Diviners

۳٬۲۳۹ طرفدار

۹۱ انتشار • فعال از ۲۰۱۵

Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of a magic ritual or practice. Using various methods, throughout history, diviners have been providing answers to querents by reading signs, events, or omens, often claiming to receive insight through supernatural agents such as spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the "will of the universe". Divination can be seen as an attempt to organize what appears to be random, so that it provides insight into a problem or issue at hand. Some practices of divination include astrology, Tarot card reading, rune casting, tea-leaf reading, Ouija boards, automatic writing, water scrying, numerology, pendulum divination and countless more. If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion. In its functional relation to magic in general, divination can have a preliminary and investigative role: the diagnosis or prognosis achieved through divination is both temporarily and logically related to the manipulative, protective or alleviative function of magic rituals. In divination one finds the cause of an ailment or a potential danger, in magic one subsequently acts upon this knowledge. Divination has long attracted criticism. In the modern era, it has been dismissed by the scientific community and by skeptics as being superstitious. Rigorous experiments do not support the notion that divination can actually predict the future more precisely or reliably than would be possible without such techniques.