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 DIVINATION

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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