self was regarded as having a
foreknowledge of the future. Later it is regarded as no more than a
messenger. Among the Australian blacks, divination is largely employed
to discover the cause of death, where it is assumed to be due to magic;
in some cases the spirit of the dead man is held to give the
information, in others the living magician is the source of the
knowledge. We find moreover a semi-scientific conception of the basis of
divination; the whole of nature is linked together; just as the
variations in the height of a column of mercury serve to foretell the
weather, so the flight of birds or behaviour of cattle may help to
prognosticate its changes; for the uncultured it is merely a step to the
assumption that animals know things which are hidden from man.
Haruspication, or the inspection of entrails, was justified on similar
grounds, and in the case of omens from birds or animals, no less than in
astrology, it was held that the facts from which inferences were drawn
were themselves in part the causes of the events which they foretold,
thus fortifying the belief in the possibility of divination.

From a psychological point of view divinatory methods may be classified
under two main heads: (A) autoscopic, which depend simply on some change
in the consciousness of the soothsayer; (B) heteroscopic, in which he
looks outside himself for guidance and perhaps infers rather than
divines in the proper sense.

(A) Autoscopic methods depend on (i.) sensory or (ii.) motor
automatisms, or (iii.) mental impressions, for their results. (i.)
Crystal-gazing (q.v.) is a world-wide method of divining, which is
analogous to dreams, save that the vision is voluntarily initiated,
though little, if at all, under the control of the scryer. Corresponding
to crystal-gazing we have _shell-hearing_ and similar methods, which
are, however, less common; in these the information is gained by hearing
a voice. (ii.) The divining rod (q.v.) is the best-known example of this
class; divination depending on automatic movements of this sort is found
at all stages of culture; in Australia it is used to detect the magician
who has caused the death of a native; in medieval and modern times
water-divining or _dowsing_ has been largely and successfully used.
Similar in principle is _coscinomancy_, or divining by a sieve held
suspended, which gives indications by turning; and the equally common
divination by a suspended ring, both of which are found fr