Divination (Lat. divinatio; Gr. manteia, mantikê technê), the act of obtaining the knowledge of unknown or future things by supernatural revelation, or more strictly, the knowledge of the divine thought manifested to the human soul by objective or subjective signs, and apprehended by means outside the range of the rational. It postulates a belief in a divine providence, and the possibility of reciprocal relations between man and God considered as being able to contribute to man's happiness. Its essential characteristic is thus a belief that the divine thought may be comprehended by the human understanding in a knowledge of a special nature, more or less direct, more or less complete, but always through supernatural means, with or without the concurrent agency of the reason. Thus its domain includes all that the human mind can apprehend by its own powers; in the first place, the future, in so far as it escapes rational foresight; in the second place, the past and the present, in so far as they are inaccessible to ordinary investigation. This supernatural knowledge, says M. Bouché-Leclercq, has been oftener applied to the investigation of the past or of the present than to that of the future. Most of the ancient prodigies were considered as having their causes in the past; the result of their interpretation was always to make known the present will of the gods, and through that, but indirectly, the secrets of the future. And in the future even, considered as capable of being modified, divination oftener teaches that which should happen in accordance with the actual plan of providence, than reveals that which actually will happen. It is closely connected with magic, which may here be defined summarily as the art of voluntarily producing effects contrary to the laws of nature, by a mastery over obscure supernatural forces. Many of its methods consist in the interpretation of the marvellous effects produced at first by magical receipts, and there is an element of magic in every practice or rite destined to prepare or to produce an act of divination. While magic is the consequence of the active knowledge which permits the human will to make use of supernatural influences, the specially prophetic faculty—the particular function of the diviner—on the other hand, is the result of the contemplative knowledge which places the divine thought within the scope of the human intelligence. The former is an enlargement of the activity and of the human initiative at the expense of the divine freedom; the latter is like an increase of visual power added to the understanding.
Otherwise a broad distinction may be made between artificial divination by haruspication, astrology, lots, the interpretation of prodigies, lighting, angury, and the like; and natural divination, by dreams and prophetic oracles, considered as the direct revelation of the divine will, or an inward intuition flashed with irresistible conviction upon the human soul. The last subjective divination follows from that conception of the prophetic function which had its place in the philosophical system of Plato. It proceeds by a state of psychic exaltation or prophetic ecstasy, which suspends the intellectual energies of the human agent in a kind of sympathetic passivity suitable for the transmission of the divine thought. The conditions most favourable for receiving the divine impressions have beforehand been induced by the weakening or the destruction of the individuality of the medium through certain morbid physiological conditions, as ecstatic enthusiasm, deep sleep, sickness, or the approach of death—the last, a notion that lingers long in the heart of our modern civilisation. The scientific spirit of Aristotle rejects external divination and accepts subjective prophecy, but reduces it to nothing more than the natural exercise of a special faculty. 'It is neither easy,' he says, 'to despise such things, nor yet to believe them.' The Stoical school maintained divination because the gods were too beneficent to have denied to men a gift so good, but they identified providence with necessity or the inevitable connection of causes and consequences, and thus involved divination in an illogical confusion betwixt fatalism and free-will, the only reason for its existence that remained being its utility. The usual attempt at an explanation was that divination and the consecutive resolution of man had been foreseen with the rest by providence, and that thus its end was active co-operation in the realisation of the divine plan. The Epicureans made divination impossible by leaving it neither object nor agent, for their gods exercised no providence over men. The sceptical Lucian imitates Aristophanes in his amusing burlesques on the difficulty which Apollo feels in composing his official hexameters. The brilliant Carneades left divination in its fatal dilemma betwixt necessity and free-will, and Cicero follows with a halting conservatism, unable entirely to surrender his wishes to a conviction that his logic demands. Pliny the naturalist and Suetonius feel all the embarrassments of the old dilemma, and their attitude to divination may to some extent be explained by classifying them as superstitious rationalists. Plutarch, an eclectic Platonist, enumerates with marked particularity all the prodigies and miracles that had happened to his heroes, and seems to have believed in an innate human faculty for divination, a state of receptivity through which the soul becomes the instrument of God, just as the body is the instrument of the soul. With the spiritual revival that marked the rise of Neoplatonism, we find divination again established and based on cosmic sympathy. The Egyptian ascetic Plotinus accepted inward revelation, and directly ascribed all the phenomena of divination to the agency of the gods and other spiritual forces. Porphyry had an intensely vivid sense of the spiritual in nature, and regarded the supernatural and its external expression almost as the least extraordinary of all her secrets. The divine communicates itself to the human through inward illumination in specially gifted souls, and to others less highly endowed through dreams, chance presages, and voices.
The early Christian controversialists accepted the supernatural inspiration of the Pagan oracles, but explained that it came not from God, like that of the Hebrew prophets and the saints, but from the devil. It was easy for them to demonstrate the fallacy and errors of the ancient oracles, but they were hardly logical in, at the same time, accepting such of these as could be interpreted as foretelling the coming of Christ or some of the peculiar dogmas of Christian theology. It was St Augustine who finally formulated the orthodox opinion of western Christianity on the subject in a special treatise, De Divinatione Daemonum. He limits greatly the part ascribed to conscious fraud in the function of the diviner, as he found the whole mystery sufficiently explained by the intervention of the bad angels, which existed in such countless numbers. The devils imitated as far as possible the divine methods, and hence we have false dreams, visions, and prophetic inspirations resembling in everything save their origin those so often vouchsafed to the saints. Thus early Christianity agreed perfectly with Paganism upon the facts of divination, simply substituting the wicked angel for the good genius and the gods of a polytheistic religion. It merely eliminated the external rites, as infected with magic, substituting for these prayer, and preserved everything that came spontaneously from God, as dreams, visions, and prophetic inspirations. Perhaps the feelings that lay at the heart of the faith in the ancient divination helped unconsciously to prepare the human mind for the Christian belief in providence, in the efficacy of prayer, and in a special revelation of God to man.
Many of the most ancient forms of artificial divination have survived to our own day, even in the heart of our vaunted modern civilisation. The sense of the efficacy of these methods undoubtedly depends on the association of ideas in supposed analogies, and in symbolism. The Samoan rain-doctors wet a stone when they want rain, and dry it at the fire when they want dry weather; and sorcerers all the world over bring harm upon their victim by wishing it strongly, or by prophesying that it will happen, as well as by symbolically representing it in some simple act, as by torturing a wax-model or the like. There is an elemental confusion between the subjective and the objective connection which the primitive mind is unable to distinguish. It cannot resist the conviction that association in thought involves similar connection in reality. The analogies are not consciously arbitrary, but admit fairly of ratiocination if we can get into the proper mental attitude to commence the chain. Rousseau's conviction of his salvation or damnation from his hitting or missing a tree with a stone is based upon a mental process natural enough to the primitive mind. Added to this is the belief in the direct agency of supernatural powers which influence the casting of lots or the tossing of a coin, now a mere mechanical appeal to blind chance, but once a solemn attempt to educe the divine will. Early grave ideas of supernatural interference with games of chance linger long in folklore, and we still turn our chair to change our luck at dice or cards, and attach absurd importance to certain numbers for lottery-tickets. The Moravian Brethren even chose their wives by sortilege or casting lots with prayer, just as the Hebrew patriarchs did at grave or doubtful junctures three thousand years ago. The ancient Greek kottabos, by which fortune in love was discovered by the particular splash made by wine thrown out of a cup into a metal basin; the astragali, or knucklebones of the Romans, used for divination and as dice; the Polynesian divination by spinning the niu or cocoa-nut to see if a sick person will recover; and the playing-cards by means of which Gypsies still read fortunes at English fairs (cartomancy), are enough to show the great variety in range of methods of divining. Many of these have been gravely formulated and systematised into pseudo-sciences. Thus astrology was not only one of the most serious studies of the ancient Chaldeans, but was still more than respectable in the time of Newton; augury by the sight and cries of birds alone gave employment to a whole college of officials in ancient Rome; and the ordeal by fire or battle had the most solemn sanction of the medieval Christian church.
Many of the notions lingering in folklore about the hearing of certain birds on the right or the left hand, or the meaning attached to first meeting certain animals or people and the like, may be understood by symbolism; but many more are now at least completely inexplicable and hopelessly confusing. Dreams to animistic thinkers are directly due to spiritual intercourse, and their symbolical interpretation (oneiromancy), either as taken directly or by the equally valid method of contraries, has been practised from the days of Joseph until now, and has given rise to a rich crop of folklore superstitions everywhere. Divination by the appearance of entrails, or haruspication, was much respected by the ancient Romans, and is still practised by the Malays and Polynesians. Something similar to it is scapulomancy, the method of divining by the cracks and lines made in a shoulder-blade placed in the fire. Palmistry, or cheiromancy, has still its thousands of votaries and its own literature, and is warmly defended by those who fail to see how childish is the sham symbolism, and how entirely arbitrary are all the analogies on which it is based. Other methods of divining again depend on the more or less conscious action of the agent, who none the less, however, is either a knave or a dupe. Such is the planchette, by means of which answers in writing are given from the spirit-world; but the most famous form in this kind is the divining-rod, with its supposed power of indicating a hidden spring of water, a vein of ore, or a buried treasure (rhabdomancy). Of the same nature are the ancient coscinomancy, with a hanging sieve and shears, and the ordeal of the key, both highly useful where a culprit was apt to betray himself by his fears. Other of the thousand forms of divination are bibliomancy, by opening at random the Old or New Testament, or such popular books as the works of Homer or Virgil; crystalomancy, by looking into a crystal or beryl to see the future represented directly in pictures, or symbolically by figures capable of being interpreted; geomancy, by the observation of points or lines on the earth, or on paper; pyromancy, by the behaviour of fire; and botanomancy, from the chance combinations made by the wind upon leaves of trees on which words and questions had been written. Of profound significance also are the barking of dogs, the fall to the right or left hand of stones or sticks flung upwards, the behaviour of a ring hung over a cup at the approach of particular persons, the spots on the finger-nails, the physiognomy of the persons met by chance at critical periods, the blowing off the seeds of the dandelion, or the pulling off the petals of the daisy with certain time-honoured formulas repeated the while. Countless omens are derived by means of hemp sown at midsummer, by nuts burned before a fire, from certain appearances of green ivy leaves, willow-wands, and the like; while those who are observant of the proper rites may ward off ill-luck, and force the future to their convenience, with the sign of the cross, and the use of the horseshoe, silver, or the holly. The future is often foretold also by apparitions, and these are not infrequently, as in the classical case of the witch of Endor, capable of being called forth for the purpose of prophesying by powerful sorcerers.
Divination is founded on faith, but has often also been helped by fraud. It is a sincere although fallacious philosophy, and finds its strongest support in the fancied proofs of its truth that strike the minds of a primitive people, who forget or overlook the misses in their eagerness to verify the hits. The persistent tendency to believe what one wishes to believe, and the inherent human craving for mysteries and wonders, account for any belief. 'The human understanding,' says Bacon, 'when any proposition has been once laid down (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords), forces everything else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although most cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions.'
See the articles APPARITION, ASTROLOGY, AUGURY, CHARMS, DEMONOLOGY, DREAM, OMENS, ORACLES, ORDEAL, MAGIC, MYSTICISM, PALMISTRY, and SORTES VIRGILIANÆ; also Bouché-Leclercq's Histoire de la Divination dans l'Antiquité (4 vols. 1879-82); and F. W. H. Myers on 'Greek Oracles' in his Essays—Classical (1883).