Gerina Dunwich - 27 Nov

Gerina Dunwich

A Citadel Press Book
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

To my Mother and to Al Jackter, as always Blessed be.

Cosmic Oracle

Cosmic oracle of the shrine

uttering prophecies of the divine.

With mystical eyes iridescent

you see into the future,

the past, and the present.

Some call you a madman,

a devil, a magician.

They fear and do not understand

the power of your visions.

Cosmic oracle

mysterious and wise,

you have lived a thousand lives.

And when your life in this world ends,

your soul will be reborn again.

from Circle of Shadows

by Gerina Dunwich

Contents

D IVINATION IS THE ART and practice of obtaining knowledge of the future or of secret things by means of omens, organized systems, or prophecy. These methods provide the three main categories into which nearly all divination can be classified.

Omens are accidental or chance signs which, when properly interpreted, are believed to reveal the future, warn of impending danger, and so forth. The word omen derives from the Latin ominosus, which means foreboding evil, however, not all omens are necessarily of an evil nature. They can also signify such things as good fortune, love, or the birth of a child.

Divination by organized systems includes (but is in no way limited to) astrology, cards, dice, lot casting, the I Ching, palmistry, numerology, and the reading of tea leaves.

Many of the systematized methods were devised by the ancient Chaldeans, Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, and Chinese. They were used by priests, shamans, and diviners not only for determining the future course of events, but also for solving problems, identifying the guilty, resolving disputes, and locating lost persons, objects, and even buried treasure.

The third and most sacred form of divination is prophecy, which relies on direct communication with divine beings or entities of the spirit world to gain insight into the future, the present, or the past. This is accomplished usually through visions (including dreams), trance states, and possession.

Under the category of prophecy are predictions made by prophets, oracles, channelers, spiritualist mediums, and any woman, man, or child who utters by divine inspiration or who acts as a revealer of the will of the gods.

The mystical art of divination has been practiced in one form or another since ancient times, in all levels of culture. In modern times, it is an essential part of modern Witchcraft and the nature religion of Wicca appearing in the form of crystal gazing (a Samhain tradition, also known as scrying), Tarot card interpretation, love divination, or other methods.

Many Wiccans are in favor of performing a divination of some kind prior to casting magickal spells, especially those spells which may be considered to be manipulative in nature (such as certain love spells). The purpose is to discover whether or not the outcome of the spell will have negative or positive effects. If the divination reveals that something bad or harmful will arise out of it, that particular spell is avoided or altered in such a way that its outcome will not in any way violate the Wiccan Rede, the main tenet of Wicca, which states: An it harm none, do what thou wilt. (No Wiccan in his or her right mind wants to go against the Wiccan Rede, even unintentionally, and then have to deal with the threefold bad karma that such an action inevitably produces.)

The numerous methods of divination included in this book range from the ancient to the modern, and are arranged in alphabetical order for the convenience of the reader. Nearly every form of the divinatory arts can be found within the pages of this book.

Many of the most archaic and taboo forms of divination involved such practices as animal and human sacrifice, the conjuring of demons and spirits of the dead, urination, and torture. Most of these were popular practices among the diviners of ancient Rome and Greece, but, luckily, they are no longer in use in modern times. Such practices are listed in this book mainly for their historic significance, and they include anthropomancy, armomancy, cephalomancy, demonomancy, haruspicy, hemomancy, hepatoscopy, hieromancy, necromancy, ordeals, spatalamancy, splanchomancy, sternomancy, and uromancy.

Among the methods most popular with twentieth-century practitioners of divination are aleuromancy (fortune cookies), apantomancy, astragalomancy and astragyromancy (dice casting), astrology (including astro-divination and horoscopy), auramancy (the reading of auras), bibliomancy, cartomancy (especially tarotology), cheiromancy (palmistry, including cheirognomy), dowsing, graphology (handwriting analysis), lot casting, numerology, oneiromancy (dream interpretation), pendulum divination, podomancy, psychography, psychometry, scrying (gazing, especially crystallomancy), and tasseography (the reading of tea leaves).

To receive free information regarding astrological natal charts and Tarot card, palmistry and numerology readings by mail, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: Gerina Dunwich, P.O. Box 525, Fort Covington, New York, 12937.

BLESSED BE!