Divination Perspectives for a New Millennium

Divination is any ritual and its associated tradition performed in order to ask a more-than-human intelligence for guidance. A universal human practice, it has received surprisingly little academic attention. This interdisciplinary collection by leading scholars in the field is dedicated to fascinating new insights into divination and oracles arising from recent work in anthropology, religious studies, history and classical studies. Central importance is given to the practical and theoretical perspectives of diviners as well as scholars of divination; several contributors are both. This book explores philosophical issues such as the nature of divinatory intelligence, the relationship between divinatory and metaphorical truth, the primacy of ontology over epistemology, the importance of reflexivity in scholarly studies of divination, and astrology as the principal Western form of divination. The ethnographic and historical examples range from contemporary Nigeria, urban Cuba, Mayan Guatemala and the shamanic cultures of the circumpolar Arctic to classical Greece and ancient Judea.

Chapter 1 Introduction, PatrickCurry; Chapter 2 Theorizing Divinatory Acts, BarbaraTedlock; Chapter 3 ‘Twinning’ and ‘Perfect Knowledge’ in African Systems of Divination, Philip M.Peek; Chapter 4 Memoir as Method, or ‘What the Devil Was I up to Anyway?’, Laura S.Grillo; Chapter 5 Central Asian and Northern European Shamanism, JuhaPentikäinen; Chapter 6 The Carbon Footprint of Oracles, Stuart R.Harrop; Chapter 7 Embodiment, Alterity and Agency, PatrickCurry; Chapter 8 Chicane, GeoffreyCornelius; Chapter 9 Darwin’s Fortune, Jonah’s Shipmates and the Persistence of Chance, EvanHeimlich; Chapter 10 Arrows, Aiming and Divination, Dorian GieselerGreenbaum; Chapter 11 Life between Lives Therapy, AngelaVoss; Chapter 12 Talking and Walking with Spirits, PaulDevereux; Chapter 13 Clarifying Divinatory Dialogue, AnthonyThorley, ChantalAllison, PetraStapp, JohnWadsworth; Chapter 101 Afterword Of Ises and Oughts, MartinHolbraad;

Patrick Curry holds an honorary research fellowship in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Wales at Lampeter. He taught an MA in Cultural Cosmology and Divination at the University of Kent, and is co-author , with Roy Willis, of Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon (Oxford: Berg, 2004).