In English, the closest translation for these is, " oracle." The Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India, still consults an oracle known as the Nechung Oracle, which is considered the official state oracle of the government of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has according to centuries-old custom, consulted the Nechung Oracle during the new year festivities of Losar. [45] Japan [ edit ] Småland is famous for Årsgång, a practice which occurred until the early 19th century in some parts of Småland. Generally occurring on Christmas and New Year's Eve, it is a practice in which one would fast and keep themselves away from light in a room until midnight to then complete a set of complex events to interpret symbols encountered throughout the journey to foresee the coming year. [21] There are quite a few English-language translations of the 易經 [yì jīng] available, and I have obviously not read all of them, but I’ll include as many as I can. The first complete translation into a Western language was when a French Jesuit missionary, Jean-Baptiste Régis, translated the book into Latin in the 1730s. Several other translations, including by the infamous James Legge, spanned the 19th century. The next influential translation was into German in 1923, by Richard Wilhelm; Cary Baynes then translated Wilhelm’s into English in 1950, and it was Baynes’s version that became most popular during the Western counterculture movement during the 1960s. Later translations of the late 20th century incorporated new archaeological findings for more up-to-date material. The two most popular English-language versions are the 1882 translation by Legge and the 1950 translation by Baynes from Wilhelm’s German version. Both are, to put it kindly, bad.

Like astronomy, geomancy used deduction and computation to uncover significant prophecies as opposed to omens ( ‘ilm al-fa’l), which were process of “reading” visible random events to decipher the invisible realities from which they originated. It was upheld by prophetic tradition and relied almost exclusively on text, specifically the Qur’an (which carried a table for guidance) and poetry, as a development of bibliomancy. [26] The practice culminated in the appearance of the illustrated “Books of Omens” ( Falnama) in the early 16th century, an embodiment of the apocalyptic fears as the end of the millennium in the Islamic calendar approached. [27] The I Ching or Yi Jing, also known as Classic of Changes or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. Gardiner, Alan Henderson; Sir, Alan Henderson Gardiner (1961). Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-500267-6. Es cierto que el libro trata de ser lo más fiel a la edición "oficial", pero también se han tomado licencias en otros sentidos y creo que ésto sería de gran ayuda para el lector. After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.

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Communicating with God through prayer may in some cases be considered divination; both are open, typically two-way conversations with God. In addition, the method of "casting lots" used in Joshua 14:1–5 and Joshua 18:1–10 to divide the conquered lands of Canaan between the twelve tribes is not seen by some as divination, but as done at the behest of God ( Numbers 26:55).

Another tradition about the I Ching was that most of it was written by Tang of Shang. [15] Structure [ edit ] Oracle turtle shell featuring the ancient form ( ) of zhēn ( 貞) "to divine" The swirling shapes made by pouring melted wax into water were used as a divination tool in both ancient and medieval Europe. One common method was to melt the wax in a brass container, and then pour the liquified wax into a vessel full of cold water, after which the diviner would interpret the shapes floating in the water. A related practice, molybdomancy, used the shapes in molten metal, usually lead. One 19th-century Irish book instructs women curious about the trade of their future spouse to take a small lump of lead and put it under their pillow on Midsummer's Eve. The next day they were to heat the lead until boiling, take a pail of water, and pour in the lead—"take it out, and you will find … emblems of his trade; if a ship, he is a sailor, [if] a book, a parson … and so on." 8. Cledonomancy (Divination by Words Overheard) I've seen on the Internet that nowadays, the I Ching is claimed to be linked to Taoism, as if springing from that line of thought. It's not very accurate. The I Ching is much older than we know Taoism to be, and it's still not even referred to in the major Taoist classic, Tao Te Ching.Although Japan retains a history of traditional and local methods of divination, such as onmyōdō, contemporary divination in Japan, called uranai, derives from outside sources. [46] Contemporary methods of divination in Japan include both Western and Chinese astrology, geomancy or feng shui, tarot cards, I Ching (Book of Changes) divination, and physiognomy (methods of reading the body to identify traits). [46] JAMES LEGGE (1882)Also in the public domain is Legge’s translation, long considered the “standard” English-language version of the text. Legge is a complicated figure in the history of translation; his work was mostly terrible, but massively influential, and is still often used in translation studies, in no small part because of the fact that many of his translations included parallel Chinese and English text. Like many other translators of the Victorian era, particularly those who were also missionaries, Legge filtered all of his translation work through a Western religious context. Much scholarship has been written on the Victorian-era “invention” of Eastern “beliefs,” and Legge is one of the worst offenders; although his opinions on Eastern and particularly Chinese culture and literature did change for the positive throughout his life, the majority of his translation work is so irrevocably tinged with this 19th century-typical Orientalism, as well as his religious evangelism, so as to be functionally useless if the intent is to read something resembling the original text. For further information on Legge specifically, I’d recommend Norman J. Girardot’s The Victorian Translation of China.

Flower, Michael A. (2008). The seer in ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-93400-9. OCLC 290580029.

Divination with the I Ching

The I Ching or Yi Jing ( Chinese: 易經, Mandarin: [îtɕíŋ] ⓘ), usually translated as Book of Changes or Classic of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. The I Ching was originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750BC). Over the course of the Warring States and early imperial periods (500–200BC), it transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the " Ten Wings". [1] After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of East Asian philosophical thought. [2]