How Divination Works

The next question in the latest Conversations Under the Oaks is something people have wondered about for millennia.

I’d love to know your opinion on why divination works. I don’t have any doubt it does because I’ve seen it a thousand times. But how can we “know things”? I’m not asking about the future, if the future is written in stone, etc. Sometimes we ask about the past and it works too. So… how can we know? What is divination?!

The English word “divination” comes to us from the Latin divinare meaning “to predict” and from the English word “divine” meaning “of the Gods.” Divination is a method of discovering things we have no way of knowing through ordinary means.

How does it work? The only completely honest answer is “we don’t know.” We know that it does work, because – as the questioner points out – we’ve seen it work over and over again. Confucius didn’t say it (and neither did George Bernard Shaw) but it’s still true: “people who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.”

What is deemed impossible with atheistic and materialistic foundational assumptions is quite possible in a worldview grounded in theism and animism.

We need not have a robust theory of divination to use it effectively. Most of us don’t really understand how electricity works – that doesn’t stop us from turning on the lights. But I’m eternally curious, and I’ve given this some thought over the years. Here are some likely possibilities that are worth exploring.

Someone tells us

This is the obvious answer. We ask a question and someone tells us. Quite often, answers learned in divination come from the divine – our Gods tell us what we need to know. Or an other-than-divine spirit tells us: an ancestor or an angel or a demon. Religions opposed to divination often insist that all such answers come from demons who wish to deceive or corrupt us, but our own experiences show that’s simply not true.

In order to get the right answer, you have to ask the right person. The dead are not omniscient. If they didn’t know something in life, they’re not likely to know it in death. Neither are other most other spirits.

Are the Gods omniscient? I don’t know. I tend to think not (though I hold that belief very loosely) but from experience I think it’s safe to say our priorities are not Their priorities. If They decline to tell us something, it’s less likely that They don’t know the answer and more likely They think the answer isn’t very important.

And so when They do tell us something, we can safely assume that it is important.

These answers may come directly – a spirit may appear and tell us what we need to know. That’s very rare. They may come silently – a voice in your head that’s actually outside your head and you know it’s not you. Or they may come through a divination system – the right cards or runes or oghams turn up in the draw.

This is the simplest explanation of how divination works. I like simple answers, but sometimes things are more complicated.

We already know the answer

This is another obvious answer. Particularly when we’re doing divination to understand a situation, or to help figure out what we should do, the real challenge isn’t to find the answer. The challenge is to see the answer, and then to accept the answer. Divination systems – especially Tarot or scrying – help us bypass our conscious mind and the “it can’t be done” and “this is too scary to deal with” roadblocks it puts up. We can tap into our unconscious mind and extract information that’s already there.

I’m reluctant to rely too heavily on this explanation. Too many people use it to say “see, it’s all in your head” and justify remaining in a materialist worldview.

And there are times when divination reveals information we had no way of knowing. I come across this in reading Tarot for others on a regular basis. The cards turn up something I could not possibly have known, but that is obvious to the querent.

Still, sometimes divination simply helps us see what we already know but either can’t remember or don’t want to accept.

We connect to a source of knowledge

This possibility is less obvious but still important. Some traditions – especially the occult traditions of the early 20^th century – teach that there’s a “hall of records” that contains all the knowledge that ever was or ever will be. If we can journey there and learn to access the records, we can discover anything we need to know.

I’m uncomfortable with this model – it strikes me as too materialistic to take literally, or close to literally. But the concepts the model describes are plausible.

Many of us – particularly Nature-centered Pagans – like to talk about “the web of life” and how we’re all connected. If this is true physically (and clearly it is) then it is likely true spiritually. If we can communicate with the spirit of tree or with the spirit of a dead ancestor, can we also communicate with the spirit of a lost object? The spirit of an event in the far past? Or even the spirit of an event in the future?

And all of this is before we start to talk about psychic energies, psychic phenomena, and psychic abilities. Perhaps we can perceive the energies of past events, and if we are sufficiently skilled, interpret those energies and translate them into our own thoughts, and then express them in words.

How do you do that? Read Psychic Witch and start practicing. Or just stop rationalizing away every clairvoyance and premonition you get.

The future is not fixed

In my own divinations – particularly when I’m reading for others – I emphasize that the cards (or whatever method of divination you use) show us what will be, not what must be. I like to use the metaphor of turning on your headlights so you can better see what’s in the road ahead of you. If you don’t like what you see, or if you don’t like where you’re headed, make a change and go somewhere else instead.

Philosophers and physicists far wiser than me have debated the question of fate vs. free will for as long as we’ve been human. There is no definitive answer. I believe in free will because I have to. I have to believe that while life is far bigger than me and much of it is random, I still have a choice – even if that choice is only how to respond internally. I can’t change the world, but I can change myself. Most times that’s enough.

There are some traditions who teach that past, present, and future all exist simultaneously – they say that’s why we can access the past and see the future. I’m unconvinced. If the future is written, it is written not in ink and not in pencil but in sand.

The future is not fixed. Divination can show us where we’re headed. After that, it’s up to us to decide if that’s a good thing, or if we need to go in a different direction.

Divination cannot choose for us

When You Rely Too Much on Divination made last year’s 4 Best Posts of 2021 You Didn’t Read year-end feature. People like hearing how divination can show them what’s coming. They don’t like being told they still have to make their own decisions.

Why would you want to surrender your agency to a deck of cards, or to some dead person?

This much we know: however divination works, it works. It gives us information. Put in proper context, it gives us knowledge. Applied wisely, it gives us wisdom. That gives us more tools to make the best decisions possible, for ourselves, our communities, and our wider world.