DIVINATION. — It is a form of idolatry and consists in honoring the demon as God, not because one believes him to be God, nor out of hatred for God, but from the desire to know, with his help, hidden things.
Hidden things may be present, past, or future; natural or free events; external facts or states of mind and interior dispositions; and they can be gathered into three categories, according to the three means by which they may be known. The first comprises things hidden from all creatures and known only to God, by virtue of his omniscience: these things man can know only through a personal divine communication: e.g., all future and uncertain events, because they depend upon a free will. The second comprises things hidden from all human beings and known, besides God, also to the angelic and diabolical spiritual world: these things man can know only through a particular communication either from God, an angel, or a demon: e.g., events taking place simultaneously in distant places. The third comprises things that are in fact hidden at a given time from a particular person, but which he may come to know when he has means belonging to the material, cosmic, and human world, and legitimately at his disposal: e.g., all natural truths still unknown but knowable through scientific investigation. The diviner, wishing to divine hidden things with the help of the demon, may invoke such help either explicitly (d. expressa), or implicitly (d. tacita). Explicitly: whether he invokes the evil one on each occasion, in individual cases, or wishes to enter with him once and for all into a pact, by virtue of which certain signs would always correspond to certain meanings. Nor is it necessary for the demon actually to answer the invocations or accept the pact proposed by the diviner; it is enough that the latter unilaterally request his help. Implicitly: in the very act of wishing to know hidden things through the use of means known in themselves to be unsuited to the purpose: e.g., by seriously claiming to know with certainty, through playing cards, whether a person will marry or not. This manner of acting implies the invocation of the demon, because one who knowingly makes use of an unsuitable means for knowing hidden things evidently believes in and expects the intervention of a superior being. Which one? Certainly neither God nor the angels obedient to him, since God rejects the use of such means. The demon, then, remains. Thus such conduct truly betrays the implicit intention of diabolical intervention. Indeed, against such an intention, affirmed by deeds, a mental or verbal protest that one does not believe in or desire demonic intervention in all this is ineffective.
All this is easily understood with regard to d. expressa. The same is not true of d. tacita. There are in fact various practices for investigating hidden things in which the means employed may, within certain limits, appear naturally suited to the purpose, but beyond those limits no longer do so. On the uncertainty of those boundaries between the natural and the preternatural, diviners still unfortunately speculate today, to the detriment of naïve persons and lovers of occult matters. The forms in use are: oniromancy, necromancy, chiromancy, physiognomy, rhabdomancy, radiesthesia, thought transmission, certain phenomena of spiritism, etc. To the extent that these forms of investigation rest upon scientific criteria, whether already established, e.g., rhabdomancy, or still to be established experimentally, e.g., thought transmission, even the appearance of d. is excluded. Beyond that measure, so long as there remains at least a doubt that the manifestation of hidden things is attributable to natural factors, even if unknown and accidental, one cannot yet speak of d. tacita; only the explicit invocation of the demon could bring these cases within the prohibited sphere of d. They are therefore, in this respect, entirely lawful, and only obscure, unjust, and more or less deviant purposes could subjectively make them sinful. Thus, to constitute d. tacita, two essential elements are required together: the serious intention of wishing to know hidden things by unsuitable means, and, in addition, certain knowledge of their unsuitability.
It is evident that d. is an injury to God, since it transfers to the worst of creatures the honor due to God alone, on account of his omniscience and providence. Such an injury is always present in d. expressa and is grave. The same is not true in d. tacita. In this case, either the intention is more playful than serious, or there is distrust of the answers expected, or there is difficulty in perceiving the moral malice subtly concealed in it; consequently, the guilt is rarely grave. Besides this specific malice, which is contrary to the virtue of religion, d. may, because of particular circumstances, involve other moral deviations against other virtues: e.g., it may offend justice if d. is practiced for profit; it is contrary to charity when it exposes one’s neighbor to scandal or the danger of serious harm; it may be contrary to the virtue of faith if it presupposes or leads to denial of, or hesitation concerning, revealed truths; and the like.
The person who consults the diviner also sins against religion, at least because he cooperates in the latter’s sin: hence, provided that he knows it and to the extent that he knows II. He may also sin against charity toward himself if he not only consults the diviner but positively directs his life according to the answers received; however, he would not sin who, because of fears conceived after the divinatory consultations, abstained from certain actions, even if they had previously been decided upon, provided that they were not obligatory.
Leonardo Azzollini
IN NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS. — It is the knowledge of the will of the higher Powers, both through symbolic signs perceptible to the senses and through direct revelation to the soul by inspiration and psychic emotion of supernatural origin. It is the prediction of future and hidden things that elude ordinary investigation.
Originally it was a branch of ordinary magic, according to which like causes produce like effects, and which was based, unlike science, on superficial and apparent similarities established arbitrarily and fancifully. Thus the diviner claims to foresee certain effects from supposed causes; or, from observed effects, to infer the cause that has remained unknown, such as the author of a crime
or the cause of illnesses, etc. From magic, d. passed into the religions, where it regarded certain facts as signs or symptoms (omina) through which the divinity makes its will known. In a special manner, however, the gods gave their response (oraculum) in some famous temple, where the faithful came from every quarter to question them, as in Greece at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, of Zeus at Dodona, and of Asclepius at Epidaurus. Naturally, not everyone was able to interpret the language of the divinity, whether omina or oracula; the priests therefore attended to this task, and among them there were sometimes specialized classes, such as the Augurs and Auspices among the Romans, and among the Babylonians the seers, headed by an arch-seer, who transmitted their art from father to son both orally and in writing. In the Hellenistic period, d. sought a philosophical foundation, and especially the later Stoics, together with Posidonius, attempted to justify this superstition through their principle of the sympathy prevailing among the various parts of the universe. Cicero’s treatise (De divinatione) most probably depends on Posidonius. By contrast, Iamblichus, or perhaps one of his disciples, author of the Neoplatonic treatise De mysteriis, grounds the practice of d. on the light that the soul receives in its union with the divinity.
There are many kinds of d. But, leaving aside personal and direct divination, consisting in the inspiration of prophetic seers, the most common is real or indirect divination, based on acquired signs, omina or oracula, whose exact interpretation it seeks to provide.
Real d. in turn is divided, according to Cicero (De divin., I, 6; II, 11, 26), into natural, when the signs are accidental; and artificial, when the signs are prepared by the will of the observer. The principal means employed by natural d. may be summarized as follows: celestial signs (astromancy), on which astrology is based (v.); atmospheric signs, such as the force and direction of clouds (aeromancy), hurricanes (ceraunoscopy), lightning and thunder, which for the Greeks were signs of Zeus, all signs that the Babylonians referred to astrology; the actions and movements of animals, especially birds (v. AUGURI; AUSPICIO); the monstrous births of human beings and animals (teratomancy), regarded as ominous; special signs of the hands (chiromancy) and of the other parts of the body (melomancy, metopomancy, onychomancy, podomancy, etc.); the rustling of leaves, as at Dodona; oneiromancy, or the interpretation of dreams, which were sometimes clear (direct revelation), or which were induced through incubation in some temple.
In Rome, fulgural d. constituted a considerable part of the «Etruscan discipline», and the relevant rules, intended to establish where lightning came from and where it was directed, were contained in the fulgural books attributed to the nymph Begoe or Vegee. On the other hand, the augural books listed the augural birds, divided into oscines, whose song had to be observed, and alites, whose flight had to be observed. Account was also taken, especially in wartime, when a rapid response was needed, of the eagerness with which chickens took food. Ennius Veranius and Varro (Antiq. rerum divin., 3) dealt with augural d.
Among the means employed by artificial d. should be noted: sortes (cleromancy), from which sortilege derived; an easy means and therefore one of the most ancient and most widely used, especially in ancient Italy, where, unlike Greece, personal inspiration was little known. More commonly, sortilege was obtained by means of rods or tablets on which a phrase was written. To make the operation more certainly effective, it was performed in a temple, for example, that of Praeneste (sortes Praenestinae). The fact that sors became equivalent to fate and fortune indicates the importance assumed in Italy by this kind of d. In addition: lecanomancy, consisting in pouring and stirring various liquids, such as water—which is pre-eminently the agent and vehicle of revelation—oil, and wine, in a basin or cup, so that indications for the future might be drawn from the variations in their movements and from the clustering of their drops; the movements produced by an object thrown into a sacred fountain (hydromancy), where, if the object sinks, it is a good sign; the forms, which may be unlimited, assumed by fire in a sacrifice (pyromancy); the manner in which smoke rises (capnomancy); the observation of the entrails, especially the liver, of a sacrificed animal (extispicy); the various phenomena displayed by decomposing corpses, a form of necromancy that most often consists in evoking the souls of the dead so that they may reveal what is hidden or what is to come; the judgment of God (ordeal), that is, the dangerous test to which a suspected person was subjected, a judgment regarded by some as a form of d. insofar as it is considered directed toward discovering not so much the objective reality of the facts as the divine will to save or not save the person being judged.
D., being founded on a mechanical conception of divine Revelation, is opposed to the prophetic conception of a personal revelation, which is why revealed religions are opposed in principle to its practice.
In practice, the people remained deeply attached to means believed capable of indicating the future, whatever their origin might be. Hence the measures taken by both civil and religious authorities to suppress d. The Roman emperors in particular had sought to prevent its social and political abuses. The jurist Paulus (Sententiae, 5, 21, 1.3) reports that those who consulted diviners about the life of the sovereign, or merely about the prosperity of the State, were to be punished by death together with those who gave the response; and that slaves who sought consultation about the fate of their masters were to be condemned to the ultimate punishment.