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"Divination -- Greece"
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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
The Ancient Oracles
For more than a thousand years, Greeks from all walks of life consulted oracles for guidance received directly from the gods. This colorful and wide-ranging survey encompasses the entire history of Greek oracles and focuses fresh attention on philosophical, psychological, and anthropological aspects of oracular consultation. It also examines how Greek oracles' practices were distinctive compared to those of their neighbors, especially in Egypt, Babylon, and Israel.
Richard Stoneman weaves a fascinating historical tapestry, taking into account the different kinds of oracles (healers, advisors, prophets, and others), their most important sanctuaries, debates about them among ancient thinkers, and Christian attacks on them. Delving into the reasons behind the oracles' enduring position at the heart of Greek culture, Stoneman offers fresh insights into pagan religious practice and the history of Greek intellectual and spiritual life.
eBook
The seer in ancient Greece
The seer (mantis), an expert in the art of divination, operated in ancient Greek society through a combination of charismatic inspiration and diverse skills ranging from examining the livers of sacrificed animals to spirit possession. Unlike the palm readers and mediums who exist on the fringe of modern society, many seers were highly paid, well respected, educated members of the elite who played an essential role in the conduct of daily life, political decisions, and military campaigns. Armies, for example, never went anywhere without one. This engaging book, the only comprehensive study of this fascinating figure, enters into the socioreligious world of ancient Greece to explore what seers did, why they were so widely employed, and how their craft served as a viable and useful social practice.
eBook
Ancient Greek divination
The first English-language survey of ancient Greek divinatory methods, Ancient Greek Divination offers a broad yet detailed treatment of the earliest attempts by ancient Greeks to seek the counsel of the gods. Offers in-depth discussions of oracles, wandering diviners, do-it-yourself methods of foretelling the future, magical divinatory techniques, and much more Illustrates how the study of divination illuminates the mentalities of ancient Greek religions and societies
eBook
Worlds full of signs : ancient Greek divination in context
Flexibility is the distinguishing feature of ancient Greek divination. Worlds Full of Signs offers a systematic approach by discussing the divinatory sign, homo divinans, text and uncertainty management from a comparative perspective, using Republican Rome and Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia as comparanda.
eBook
Birth of the symbol
Nearly all of us have studied poetry and been taught to look for the symbolic as well as literal meaning of the text. Is this the way the ancients saw poetry? InBirth of the Symbol, Peter Struck explores the ancient Greek literary critics and theorists who invented the idea of the poetic \"symbol.\"
The book notes that Aristotle and his followers did not discuss the use of poetic symbolism. Rather, a different group of Greek thinkers--the allegorists--were the first to develop the notion. Struck extensively revisits the work of the great allegorists, which has been underappreciated. He links their interest in symbolism to the importance of divination and magic in ancient times, and he demonstrates how important symbolism became when they thought about religion and philosophy. \"They see the whole of great poetic language as deeply figurative,\" he writes, \"with the potential always, even in the most mundane details, to be freighted with hidden messages.\"
Birth of the Symboloffers a new understanding of the role of poetry in the life of ideas in ancient Greece. Moreover, it demonstrates a connection between the way we understand poetry and the way it was understood by important thinkers in ancient times.
eBook
Introduction
Many divination systems are epistemologically justified according to an explicit ontology: results are attributed to the work of an agent (gods, spirits) or to a cosmic principle (as in the Chinese concept qi ). Analytically, we can thus distinguish between divination based on ‘agentive ontology’, which raises the possibility of deception by gods or spirits, and ‘calculatory ontology’, which understands verdicts as calculations based on fixed principles. The relationship between explicit ontology and epistemic affordance, including the circumstances under which divination is subject to ontological explanation, suggests large-scale comparative questions concerning the wider socio-political and economic correlates of agentive and calculatory systems. These are exemplified in this special issue by the divergences between divination systems in the Greco-Roman world, in Han China, and among the Nuosu.
Journal Article
