Divination

Every method of divination assumes something about fate before it reads a single sign. Roman augurs read birds, thunder and lightning for the gods’ consent to what Rome was about to do, not for a forecast. Astrology assumes the planets determine or indicate events on earth. Chinese diviners cast yarrow stalks to build one of the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, and geomancers reduce random marks in sand to a vocabulary of sixteen figures. Runes were the letters of the Germanic futhark, carved for charms as well as memorials.

The I Ching makes the subtlest assumption of them all: that every situation is already changing, and the future is a direction, not a fixed end.

Expect translations of the classic manuals, histories of astrology and the occult revival, anthropological studies of divination, and histories of playing cards and tarot. Tarot began as an Italian card game in the 1430s; Antoine Court de Gébelin declared it the remnant of an ancient Egyptian book in the eighth volume of Le Monde primitif, printed in Paris in 1781.