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experiment, and divination in altered states of consciousness. Lessa and Vogt (1979: 333) separate inspirational (possession) and noninspirational divination (interpretation of both fortuitous and deliberate events), and Zuesse (1987:376) cites intuitive, possession, and wisdom divinational forms.
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African-based typologies reflect a similar pattern of ideas. Crawford (1967: 17981) proposes a tripartite division of forms, allowing that the same diviner may employ all threes: psychic (involving possession), psychological (diviner interviewing client), and causal (chance cast of objects). Reflecting the dichotomizations suggested by Lessa and Vogt (1979) and Zuesse (1979:212ff), Zahan (1979: 86) categorizes diviners as "interpreters" (an intellectual process) and "messengers" (a mediumistic process). Devisch (1985:5154) distinguishes ''interpretative," "mediumistic," and "oracular-interpretative" divination. In the first form the diviner manipulates divinatory vehicles and decodes their communication according to an established scheme. For mediumistic divination, with its "transformation in the diviner's consciousness," Devisch accepts Bourguinon's distinction (1968) of trance, possession trance, and shamanistic trance. Between the interpretive and mediumistic forms are a variety of oracular-interpretative forms in which "mediumistic phenomena or oracular mediums" intervene (but not through the diviner), as in ordeals and the movement or configuration of significant objects.27 |
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Other principles are present which might guide our categorizations. Blier (1983) notes that many divinatory processes involve locomotion, by tracing movement (fox's tracks among the Dogon), interpreting resistance (Zande rubbing boards), or even using associated implements (East African sandal divination). Or we could consider the opposition of open-ended analogical systems (such as Ndembu basket divination) and fixed response digital systems (based on a yes/no binary such as the Zande poison oracle). |
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Such a diversity of organizational schemes would seem to reinforce the stereotype of divination's capriciousness: divination is whatever practitioners call divination. Actually, careful choices are made in each culture among many possible methods, mediums, and materials for divination, and these choices must be studied closely. But with each culture employing several divination forms and diviners often utilizing different types in the same session, previous typologies are unsatisfactory because the cognitive modes they attempt to distinguish usually overlap. In fact, a key to our understanding of divination is found in the continual reference to an intermediate category between the poles of mathematical calculation and spirit mediumship. All analyses try to distinguish those forms involving ecstatic states from those performed in normal states of consciousness, yet the only real difference between them is that in ecstatic states the occult powers "speak" through the diviner rather than the divinatory apparatus. All divination forms involve a non-normal state of inquiry which then requires a "rational' interpretation of the revealed information by the client if not by the diviner. Thus, as Devisch and Shaw assert, in response to Turner, both "analytical" and "revelatory" dimensions are present (see their essays in this volume). |
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It is far more fruitful to focus on the total process generated rather than try to distinguish the individual mechanical causes of the oracular diagnosis because |
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