In the realms of energetic or spiritual practices, in ares of magic even, there is one category that not only has stood the test of time exceptionally well despite a lack of cohesion, widespread rules, and deep cultural embedding, but that also offers a continual source of productive self-advancement that endlessly iterates, providing new perspectives with every experience.

That category is divination, "the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means."

Divination is easy prey for any skeptic. There are two reasons why, the lighter being that the future is unknowable. This is a plain truth of our lives, which are themselves culled freely by circumstance like one blade of grass that is stomped on by a boot. Directly next to that blade is another unscathed. Thus to try to pry apart the meaning of the future is foolish, a task better left to analytical methods anyway. We may envision a time in the future where machines are able to simulate at such vast complexity that they can reasonably estimate what will happen... But what's the fun in that anyway? The future is the future, the wheel that turns you, and certainly not the other way around. Whether God determines it, or some fates, or if the universe is just a random play of chance, it does not matter, you do not know it. Why then try to determine it? It's ridiculous.

The second reason that skepticism is easily, maybe rightly, levied against divination, and far the heavier, is that almost all divination systems have isolated and personal meaning structures. That is to say that there are no external systems (attributed to) governing them, at least none that are sufficiently tangible to have their own import for most practitioners. When one reads tea leaves, it is not a petition to a god of the tea. But when a Christian prays it is to a God that is greater than the prayer. When one pulls The Emporer in tarot, one does not have a story to tell about an emporer, or a cosmic image of an emporer to turn to. Conversely, a capricorn with her moon in aquarious knows that the attributes of each are governed by some obscure and likely ancient interpretation of the celestial positions. Divination has no background aside from to say that the universe, as it plays its play in whatever format it plays it (whether God or gods or chance or anything else), conspires with some vague divinity to give a sign through the divination interpretation.  A loose consciosuness to the universe must exist in some mode for this to work. But the rules are not plane, completely unscientific at least in worldview. So, in some sense, the entire proceeding is ridiculous. A meaning structure untied to anything tangible, even in imagination, and a hazy property of consciousness attributed to reality with little evidence or even basic theory to support it. Again, ridiculious.

And then of course there is the third reason. It is the very nature of the act of divination itself. That nature being: randomness. Whether its randomness or, as described above, divinity. Randomness. Chance. To give ones interpretation of life over to something so fickle, can't be smart, can it?

In short, the problem with divination is that the whole thing is just too ephemeral.

But just like a person it is these apparent weaknesses in divination that are its hidden strengths. For just as the headstrong are courageous, the prideful confident, the shy careful, the neurotic creative, and the depressed realistic, one might consider that by its nature something that is ephemeral might be versatile. Versatile being something that can adapt to many situations, or be adapted by many situations.

It is in this continuous applicability that divination finds its great strength and use as a tool, not for discovering the future, for we all know that the future is best left to itself, and us best left to prepare for it, not try to decipher it. Rather, divination is a tremendous tool for two absolutely critical skills to develop in order to lead a happy and productive life: introspective analysis and emotional regulation. Now, there may be better, less self-serious, more directly applicable ways to reach these same beneficial exploits. But divination is special in that there is a granduer to it that immediaately appeals to the natural human inclinaation to mystery, magic, and all other things that feel like blue flame on a hot fire in the forest at night looks. Ephemeral, and yet real and beautiful.

When one pulls a tarot card, there is only one thing to do: to look at your life, and then to consider the reflection that the meaning that the tarot card might shine on it. This meaning can be told by another, but it is only you that can decide its true import.

  • You see, since the future is unknowable (problem #1), divination calls us to position ourselves in the world in such a way that gives both the good, and the bad, possibilities of the future the proper respect they deserve.
  • Since there is no external regulator of the divination system aside from a potential pervasive divinity itself (problem #2), the experience rests just in that moment, that moment when you witness the resultl of the divinaation. Thus, in that moment you may harness the experience to trigger a set of emotions pertaining to whatever you need to posture yourself as at that point in your life.
  • Since divination is born of randomness (problem #3), we are free to fully explore the meaning of the result of the divinaation in consort with any aspect of our lives we choose, we can pick elements of a divination result, and elements of our lives, and match them or let the first illuminate the second to our benefit.

And so, in short, the advantage of divination is that it is an act of self-construction.

This is Part 0 of a divination series in which I will share personal divination practices, most untied to any existing format such as tea leaves or tarot. I know that for some of you this little treatise will leave you wondering the answer to an important question: do I believe that the result of divination is a random outcome, or is it a "tiny spark of divinity reaching up into that moment" as my friend recently put it.

You will have to read and find out, because at the end of the series I will divulge my response...

Quite typical of the future, your guess is wrong. But I'll save that for later.