The Source of Insight

[Quintessence]

For those of you who practice some form of divination, where you do personally feel that the insights you receive come from? There are all sorts of perspectives on this, so I'm curious to see what people think.

The etymological root of the word "divination" suggests a connection to a divine power, but it seems uncommon nowadays for folks to believe that the insights come from the gods.

I wax back and forth on how I think about the source of insight, perhaps because I am more concerned with utility. Divination works; the source is academic.

 

[Sylvan]

I wax back and forth on how I think about the source of insight, perhaps because I am more concerned with utility. Divination works; the source is academic.

There are two ways or frames to look at this I see. The first in an innate ability in the diviner to find patterns in the figures/stories created by divination systems and the sortilege involved. The other is that some external force, entity, or situation either moves the cards/shells/etc themselves or they somehow have access to the knowledge of how they fall. This poses a number of important existential questions about the nature of gods, man, fate, magic, etc. These are fun ponderables, but as Q says.. ultimately academic questions. The process is useful. How useful depends on how well you can tend boundaries. One side of the fence discounts the insights as 'psychological', the other creates for itself a paranoia of signs and portents spinning a web of inaction.

I trust divination the most when I have created a ritual framework which says basically.. "Ok.. entity x.. By these various authorities and etc I empower this object here to be the voice of you here now.' Then the questions determined by sortilege are essentially clarifications of 'inner communications' with the entity as confirmation. If the statements of the beings and the fall of the signs don't match then I suspect a faulty communication and take action to correct or shut down the session altogether.

 

[dgirl1986]

I have heard several schools of thought on the subject. One being that it comes from deities, another that its spirits, spirit of the cards and its actually from within yourself.

I think all are valid concepts. its possible that it is different for each I guess?