The Power of Divination

As far back as we know homo sapiens has sought to predict, and influence, the future and we have employed a welter of technologies to that end. From Tarot Cards to Weather Balloons, we look seemingly everywhere for glimpses of what’s ahead. We search the environment for Pokémon and periscopes, the latter so that we might peer around the corners of time!

For millennia humans have recognized sufficient correlation between predicted events and actual events to declare the ‘divination hypothesis’ confirmed. But uneasily so. Correlation frequencies seem to vary widely with context and the addition of variables to our equations does nothing to dampen the chaotic behavior of our system. Major red flags!

So once positive correlation is determined, albeit subjectively, it seems reasonable to look for a point of origin or cause for this phenomenon. How is it that we can apparently predict future events with a useful level of accuracy?

The answer is ‘patterns’. We see patterns…whether or not there are there:

“Rows and floes of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere,

I’ve looked at clouds that way…

It’s life’s illusions I recall,

I really don’t know life at all.” – Joni Mitchell

We look at a more or less random collection of water droplets and we ‘see’ castles. When we experience such a pattern, we look for it to have reference beyond itself; we look for it to have meaning. But what meaning?

It might portend an invitation to a child’s birthday party. Or suggest that a cruise along the Rhine is in my future. Or it may signal the approach of rain. In any case, the perception of a predictive pattern is likely to influence my reaction to future events as they unfold.

If a friend suggests a vacation, I may be more positively inclined. Or if my spouse suggests an umbrella, I may take heed.

Compared to a random collection of water droplets, an ice cream castle is ordered and so has the potential to ‘mean’ something, to point to something beyond itself, something that transcends both the droplets and the pattern per se.

Not convinced? Take a word, any word. It consists of letters. But not every collection of letters forms a word. A word is not just letters but a pattern of letters. Once sight readers learn to recognize the patterns, they can see beyond the words themselves to actions, objects, etc.

So because I am a human being with a humanoid nervous system, I see patterns where none are objectively present. I see patterns in clouds, bird flight, tea leaves, entrails, and yarrow stalks. I also see patterns in the ordinary events of daily life. 

Without the concept of ‘pattern’, there is no reason to imagine that a collection of water drops today signifies anything that might happen tomorrow. But the academic pursuit we know as History is nothing but the divination of patterns, real and imagined, in events.

Assume for the sake of discussion that neither clouds nor events occur in inherently ordered patterns. That does not mean that I will not find patterns in both; I’m human, I will. Now, if I can invent a logic that connects meteorology and history, I will seem to have accounted for the positive correlation between Divination and Reality.

Let me hasten to point out, however, that this does not mean that cloud patterns have any non-trivial connection to historical events. Even less do I mean to imply the intervention of a transcendent power. We are the ‘power’; we invent the connection.   

Take Tarot for example. There are 78 cards in a standard Tarot deck. 52 of them are similar to the playing cards in a modern deck. An additional face card (Knight) in each suit makes 56. There are 22 additional cards known as the Major Arcana: these cards have no numerical value but rather point to important themes: Justice, Temperance and Death, to name just three. 

Now let’s do a simple 3 card reading using just the Major Arcana: Lovers, the Moon, and the Fool. Well, I guess we can all decipher this one: Beware the excesses of romance! How about another reading: Justice, the Star, Wheel of Fortune. A bit more opaque, but if you really concentrate, I’ll bet you can find something in your upcoming experience that will seem to validate it.

The purest celebration of pattern is found in music, especially in the works of Bach and Beethoven. However, James Joyce’s Ulysses deserves a mention. Everything that happens in this novel is both actual and symbolic. 100 pages in and you will begin to experience events in your daily life in an entirely new way. 

So the value of the Divinatory Arts is not that they cause future events, or even reveal the mind of God, but that they sharpen our own interpretive acumen, allowing us to experience the shapes of things to come at an added level of depth. Understood properly, Divination is a celebration of pattern, as it occurs objectively in the World and as it exists subjectively in human consciousness.

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