Module 2: Understanding Divination
Tutor: Geoffrey Cornelius
When in early antiquity Pao Hsi ruled the world, he looked upward and contemplated the images in the heavens; he looked downward and contemplated the patterns on earth. He contemplated the markings of birds and beasts and the adaptations to the regions. He proceeded directly from himself and indirectly from objects. Thus he invented the eight trigrams in order to enter into connection with the virtues of the light of the gods and regulate the conditions of all beings.
(I Ching: Ta Chuan II.2.1, Wilhelm Baynes ranslation)
Module content
This module addresses the question of divinatory intelligence across cultures and from antiquity to modernity. We ask: what are the phenomena of divination? How have these phenomena been understood in the past, and how may we understand them now? Our focus is on the cosmological and metaphysical implications of divination, as well as on the practical manifestations of inductive divination. By this we understand metaphorical interpretation from omens and symbols taken both as singular events and as the components of complex symbol-systems, as in horoscopic astrology, the imagery of Tarot cards, and the consultation of texts in the ancient Book of Changes (I Ching). We start with the 'impossibility' of initiatory, revelatory and divinatory knowledge from the post-Enlightenment perspective: this reveals the ground of the modern educated hostility to divination and alerts us to hidden conceptual barriers to our own interpretation. This perspective is in certain respects the radicalisation of a venerable sceptical tradition going back to Cicero and before. Against such scepticism we review theories and documented instances of divination from classical, religious, anthropological and psychological sources, culminating in an examination of Carl Jung's description of synchronicity. We will also explore a possible hermeneutics of divination developed on the basis of both theological interpretations (especially that of the Christian Four Senses or Levels), and modem philosophical hermeneutics. Throughout we cultivate a discriminating mode appropriate for scholarly enquiry, while seeking to stay faithful to the experience of the diviners.
Module aims
1. To develop a mode of study appropriate to the description and investigation of divination within a scholarly context.
2. To familiarise the student with significant perspectives on divination within their historical and cultural contexts (eg. classical, Judeo-Christian, sceptical, anthropological, psychological).
3. To reveal the metaphysical and cosmological implications of divinatory practice.
4. To develop a critical and analytical method for the description of divinatory phenomena and interpretations, involving a consideration of philosophical and theological hermeneutics, in particular the medieval Four-Senses hermeneutic.
5. To identify the problematics of contemporary and New Age practices of divination in the context of post-Enlightenment thought.
Module units
1. The omen in antiquity
Bottéro, Jean. Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. (University of Chicago, 1992)
Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951)
Fontenrose, J. The Delphic Oracle. (California University Press, 1978)
Guinan, Ann Kessler. 'A Severed Head Laughed: Stories of Divinatory Interpretation.' In Magic and Divination in the Ancient World, edited by L Ciraolo and J Seidal. (Brill-Styx, 2002)
Johnston, Sarah Iles. Ancient Greek Divination. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008)
Johnston, Sarah Iles, and Peter T. Struck, eds. Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. (Leiden Boston: Brill, 2005)
Wildfang, Robin Lorsch, and Jacob Isager, eds. Divination and Portents in the Roman World. (Odense University Press, 2000).
Additional reading:
Halliday, W.R. Greek Divination: A Study of Its Methods and Principles. (Chicago: Argonaut, 1913)
Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (London: Allen Lane, 1976)
Lloyd, Geoffrey E. R. Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979)
Ogden, Daniel. Greek and Roman Necromancy. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)
Parke, H. W. Greek Oracles. (London: Huthinson University Library, 1967).
2. Socrates and Plato: divination and philosophy
Brickhouse, Thomas C., and Nicholas D. Smith. Socrates on Trial. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989)
Brickhouse, Thomas C., and Nicholas D. Smith. The Philosophy of Socrates. (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000)
Bruns, Gerald L. Hermeneutics Ancient and Modern. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) - especially the chapter on Socrates
McPherran, Mark L. The Religion of Socrates. (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1996)
Nightingale, Andrea. Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Plato Apology (The Trial of Socrates) Jowett translation available online
Xenophon. 'Apology.' Translated by O. J. Todd, in Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium, Apology. (Harvard University Press, 1923)
Additional reading:
Alon, Ilai. Socrates in Mediaeval Arabic Literature. (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, the Hebrew University, 1991)
Smith, Nicholas D., and Paul B. Woodruff, eds. Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
Spiegelberg, Herbert, ed. The Socratic Enigma - a Collection of Testimonies through Twenty-Four Centuries, Library of Liberal Arts. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964)
3. The daimon
Harpur, Patrick. Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Other World. (London: Viking Arkana, 1994)
Plutarch. 'The Obsolescence of Oracles.' Translated by F. C. Babbit, in Plutarch's Moralia 5: Loeb Classical Library 306. (Harvard/Heinemann, 1936)
Plutarch. 'The E at Delphi.' Translated by F. C. Babbitt, in Plutarch's Moralia 5: Loeb Classical Library 306. (Harvard/Heinemann, 1936)
Plutarch. 'On the Sign of Socrates.' Translated by P. de Lacy and B. Einarson, in Plutarch's Moralia 7: Loeb Classical Library 405. (Harvard/Heinemann, 1984)
additional reading:
Nitzsche, Jane Chance. The Genius Figure in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. (New York
London: Columbia University Press, 1975).
4. The Hebrew Bible: ontology, prophecy, divination
Bohak, Gideon. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2008)
Jeffers, Ann, Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria. (Leiden,New York, Koln: Brill, 1996)
Porter, J. R. 'Ancient Israel.' in Divination and Oracles, edited by Michael Loewe and Carmen Blacker. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981)
Additional reading:
von Rad, Gerhard. Old Testament Theology. Translated by D. M. G. Stalker. 2 vols. Vol. I. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1962)
---. Old Testament Theology. Translated by D. M. G. Stalker. 2 vols. Vol. II. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1965)
5. Augustine and divination
Bonner, Gerald., ed. St. Augustine of Hippo: Life and Controversies. (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1986)
O'Donnell, James. Augustine: Confessions. (Oxford, 1992).
Additional reading:
Kelsey, Morton T. God, Dreams and Revelation: A Christian Interpretation of Dreams. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1991)
Meynell, Hugo, ed. Grace, Politics and Desire: Essays on Augustine. (Calgary, Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary, 1990)
Paffenroth, Kim, and Robert P. Kennedy, eds. A Reader's Companion to Augustine's Confessions. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003)
6. The Medieval Four Senses as a hermeneutic of divination
Voss, Angela M. 'From Allegory to Anagoge: The Question of Symbolic Perception in a Literal World.' In Astrology and the Academy, edited by Nicholas Campion, Patrick Curry and Michael York, 1-9. (Bristol: Cinnabar, 2004)
Augustine, St. On Christian Doctrine. Translated by D. W. Robertson, Library of Liberal Arts. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976)
Lubac, Henri de. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Translated by Mark Sebanc. 2 vols. Vol. I. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)
Lubac, Henri de. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Translated by E.M. Macierowski. 2 vols. Vol. II. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000)
Rollinson, Philip. Classical Theories of Allegory and Christian Culture. (Pittsburg: Duqesne University Press, 1981)
7. I Ching and the moral pattern in Chinese thought
I Ching, or Book of Changes. Translated by Richard Wihelm. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970)
The Way of Lao Tzu (Tao-Te Ching). Translated by Wing-Tsit Chan. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963)
Hyde, Maggie. 'Pigs and Fishes: Inner Truth in Divination.' (University of Kent, 2005). [on-line]
Additional reading:
Chan, Wing-Tsit, ed. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963)
Graham, A. C. Unreason within Reason: Essays on the Outskirts of Rationality (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1992)
Raphals, Lisa. Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China and Greece. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)
Smith, Kidder et al. Sung Dynasty Uses of the Book of Changes. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)
8. The sceptical tradition from Cicero to Kant
Cicero. On Divination. Translated by W. A. Falconer, Loeb Classical Library. (London: William Heinemann, 1923)
Cornelius, Geoffrey. Summary of Kant's 'Dreams' and discussion. (University of Kent, 2009) - online
Vickers, Brian, ed. 'Analogy Versus Identity: The Rejection of Occult Symbolism, 1580-1680.' In Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, edited by Brian Vickers, 95-163. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)
Kant Dreams of a spirit-seer illuminated by dreams of metaphysics (1766) - ed. and Trans. D. Walford, R. Meerbote. Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770 (1992, Cambridge University Press)
Additional reading:
Cicero. The Nature of the Gods. Translated by Horace C. P. McGregor. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972)
Guyer, P., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Heidegger, M.: What is a Thing? Trans. W. B. J. Barton and V. Deutsch. (outh Bend, IN.: Gateway Editions, 1967)
Palmquist, S. R., Kant's Critical Religion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)
Shumaker, Wayne. The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972)
Swedenborg transl. & ed. Dole, Emanuel Swedenborg: the Universal Human and Soul-Body Interaction (New York: Paulist Press: Classics of Western Spirituality, 1984)
9. Participation and the cognitive continuum: anthropological perspectives
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. How Natives Think. Translated by Lilian A. Clare. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien. The Notebooks on Primitive Mentality. Translated by Peter Rivière. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975)
Tedlock, Barbara. 'Divination as a Way of Knowing: Embodiment, Visualisation, Narrative, and Interpretation.' Folklore, no. 112 (2001): 189-97
Peek, Philip M., ed. African Divination Systems. (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991)
Turner, V.W. Revelation and Divination in Ndembu Ritual. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973)
Additional reading:
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937)
Holbraad, Martin. 'Defining Anthropological Truth.' In Truth Conference. (Cambridge, 2004)
Horton, Robin. Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1972). Tedlock, Barbara. Time and the Highland Maya. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992)
10. Psychical research and subliminal mind: from Myers to Flournoy and Freud
Murphy, Gardner, and Robert O. Ballou, eds. William James on Psychical Research. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961)
Myers, Frederick W.H. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. abridged ed. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920)
Flournoy, Theodore. From India to the Planet Mars: A Case of Multiple Personality with Imaginary Languages. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)
Freud, Sigmund. 'Dreams and Occultism: Lecture 30.' In New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. (London: Penguin, 1973)
Additional reading:
Devereux, George, ed. Psychoanalysis and the Occult. (New York: International Universities Press, 1970)
Eisenbud, Jule. Parapsychology and the Unconscious. (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1983)
Ellenberger, Henri F. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1970)
Flournoy, Theodore. Spiritism and Psychology. Translated by Hereward Carrington. (New York, NY: Harper and Bros., 1911)
Gauld, Alan. The Founders of Psychical Research. (New York: Schocken Books, 1968)
Oppenheim, Janet. The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
Sidgwick, Eleanor Mildred, Edmund Gurney, Frederick W.H. Myers, and Frank Podmore, eds. Phantasms of the Living. (New York: University Books Inc., 1962)
Thakur, Shivesh C., ed. Philosophy and Psychical Research. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976)
11. Jung and synchronicity
Aziz, Robert. C.G.Jung's Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity. (State University of New York, 1990)
Franz, Marie-Louise von. On Divination and Synchronicity: The Psychology of Meaningful Chance. (Toronto: Inner City, 1980)
Hyde, Maggie. Jung and Astrology. (Aquarian Press, 1992)
Jung, C.G. Foreword to the English edition I Ching, or Book of Changes. Translated by Richard Wihelm. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970).Jung, C.G. Synchronicity, an Acausal Connecting Principle. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972)
Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. (Fontana, 1974)
Main, Roderick. Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal. (Routledge, 1997)
Main, Roderick. The Rupture of Time. (Hove, New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2004)
Additional reading:
Progoff, Ira. Jung, Synchronicity and Human Destiny. (New York: Dell Publishing, 1973)
McGuire, William, ed. The Freud-Jung Letters. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)
12. Towards a hermeneutic of divination
Cornelius, Geoffrey. 'Provisional Definitions Towards an Analysis of Divination.' (University of Kent, 2007) [online]
Struck, Peter. Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of Their Texts. (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004)
Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays. Translated by Froma I. Zeitlin. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991)
Additional reading:
Dupre, Louis. Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)
Palmer, Richard E. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969)
Stewart, David. 'The Hermeneutics of Suspicion.' Journal of Literature and Theology 3, no. 3 (1989): 296-307
Struck, Peter. 'Natural Supernaturalism: Physical Explanations of Divination in the Greco-Roman World.' Paper presented at the American Philological Association annual meeting, Boston, MA, 2005.
For an extensive bibliography for cosmology and divination click here
For a catalogue of papers available from AV click here