of divination rested on a well-defined theory, to wit, that the liver was the seat of the soul of the animal and that the deity in accepting the sacrifice identified himself with the animal, whose "soul" was thus placed in complete accord with that of the god and therefore reflected the mind and will of the god, so astrology is based on a theory of divine government of the world, which in contrast to "liver" divination assumes at the start a more scientific or pseudo-scientific aspect.

Hence in "liver" divination, as in astrology, the interpretations of the signs noted all have reference to public affairs and events and not to the individual's needs or desires.

While in a general way the reign of law and order in the movements of the heavenly bodies was recognized, and indeed must have exercised an influence at an early period in leading to the rise of a methodical divination that was certainly of a much higher order than the examination of an animal's liver, yet the importance that was laid upon the endless variations in the form of the phenomena and the equally numerous apparent deviations from what were regarded as normal conditions, prevented for a long time the rise of any serious study of astronomy beyond what was needed for the purely practical purposes that the priests as "inspectors" of the heavens (as they were also the "inspectors" of the sacrificial livers) had in mind.

Judicial astrology, as a form of divination, is a concomitant of natural astrology, in its purer astronomical aspect, but mingled with what is now considered an unscientific and superstitious view of world-forces.

Joseph de Maistre believed in comets as messengers of divine justice, and in animated planets, and declared that divination by astrology is not an absolutely chimerical science.

You can order or phone direct for a personal psychic phone reading using clairvoyance, mediumship, tarot or other divination oracles.

To say nothing of the later practice of using divination to determine who was or wasn't a witch.

One of the things that makes domino divination unique is its system of remedies.

In the Celtic Tradition, the year begins at Samhain, this is the most powerful night of the year to perform divination.