Projecting the Future of Divination
Your prompt:
We have considered the witch-burnings/trials of the 17th and early 18th centuries, as well as the laws forbidding the practice. We've noted the rise of astrology and how science made it into something else. We've discussed dreams and examined dream books from antiquity (Artemidorus) and one from the 18th century ( including Mr Freke). While the astrological vogue becomes astronomically and scientifically based, occultism (I.e. The Hellfire boys) flourishes more in the spirit of decadence than of religion. This playful [?] Gothicism prevails but Napoleon will outlaw professional cartomancy. In fact, both Britain and France are highly social cultures obsessed with cards and gambling and cartomancy flourishes even as Napoleon bans the practice (Lenorman, for example, is arrested numerous times). We've remarked on the mystical aspects of the Tarot—its occultist overtones and its reliance on chance as a foundation for divination. By the end of the 18th century and into the early 19th century, along with industrializtion come its numerous social consequences. Diseases kill millions. There are wars—even on a global scale. Death is a constant presence. These factors, no doubt, help explain the 19th century's obsession with spiritualism. Besides, all the best people are doing it—Empresses , Czars, Queens, and U S Presidents, to list but a few. I think that we can all agree that necromancy (for that is the term for the practice) would not have been tolerated in 17th-century Salem—but by 1864, it is so accepted and common that Abe Lincoln, a sitting President, tries on numerous occasions to make contact and to communicate with the dead by way of mediums and seances. Attitudes have apparently changed—and rather a lot—since the 17th century. We touched on Mr Cayce—a simple man with extraordinary talents. Mr Cayce possessed very little formal education and held orthodox protestant religious beliefs, yet in a trans-like state he diagnoses illnesses with uncanny accuracy--over and over again. He also predicts (with less success) future events. Although we didn't discuss the matter, this is about the time that Ouiji boards come into vogue. (I got one for Christmas in 1967.)
Consider this odd history and then define the future of divination; that is, how will this need (for that it what it appears to be) be met or addressed in the future? Explain. This is not intend to be a research paper—only a thoughtful essay.
11 years ago
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