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"Divination"
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Roman Republican augury : freedom and control
Roman Republican Augury: Freedom and Control proposes a new way of understanding augury, a form of Roman state divination designed to consult the god Jupiter. 0Previous scholarly studies of augury have tended to focus either upon its legal-constitutional effects or upon its role in maintaining and perpetuating Roman social and political structures. This volume makes a new contribution to the study of Roman religion, politics, and cultural history by focusing instead upon what augury can tell us about how Romans understood their relationship with their gods. 0Augury is often thought to have told Romans what they wanted to hear. This volume argues that augury left space for perceived expressions of divine will which contradicted human wishes, and that its rules and precepts did not permit human beings to create or ignore signs at will. This analysis allows the Jupiter whom Romans approached in augury to emerge as not simply a source of power to be channelled to human ends, but a person with his own interests and desires, which did not always overlap with those of his human enquirers. When human will and divine will clashed, it was the will of Jupiter which was supposed to prevail. In theory as in practice, it was the Romans, not their supreme god, who were bound by the auguries and auspices.
Book
Fortune and the cursed
Innovation-making is a classic theme in anthropology that reveals how people fine-tune their ontologies, live in the world and conceive of it as they do. This ethnographic study is an entrance into the world of Buryat Mongol divination, where a group of cursed shamans undertake the 'race against time' to produce innovative remedies that will improve their fallen fortunes at an unconventional pace. Drawing on parallels between social anthropology and chaos theory, the author gives an in-depth account of how Buryat shamans and their notion of fortune operate as 'strange attractors' who propagate the ongoing process of innovation-making. With its view into this long-term 'cursing war' between two shamanic factions in a rural Mongolian district, and the comparative findings on cursing in rural China, this book is a needed resource for anyone with an interest in the anthropology of religion, shamanism, witchcraft and genealogical change.
eBook
Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece
Divination was an important and distinctive aspect of religion in both ancient China and ancient Greece, and this book will provide the first systematic account and analysis of the two side by side. Who practised divination in these cultures and who consulted it? What kind of questions did they ask, and what methods were used to answer those questions? As well as these practical aspects, Lisa Raphals also examines divination as a subject of rhetorical and political narratives, and its role in the development of systematic philosophical and scientific inquiry. She explores too the important similarities, differences and synergies between Greek and Chinese divinatory systems, providing important comparative evidence to reassess Greek oracular divination.
eBook
Making the Gods Speak
For two millennia, Chinese society has been producing divine revelations on an unparalleled scale, in multifarious genres and formats. This book is the first comprehensive attempt at accounting for the processes of such production. It builds a typology of the various ritual techniques used to make gods present and allow them to speak or write, and it follows the historical development of these types and the revealed teachings they made possible. Within the large array of visionary, mediumistic, and mystical techniques, Vincent Goossaert devotes the bulk of his analysis to spirit-writing, a family of rites that appeared around the eleventh century and gradually came to account for the largest numbers of books and tracts ascribed to the gods. In doing so, he shows that the practice of spirit-writing must be placed within the framework of techniques used by ritual specialists to control human communications with gods and spirits for healing, divining, and self-divinization, among other purposes. Making the Gods Speak thus offers a ritual-centered framework to study revelation in Chinese cultural history and comparatively with the revelatory practices of other religious traditions.
eBook
The Cloisters : a novel
\"The Secret History meets Ninth House in this sinister, atmospheric novel following a circle of researchers as they uncover a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York's famed Met Cloisters. When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination. Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers' more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. As the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs. A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a gripping debut that will keep you on the edge of your seat\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic
This book offers a comprehensive assessment of the intersection between Roman politics, culture and divination in the late Republic. It discusses how the practice of divination changed at a time of great political and social change and explores the evidence for a critical reflection and debate on the limits of divination and prediction in the second and first centuries BC. Divination was a central feature in the workings of the Roman government and this book explores the ways in which it changed under the pressure of factors of socio-political complexity and disruption. It discusses the ways in which the problem of the prediction of the future is constructed in the literature of the period. Finally, it explores the impact that the emergence of the Augustan regime had on the place of divination in Rome and the role that divinatory themes had in shaping the ideology of the new regime.
eBook
Japanese Oracle Bone Divinations during the Yayoi to Heian Periods: A Review of Studies of the Last Seventy Years
Although often thought to be mostly relevant to Bronze Age China, oracle bone divination also has a rich history in Japan, primarily documented through literature and ethnographic records. In recent decades, the discovery of oracle bones spanning from the Early Yayoi (1000–400 b.c.) to Heian (a.d. 794–1185) periods has opened new avenues for research in pyro-osteomancy. These archaeological findings provide fresh perspectives on the social and cultural influences on oracle bone divination in Japan and East Asia more broadly. In this study, we review the historical, ethnographic, and archaeological studies of oracle bone divination in Japan, offering a comprehensive overview of divination practices and their broader significance.
Journal Article