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pinkpsychic · Site Admin Joined: 16 Jan 2007 Posts: 201

Divination (Greek μαντεια, from μαντις "seer"), is the attempt of ascertaining information by interpretation of omens or an alleged supernatural agency.

If a distinction is to be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a formal or ritual and often social character, usually in a religious context; while fortune-telling is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Divination is often dismissed by skeptics, including the scientific community, as being mere superstition: in the 2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, Alexander the false prophet, trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-affairs, visitations for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure, and successions to estates" though most Romans believed in dreams and charms. Advocates of divination will usually cite a mass of anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of divination.

Divination is a universal cultural phenomenon which anthropologists have observed as being present in many religions and cultures in all ages up to the present day.

Theories
Beyond mere explanations for anecdotal evidence, some theories have been proposed of how some forms of divination might result in meaningful messages. One theory is that the divination process allows messages from the subconscious mind to emerge into the conscious world. For example, using the I Ching oracle, a person with a very good knowledge of the 64 chapters of the I Ching might subconsciously direct the division of the yarrow stalks to obtain a relevant oracle. After an I Ching hexagram has been found, interpretation is needed to obtain an answer to the question posed, and again, this allows the subconscious to influence the outcome. This theory presupposes that the subconscious mind has a relevant message to deliver, which in any particular case may or may not be true.

Sometimes random decisions are recognized by modern science as effective ways to address a problem. Mathematical problems may be addressed by Monte Carlo algorithms in which pseudo-random numbers are used to test a function. In game theory, choices must be made randomly to prevent opponents from devising an effective counter strategy. A similar role might exist for the I Ching, which is sometimes described as an "invention machine", in which any random combination of hexagrams potentially leads to a new and different idea. Perhaps divination schemes may be seen as efforts to divide conceptual space into segments, and randomly directing attention to any segment is potentially productive.