DIVINATION
49
DIVINATION
in the development of divination, especially in connex-
ion with celestial phenomena, is attributed to the Chal-
deans, a vague term embracing here both Babylonians
and .\ssyrians. In Greece from the earliest historical
times are found diviners, some of whose methods came
from Asia and from the Etruscans, a people famous
for the art. While the Romans had modes of their
own, their intercourse with Greece introduced new
forms, and principally through these two nations they
spread in the South and West of Europe. Before
Christianity divination was practised everywhere
according to rites native and foreign. In early days
prie.st and diviner were one, and their power was very
great. In Egypt the pharaoh was generally a priest;
in fact, he had to be initiated into all the secrets of the
sacerdotal class, and in Babylonia and Assyria almost
every movement of the monarch and his courtiers was
regulated by forecasts of the official di\-iners and as-
trologers. The cuneiform inscriptions and the papyri
are filled with magical formuUe. ^^■itness the two
treatises, one on terrestrial and the other on celestial
phenomena, compiled by Sargon several centuries
before our era. In Greece, where more attention was
paitl to aerial signs, the diviners were held in high es-
teem and assisted at the piiljlic assemblies. The Ro-
mans, who placed most reliance in divination by sacri-
fices, had official colleges of augurs and aruspices who
by an adverse word could postpone the most impor-
tant business. No war was undertaken, no colony
sent out without consulting the gods, and at critical
moments the most trifling occurrence, a sneeze or a
cough, would be invested with meaning. Alongside
all this official divining there were practised secret
rites Ijy all kinds of ■nizards, magicians, wise men, and
witches. Chaldean soothsayers and strolling sibyls
spread e\'erj-where telling fortunes for gain. Be-
tween the regulars and the irregulars there was a very
bitter feeling, and as the latter often invoked gods or
demons regarded as hostile to the gods of the country,
they were regarded as illicit and dangerous and were
often punished and prohibited from exercising their
art. From time to time in various countries the number
and influence of the regular diviners were diminished
on account of their pride and oppression, and no doubt
at times they in turn may have adroitly mitigated the
tyranny of rulers. With an increase of knowledge the
fear and respect of the cultivated people for their
mysterious powers so decreased that their authority
suffered greatly and they became objects of contempt
and satire. Cicero's "De Di\dnatione" is not so
much a description of its various forms as a refuta-
tion of them ; Horace and Juvenal launched many a
keen arrow at diviners and their dupes, and Cato's say-
ing is well known, that he wondered how two augurs
could meet without laughing at each other. Rulers,
however, retained them and honoured them pubUcly,
the better to keep the people in subjection, and out-
side classical lands, workers of magic still held sway.
Wherever Christianity went divination lost most of
its old-time power, and one form, the natural, ceased
almost completely. The new religion forbade all
kinds, and after some centuries it disappeared as an
official system though it continued to have many ad-
herents. The Fathers of the Church were its vigorous
opponents. The tenets of Gnosticism gave it some
strength, and neo-Platonism won it many followers.
Within the Church itself it proved so strong and at-
tractive to her new converts that synods forbade it
and councils legislated against it. The Council of
Ancyra (c. xxiv) in 314 decreed five years penance to
consulters of diviners, and that of Laodicea (c. xxxvi),
about .300, forbade clerics to become magicians or
to make amulets, and those who wore them were to be
driven out of the Church. A canon (xxxvi) of Orl*ans
(.511) excommunicates those who practised divination,
auguries, or lots falsely called Sortrs Sam-torum (BiliU-
omm), i. e. deciding one's future conduct by the first
\-4
passage found on opening a Bible. This method was
evidently a great favourite, as a synod of Vannes (c. xvi)
in 461 had forbidden it to clerics under pain of excom-
munication, and that of Agde (c.xlii) in 506 condemned
it as against piety and faith. Sixtus IV, Sixtus V,
and the Fifth Council of Lateran likewise condemned
divination. Governments have at times acted with
great severity. Constantius decreed the penalty of
death for diviners. The authorities may have feared
that some would-be prophets might endeavour to ful-
fil forcibly their predictions about the death of sov-
ereigns. When the races of the North, which swept
over the old Roman Empire, entered the Church, it
was only to be expected that some of their lesser su-
perstitions should survive. All during the so-called
Dark Ages di\aning arts managed to live in secret, but
after the Crusades they were followed more '.penly.
At the time of the Renaissance and again preceding
the French Revolution, there was a marked growth of
noxious methods. The latter part of the nineteenth
ceriturj' witnessed a strange revival, especially in the
United States and England, of all sorts of supersti-
tion, necromancy or spiritism being in the lead. To-
day the number of persons who believe in signs and
seek to know the future is much greater than appears
on the surface. They aboimd in communities where
dogmatic Christianity is weak.
The natural cause of the rise of divination is not hard to discover. Man has a natural curiosity to know the future, and coupled with this is the desire of personal gain or advantage; some have essayed, therefore, in every age to lift the veil, at least par- tially. These attempts have at times produced re- sults which cannot be explained on merely natural groimds, they are so disproportionate or foreign to the means employed. They cannot be regarded as the direct work of God nor as the effect of any purely material cause; hence they must be attributed to created spirits, and since they are inconsistent with what we know of God, the spirits causing them must be evil. To put the question directly; can man know future events? Let St. Thomas answer ii substance: Future things can be known either in their causes or in themselves. Some causes always and necessarily pro- duce their effects, and these effects can be foretold with certainty, as astronomers announce eclipses. Other causes bring forth their effects not always and neces- sarily, but they generally do so, and these can be fore- told as well-founded conjectures or sound inferences, like a physician's diagnosis or a weather observer's prediction about rain. Finally there is a third class of causes whose effects depend upon what we call chance or upon man's free will, and these cannot be foretold from their causes. We can only see them in themselves when they are actually present to our eyes. Only God alone, to whom all things are present in His eternity, can seethem before they occur. Hence we read in Isaias (xli, 23), "Shew the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that ye are gods." Spirits can know better than men the effects to come from the second class of causes because their knowledge is broader, deeper, and more universal, and many occult powers of nature are known to them. Consequently they can foretell more events and more precisely, just as a physician who sees the causes clearer can better prognosticate about the restoration of health. The difference, in fact, between the first and second classes of causes is due to the limitations of our knowledge. The multiplicity and complexity of causes prevent us from following their effects. Future contingent things, the effects of the third class, spirits cannot know for certain, except God reveal them, though they may wi.sely conjecture about them because of their wide knowledge of human nature, their long ex- perience, and their judgments based upon our thoughts as revealed to them by our words, counte- nances, or acts. Unless we wish to deny the value of
