Well, I said I’d soon write about things besides divination here, and that I will (travel piece coming, just as soon as I can get to traveling). But I also said I’m hashing out a first draft of a book on divination, my friendly old obsession, and that’s what I’ve got today: a new introduction. I hope you find something fresh here.
-djed
It’s been a great adventure for me to realize, over the course of half a lifetime, that divination1 is for real. That this stuff works, if only we learn to work it. That’s certainly been my personal experience, as I’ll relate in anecdotes throughout the chapters to come.
Beyond the personal, I’ve become convinced that divination represents a capacity that’s dramatically underdeveloped in our left-brained, white-knuckle-rational world—a world clinging madly, irrationally, to rationality. I’ve become convinced that, if given its due, the neglected mantic art could play a role on the world stage (if only ever from behind the scenes) as it has so often done throughout history.
Two examples here, out of many possible.
China, circa 3,000 years ago. Facing a corrupt Shang dynasty regime, the rebels who would go on to found the Zhou dynasty used divination in the form of oracle bone reading (reading the cracks in heated turtle shells) and an early form of what’s now the I Ching (Yijing) to guide the progress of their revolution. Whatever they were doing, it worked: they rode the tides to victory, successfully overthrowing the Shang rulers and turning over a new leaf in Chinese history. The famous Yijing that’s made it down to us today was codified by those Zhou leaders, its very text recording the progress of their struggle. The oracle has been used ever since by those seeking to align their strategies and tactics with the currents of fate--in love, business or war.
Tibet, 1959. With the Chinese authorities closing in, the Dalai Lama must decide whether to flee to India. His camp is divided: for some it is unthinkable to leave the Tibetan land and people. For others, it is unthinkable to risk capture. At an impasse, with time running out, Dalai Lama consults the Nechung state oracle, a highly trained ceremonial medium. From the depths of a violent trance state, the oracle scrawls a message on a piece of paper: “GO. NOW. TONIGHT.” This is not mere advice to be taken into account; it is an imperative on a direct line from the deities. The debate is settled. The party prepares a hasty departure, following a grueling two week trekking route over Himalayan passes into India’s Arunachal Pradesh province--exactly as mapped out by the oracle. The Dalai Lame is just in time: if he had waited another day or two, the Chinese authorities would have learned of his departure in time to seal the border and drastically alter the fate of the Tibetan people.
I offer these examples to illustrate just how much divination has always been about real-world matters, and often about life-and-death ones.
Though our everyday divination is not likely to be as dramatic, divination at its best still offers us something profound: the power not only to predict, but to shape the future. Whether we shape it well and wisely depends in part on the divination, but also on us--wisdom generally being a BYO affair.
For these reasons and others, I contend that the world’s divination traditions are precious treasures for their own sake.
But divination is also valuable for what it shows us about the nature of things. For if divination is real, then--at the risk of sounding simplistic--so too is magic. So too are the gods. So too are many so-called “impossible” things that we can stand to remember are, in fact, possible.
Yes, divination can help us chart our course through life on a mundane level, as we’ll explore. Approached seriously, it can do more, helping us align with a destiny we might otherwise miss. But divination’s greatest gift, in our jaded age, may be its ability to open us to greater possibilities for what life can be in the first place--and to the larger stories out there, waiting for us.
Divination is, in truth, but one method among many for widening the aperture of the heart-mind to help us understand more of who and what we are: literal stardust--nearly every atom forged in the hearts of suns--with connections across time and space. Multidimensional beings donning intricate meat suits in order to take part in one of the greatest plays in the universe, on an endlessly fascinating (albeit maddening and too-often tragic) planetary stage.
We’re about to leave Kansas behind for a while. We’ll make a round trip of it, I promise, though we may return with some stories to tell.
For all that we’re heading far out, our mode of transport may be surprising. Paradoxically enough, we’ll make our departure via one of the most innocuous-seeming methods imaginable: play.
Though we’re aiming for the stars, we begin in the toy-room, where we learn to see old games with new eyes.
Divination: a stuffy old word with a vaguely disreputable odor--one I aim to freshen up over the course of this book
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