There are countless recorded methods of fortune-telling, some of which haven’t been used in millennia, others of which came about less than 200 years ago*.

The idea is to interpret the divine order of the cosmos/divinity through understanding esoteric “rules” that govern the Universe. Diviners, or interpreters of each art, were necessary because the more observations made, the stronger a prediction system can become. And masters of the art could, in theory, separate correlation from causation to know which signs or symbols held meaning, and which were dismissible.

Types of Divination

When it comes to oracles, there are basically four main types:

• Random: The trigger is naturally occurring, but is/seems spontaneous.
• Randomized: The trigger is human-initiated, but the output is random.
• Human: A person acts as a spokesperson for the divine.
• Non-Random: The trigger is repeating, consistent, or predictable in some way.

There are way too many to include in a single post. So, in the next few posts, I’ll delve into examples of each type of divination. Stay tuned!

And many thanks to Harvard’s free PredictionX course, which set me off on this path to begin with.

*I don’t intend to delve into most of those recent ones. A lot of the Victorian-era practices, like phrenology, are laced with racism, and I’m not about that bullshyte.