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3 - Divination as Magic
At its crudest divination can degenerate into vulgar fortune-telling - the fatalistic belief that the future is immutable, that man has no control over his destiny, that what is to come may be foretold by the mechanical application of a particular set of rules. Such superstition has nothing in common with genuine occultism (although it might be compatible with the theology of Augustine or Calvin) and was denounced in the Chaldaean Oracles of the pseudo-Zoroaster.
'Direct not thy mind', wrote the mystic, 'to the vast surfaces of the earth; for the Plant of Truth grows not upon the ground. Nor measure the motions of the Sun, collecting rules, for he is carried by the Eternal Will of the Father, and not for your sake alone. Dismiss from your mind the impetuous course of the Moon, for she moveth always by the power of Necessity. The progression of the Stars was not generated for your sake. The wild aerial flights of birds give no true knowledge, nor the dissection of the entrails of victims; they are all mere toys, the basis of mercenary fraud; flee from these if you would enter the sacred paradise of piety where Virtue, Wisdom and Equity are assembled.'
Most magicians would be in agreement with 'Zoroaster's' strictures but do, nevertheless, accept divination as a method of (a) examining the full potentiality of a given situation (ie ascertaining some of its many possible outcomes) (b) deciding which of the infinite series of choices open to them they shall take, and (c) developing their own intuitive faculty. Exactly how divination works is uncertain and, before we go on to give detailed instructions regarding the techniques which we consider unequalled in their ability to develop the magical intuition, we shall briefly outline the nature of the currently fashionable theory and contrast it with more traditional hypotheses.
One traditional Chinese explanation of how the I Ching and all other methods of divination work is simple enough; it is that the physical manipulations involved in obtaining an answer to a question are not in any sense random or accidental but bear a direct relationship to the full cycle of happenings, cause and effect, to which both question and answer belong. By its very nature such an explanation is unprovable - but it is quite as good an explanation as any other - and bears a considerable resemblance to certain aspects of C.G. Jung's theory of synchronicity, one of the two fashionable western theories which seek to provide a rationale for divinatory systems.
Before making some examination of the concept of synchronicity, it is worth taking a brief look at the other western theory regarding divination. It is a theory that until a few years ago was confined to, at the most, a few hundred occultists but is now, thanks to the increasing popularity of the formerly neglected writings of Aleister Crowley, becoming more widely known. The theory is concerned with what Crowley and his teachers in the Golden Dawn called 'Intelligences'. Crowley described these Intelligences and his theory of divination as follows:
'We postulate the existence of intelligences, either within or without the diviner of which he is not immediately conscious. (It does not matter whether the communicating spirit so-called is an objective entity or a concealed portion of the diviner's mind.) We assume that such intelligences are able to reply correctly - within limits - to the questions asked.
'We postulate that it is possible to construct a compendium of hieroglyphs sufficiently elastic in meaning to include every possible idea, and that one or more of these may always be taken to represent any idea. We assume that any of these hieroglyphs will be understood by the intelligences with whom we wish to communicate in the same sense as it is by ourselves. We have therefore a sort of language. One may compare it to a lingua franca which is perhaps defective in expressing fine shades of meaning, and so is unsuitable for literature, but which yet serves for the conduct of daily affairs in places where many tongues are spoken ....
'We postulate that the intelligences whom we wish to consult are willing, or may be compelled to answer us truthfully.'
Although the theory outlined above is particularly associated with Crowley it must be emphasised that it did not originate with him but was derived from the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
The followers of C.G. Jung appear to be under the impression that the concept of synchronicity - the theory that everything occurring at a certain moment of time has the qualities of that moment of time (1) - originated with their hero. Certainly Jung evolved his theory independently of the occult tradition, but synchronicity, or something so like it as to be almost indistinguishable from it, has been a common-place of Western occultism for at least 150 years and probably a great deal longer.
At least one early 19th century astrologer boldly stated that he did not believe that the planets influenced mankind directly but rather that they simply corresponded to the various conditions of men in the same way that the hands of his clock corresponded to his appetite for food; 'Mars in the second house of a geniture'. (2) he wrote 'indicates that the native will have no great estate in the same way that the hands at ten of the clock indicate that I want bread and cheese.' Such an attitude is close to that of Jung who outlined his synchronistic rationale for the I Ching and other divinatory systems in the following words:
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[1] This is merely a special case of, and arises out of the general theory of synchronicity which considers causality as a statistical, and not an absolute truth and 'takes', to use Jung's own words, 'the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers'.
[2] ie in the horoscope of an individual.
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'... when one throws the three coins, or counts through the forty-nine yarrow stalks, these chance details enter into the picture of the moment of observation and form a part of it .... With us it would be a banal and almost meaningless statement (at least on the face of it) to say that whatever happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. This is not an abstract argument but a very practical one. There are certain connoisseurs who can tell you merely from the appearance, taste and behaviour of a wine the site of its vineyard and the year of its origin. There are antiquarians who with almost uncanny accuracy will name the time and place of origin and the maker of any objet d'art or piece of furniture on merely looking at it. And there are even astrologers who can tell you, without any previous knowledge of your nativity, what the position of the sun and moon was and what zodiacal sign rose above the horizon in your moment of birth. In the face of such fact' (sic!), 'it must be admitted that moments can leave long-lasting traces.
'In other words, whoever invented the I Ching was convinced that the hexagram worked out in a certain moment coincided with the latter in quality no less than in time. To him the hexagram was the exponent of the moment in which it was cast - even more so than the hours of the clock or the divisions of the calendar could be inasmuch as the hexagram was understood to be an indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin.'
This is probably as clear an outline of the synchronistic theory of divination as it would be possible to write (which isn't saying a great deal) but it is highly unsatisfactory in almost every respect.
Jung's last paragraph seems to imply that Chinese devotees of divination were possessed of a theoretical outlook identical with that of Jung himself and this is simply not true. For while, as we have said before, one traditional Chinese theory does bear some resemblance to Jungian synchronicity it is clear that many Chinese students of the I Ching and other similar divinatory systems had an outlook very similar to that associated with Aleister Crowley, believing that the implements used in divination were themselves possessed of a peculiar magical virtue, were 'spirit like' and given to man as a divine gift 'Heaven produced the spirit-like things' says one commentator on the I Ching.
As for the general theory of synchronicity it must be said that natural laws are not merely statistical - although, of course, they are often formulated on the basis of statistical analysis that a formula such as e=mc<2> is true yesterday, today and forever, and that if the theory was not true there could be no chemistry, no physics and no mathematics. The fact that such a distinguished physicist as Wolfgang Pauli could take the theory seriously proves nothing except that physicists are sometimes philosophically (as they are sometimes politically) illiterate!
But in the last analysis it is relatively unimportant why divination works; the important thing is that it does work - for the occultist there can be no better method of developing the magical intuition.
Divination in this context is no longer an operation of low magic, of fortune-telling. Although the beginner is compelled to use the 'traditional' meanings of the cards (if it be Tarot divination), geomantic figures (if it is geomancy) or hexagrams (if the I Ching is used) it is merely a 'stand in' till the instrument of divination 'comes alive' in the hands of the diviner. When this happens, and the diviner feels completely at home with the method of divination being practised, then is the time for the intuition to come into play: the traditional meaning then becomes subservient to the inner promptings of the diviner. As Dr Regardie put it in his admirable preface to his collection of the Golden Dawn papers: (3)
'Again, while divination as an artificial process may be wholly unnecessary and a hindrance to the refined perceptions of a fully developed Adept, who requires no such convention to ascertain whence a thing comes and whither it is going, yet these aids and stimuli have their proper place for the Neophyte. For those in training they are not only legitimate but useful and necessary.'
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[3] Dr Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn. (4 vols in 2) Llewellyn, USA, 1969. Vol 1 p77.
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There are, of course, literally hundreds of methods of divination that are available to the aspiring magician, but, as has previously been remarked, there is a tendency for the beginner in practical occultism to become airy-fairy, to retreat from the world of matter into an astral never-never land of woolly pseudo-idealism. To counteract this tendency it is desirable that the mode of ritual divination employed by you should be as 'earthy' as possible; ritual geomancy, the application of certain elements of astrological techniques to physical earth instead of to the planets and the constellations, is ideal for this purpose.
Theoretically geomancy is carried out by the occultist in collaboration with the 'Gnomes', in other words the elemental spirits of Earth; whether you choose to regard these beings as objective entities or as parts of your own unconscious mind is, of course, entirely up to you - in either case it makes no difference to the methods employed or the results obtained.
