Forms Of Divination Research Articles

Reflective Ontology and Intuitive Credibility in Chinese Six Lines Prediction

Any form of divination can be intuitively compelling without the need for ontological elaboration, but practices like Chinese six lines prediction involve complex ontological accounts, raising the question of what effect this has on divination’s authority and persuasiveness. The explicit ontology of six lines prediction appears to make it especially persuasive, because it provides a coherent model of epistemology and causation that is readily comparable to scientific observation and description based on constant principles. Meanwhile, six lines prediction’s mathematical character adds to its intuitive authority. By relying on a predetermined system of correlates, it creates the impression that the diviner is not the source of the divinatory result or its interpretation. This likely allows six lines prediction to flourish in an environment in which it is officially classified as ‘superstition’.

Divination and Ontologies

The way types of divination move round the planet means it is not helpful to simply attribute one unitary ontology to specific techniques or to groups of practitioners. Explaining divination in terms of ‘ontology’ homogenizes cognitive and conceptual multiplicity, and pre-empts the possible outcomes of divination. Moreover, this contradicts the fundamentally open nature of divination, and the fact that in many forms of divination the reformulation of questions helps keep futures open. With examples drawn from Mambila spider divination, I suggest what an epidemiology of beliefs and ontologies that gather around divination could look like. On this account, divination acts as a ‘boundary object’, mediating both the cognitive differences among clients and the conceptual differences between clients and diviners.

Alamarcelvan and Atalvallan

The origin for the divine forms of Lord Dakshinamoorthy also named as south facing deity and Lord Natarajar, which are commonly seen in siva temples are described in Sangam literature. It reveals the importance and antiquity of siva moorthy forms two thousand years ago. The two forms that are incorrectly featured in today's Saiva temples are the Natarajar Alamarselvan and Adalvallan, who sit under a stone tree and teach wisdom. Both forms embody glorious theology. Are of special interest in the Sanskrit literature of over two thousand years ago. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explain the Alamarselvan and Adalvallan portraits and their philosophy, as pointed out in the Sangam literature.

Christian Divination in Late Antiquity by Robert Wiśniewski

Reviewed by: Christian Divination in Late Antiquity by Robert Wiśniewski Jennifer Eyl Robert Wiśniewski Christian Divination in Late Antiquity Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020 Pp. 287. €105.00. If a Christian in late antiquity wanted to divine secret information about the past, present, or even the future, what would he or she do? If a Christian wanted to know how to proceed with regard to an important decision, how would he or she find divine counsel? If a Christian sought to be healed of an intractable ailment, where might he or she go? What practices and strategies were available for gaining access to the hidden information about what did or would happen in the world, what one ought or ought not do, or how one could be cured? These questions stand at the center of Robert Wiśniewski’s Christian Divination in Late Antiquity. A much-revised English version of his earlier 2013 book in Polish, Wiśniewski primarily divides the monograph into chapters based on divinatory technique or practice. Chapter One explores attitudes towards forms of divination among Christian ecclesiastical leaders such as Athanasius, Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea. The chapter also details a history of legislation against divination among the emperors Constantine, Constantius II, Valentinian, Theodosius, and Honorius. Wiśniewski does not suppose that “ordinary Christians” complied with all such laws and ecclesiastical teachings but uses the chapter as a starting point to discuss how Christians continued to employ divinatory techniques despite such top-down prohibitions. The second chapter focuses on prophecy. Wiśniewski points to a dip in references to prophetic activity in Christian sources in the third century, on the heels of Montanism. Yet, we see a resurgence, in the literary record anyway, of prophetic claims in the hagiographies of the desert monks and other ascetics of the fourth century and the centuries that follow. The Life of Antony, the Life of Paul, and the writings about Martin of Tours, for example, assert that ascetics had the ability to answer questions that depended on a kind of clairvoyance. Wiśniewski also considers numerous letters sent to ascetics, enquiring about the future (e.g., “Should I marry?” “Will my servant recover from a dog bite?”). The third chapter, “Take and Read,” explores forms of bibliomancy among late antique Christians. In addition to Augustine’s quite famous account in Confessions, the chapter considers evidence from the Life of Antony, Theophanes’s Chronographia, and the Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite. Wiśniewski looks at evidence for bibliomantic practices that range from opening a gospel or Pauline letter and drawing mantic information from the first words seen on the page, to [End Page 457] the assumed divine power of the physical codex itself for warding off headaches. He suggests that the expanded use of the codex among Christians may account for an increase in bibliomantic uses of divine text. Chapter Four focuses on the sorts of texts which were created for the specific use of divination, for example, the Sortes Sanctorum, the Gospel of the Lots of Mary, and the Sortes Monacenses. The writing of divinatory lot-texts was hardly invented by Christians, and here Wiśniewski deliberates on the process of “Christianizing” the practice. This chapter demonstrates the difficulty of working with categories like Christian, pagan, religious, and secular (more on this problem in a moment). Chapter Five examines the divinatory power ascribed to the bodies of saints—touching the body, possessing relics of the body, or even being in proximity to the body (in a shrine, martyrium, or altar). The author also considers what appears to be a widespread practice of using lots at the graveside of a saint or on an altar containing saints’ relics. These “oracular tickets” (a Christianized form of cleromancy) have been discovered at Oxyrhynchus and at various Christian sanctuaries across Egypt, and we find a sole literary reference to the practice in Gregory of Tours’s Lives of the Fathers. Chapter Six explores the extent to which late antique Christians consulted demoniacs, or energumens, for information not accessible to regular humans. The practice is not mentioned in any canons or laws produced by the church, but is condemned by Athanasius...

<em>Imago Dei</em>: la perspectiva de Ibn ʻArabī a la luz de la tradición judeocristiana

El concepto de la forma divina del ser humano es mencionado en varias descripciones en las tres religiones abrahámicas mayores. El enfoque tradicional judeocristiano de Imago Dei (La imagen de Dios) tiene tres perspectivas principales: sustantiva, funcional y relacional. Ibn ‘Arabī, como pensador y místico musulmán, explicó esta idea a través del concepto de espejo y otros dos conceptos, a saber, el ‘Hombre Perfecto’ y la vicegerencia de Dios. Consideró la forma divina del ser humano como un espejo a través del cual Dios se manifiesta. Este artículo ofrece una visión general comprensiva de la interpretación de Ibn ‘Arabī a la luz de los enfoques judeocristianos. La explicación de Ibn ‘Arabī incluye tres enfoques. A través del concepto del hombre perfecto, la explicación de Ibn ‘Arabī se acerca a la interpretación sustantiva, y a través del concepto de vicegerencia, revela la interpretación funcional. El artículo reconoce una interpretación relacional de la forma divina a través de algunas explicaciones contradictorias que pueden hallarse en sus libros. Este análisis de su explicación también arroja bastante luz sobre aspectos de su perspectiva antropológica.

The Importance of the Sun Symbol in the Restoration of Sámi Spiritual Traditions and Healing Practice

Today, artefacts of the past have immense value for Sámi shamans, artists, and custodians of culture who are reengaging with their spiritual traditions. A cultural revival is taking place through various applications and approaches. Henceforth, there is an ongoing process of creating a restorative framework mainly based on the work of individuals, through which, drum making and decoration, joiking, sacrificial acts, and forms of divination consisting of various sorts of practices are emerging. One of the central symbols that features prominently amongst the Sámi in relation to their prehistoric cosmology and reuse of symbolism in different contexts with regard to spiritual traditions that helps link past with the present is the Sun. Therefore, the purpose of the descriptive analysis in this research paper examines the application of the Sun symbol to new types of drums made by Peter Armstrand who is a Sámi person, for healing and identity building and some of the contexts they appear within. As a method to elaborate on how the past is utilized in the present, the research material constitutes one short case study involving Armstrand who is a Sámi drum maker and likewise, a healer. To help broaden the fieldwork materials collected, I also refer to an old photograph of a drum and its cosmological landscape.

Irigarayan Sensible Transcendental in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

ABSTRACT This study displays how Alice Walker in The Color Purple reconciles the duality of spirit and the flesh through Irigarayan sensible transcendental to appreciate female protagonist’s subjective identity. It shows how Walker represents a new vision of God in the form of divinity within women and in nature as the Mother Goddess, far from the Western patriarchal image of God. In this paper, Irigarayan sensible transcendental is introduced as a process of discovering the uniqueness of women’s divine body. Women need to gain their own subjective identity by becoming divine in their feminine body. Celie, the female protagonist in The Color Purple, comes to understand the destructive nature of a male-defined deity; thus, she personifies an alternative for her exploited and marginalized existence. She seeks her self-development by awakening her hidden female energy, not merely for her physical pleasure, but as a creative power.

A Goddess and a Pañcāyat President: Narrative, Sanctity, and Authority in Rural Tamil Nadu

In an examination of the interdependent relationship between narrative and ritual, this article discusses a ritual dilemma solved through narrative to explore how narrative sustains authority usually enacted, validated, and supported by ritual practice. In the Tamil village of Nagamalai Pudukkottai, Jeyakumar, the pancāyat president, must perform as a cāmiyāti (“god dancer”) possessed by the village’s most powerful form of divinity, Taṭātakai Ammaṉ, to substantiate his family’s long lineage of traditional authority. For seventeen years, however, Jeyakumar was unable to substantiate his authoritative claim through ritual; instead, he and his constituents relied on narratives, including a migration myth. Narrative did not replace the importance of ritual in Nagamalai Pudukkottai, but rather, the usually obligatory tie to the goddess was deferred and his legitimacy was maintained through narrative. Village claims to authority depend upon negotiating the connections among the village migration myth, the local goddess temple myth, personal experience narratives, and everyday conversational narratives and stories. Each of these narrative genres claims authority differently but works as part of an interdependent folklore system to confirm the village’s sacrality and leadership. Jeyakumar’s authority is further strengthened by local folk mythologies that integrate nearby Madurai’s more formalized Mīnākṣī tradition into local religiosity surrounding Taṭātakai Ammaṉ.

Is Astrology a Type of Divination? Thomas Aquinas, the Index of Prohibited Books, and the Construction of a Legitimate Astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Abstract What is the relationship between astrology and divination? In particular, is astrology a type of divination, as is often asserted or assumed? In both astrology and divination, knowledge and prediction of the future are primary goals, but does this warrant calling astrology a form of divination? I approach these questions by exploring the response of Thomas Aquinas, which was to be extremely influential for many centuries. First I analyze in some detail Thomas’s answer in his Summa theologiae 2-2.92–95; then I discuss two significant sixteenth-century examples of its influence: the 1557, 1559, 1564, and later indexes of prohibited books; and Pope Sixtus V’s anti-divinatory bull, Coeli et Terrae Creator (1586). In this way, we can explore some of the complex historical dynamics at play in the construction of a legitimate astrology in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Image of God and Image of Human Being: A Philosophical Investigation of the God-Human and Human-Machine Relationships

One of the answers to the question of the human nature was provided by the mystical philosophers such as Ibn ‘Arabī through the theory of divine form of human being. This theory in Judeo-Christian tradition is known as imago Dei. It means God created human being in His image/form. The main effort of the scholars in both Judeo-Christian and Islamic tradition has been to interpret the imago Dei and to find an explanation for man-God relationship. The present paper indicated that the meaning and functions of the theory could be understood in the light of philosophical investigations on the artificial intelligence. The paper outlined the wish of God to be seen outside of His Essence in His ‘image’ (human) based on Ibn‘Arabī’s interpretation. Then, we indicated that human being similarly tries to find the ‘other’ outside of his being, AI-based machines, to see his potentialities in his form (machines). Man can know himself through other (machine) which has similarities with him. We argued that this investigation helps to understand more explicit meaning of the theory and the goal of creation of the human being based on the interpretation of imago Dei in Ibn‘Arabī’s perspective. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to provide a comprehensible meaning of imago Dei based on Ibn ‘Arabī’s interpretation regarding the philosophical bases of the need for AI-based machines. The method that used for this investigation is the conceptual analysis; also, we considered pluridisciplinary which opens new possibilities of understanding of the meanings in art and philosophy.

HZ. PEYGAMBER İN SÜNNETİ/HADİSLERİ VE BAZI YÖNETİCİLERİN ÖRNEK UYGULAMALARI ÖZELİNDE ADÂLETİN TE SİSİNE YÖNELİK TEMEL YAKLAŞIMLAR

One of the important mission of the Prophets that they take over guiding for humanity is to destroy the persecutions and injustices in the world and to provide to maintain the rights and justice. The justice principle is the main rule which takes place in all the celestial religions. The justice means to put something on its place, to give someone his rights, equality and equivalence and to be suitable to the rights. In the jurisprudence justice means implementation of the law according to equality principle and to equate the laws for everyone. Giving someone his rights is justice. Giving much is mercy, grace and beneficence.The Prophet Muhammed completed all his life on truth and honesty. He showed that Islam was a religion which adopted the justice a principle on his sunnah. He did not tolerate to a concession before the law among the people at their behaviours. It has been seen that the Holy Quran intended the justice to be built and to be kept the rights all of the people and to be designed a management in the context of justice superiority. Also the Quran wanted people and Muslims to obey the principles of justice and strongly forbided them from the persecutions and injustices which are against justice. As an indispensable law principle, the justice became an important and valued norm in our world which persecutions and injustices often have been continued in it. Basing on this importance in the article it is mentioned to the importance of the concept of the justice which has richness of meaning. And then the concept of justice is examined in the six main title in the context of the Quran and the Hadiths in the different sizes of the form of divine, legal, social, economical, international, equivalence and ransom. By the way it is taken place to the obstacles in the way of the manifestation of justice, like favoritism for another or himself, following his enjoys, making someone or something partner for God, feeling hatred and anger and difference of religion and faith. Specially in the judgement it is emphasized on the attitude of the Prophet Muhammed and his consistency of the justice that he built on his Sunnah. It is put forth the justice of the Prophet Muhammed by giving examples from the life of the Muslims who lived with him together. Also it is taken attention to the justice principle that it is one of the main rule of Islamic civilization and it is a universal law that is built with the Prophet’s application and it is a social justice and ethical values by giving some examples from the life of Muslims after the Prophet Muhammed.

Divination and its Potential Futures: Sensation, Scripts, and the Virtual in South Korean Eight-character Fortune Telling

Horoscopic eight-character divination (saju p’alcha) flourishes both face-to-face and online in South Korea. Contrary to a face-to-face reading, however, the fortune teller is no longer necessary in digital divination. This article highlights some of the transitions and tensions between more conventional forms of divination and their digital counterparts. Rather than conceptualizing these transitions in relation to a loss of authenticity or material presence, this work examines the potentials of online mediations in regard to how they are not only consumed as knowledge, but also as phenomenological and affective experiences connected to the virtual. The virtual foundations of religion expand to include divination activity, which are key to understanding its proliferation across digital platforms.

There Is a God in Heaven Who Reveals Mysteries: Failed Divination and Divine Revelation in Daniel 2 and Genesis 41

Abstract This article examines accounts of dream interpretation in the Joseph story and the court tales of Daniel as theological critiques of divinatory methods that relied upon the skill and knowledge of the diviner, such as the various forms of deductive divination practiced in the royal courts of the ancient Near East. Building upon studies of dream/vision divination by Susan Niditch, Jean-Marie Husser, and A. Leo Oppenheim, it utilizes historical-critical and comparative/contextual methodologies to read Dan 2 and Gen 41 in light of dream divination as it was commonly practiced in the royal courts of the ancient Near East. It finds that, in both of these texts, as the protagonist successfully interprets a dream that his Egyptian or Babylonian counterparts cannot, the inability of human diviners to uncover divine secrets is highlighted, along with the explicit confession of the Israelite protagonist that he interprets not due to his superior intelligence or ability but by divine inspiration. This suggests that both Gen 41 and Dan 2 hold up dream interpretation that relies upon divine inspiration by the true God of heaven, rather than technical knowledge, as a method superior to divination. Finally, these texts provide evidence for the use of an apocalyptic-style revelation motif in literary contexts that suggests a wisdom setting and background, particularly in the Jewish diaspora, where they championed the Jewish God as the sole true revealer of mysteries.

Omen Watching, Mantic Observation, Aeromancy, and Learning to ‘See’: The Rise and Messy Multiplicity of Zhanhou 占候 in Late Han and Medieval China

This article investigates the early history of a Chinese mantic practice unattested before the late first century CE known as zhanhou 占候 (lit., omen watching; divination through observation; divination of atmospheric or meteorological conditions). While early occurrences of the term primarily present it as a learned form of divination used to forecast human fortune through the interpretation of anomalous emanations of qi 氣 in heaven-and-earth (e.g., wind; clouds; rain; rainbows), zhanhou is also variously classified as an astrological, Five Agents, or military technique; and variously identified as a hemerological, medical, and contemplative-visualization practice by the end of the Tang. I not only contend that zhanhou’s inherent polysemy and its multiple identities helped broaden and perpetuate its transmission during the first millennium of the Common Era, but also that the same messy multiplicity makes its early history and development difficult—but not impossible—to trace and understand. Zhanhou closely resembles many earlier named forms of astrology and divination focused on the observation and interpretation of macrocosmic qi conditions or phenomena, but late Han and early medieval writers carved out a space for zhanhou. This was done through increasingly frequent use of the term, by explicitly distinguishing it from similar families of techniques (e.g., astrology; turtle and yarrow divination; yinyang; algorithmic mantic techniques), and by identifying and constructing networks and lineages of practitioners, both of which helped form and perpetuate zhanhou’s identity as a discrete technique (shu 術). The present study compares different definitions and translations of zhanhou, analyzes a handful of late Han occurrences, and illustrates the term’s increasingly widespread medieval circulation, chiefly through biographic narratives and technical texts.

Mesopotamian astrology

AbstractDivination in the Ancient Near East took many forms. One of the most important practices, however, was astrology—the art of observing the sky and weather for signs. The first written evidence for this began in the late third millennium BCE, but it probably existed even earlier. Throughout the early and middle centuries of the second millennium BCE, there are glimpses of astrology preserved in letters and other texts. It was not until the end of the second millennium that the practice began to be codified and written down in standard works. During the Neo‐Assyrian period (911–609 BCE) astrology gained a new level of importance in the royal court with scholars (employed by the court) constantly watching the sky and writing to the king. Finally, during the latter half of the first millennium BCE (the Neo‐Babylonian, Achaemenid, and Hellenistic periods), astrology underwent a period of innovation alongside the continued use of standard practices. Throughout its history, Mesopotamian astrology functioned together with other forms of divination. The examination of an animal's liver, for example, was often used to check the results of an astrological observation. Astrology was one of many ways the messages of the gods could be decoded in the Ancient Near East. It developed a complicated series of texts and skilled practitioners and had a great impact on the fate of its adherents.

Astrology as Heresy in Contemporary Belief

Astrology has been characterised as a heresy by many Christian thinkers, from the time of the early Church Fathers to the present day. In contemporary discourse, astrology is often treated as if it were a heresy against science. I provide examples of astrologers being treated as heretics in the name of science, and an alternative conception of astrology as a form of divination, not dependent on scienti?c substantiation. I argue that the ‘astrology’ often criticised in the name of science may be de?ned as much by scientism’s need for a construction to de?ne itself against, as by the actual views of horoscopic astrologers. The emerging picture is that criticisms of astrology are typically based on a mixture of legitimate objections and scientistic belief. I conclude that scientism’s unspoken aspiration to orthodoxy emerges through the parallels between its approach to astrology and that of the Church.

How to Rule the World: Occult-Scientific Manuals of the Early Modern Persian Cosmopolis

AbstractImperial grimoires—that is, manuals on various forms of magic and divination written for or commissioned by royal readers—proliferated across the early modern Persianate world, more than paralleling the (decidedly non-imperial) grimoire boom in Renaissance Europe; but only the latter has been studied to date. This programmatic essay diagnoses the colonialist-Orientalist causes for this wild imbalance in comparative early modern Western intellectual and imperial historiography and outlines a philological way forward. Far from being evidence for “the superstition of the Moslem natives,” such manuals are an indispensable aperture onto precisely those processes—common to Islamdom and Christendom alike—by which we define Western early modernity: textualization, canonization, standardization, confessionalization, centralization, imperialization, bureaucratization, democratization, and mathematization. Yet they also record the religio-cultural and institutional divergences that so distinguish the Islamicate and especially Persianate experience of early modernity from the Latin Christianate.

Stranger diviners and their stranger clients: Popular cosmology-making and its kingly power in Buddhist Thailand

Marshall Sahlins argues that kings are ‘stranger kings’, as they typically originate from outside their kingdom or from the celestial realms. He advances that kings draw authority precisely from an ability to appropriate a geographic and cosmological Other for the benefit of their subjects. With this article, I propose that, in contemporary Thailand, a kingdom ruled by a Buddhist monarch, this defining ability of kings spreads to commoners. An ethnographic study of diviners (mo du) and their clients (luk kha) in Bangkok reveals that Thai Buddhists routinely make cosmologies. Such cosmology-making entails appropriating foreign and divine forms of knowledge in the manner of kings. I argue that this phenomenon allows commoners to master the idioms of power of Thai Buddhist kingship. This results in tensions between commoners, and places them in an ambiguous relationship with the monarchic state.

A survey of traditional and faith healers providing mental health care in three sub-Saharan African countries.

Traditional and faith healers constitute an important group of complementary and alternative mental health service providers (CAPs) in sub-Sahara Africa. Governments in the region commonly express a desire to integrate them into the public health system. The aim of the study was to describe the profile, practices and distribution of traditional and faith healers in three sub-Saharan African countries in great need for major improvements in their mental health systems namely Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria. A mapping exercise of CAPs who provide mental health care was conducted in selected catchment areas in the three countries through a combination of desk review of existing registers, engagement activities with community leaders and a snowballing technique. Information was collected on the type of practice, the methods of diagnosis and the forms of treatment using a specially designed proforma. We identified 205 CAPs in Ghana, 406 in Kenya and 82 in Nigeria. Most (> 70%) of the CAPs treat both physical and mental illnesses. CAPs receive training through long years of apprenticeship. They use a combination of herbs, various forms of divination and rituals in the treatment of mental disorders. The use of physical restraints by CAPs to manage patients was relatively uncommon in Kenya (4%) compared to Nigeria (63.4%) and Ghana (21%). CAPs often have between 2- to 10-fold capacity for patient admission compared to conventional mental health facilities. The profile of CAPs in Kenya stands out from those of Ghana and Nigeria in many respects. CAPs are an important group of providers of mental health care in sub-Saharan Africa, but attempts to integrate them into the public health system must address the common use of harmful treatment practices.

Between Aquinas and Eymerich: The Roman Inquisition’s Use of Dominican Thought in the Censorship of Alchemy

In the latter half of the sixteenth century the Roman Inquisition developed criteria to prosecute a series of operative arts, including various forms of divination and magic. Its officials had little interest in alchemy. During that period the Roman Inquisition tried few people for practising alchemy, and it was rarely discussed in official documents. Justifications for prosecuting alchemists did exist, however. In his influential handbook, Directorium inquisitorum, the fourteenth-century inquisitor Nicholas Eymerich had developed a clear rationale for the investigation and prosecution of alchemists as heretics. His position was endorsed in the 1570s by Francisco Peña in his commentary on Eymerich’s handbook. In this article I explore the reasons why alchemy held this ambiguous status. I argue that members of the Dominican Order developed two traditions of thinking about alchemy from Aquinas’s thought. The first, and closest to Aquinas’s own belief, held that alchemy was a natural art that posed no danger to the Christian faith. The second, developed by Eymerich from a selective reading of Aquinas’s writings, indicated specific circumstances in which alchemists could be investigated. The Roman Inquisition’s response to alchemy vacillated between the positions advocated by Aquinas and Eymerich.