Divination Sentence Examples

That they were employed in divination is consonant with the facts already noted.

We are justified in concluding, therefore, that among the Greeks and Romans likewise the examination of the liver was the basis of divination in the case of the sacrificial animal.

As man approached the gods in sacrifice and prayers, so too the gods declared themselves to men by divers signs and tokens, which it was possible to read by the art of Divination (q.v.).

Prophetic personality now moved in a larger sphere than that of divination, important though that function be in the social life of the ancient state as instrumental in declaring the will of the deity when any enterprise was on foot.

Like Leonardo, but with much less than Leonardo's genius for scientific speculation and divination, Diirer was a confirmed reasoner and theorist on the laws of nature and natural appearances.

Similar in principle is coscinomancy, or divining by a sieve held suspended, which gives indications by turning; and the equally common divination by a suspended ring, both of which are found from Europe in the west to China and Japan in the east.

It constituted the most common form of divination in ancient Babylonia, where it can be traced back to the 3rd millennium B.C. Among the Etruscans the prominence of the rite led to the liver being looked upon as the trade-mark of the priest.

Among the Greeks and Romans likewise it was the liver that continued throughout all periods to play the chief role in divination through the sacrificial animal.

Amongst his scientific, theological and grammatical works mention may be made of De diis, containing an examination of various cults and ceremonials; treatises on divination and the interpretation of dreams; on the sphere, the winds and animals.

All the world over it is held that such people can assume the form of animals; sometimes the power of the shaman is held to depend on his being able to summon his familiar; among the Ostiaks the shaman's coat was covered with representations of birds and beasts; two bear's claws were on his hands; his wand was covered with mouse-skin; when he wished to divine he beat his drum till a black bird appeared and perched on his hut; then the shaman swooned, the bird vanished, and the divination could begin.

He married a daughter of Tarquinius and succeeded to the throne by the contrivance of his mother-in-law, Tanaquil, who was skilled in divination and foresaw his greatness.

It had been predicted that he should die when he met his superior in divination; and the prophecy was fulfilled in the person of Mopsus, whom Calchas met in the grove of the Clarian Apollo near Colophon.

When the latter desired to double the number of the equestrian centuries, Navius opposed him, declaring that it must not be done unless the omens were propitious, and, as a proof of his powers of divination, cut through a whetstone with a razor.

Philochorus also wrote on oracles, divination and sacrifices; the mythology and religious observances of the tetrapolis of Attica; the myths of Sophocles; the lives of Euripides and Pythagoras; the foundation of Salamis.

But the great prophets disallowed this claim, and the distinction which they draw between true prophecy and divination is recognized not only in the prophetical law of Deuteronomy but in earlier parts of the Pentateuch and historical books.

Among all Teutonic peoples from the time of the Cimbri onwards we frequently hear also of holy women whose duties were concerned chiefly with divination.

On the side of the Stoics it was argued that if divination was a real art, there must be gods who gave it to mankind; against this it was argued that signs of future events may be given without any god.

Divination is practised in all grades of culture; its votaries range from the Australian black to the American medium.

Among the Australian blacks, divination is largely employed to discover the cause of death, where it is assumed to be due to magic; in some cases the spirit of the dead man is held to give the information, in others the living magician is the source of the knowledge.

We find moreover as emi-scientific conception of the basis of divination; the whole of nature is linked together; just as the variations in the height of a column of mercury serve to foretell the weather, so the flight of birds or behaviour of cattle may help to prognosticate its changes; for the uncultured it is merely a step to the assumption that animals know things which are hidden from man.

Haruspication, or the inspection of entrails, was justified on similar grounds, and in the case of omens from birds or animals, no less than in astrology, it was held that the facts from which inferences were drawn were themselves in part the causes of the events which they foretold, thus fortifying the belief in the possibility of divination.

Confined to higher cultures on the other hand, for obvious reasons, is divination by automatic writing, which is practised in China more especially.

The sand divination so widely spread in Africa seems to be of a different nature.

In other cases the impression is involuntary or less consciously sought, as in dreams, which, however, are sometimes induced, for purposes of divination, by the process known as incubation or temple sleep. Dreams are sometimes regarded as visits to or from gods or the souls of the dead, sometimes as signs to be interpreted symbolically by means of dream-books, which are found not only in Europe but in less cultured countries like Siam.

Similarly dice are thrown for purposes of sortilege; the astragali or knucklebones, used in children's games at the present day, were implements of divination in the first instance.

But where autoscopic phenomena play the chief part the question of the origin of divination is less simple.

Divination of this sort, therefore, may be due to observation and experiment of a rude sort, rather than to the unchecked play of fancy which resulted in heteroscopic divination.

On the mound grow cypresses, acacias, what is called " the crystal tree," said not to be elsewhere found, and the Achillea, the plant whose stalks were employed in ancient times for purposes of divination.

If not intended from the first for purposes of divination, it was so used both before and after Confucius, and on that account it was exempted, through the superstition of the emperor of the Ts'in dynasty, from the flames.

In matters of ordinary life on which divine counsel was prayed for, it was usual to have recourse to this form of divination.

Divination by means of flies was known at Babylon."' There are other cases of names compounded of Baal and an element equivalent to a descriptive epithet, e.g.

It seems that opinions may be formed of inquiry and study alone, which are then constructive; but where intuitive perception or the perceptive imagination is a robust possession, the fruits of research become assimilative - the food of a divining faculty which needs more or less of it according to the power of divination.

The reputation of the Laplanders for skill in magic and divination is of very early date, and in Finland is not yet extinct.

During his divination the wizard fell into a state of trance or ecstasy, his soul being held to run at large to pursue its Witch= inquiries.

They possessed several means for rendering a person invisible, and various peculiar and complicated methods of divination, such as Imbas forosna, tein laegda, and dichetal do chennaib, are described in early authorities.

Together with this idolatry there is also a firm belief in the power of witchcraft and sorcery, in divination, in lucky and unlucky days and times, in ancestor worship, especially that of the sovereign's predecessors, and in several curious ordeals for the detection of crime.

Among these are the names of the months and the days of the week, those used in astrology and divination, some forms of salutation, words for dress and bedding, money, musical instruments, books and writings, together with a number of miscellaneous terms.

These descriptive terms are applied to one of the methods of divination employed by the ancient Hebrews, which, it is now generally agreed, consisted in a species of sacred lot.

Similar modes of divination were practised, it would seem, among the pre-Islamic Arabs.

That this method of divination was not in actual use after the Exile is shown by Neh.

Even up to the present day men of intellectual eminence like Dr Richard Garnett have convinced themselves that astromancy has a foundation of truth, just as there are still believers in chiromancy or other forms of divination.

Just as this latter method of divination rested on a well-defined theory, to wit, that the liver was the seat of the soul of the animal and that the deity in accepting the sacrifice identified himself with the animal, whose "soul" was thus placed in complete accord with that of the god and therefore reflected the mind and will of the god, so astrology is based on a theory of divine government of the world, which in contrast to "liver" divination assumes at the start a more scientific or pseudo-scientific aspect.

Hence in "liver" divination, as in astrology, the interpretations of the signs noted all have reference to public affairs and events and not to the individual's needs or desires.

While in a general way the reign of law and order in the movements of the heavenly bodies was recognized, and indeed must have exercised an influence at an early period in leading to the rise of a methodical divination that was certainly of a much higher order than the examination of an animal's liver, yet the importance that was laid upon the endless variations in the form of the phenomena and the equally numerous apparent deviations from what were regarded as normal conditions, prevented for a long time the rise of any serious study of astronomy beyond what was needed for the purely practical purposes that the priests as "inspectors" of the heavens (as they were also the "inspectors" of the sacrificial livers) had in mind.

Judicial astrology, as a form of divination, is a concomitant of natural astrology, in its purer astronomical aspect, but mingled with what is now considered an unscientific and superstitious view of world-forces.

Joseph de Maistre believed in comets as messengers of divine justice, and in animated planets, and declared that divination by astrology is not an absolutely chimerical science.

You can order or phone direct for a personal psychic phone reading using clairvoyance, mediumship, tarot or other divination oracles.

To say nothing of the later practice of using divination to determine who was or wasn't a witch.

One of the things that makes domino divination unique is its system of remedies.

In the Celtic Tradition, the year begins at Samhain, this is the most powerful night of the year to perform divination.

This involves the use of geomancy, meaning divination through the earth or earth magic.

Through personal experience, dream interpretation and I Ching divination become part of a single experience.

The seeds of the Ash have long been used in love divination.

The Etruscans did not appear to practice astrology but they were known for their liver divination.

A favorite method of divination was reading sheep or goat entrails.

The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination.

This is essentially a powerful divination session by means of shamanic trance.

The taking of omens may be said to be a part of all systems of divination, in which the future is predicted by means of indications of one sort or another; and tradition has thus gathered round many subjects - events, actions, colours, numbers, &c. - which are considered "ominous," an adjective which generally connotes ill-fortune.

Hepatoscopy, or divination through the liver, belongs therefore to the primitive period when that organ summed up all vitality and was regarded as the seat of all the emotions and affections - the higher as well as the lower - and also as the seat of intellectual functions.

In the course of time the collections of signs and their interpretation made by the baru-priests grew in number until elaborate series were produced in which the endeavour was made to exhaust so far as possible all the varieties and modifications of the many signs, so as to furnish a complete handbook both for purposes of instruction and as a basis for the practical work of divination.

In any case, since the Eastern origin of the Etruscans is now generally admitted, we may temporarily, at least, accept the conclusion that hepatoscopy as a method of divination owes its survival in advanced forms of culture to the elaborate system devised in the course of centuries by the Babylonian priests, and to the influence, direct and indirect, exerted by this system in the ancient world.

In phrenology, however, as popularly carried on as an unofficial cult, we may recognize a modified form of divination, co-ordinate with the third stage in the development of beliefs regarding the seat of soul and based on the assumption that this organ is - as were its predecessors - a medium of revelation of otherwise hidden knowledge.

The unity of procedure consists in the fact that every sacrifice involves putting the divine in communication with the profane by an intermediary - the victim - which may be piacular or honorific, a messenger or a means of divination, a means of alimenting the eternal life of the species or a source of magical energy which the rite diffuses over objects in its neighbourhood.

The blood of the victim may be drunk by the priest as a means of inducing inspiration, its entrails may be employed in divination, its flesh consumed in a common meal, exposed to the birds and beasts of prey or buried in the earth.

Sometimes divination took place through vessels filled with water and oil (see Omen and Divination).

In Greece, on the other hand, divination was not generally a priestly function, but it did belong to the priests of the Oracles (see Oracle).

The shouts of the ploughman (Tarchon) brought to the spot all the people of Etruria, whom the boy proceeded to instruct in the art of divination.

Virolleaud, L'Astrologie chalddenne (Paris, 1905 - to be completed in 8 parts - transliteration and translations of cuneiform texts); Jastrow, Religion Babyloniens and Assyriens (Parts 13 and 14); also certain sections in BoucheLeclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquite (Paris, 1879), vol.

At about this same time, the yarrow stalk method of divination was created.

The site's psychics use a number of divination techniques such as Western and Eastern astrology, numerology and runes.

This popular board game helps individuals connect with spirits from the beyond and has been used as both a divination mechanism and a form of entertainment for many years.

A form of divination providing inspiration and answers from the world's oldest oracle, free I Ching readings are based on ancient Chinese wisdom.

These figures are the heart of the I Ching and its use as a divination tool.

Facade offers free readings as well as many other forms of divination including tarot, runes and numerology.

Although the readings are free, you do have the option of delving deeper into the divination for a fee.

This is one of the ways that the I Ching builds complexity by creating layers of meaning as part of the process of divination.

All of them explain the basic 64 hexagrams used in I Ching divination.

Used as a divination method in ancient China, the oracle bones, found and dated by archeologists and scientists are the earliest records of the symbols used by man to represent the concept of ying and yang.

I Ching readings are an ancient Chinese divination practice.

This stacking method is used regardless of which divination method you select.

Another method used for the coin toss divination is the point system that assigns three points to each coin that lands heads up and two points for those that land tails up.

This method of I Ching divination uses yarrow sticks instead of coins.

If you don't want to purchase coins or yarrow sticks, you can use some of the many online virtual I Ching divination tools.

Whichever method you choose to use for I Ching readings, this ancient form of divination can assist you in your feng shui efforts.

The Internet provides many opportunities for you to receive free I Ching readings based on the ancient Chinese method of divination.

The oldest form of divination, the I Ching oracle provides insight and guidance in the form of hexagram patterns.

Coin toss is the most common form of divination offered.

At best, these divination charts are believed to be up to 93 percent accurate.

However, some Chinese astrologers began to incorporate solar astrology in the early 1900s for a unique combination of astrological divination.

Serena's Guide to Divination is a website actually based on the astrologer of the same name.

Although the website, Serena's Guide to Divination, is quite popular, relatively little is actually known about the astrologer herself.

So, what's the bottom line on Serena's Guide to Divination?

Most of the sites offering free numerology reports typically have an array of other divination oracles such as astrology, runes, tarot and others.

Much of the ancient knowledge of palmistry has been passed on from one generation to the next like many of the other divination arts.

It's no secret that the world of divination has been under assault by skeptics, particularly in areas where Western rationalism remains prevalent.

Still, some individuals prefer the mysticism of the divination arts, and these people fuel the fortune telling community.

Divination includes all sorts of fields such as Tarot cards, palm readings, crystal balls, tea leaves, runes, numerology and astrology.

Thus, the field of fortune telling lives on in modern society alongside technological and scientific advancements that could have rendered the divination arts obsolete.

After all, if a person has a gleaming talent for divination, why not build her life and occupation around it?

The second school encourages you to use your innate psychic abilities to enhance any basic knowledge you have since the cards are nothing more than a divination tool that allows you access to information about the person you're reading.

As you gain confidence in your divination abilities, you should study the card and allow it to speak to you instead of focusing on the meaning of the card when reading for someone.

The ancient forms of psychic ability, such as divination or sorcery, have been mentioned in countless religious texts throughout history.

Dowsing is a form of divination that involves the use of a tool to find a certain type of energy.

Candlelit mirrors were once used as tools of divination in a method referred to as scrying.

The latter, however, was the more difficult of interpretation, and upon it, therefore, mainly hinged the system of divination with which the augurs were occupied.

Prophesy and traditional divination Many of our respondents acknowledged the similarities between the prophet and the traditional diviner.

Various identifications have been published for the spiders used in spider divination.

You are warmly invited to ' Wedding Cake Dreams ' - a performance revealing the bizarre rituals of marriage divination by Jen Walke.

Useful not only as a method of divination, the I Ching is a complex text that outlines the principles of change and transformation that are a part of the human condition.

The inspection of the liver for purposes of divination led to the study of the anatomy of the liver, and there are indeed good reasons for believing that hepatoscopy represents the startingpoint for the study of animal anatomy in general.

Divination through the liver remained in force among the Assyrians and Babylonians down to the end of the Babylonian Empire.

It is well known that the Romans borrowed their methods of hepatoscopy from the Etruscans, and, apart from the direct evidence for this in Latin writings, we have, in the case of the bronze model of a liver found near Piacenza in 1877, and of Etruscan origin, the unmistakable proof that among the Etruscans the examination of the liver was the basis of animal divination.

The Scyths had a method of divination with sticks, and the Enarees, who claimed to be soothsayers by grant of the goddess who had afflicted them, used another method by splitting bast fibres.

The practice, in all times and countries, was used for purposes of divination.

He was augur for fifty-five years and wrote a work on the science of divination.

Possessing the gift of divination, she warned her husband of the evils that would result from his journey to Greece.

This system of divination has the charm of simplicity and definiteness, as an application of the "doctrine of signatures" which formed so extensive an element in the occult writings of the past six centuries.

Certain forms of popular divination were, however, under his patronage, notably the world-wide process of divination by pebbles (0pcai).

In many nations divination and priesthood have always gone hand in hand; at Rome, for example, the augurs and the XV viri sacrorum, who interpreted the Sibylline books, were priestly colleges.

Now among the Arabs, as we have seen, ritual service is the affair of the individual, or of a mass of individuals gathered in a great feast, but still doing worship each for himself and his own private circle; the only public aspect of religion is found in connexion with divination and the oracle to which the affairs of the community are submitted.

The popular faith was full of heathenish superstition strangely blended with the higher ideas which were the inheritance left to Israel by men like Moses and Elijah; but the common prophets accepted all alike, and combined heathen arts of divination and practices of mere physical enthusiasm with a not altogether insincere pretension that through their professional oracles the ideal was being maintained of a continuous divine guidance of the people of Yahweh.

There is sufficient evidence that down to the last age of the Judaean monarchy practices not essentially different from divination were current in all classes of society, and were often in the hands of men who claimed to speak as prophets in the name of Yahweh.

The process of assimilation did not proceed so far in Babylonia and Assyria, but Shamash and Adad became in combination the gods of oracles and of divination in general.

Whether the will of the gods is determined through the inspection of the liver of the sacrificial animal, through observing the action of oil bubbles in a basin of water or through the observation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, it is Shamash and Adad who, in the ritual connected with divination, are invariably invoked.

Similarly in the annals and votive inscriptions of the kings, when oracles are referred to, Shamash and Adad are always named as the gods addressed, and their ordinary designation in such instances is bele biri, " lords of divination."

Phenomena of this kind play a large part in primitive ceremonies of divination and in our own day furnish much of the material of Psychical Research.

At all sacrifices it seems to have been customary to practise divination; in connexion with human sacrifice we have record of this rite from the time of the Cimbri.

But in its second aspect it touched divination and astrology, of which Galen' says that the physiognomical part is the greater, and this aspect of the subject ' bulked largely in the fanciful literature of the middle ages.

This was the famous " ash-altar " at which the Iamidae, the hereditary gens of seers, practised those rights of divination by fire in virtue of which more especially Olympia is saluted by Pindar as mistress of truth."

They believe also in omens and divination, but they have neither temples nor idols, nor religious rites.

For example, the ephod, an object of divination, is still retained, but it is now restricted to the high-priest; and his position as head of a theocratic state, and his ceremonial dress with its heathenish associations presuppose a past monarchy.

The persistent prominence which astrology continued to enjoy down to the border-line of the scientific movement of our own days, and which is directly traceable to the divination methods perfected in the Euphrates valley, is a tribute to the scope and influence attained by the astral theology of the Babylonian and Assyrian priests.

There are also indications that the extensive texts dealing with divination through the liver of sacrificial animals, which represents a more popular origin than divination through the observations of the heavens, based as it is on the primitive view which regarded the liver as the seat of life and of the soul, were brought into connexion with astral divination.

The ritual alone which accompanied divination practices and incantation formulae and was a chief factor in the celebration of festival days and of days set aside for one reason or the other to the worship of some god or goddess or group of deities, is free from traces of the astral theology.

In its ancient stories were remnants of primitive religion, of tabu, of anthropomorphic gods, of native forms of worship, of magic and divination, of local and tribal cults.

These stones are anointed with oil, and worshipped with prayer and offerings, and are also used for purposes of divination, in which, and in various omens, there is a general belief.

There we are told that for purposes of divination certain signs were scratched on slips of wood from a fruit-bearing tree (including, no doubt, the beech; cp. book, German Buck, and Buchstabe, a letter of the alphabet); the slips were thrown down promiscuously on a white cloth, whence the expert picked them up at random and by them interpreted fate.

The soul of the bird, he explains, enters them with its flesh, and endows them with power of divination.

The belief that the Powers controlling man's life are willing upon occasion to disclose something of their purpose, has led to widespread rites of divination, which Plato described as the " art of fellowship between gods and men," and the Stoics defended on grounds of a priori religious expectation as well as of universal experience.

Lastly, the practice of divination and the consul tation of oracles afforded a means of communication between God and man - a concession to popular beliefs.

His opponents argued, " if all events are foreordained, divination is superfluous "; he replied that both divination and our behaviour under the warnings which it affords are included in the chain of causation.

Panaetius was competent to pass judgment upon the critical " divination " of an Aristarchus (who was perhaps himself also a Stoic), and took an interest in the restoration of Old% Attic forms to the text of Plato.

Polybius's rejection of divination is decisive.

He doubted the entire system of divination.

Unfortunately, James Legge was not a devotee of the I Ching and considered divination poppycock.