But our readers will, we trust, find justification for our calling special attention to the following model of divinatory criticism.
It was under such impressions that so many nations originally rested their belief in divinatory dreams.
Originally diviners from the flight of birds, but the area of their divinatory functions was gradually extended.
A fair illustration of the early belief in omens is afforded by the divinatory system that prevails in Samoa and the neighboring group of islands.
The belief in the sacredness or divinity of the human body has led to the search for divinatory signs in its parts.
Divinatory signs may be grouped in various classes according as they belong to the outer world or to men's inward experiences, and according as they present themselves without or with preparation by man.
Astronomy appears to have been pursued in the first instance not from interest in the natural laws governing the movements of sun, moon, and stars, but from belief in their divinatory significance.
The divinatory function of trees follows as a matter of course from their divine nature (whether this was regarded as innate or as due to an indwelling spirit).
Of all divinatory methods astrology has played the greatest rôle in human history, and is still believed in and studied by not a few persons.
In savage and half-civilized communities divinatory signs are usually simple, drawn from appearances of familiar objects and occurrences.
For a tabulation of omens and other signs and of forms of divinatory procedure see article "Divination" in La Grande Encyclopédie.
The same facility of speaking in a fluent and exalted style while in the divinatory ecstacy, was remarked of old in the case of the Pythian priestess.
Ancient Mexico thus furnishes us with an interesting and instructive explanation of the origin of divinatory practices, prognostication at birth, etc.
Sympathy and symbolism, association of ideas and analogy, together with a certain amount of observation, are the explanation of the great mass of heteroscopic divinatory formulae.
But the difficulty of interpretation may frequently make the dream of no value because it may happen that the future must be determined by recourse to other divinatory methods.
When any of the omens taken by one of the above forms of divination prove unpropitious, the tagbúsau must be invoked and other divinatory methods tried until the party is satisfied that a reasonable amount of success is assured.
If they enter the house, they must be driven out in a gentlemanly way and divinatory means resorted to at once, for they may portend ill luck.
These savages attach an absolute faith to divinatory services, to incantations, to the fetiches, clay figures stained with white and red, representing fantastic animals or figures of men and women cut out of whole wood.
The extent of this treatise does not allow a detailed exposition of the many divinatory arts which had their adepts among the people.
This conclusion is confirmed when it is found that divinatory verses generally accompany the popular form of the game.
It will be seen that many of these divination formulae are used in other connections than that of "Shuttlecock," but this rather emphasises the divinatory character of the game in its original form.
These interpretations are comparable in every respect to the divinatory and fortune-telling meanings with which I shall have to deal in their turn.
Divinatory Meanings: Valor, intelligence, business, mathematical gifts, and success in these paths.
Divinatory Meanings: Dark young man, faithful, a lover, an envoy, a postman.
