cation_, or the inspection of entrails, in
_scapulomancy_ or divination by the speal-bone or shoulder-blade, in
divination by footprints in ashes, found in Australia, Peru and
Scotland, the voluntary element is prominent, for the diviner must take
active steps to secure the conditions necessary to divination. (iii.) In
the case of _augury_ and _omens_, on the other hand, that is not
necessary. The behaviour and cries of birds, and _angang_ or meeting
with ominous animals, &c., may be voluntarily observed, and
opportunities for observation made; but this is not necessary for
success. (iv.) In _astrology_ we have a method which still finds
believers among people of good education. The stars are held, not only
to prognosticate the future but also to influence it; the child born
when Mars is in the ascendant will be war-like; Venus has to do with
love; the sign of the Lion presides over places where wild beasts are
found. (v.) In other cases the tie that binds the subject of divination
with the omen-giving object is sympathy. The name of the life-index is
given to a tree, animal or other object believed to be so closely united
by sympathetic ties to a human being that the fate of the latter is
reflected in the condition of the former. The Polynesians set up sticks
to see if the warriors they stood for were to fall in battle; on
Hallowe'en in our own country the behaviour of nuts and other objects
thrown into the fire is held to prognosticate the lot of the person to
whom they have been assigned. Where, as in the last two cases, the
sympathetic bond is less strong, we find symbolical interpretation
playing an important part.

Sympathy and symbolism, association of ideas and analogy, together with
a certain amount of observation, are the explanation of the great mass
of heteroscopic divinatory formulae. But where autoscopic phenomena play
the chief part the question of the origin of divination is less simple.
The investigations of the Society for Psychical Research show that
premonitions, though rare in our own day, are not absolutely unknown.
Pseudo-premonitions, due to hallucinatory memory, are not unknown; there
is also some ground for holding that crystal-gazers are able to perceive
incidents which are happening at a distance from them. Divination of
this sort, therefore, may be due to observation and experiment of a rude
sort, rather than to the unchecked play of fancy which resulted in
heteroscopic divination.

See