Charismatic Divination

Types of Divination

There are numerous different approaches to divination, but they can be divided into inductive, intuitive and interpretative.

Inductive divination is based on some objective piece of information, typically a text, such as the Chinese I Ching (Classic of Changes). Here, specific interpretations are set out for specific results of the divination process (in this case, the casting of yarrow stalks or tossing of coins to produce the appropriate hexagrams). There is one correct answer in every case (though the answer itself may be subject to further interpretation).

Intuitive divination relies on an oracle, shaman, prophet etc (in general, a diviner), who communicates directly with the unseen world and announces the results of this consultation. The only way to question the correctness of this person's insight is to consult another diviner. (See also 'Shamanism in the Pulpit'.)

Between the two lies interpretative divination, where some objective sign or procedure is interpreted by an expert. Palmistry and tarot readings fall into this category.

Purposes of Divination

The basic purpose of divination, as I have said, is to give advice on some question. Should X and Y marry? Is it safe to take up this business offer? If we go to war now, will we win? These are questions concerned with the future, but there are also issues of the present: Where on my farm is there underground water? Am I pregnant with a boy or a girl? (These could be rephrased as future issues, of course: Where should I dig for water? What will be the gender of my child?) There is also investigation of the past: Who killed Cock Robin? (The diviner as detective, using his supposed powers to force a confession from a person he knows to be guilty on other grounds, is an idea explored several times in literature.)

I originally wrote above, 'The basic purpose of divination is to give the right answer to some question.' But in fact, it is not. It is to give advice - advice which will be regarded like all advice (though possibly more seriously than most), as a basis for decision. To quote the Britannica article again: 'Clients seek out a diviner when they are unsure how to behave . . . Where divinatory practice is a recognized resource, a man who ignores it is considered arbitrary, and one who heeds it needs no further justification for his actions. In this sense, the ultimate function of divination is the legitimation of problematic decisions' (p 87).

Good Advice

Now, as every wise man knows, when people come looking for advice, what they usually want is to be reassured that it is all right to do what they want to do ('the legitimation of problematic decisions'). Often, they are not aware of what they want to do themselves, and the divination process helps to clarify it for them. A friend of mine takes specific advantage of this. If he is unsure of what he wants to do, he flips a coin. As soon as he sees the 'advice' of the coin, he knows whether that was what he really wanted to do or not by how he feels about the coin's 'decision'. This grew from a childhood practice in which he would flip a coin with the actual intention of using it to make a decision, and if it wasn't the decision he wanted would make it 'best of three' - and keep doing this until he got the 'right' decision. He finally realized that there was a shortcut, and now uses the coin simply as a means of clarifying his own wishes to himself (paying no attention to the course of action 'indicated' by the coin).

Intuitive and interpretative divination is particularly well adapted for this role of offering advice, since it involves a skilled 'operator', the diviner, who, if he or she is any good, will be able to perceive the concerns and desires of the client and slant the divination accordingly. This is the heart of the famous 'cold reading' technique, by which the diviner starts with general statements and, based on the reaction of the client, makes them more and more specific. 'You're concerned about a relationship. A member of your family. A younger - no, not a younger member. A parent? You're concerned about one of your parents. Your m- your father . . .' As the client will be nervous, and will thus display clear body language, anyone with a good knowledge of the human condition (so that they can predict what is likely to concern this type of client, or all clients) and an ability to read reactions can use this technique successfully and will seem to have supernatural knowledge.

The advice given to clients is frequently generalised, putting part of the interpretative burden back on the client. Since the human mind is set up in such a way that if patterns do not exist, we find it necessary to invent them, this is also a very successful technique. Horoscopes are famous users of it. This is a randomly selected example (it is my horoscope for the week in which I am writing, from the New Zealand Herald newspaper): 'A quiet period. There will be ripples when people oppose you, but after you have made your point the whole scene settles down. Friction is possible between you and partner.'

The combination of vagueness, generalised advice, knowledge of human nature, and hedging makes this difficult to fault. Most people's lives are quiet most of the time. The second sentence contradicts the first (and the human mind will tend to 'strike out that which does not apply'), by saying that there will be 'ripples when people oppose you' (self-evidently true). People do not feel they have 'made their point' until after 'the whole scene settles down', so that part is also inevitable given that there are any 'ripples' at all (as it happens, there haven't been). 'Settles down' also reinforces 'a quiet period'. Finally, this might or might not be the same situation referred to as the 'possible friction' between me and my partner (I don't actually have a partner, but most people do, and it is the nature of such relationships that friction is always 'possible'). The one piece of actual 'advice' in this sample is implied, not stated: When people oppose you, stand up to them and 'make your point'. This is not necessarily good advice, depending on the situation (I might learn more and come to better decisions by listening to people who oppose me, rather than confronting them in turn).

Many horoscopes contain much more explicit advice, much of it common sense and some of it potentially useful. Of course, a specific magazine or newspaper horoscope will be read by about one-twelfth of whatever proportion of the readership pays attention to horoscopes, and this may be quite a large number of diverse people, so the more generalised the advice and warnings, the more effective a horoscope will be (bearing in mind that a lot can be predicted about the readers of certain magazines, and about people who believe in horoscopes). It has never been convincingly shown, as far as I'm aware, that people born around the same time of year are very alike; though some astrological descriptions seem very accurate again, careful phraseology probably has more to do with this than any underlying reality. If enough of the positive qualities given are desirable, and enough of the faults universal, most people will identify with any of these descriptions. An experiment was done once in which a large number of people, with different astrological signs, were all given the identical description of themselves puporting to be a description of their particular star sign, and most of them reported that it was accurate.

Even something like the I Ching, an 'inductive' tool for divination, is set up to be open to interpretation by the client (who in this case is also the diviner). Here is an example of an I Ching reading, part of the character 'Peace' (T'ai):

'No level way not followed by a slope. No departure not followed by return. Carry on, wary of danger. No blame.'

Certainly to a western mind, and probably to a Chinese one, this is profoundly ambiguous and open to interpretation. The famous Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece was known for giving similarly ambiguous announcements, most of which could not be understood except in retrospect, after the events they had 'predicted'.

Advantages of Divination

I have spent some time pointing out the subjective nature of divination in order to underline the point that what is going on is not the giving of clear direction or right answers (regardless of the origin of the information, real or imagined, or the technique used to gain it). The Britannica makes the point that even if a diviner gives specific information, and even if it is tested, failure reflects not on the divination process but on the diviner (either personally, or in the perfection of the technique they have used). A client will often go to several diviners seeking 'information on which he can confidently act. He is seeking, in so doing, public credibility for his own course of action.

'Consistent with this motive, he should set aside any finding that he thinks would lead him into doubtful action and continue his consultations until they suggest a course that he can take with confidence. The diviner's findings are judged pragmatically' (p 87). In other words, this is an advisory process which enables the client to make a more confident decision - the important point being that it is the client's decision (but is not presented as such). Like modern corporate consultants, diviners and their oracles can advise, but the client is always able to distort or ignore their advice and do what he or she intended to do all along. Some diviners, and consultants, are well aware of this, and ensure that what they do is lend legitimacy to the decisions they perceive their clients have already made.

Hence, in ascending order of confidence in the client, the purposes of divination can be:

To reassure the client that his or her concern is legitimate;
To clarify the client's own desires in the matter;
To give validation to the client's decision in the client's mind;
To give validation to the client's decision in the minds of others.

In his book Chance and Chaos (Penguin, 1991), the French theoretical physicist David Ruelle discusses game theory, and the importance in many games of acting in a way your opponent cannot predict, and hence counter. Oracles, he points out, are a good way of introducing a random element to otherwise rational (and hence predictable) behaviour, giving you the advantage. They can act as what Edward de Bono refers to as a 'provocation', something which has value as a stimulator of thought along a different track, which may end up being much more fruitful than moving slowly and logically in a direction you were already headed. Provocations can have value regardless of their source, truth value, or usefulness in themselves. Their importance is in the effect they have on the thought process.

Charismatic Christian Divination

No charismatic Christian would ever claim to use, or admit to using, divination. It is a practice forbidden in the Law of Moses (Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 9-11): 'When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead'. This passage, in the words of the commentators Keil and Delitzch, 'groups together all the words the language contained for the different modes of exploring the future and discovering the will of God, for the purposes of forbidding every form of soothsaying' (Keil, C.F. and Delitzch, F., Commentary on the Old Testament, Eerdmans, nd [reprinted 1988], Vol 1, p 393).

Yet the ways in which charismatic Christians - and many who are not charismatic - reach their decisions or validate them to themselves and to others are clearly divination. The same friend who uses the coin to gain insight into his inclinations told me of a woman he knew who learned to 'hear God' in the following way. First, she prayed about something to which she knew the answer was 'no'. When she had done this a few times, she knew what 'no' felt like. She then did the same with 'yes'. Thereafter, when she prayed, she could tell what the answer was by which feeling she had. This is what I facetiously call 'pyrothoracimancy', which is very bad Greek for 'divination by a burning in the bosom' (after the Mormon phrase for the experience which is supposed to answer a true seeker's question regarding the reality of God - taken, I recently discovered, from the story of the Road to Emmaus, Luke 24:32). It produces a result in the same way as my friend's coin, but is much more dangerous, because it gives the decision the authority of God.

A popular form of divination in the 1970s was the 'promise box', a box divided into a number of compartments, each containing a slip of paper with a 'promise' (a piece of Scripture offering assurance or reassurance) written on it. These could be pulled out at random (with tweezers, in the example I saw) and read, in a manner remarkably similar to a fortune cookie. Of course, many owners of 'promise boxes' used them only to remind themselves of the goodness of God, in a manner which has nothing to do with divination. But this method (and the similar one of opening a Bible at random, popular for centuries and used even by John Wesley in the early days of his ministry - see his Journal for 28 March 1739, which also mentions casting lots) could be used for divination - and was, if the verses so selected were taken as direct, targeted messages from God for the person's current situation. The same could be said of seeing 'signs' in Scriptures brought to one's notice by various other means (in daily devotionals, sermons, tapes, wall posters or any of the many other ways in which enthusiastic Christians expose themselves to the Scriptures on a daily basis). Some Christians even go so far as to see 'signs' in words and phrases which occur in overheard snatches of conversation, or in secular magazines and newspapers. Their theology of a communicating God is so strong that they believe that anything may be communication from him.

The contextual meaning of the Scripture itself is frequently disregarded in these exercises. A friend of mine (who now knows better) took a passage in Ezekiel as confirmation that he not only should, but would, go out with a particular girl he was interested in. I cannot swear to the specific passage, but I think it was chapter 17, verses 22 to 24, which speaks allegorically of a tree being planted and becoming evidence of God's power, and concludes "I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it." It is, in fact, a messianic prophecy having no relevance to my friend's situation at all. I would like to say that he realised this when the girl turned him down, but it is much more likely (thinking back on how we both thought in those days) that he just decided that he had 'misheard God'. That is, the fault lay with the practitioner, not the practice.

Few other groups use these personal divinitory practices more than keen charismatic Christians, except perhaps the Azande of Africa who 'routinely employ [divination] to explore their thoughts and who will not consider any important undertakings without oracular confirmation in advance. Among the Azande, the ordinary man could be considered a divinatory specialist. Elsewhere, men are content to reserve divination for special crises, and consultation must be with a recognised expert in order to distinguish an authentic answer from a spurious one' (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol 25, p 86).

There are divinatory experts among charismatic Christians also. Anyone in a position of 'leadership' - a youth leader, a home group leader, an elder, deacon or pastor - is assumed to have above-average communication with God, because their position implies that they have above-average 'spirituality'. Like many charismatic concepts, this is difficult to define, but it incorporates ideas of personal spiritual strength, a high level of faith, moral purity, knowledge of Scripture, wisdom, charismatic giftedness and a strong personal devotional life. It is also measured by conformity to, and strongly displayed enthusiasm for, the group norms of the charismatic community (which include all of the above, and the enthusiasm itself, as well as a number of beliefs and attitudes both theological and otherwise). The expression 'mature' is used as virtually a synonym.

Some keen charismatic Christians will seek guidance on anything, down to and including what they should wear (which gives rise to derisive remarks among skeptics regarding God's fashion sense). A charismatic Christian faced with a difficult decision, however, such as whether or not to marry (a favourite among the young people who make up a high proportion of charismatics), will probably consult with one or more of these 'experts' who are 'in leadership'. In non-divinatory Christian circles, such consultations still occur, but there it is the greater experience and wisdom of the leader which is sought, rather than their support in 'seeking the will of God'. The leader will use much the same practices for seeking this guidance as would the client, but is more likely to give the answer in the form of a Scriptural quotation.

Leaders, and also often members of the congregation with informally recognised 'ministries', and even friends, will often pray over people who are taking a significant life step such as marriage (or, even more commonly, public baptism) and offer them 'words'. These can either be 'illuminated' Scriptures or 'prophecies', the latter often couched in biblical style. There are several methods of arriving at an 'illuminated' Scripture, all of them relying on subjective 'impressions' (pyrothoracimancy, more or less). In decreasing order of rationality, these are: remembering an appropriate Scripture, finding it in one's Bible (which all charismatics carry), and reading it out; feeling 'led' to a Scripture, the appropriateness of which may not be obvious (particularly in context); and having a verse reference pop into one's head and searching out the verse. (I was given one of these last once, which neither I nor the person giving it to me either understood or saw the relevance of, but at the time we both accepted it as being from God.)

'Prophecy' tends to be quite stereotyped, and extremely full of jargon phrases (typical beginnings are 'Oh my people, I would say unto you,' or, for the less confident, 'I believe the Lord would have us know that . . .'). Frequently any content they do have is generalised encouragement that the listeners, or the person prophesied over, belong to the Lord, that the Lord is with them, etc. Sometimes they are equally generalised rebukes (directed to the congregation as a whole; I never heard an individual confronted) regarding non-adherence to the group norms, such as enthusiasm, or love, or something else of this nature. Many congregations, as I said, have certain members who tend to do this kind of thing frequently, and what they say is seldom very different from week to week.

The real divinatory experts, however, are itinerants with a recognised 'ministry' (often of healing and/or exorcism, coupled with evangelism and/or Bible teaching - which of these takes priority in public perception varies between individuals, but most do some of all four). I have elsewhere drawn parallels between these powerful figures and the shamans of North America and Asia. Their divinatory powers are much more sharply focussed, and they are believed to have the ability to know specific facts about members of their audience supernaturally. Some, of course, achieve this by conscious fraud, through electronics and memory techniques. Others use forms of 'cold reading' consciously or unconsciously (my inability to examine their consciences forbids me to say). It is notable that they attribute real, if demonic, power to occult practitioners, and would probably resist debunking of their techniques, since many of the same techniques are used by them. They also use techniques of crowd manipulation well known to trained actors, in order to increase emotion and credulity, silence detractors and present themselves as authoritative and in control. This can preserve their reputation for infallibility using Freud's Forked Stick, if all else fails: if you admit it, it must be true; if you deny it, it is evidence of sin or demonic control over you, and it must be true. Or rather, it is assumed that it must be true, and the sin/demonic explanation is brought out if you deny the 'truth' as propounded by the spiritual expert.

One such figure displayed his technique rather to disadvantage in one meeting. He first gave a very specific 'word': someone in a particular part of the auditorium had pain in a specific area of their body. Nobody responded. The net was gradually cast wider; more of the audience was included, people known to the audience were included, the pain became less specifically located. Finally, he said jokingly, 'Come on, surely one of you must know someone with a pain in their chest.'

It is indeed surprising that in a large audience of any kind, let alone one which has come to hear a famous 'healing evangelist', there was nobody who would admit to knowing such a person. The speaker is always covered, of course, by the explanation that the person concerned has not obeyed their command to come forward. Short of asking each person individually, it is impossible to prove that the person with the ailment they have named is not, in fact, sitting silent in his or her seat.

Dangers of Divination

The prohibition in Deuteronomy, part of the call for distinctiveness to Israel as the chosen people of God, also makes excellent sense in the context of an objective, written revelation like the Bible, which asserts comprehensive and exclusive truth. No competing source of spiritual truth can be tolerated, particularly not forms which, like a diluted form of Jewish Cabalism, use the Scriptures themselves in inappropriate ways, bringing meanings to them which they do not inherently support. This can only lessen the power of the genuine meaning in favour of the diviner's potentially self-serving interpretation.

Quite apart from all this, the danger of divination is in the inappropriate assurance, authority and reinforcement it gives to decisions which, at base, are those of the client himself or herself. This is particularly so when the client is also the diviner (as is most frequently the case with charismatic divination). It also gives inappropriate power to those persons who claim a special expertise and authority in discerning and communicating the will of God. This power, even if used with no ill intent, will inevitably be abused and bring about damage to those on whom it is exercised. In the hands of the unscrupulous, it can be even more destructive, particularly since it cannot be falsified except by another such 'expert' (and the will to confront in this way seldom or never exists).

Given, though, the self-reinforcing nature of belief, it is extremely difficult to break a person out of this practice of divination without presenting a coherent alternative and strong emotional as well as logical reasons for its acceptance.