Divination, Oracles & Omens

Michelle Aroney, David Zeitlyn (MA(Hons Oxon), Msc (Lond, LSE), PhD (cantab))

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Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Bodleian Library
01 April 2025

Sociology & anthropology; Fortune-telling & divination

The past, present and future are full of tantalising mysteries: questions about our own and other people's lives that we long to answer. Across history, human cultures have devised a wide range of methods to discover what might lie ahead or to understand past events.

This fascinating book features twenty-four divinatory techniques from around the world that have been and are still used to uncover hidden information: from astrology, palmistry, and Tarot to egg divination and Chinese Yijing. Each chapter is beautifully illustrated with a wide range of associated objects, such as cards, dice, altars, candles and texts, and even mathematical tools including astrolabes and astronomical tables. While these practices are often seen as light-hearted entertainment, a soothsayer's uncannily accurate reading can catapult a client from scepticism to serious engagement.

From ancient times to the present day, this spellbinding collection explores our need to appeal to powers beyond the realm of our day-to-day understanding for prediction and clarification, and how the questions we ask can reveal more than the answers we are given.

Edited by: Michelle Aroney, David Zeitlyn (MA(Hons Oxon), Msc (Lond, LSE), PhD (cantab))
Imprint: Bodleian Library
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 161mm,
Weight: 666g
ISBN: 9781851246335
ISBN 10: 1851246339
Pages: 192
Publication Date: 01 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Michelle Pfeffer is a research fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a historian of early modern science and religion. David Zeitlyn is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and an initiated Mambila gam d spider diviner.

Reviews for Divination, Oracles & Omens

Beautifully illustrated, Divination, Oracles & Omens presents an array of related objects used in divination practices, such as cards, dice, altars, candles, astrolabes, and astronomical tables...More than just a survey of divinatory techniques, this spellbinding work explores what it means to seek answers in an unpredictable world, revealing that our questions often speak volumes about our lives and the times we live in. -- Gang Li * International Society for the Critical Study of Divination *