Isleen's Magickal Mist-ery Tour

Divination…what is it exactly? If you ask someone who either doesn’t know much about it or believe in it, they may call it “fortune telling” or “hocus pocus”. If you check the dictionary, you’ll get: “the practice of attempting to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means”, which I like better. But to get to the best definition, in my opinion, we need to examine the etymology of the word and derive our own from that.

The online etymology dictionary has the word origins of  divination listed as: “late 14c., from O.Fr. divination (13c.), from L. divinationem (nom. divinatio) “the power of foreseeing, prediction,” from divinatus, pp. of divinare, lit. “to be inspired by a god“.

Combine that with the etymology of the both the adjective AND verb divine: [adj] “c.1300, from O.Fr. devin, from L. divinus “of a god,” from divus “a god,” related to deus “god, deity” . 

Mash all that together, what do we get? How about this: Using supernatural insight, inspired by the Divine, to discover a possible or foreseeable future. Yeah, I like it!

So, that’s what it is…now, why do we do it? Because either we, or whomever we are divining for, are seeking Divine Guidance. It is not about seeing what will happen, it’s about seeing what could happen. It can show us that we are on the right track…or if we see something we don’t like, it gives us the opportunity to change the course of future events, or to prepare for the things that we cannot change. Just think about Charmed. When Phoebe got a premonition that so-and-so was gonna get fried by a demonic fireball, it was not always a foregone conclusion.

Aaaand, moving on…

Some common forms of divination are Astrology, Geomancy, the Tarot, the I Ching, and direct psychic means (such as clairvoyance and clairaudience).

Astrology uses the position and movement of celestial bodies as indicators to what will/is happening in our daily lives.

Geomancy is divination by means of interpreting markings on the ground, or patterns made by handfuls of items scattered on the ground. Most definitions use soil, rocks and sand as examples of what is scattered…but all I ever think of, when I read about Geomancy, is the scene in Willow when the wizard “consults the bones” by shaking them like Yahtzee dice and scattering them on the ground to seek an answer.

The Tarot is a set of 78 cards used in divination. It is used by the reader to connect to the the subconscious mind (or Universal Consciousness) in order to to answer questions, predict future events, or to understand past and current events. The deck is divided into The Major Arcana and The Minor Arcana. There are 56 cards in the Minor Arcana which are categorized into four suits: Wands, which symbolize action; Cups, which symbolize emotions; Swords, which symbolizes intellect; and Pentacles, which symbolizes material concerns. The remaining 22 cards make up the Major Arcana, which depict archetypes and elemental forces.

The I Ching is a bibliomancy (divination using books) method using the Book of Changes (or “I Ching”). The book is organized into an 8×8 grid of 64 hexagrams – called Trigrams – representing the states and the dynamic relationships of the eight elements (each of which is represented by a hexagram). The eight elements are: Qian (Heaven); Xun (Wind); Kan (Water); Gen (Mountain); Kun (Earth), Zhen (Thunder), Li (Fire); and Dui (Lake).

Using the book as an oracle consists of the seeker asking a question, opening the text to a seemingly random page, and then reading the text associated with the hexagram on that page.

Using Direct Psychic Means for divination is different for each person who has these abilities. There are many ways in which people can gain information. A few example are: Clairvoyance (seeing/visions), Clairaudience (hearing/listening), Claircognizance (knowing), Clairsentience (feeling/touch).

True divination is more than just “going through the motions” of a divination system such as the Tarot, Runes or Astrology. True divination is when the reader interprets things, not just by what the tools of the system suggest, but by their ‘intuition’, by their connection to Divine, and the one they are divining for. And, now that I think of it…sometimes these ‘tools’ are not even used. Sometimes we receive messages without the use of tools…things just ‘come to you’. So, with or without the use of tools…

Well, I’d say “Stay tuned for next week’s post” but this was was a wee bit late. So stay tuned til this Friday when I’ll have more stuffs to share.

Toodles!