What is Divination and Why Do We Do It?
Divination satisfies a very normal human impulse. It's why nearly everyone does it, and that's a good thing.
Like many of my kind, my interest in things connected to the occult began with a strong interest in divination. I was a tarot reader long before I became a witch. And before that I was one of those really annoying people who read my horoscope and who knew most of the basics of my birth chart from memory.
Even people who would blanch at the idea of doing spellcraft know their sun and moon signs. And while there are some who are just a little scared of having a tarot reading, many more see you carrying a deck of cards and immediately want to know if you'll do a reading for them. People who love to hate on witchcraft often eat up divination practices with a spoon.
So what IS divination anyway?
The word "divination" is derivative of the latin word "divinare" which means "to predict" or "to discover the will of the gods." If you ask a dictionary what the word means today, it will tell you that "divination" means the ability to obtain knowledge into the future of secret things using supernatural means.
Let's quickly draw a line around what divination is not. Divination is not the same thing technically as prophesying or omens. They share some similar vibes, but there are differences. All three things represent the obtaining of knowledge about the future from a supernatural source. What's different is the mechanics of the delivery.
Divination traditionally involves some kind of device that is manipulated in some way and then interpreted for the purpose of obtaining knowledge about a thing, person, event, or circumstance. Maybe it's casting bones. Maybe it's cards. Maybe it's sticks with little marks on them. Maybe it's a bunch of found objects, or a book, or a plastic 8-ball filled with liquid and a window that lets you look at a weird little dice with text on each side. Just about anything can be turned into a divination tool, particularly if the object can provide randomized outcomes.
Prophesying, on the other hand, usually filters information through a person. That person may be a medium channeling messages from spirits, or an oracle with messages from deities. The person may be prophesying just randomly as the spirits move them, or it may be in the context of a ritual organized for the purpose, like the Norse practice of seidr. The information may be offered at the request of a seeker, but may also arrive unbidden.
Omens, even different still, usually are unbidden offers of information through various objects or creatures or events. Omens include things like having a murder of crows bark at you, or when a feather of a certain kind of bird shows up at your doorstep, or when a particular type of sea creature beaches itself in your town. It can be a specific type of color in the sky at a certain time of year, or a shooting star appearing overhead. Interpreting omens is often tricky, as many of the things that seem to be omens are also perfectly natural things that have perfectly un-supernatural explanations for why they are occurring.
So divination as a way of learning hidden information is marked by two key elements: first, it is occurring at someone's request -- there is specifically a seeker looking for the information (that seeker can be yourself), and second, the divination is happening through the use of a tool -- an object or set of objects -- that is interpreted by the person doing the divining.
How does divination work? Why do we do it?
That first question has many answers, and all of them can probably be embodied by using the adage of "where you stand depends on where you sit." In other words, your perception of how the Universe works will guide your understanding of how (and even whether) divination works. If you believe in an all-knowing deity, divination is the process of connecting to that deity. If you believe that we live in a Universe populated with a host of different spirits of differing levels of knowledge, then divination is about finding and contacting the entities you need to get the knowledge you require. If you don't believe in deity at all, you might still find divination useful because the tools tap into the unconscious, universal knowledge we all possess. Some people don't even need to get that deep -- they think that it's just a fun party game that they find entertaining as a psychological exercise of thinking about the future. I'm not here to try and tell you what to think on this point -- because while what I believe might work for me, it. might not for you. You might need something vastly different. And that is just as it should be.
The thing is, most of us have engaged in some form of divinatory practice. If you've read your horoscope in the morning paper, you've sampled divination. There are many games we played as children that were effectively divination games. If you plucked the petals of a daisy saying "he loves me" and "he loves me not," then you have engaged in divination. If you folded a piece of paper into what has been called a "cootie catcher," "chatterbox," or a "paper fortune teller" then you've been messing about with a divination tool. You probably weren't thinking terribly seriously about these games as you played them, but that is what they are, at bottom.
Because the fact is, human beings are wired to want to know the future, to want hidden knowledge. It's an impulse that we all have. That's why corporations will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to "trend forecasters" who can tell you what people will want to eat or do or buy in the future. It's why we have entire television networks devoted to promoting information trying to predict what will happen to the stock market, to the economy. We have people who have built very lucrative livelihoods for themselves by predicting the outcome of professional sports contests, and even elections. The people making these predictions may not be relying on magical techniques to make these predictions, but their predictions often have the feel of divination to them, and we certainly hang on their every word.
The insatiable desire for knowledge of this kind, knowledge beyond what is readily available, can stem from a number of different impulses. Sometimes it's a desire to "get ahead." If I know what's going to happen before it actually happens, then I have a chance to make a profit off of that knowledge, by being the first to leverage that knowledge. Welcome to how every "insider trading" crime ever happens. Also why people want to know what's going to be the "next big thing." Sometimes it is a desire to engage in good decision making. We don't always know what we don't know, and being able to inform ourselves of those hidden variables can ensure that as we take our next steps in any endeavor, that we don't make any mistakes. It's reassuring. And then there's just the flat out anxiety about the future, about ourselves. That imposter syndrome we all can buy into from time to time that tells us that whatever knowledge we might possess in a situation is insufficient, and to really make sure we're okay, we need to know more.
Human beings don't like not knowing something, and if they see a way to reveal knowledge that is hidden, they will take it. So, the impulse to engage in divination practices is pretty darn rational in that circumstance.
The importance of skepticism
All that said, and even as someone who regularly uses and teaches divination practices, I am here to tell you that you should hold some skepticism around them.
I've always been a big fan of a conceptualization that actually comes from Christian theologian Paul Tillich's 1957 classic, Dynamics of Faith. In Tillich's view, doubt is actually an essential part of believing in something. In Tillich's view "[Doubt] does not question whether a special proposition is true or false. It does not reject every concrete truth, but it is aware of the element of insecurity in every existential truth. At the same time, the doubt which is implied in faith accepts this insecurity and takes it into itself as an act of courage."
Blind faith in something, faith which purges and demonizes the idea of doubt, is ultimately toxic, resulting in polyanna-ish behavior in its most innocuous version, or (at its worst) becomes the kind of fanaticism that does violence to the self and to others in the name of faith. I tend to avoid using the word "faith" altogether most of the time when referring to paganism, often choosing instead to use the term "path" instead, largely because our culture so thoroughly embraces the idea of faith as believing in things with an absoluteness that precludes doubt.
Tillich challenges that proposition directly by his insistence that faith and doubt are inherent partners. In Tillich's conception, if you are having doubts about the thing you say you believe, that's evidence of how core that thing is to your existence, it's nature as an "ultimate concern" in your life. Realism requires us to engage with the risk that what we believe might be wrong. If we're not engaging with it, we're either stupid, disingenuous, or dangerous.
From a scientific perspective, doubt is also important. One of my personal heroes is Dr. Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who is most famous for discovering the wreck of the Titanic. I had the pleasure of seeing him speak at a conference about a decade ago about the work he'd done since then, deep sea exploration that challenged many of the critical assumptions we have about whether there is life at the bottom of the ocean and what it's like. Ballard began his lecture holding up a thick, hardbound book. "This is my high school physics textbook," he said. "And everything in it has since been proven to be garbage." He then tossed the book away. The point he was trying to make was that many of the technological advances that he was making in deep sea exploration, and the discoveries those technologies had made possible, were the direct result of him consistently embracing the question, "what if everything I think I know is actually wrong?" The earth was flat. Until it wasn't. Photosynthesis and the ability to create oxygen was the only way to support life on earth, until it wasn't. (Ballard discovered organisms at the bottom of the ocean who lived off of a process called chemosynthesis.) Progress comes not from blindly accepting things as they are, but by harnessing constructive doubt to challenge our assumptions and push past false limitations.
Holding doubt beside your credulity with respect to divination tools is an important part of being realistic and grounded in your practice. It keeps you honest.
It also provides some protection against scam artists who use divination tools as a means of separating people from their cash. I've discussed before that there are many ways that people who are in the witchy community are targeted by scammers, and divination is central to many of them. Whether it's the scammer spoofing a more well-known practitioner sliding into your DM to offer a reading, or a reader who tries to upsell you on a very expensive "purification ritual" to help dispel the "darkness in your aura" that is causing you to have bad luck, there are lots of ways that folks who purport to offer divination services are full of shit. Healthy skepticism let's you protect yourself by reminding you that not everyone who pretends to have divination gifts actually does, and even people who have gifts can misuse them.
Which brings me to the most important reason why skepticism is healthy -- because ultimately, YOU are the master of your fate, not fate. I have always been a big proponent of the idea that humans are gifted with free will, and that we are sovereign over our lives and our path. Divination is not telling us what our inescapable future is. Divination tells us what's going on, and based on how we're currently applying our actions and energy, where we'll likely end up. As a being with free will, you can always change what you are doing and what energy you are applying and change the outcome if you don't like where the divination tool is saying you're headed. In an infinite universe of infinite possibility, the idea that you have to look at a bunch of cards (runes, sticks, bones, whatever) and simply accept that whatever they say is the only possibility for your future is bullshit. You are more powerful than that. And you shouldn't let anyone tell you differently. Because whoever is doing that is looking to control you for their own purposes, and you shouldn't trust them.
Skepticism gives us the ability to take the information we learn from divination and put it in the right perspective. Divination does not deliver an inescapable edict handed down from the sky. Rather, it gives you valuable information that is usually hidden from you. And using that information you can do things differently. You can adjust your attitude about things, or create different opportunities for yourself. You can make changes, and in turn, change what happens. Like Dr. Ballard, divination gives you the power to ask the question, "what if what I think I know about this is wrong?" And instead of being scared that might be true, it can free you, become fuel for you to imagine an entirely different and better future for yourself.
In the end, that's what we really want and need -- the ability to make a better future, for ourselves and our community.
Blessed be, witches!