Divination

DIVINATION. - It is a form of idolatry and consists in honoring the devil as God, not because one believes him to be God nor out of hatred for God, but out of the greed to know, with his help, hidden things.

Hidden things can be present, past and 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 one can come to know them. The first comprises things hidden from all creatures and known only by God, by virtue of his omniscience: these things man can know only through a personal divine communication: for example, all future events that are uncertain because they depend on a free will. The second comprises things hidden from all men and known, besides by God, also by the angelic and diabolical spiritual world: these things man can know only through a particular communication either of God or of an angel or of a demon: for example, events that take place simultaneously in distant places. The third comprises things that in fact are hidden at a given time from a particular person, but that he will be able to know when he has at his disposal means that belong to the material, cosmic and human world, and that are legitimately available to him: for example, all natural truths still unknown, but knowable through scientific investigation. The diviner, wishing to divine hidden things with the help of the devil, can invoke such help either expressly (express d.), or implicitly (tacit d.). Expressly: whether he invokes the evil one each time, in individual cases, or whether he wishes to enter with him once and for all into a pact, by virtue of which certain signs always correspond to certain meanings. Nor is it necessary for this that the devil really answer the invocations or accept the pact proposed by the diviner; it is enough that the latter unilaterally ask for his help. Implicitly: in the very fact of wishing to know hidden things with the use of means that are known to be in themselves unsuited to the purpose: for example, by seriously claiming to know with certainty, by means of playing cards, whether a person will marry or not. This way of acting implies the invocation of the devil, because he who consciously makes use of a means unsuited to 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 disapproves of the use of such means. There remains, then, the devil. So that such a way of acting truly betrays the implicit intention of diabolical intervention. Indeed, against such an intention, affirmed by deeds, the mental or verbal protest of not believing or not willing the demonic intervention in all this is ineffective.

All this is easy to understand as regards express d. Not so for tacit d. There exist in fact various practices for investigating hidden things, in which the means employed can within certain limits appear naturally suited to the purpose, but, beyond those limits, no longer. On the uncertainty of those limits between the natural and the preternatural, unfortunately, diviners still today speculate to the harm of ingenuous persons and of lovers of morbid things. The forms in use: oneiromancy, necromancy, chiromancy, physiognomy, rhabdomancy, radiesthesia, thought transference, certain phenomena of spiritism, etc. To the extent that these forms of investigation rest on scientific criteria either already established, for example, rhabdomancy, or to be established experimentally, for example, thought transference, even the appearance of d. is excluded. Beyond that extent, as long as there persists at least the doubt that the manifestation of hidden things is to be attributed to natural factors, even if unknown and chance, one cannot yet speak of tacit d.; only the express invocation of the devil could bring these cases within the forbidden sphere of d. They are therefore, in this regard, entirely lawful, and only shady, unjust, more or less deviant purposes could subjectively render them sinful. To constitute tacit d., therefore, two essential elements are required together: the serious intention of wishing to know hidden things by unsuitable means and moreover the 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, for his omniscience and providence. Such an injury in express d. is always present and is grave. Not so in tacit d. In this, either the intention more playful than serious, or the distrust in the responses awaited, or even the difficulty of perceiving the moral malice that subtly hides in it, mean that rarely is the fault grave. Besides this specific malice, which is against the virtue of religion, d. can imply, through particular circumstances, other moral deviations against other virtues: for example, it can offend justice, if d. is practiced for profit; it is against charity by exposing one's neighbor to scandal or to the danger of grave harms; it can be against the virtue of faith, if it supposes or leads to denial or wavering regarding revealed truths; and the like.

He also sins against religion who consults the diviner, at least because he cooperates in his sin: therefore on condition that he knows it and to the extent that he knows it. He can also sin against charity toward himself, if, not only does he consult the diviner, but positively directs his life according to the responses received; he would not, however, sin who, out of fears conceived after divinatory consultations, abstained from certain actions even though previously already deliberated, but which are 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, which escape ordinary investigation.

Originally it was a branch of ordinary magic, according to which similar causes produce similar effects and which was based, unlike science, on superficial and apparent resemblances established arbitrarily and fantastically. Thus the soothsayer claims to foresee determined 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, divination passed among the religions, where it regarded certain facts as signs or symptoms (omina) through which the divinity makes known its will. 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 in the temple of Apollo at Delphi, of Zeus at Dodona, of Asclepius at Epidaurus. Naturally not everyone was capable of interpreting the language of the divinity, whether omina or oracula; for this, therefore, the priests attended to it, among whom there were at times specialized classes, such as the Augurs and the Auspices among the Romans and among the Babylonians the seers, with a chief arch-magus at their head, who handed down the art from father to son both orally and in writing. In the Hellenistic era divination sought to find a philosophical foundation for itself, and especially the more recent Stoics, with Posidonius, tried to justify this superstition with their principle of the sympathy running between the various parts of the universe. Cicero's treatise (De divinatione) depends in all probability on Posidonius. On the contrary, Iamblichus, or perhaps a disciple of his, the author of the Neoplatonic treatise De mysteriis, founds the practice of divination on the light that the soul receives in its union with the divinity.

The kinds of divination are many. But, leaving aside the personal and direct kind, consisting in the inspiration of prophet-seers, the most common is the real or indirect kind, based on acquired signs, omina or oracula, of which it wishes to be the exact interpretation.

Real divination in turn is divided, according to Cicero (De divin., I, 6; II, 11, 26), into natural, when the signs are casual; and artificial, when the signs are prepared by the will of the observer. The principal means that natural divination employs can be summarized as follows: celestial signs (astromancy) on which astrology (v.) is founded; atmospheric signs, such as the force and direction of the clouds (aeromancy), hurricanes (ceraunoscopy), lightning and thunder, which were for the Greeks signs of Zeus, all signs that the Babylonians referred to astrology; actions and movements of animals, especially of birds (v. AUGURI; AUSPICIO); monstrous births of men and animals (teratomancy), held to be ill-omened; 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 at times were clear (direct revelation) or which one sought to have through incubation in some temple.

In Rome fulgural divination constituted a notable part of the "Etruscan discipline" and the relative norms, aimed at establishing whence the lightning came and whither it was directed, were contained in the fulgural books, attributed to the nymph Begoe or Vegoia. On the other hand, in the augural books were 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 war where a rapid response was needed, of the greed with which the chickens took their food. Ennius Veranius and Varro (Antiq. rerum divin., 3) dealt with augural divination.

Among the means that artificial divination employed, the following should be noted: lots (cleromancy), from which sortilege derived; an easy means and therefore very ancient and very widely used, especially in ancient Italy, where unlike Greece personal inspiration was little known. More commonly sortilege was obtained by means of sticks or tablets on which a phrase was written. So that the operation might then have a surer effect, it was performed in a temple, for example, that of Praeneste (sortes Praenestinae). The fact that sors became equivalent to fate and fortune indicates all the importance assumed in Italy by this kind of divination. Furthermore: lecanomancy, consisting in pouring and agitating in a basin or cup various liquids, such as water, which is par excellence the agent and vehicle of revelation, oil, wine, so that from the varieties of their movements and the groupings of their drops indications for the future could be drawn; the movements produced by an object thrown into a sacred spring (hydromancy), where if the object sinks it is a good sign; the forms, which can be unlimited, assumed by fire in a sacrifice (pyromancy); the manner of the rising of smoke (capnomancy); the observation of the viscera, especially the liver, of a sacrificed animal (extispicy); the various phenomena presented by corpses in putrefaction, a species of necromancy, which most often consists in the evocation of the souls of the dead, so that they may reveal what is hidden or future; the judgment of God (ordeal), that is, the dangerous test to which the suspected person was subjected, a judgment considered by some as a form of divination insofar as it is held to be directed at knowing not so much the objective reality of the facts as the divine will to save or not the person to be judged.

Divination, founding itself on a mechanical conception of divine Revelation, is opposed to the prophetic conception of a personal revelation, for which reason the revealed religions are opposed in principle to its practice.

In practice the people remained very attached to means believed capable of indicating the future, whatever their origin. Hence the measures taken by both civil and religious authority to repress divination. Especially the Roman emperors had sought to prevent its social and political abuses. The jurist Paul (Sententiae, 5, 21, 1.3) informs us how those who consulted soothsayers about the life of the sovereign or merely about the prosperity of the State were to be punished with death together with those who gave the answer; and how slaves who sought consultation about the fate of their masters were to be condemned to the ultimate punishment.

Alberto Galieri