Divination, or mantic operations, are culturally sanctioned methods of arriving at a judgement of the unknown through a consideration of incomplete evidence. It is likely that divinatory practices have existed since the remote origins of human society. There is documentary evidence on Mesopotamian divination some 4,000 years ago, when priests regularly predicted the outcome of events through the examination of the livers of sacrificed animals. This practice, called haruspicy, appears to have diffused into Western Asia and to have been adopted by the Etruscan culture of northern Italy. The Etruscans also divined through observation of the effects of lightning and through the examination of the flight of birds, a method still common in insular Southeast Asia. Both customs were incorporated into the culture of the ancient Romans. Scapulimancy, divination from the appearance of cracks in the heated shoulder-blades of sacrificed animals, was general in ancient China, where it replaced an earlier method using tortoise shells, and has been reported elsewhere in Asia and North America. Chinese civilization was also the origin of one of the most sophisticated systems of divination, the topic of oracles known as the I Ching of Changes which is believed to be at least 3,000 years old. Another mantic procedure of worldwide distribution and immemorial antiquity is divination through spirit possession, of which a famous classic example was the prophetess called Python at Delphi in Greece. Divination through consideration of the behaviour of celestial bodies, or astrology, was found in ancient Mesopotamia, India and China, in Central America and Saharan Africa and is still practised in many areas. In Europe the use of Tarot cards, crystal-gazing and a form of automatism called the ouija board enjoy widespread popularity. All these divinatory methods fall into the category of procedures concerned with predicting future events. A second category, typical of small-scale tribal societies, seeks to uncover the hidden causes of present misfortune in the recent or more remote past. Such blame-allocating divinatory methods have been well described by anthropologists in Africa (e.g. Werbner 1973; Turner 1975). In contrast, a predictive African system which rivals the Chinese I Ching in formal complexity is the Ifa oracle of the Yoruba-speaking peoples of West Africa (Bascom 1969).
Modern anthropology has generally held divination in low esteem, often regarding it as evidence of primitive irrationality. For all the sensitivity of his celebrated study, E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s (1937) opinion of the truth value of the Zande poison oracle of Central Africa is essentially similar to E.B. Tylor’s (1871) generalization that divination was ‘a sincere but fallacious system of philosophy’. Yet serious consideration of the subject in Western culture goes back at least to the Roman orator and writer Cicero, who in De Divinatione (44—42 bce) usefully distinguished between deductive forms, which relied on the unambiguous, rule-governed reading of objective phenomena, and intuitive methods which called for subjective interpretation. Recent anthropological scholarship, in distancing itself from the implicitly derogatory approach typical of an earlier era, makes similar distinctions between divinatory forms of knowing. However, the latest field studies characteristically discover both logico-deductive and intuitive—interpretive cognitive modes operating within the same divinatory system. Further, a recent survey of divination in Africa links this cognitive dualism with the neurophysiologist R.W. Sperry’s work on the differential functions in human beings of the left and right cerebral hemispheres (Ornstein 1973). In a typical consultation, it is suggested, the diviner initiates a switch to the holistic, pattern-seeking mode of knowing special to the normally subordinate right brain. Having achieved this altered state of consciousness the diviner then proceeds, with the help of the client, to bring together the information generated in the ‘mystical’ right-brain state with input from the analytic, linear left-brain (Peek 1991). According to Peek, ‘all types of divination aid decision-making by literally reviewing the problem in light of different knowledge … and then the process integrates this perspective with contemporary reality by means of discussion between diviner and client’.
Diviners employ a variety of techniques for achieving the change from ordinary consciousness. In the Americas the use of psychoactive drugs is widespread. In Africa and Asia the same effect is commonly achieved through an auditory stimulus, typically the use of percussive instruments such as drums or rattles. Victor Turner (1972) describes how the Ndembu diviner of Central Africa is taken out of his ‘everyday self’ and gains heightened intuitive awareness through drumming and singing, as well as the use of archaic formulae in questions and responses.
This view of divination, so far from seeing it as irrational, credits it with manifesting an unusual, supra-rational form of knowing that provides privileged access to normally hidden information. The view has obvious affinities with the psychoanalyst C.G.Jung’s interpretation of the I Ching. Jung (1951) saw this ancient oracle, in which the seemingly fortuitous fall of coins or disposition of yarrow stalks directs the client to the appropriate text, as reflecting a principle of ‘synchronistic’ connection between events which was timeless and entirely distinct from the cause-and-effect connections apparent to ordinary consciousness.
These findings are consistent with earlier anthropological descriptions which have emphasized the abnormal status of the typical diviner. He or she is typically someone who, by reason of ethnic origin, occupation, physical condition or sexual orientation is considered marginal to ordinary society. The transvestite diviners of some Native American societies, the Romany fortune-tellers of Europe, the Untouchable magician-diviners of Hindu India and the blind diviners of the Sudanic Dinka are examples. It seems reasonable to assume that social margin-ality of some kind helps the diviner to ‘see’ the situation of the client with the requisite degree of detachment and overall perspective. Frequently also the diviner signals his abnormal status through some standardized but unusual behaviour. Thus the male Nyoro diviner of Uganda symbolically takes on feminine attributes by using his left hand to cast the oracular cowrie shells (Needham 1967).
