om Europe in
the west to China and Japan in the east. The ordeal by the Bible and key
is equally popular; the book is suspended by a key tied in with its
wards between the leaves and supported on two persons' fingers, and the
whole turns round when the name of the guilty person is mentioned.
Confined to higher cultures on the other hand, for obvious reasons, is
divination by automatic writing, which is practised in China more
especially. The sand divination so widely spread in Africa seems to be
of a different nature. _Trance speaking_, on the other hand, may be
found in any stage of culture and there is no doubt that in many cases
the procedure of the magician or shaman induces a state of
auto-hypnotism; at a higher stage these utterances are termed oracles
and are believed to be the result of inspiration (q.v.). (iii.) Another
method of divination is by the aid of mental impressions; observation
seems to show that by some process of this sort, akin to clairvoyance
(q.v.), fortunes are told successfully by means of palmistry or by
laying the cards; for the same "lie" of the cards may be diversely
interpreted to meet different cases. In other cases the impression is
involuntary or less consciously sought, as in dreams (q.v.), which,
however, are sometimes induced, for purposes of divination, by the
process known as incubation or temple sleep. Dreams are sometimes
regarded as visits to or from gods or the souls of the dead, sometimes
as signs to be interpreted symbolically by means of dream-books, which
are found not only in Europe but in less cultured countries like Siam.

(B) In heteroscopic divination the process is rather one of inference
from external facts. The methods are very various. (i.) The casting of
lots, _sortilege_, was common in classical antiquity; the Homeric heroes
prayed to the gods when they cast lots in Agamemnon's leather cap, and
Mopsus divined with sacred lots when the Argonauts embarked. Similarly
dice are thrown for purposes of sortilege; the _astragali_ or
knucklebones, used in children's games at the present day, were
implements of divination in the first instance. In Polynesia the
coco-nut is spun like a teetotum to discover a thief. Somewhat different
are the omens drawn from books; in ancient times the poets were often
consulted, more especially Virgil, whence the name _sortes virgilianae_,
just as the Bible is used for drawing texts in our own day, especially
in Germany. (ii.) In _haruspi