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DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT 185
practised these arts, derived them. But, as all these practices will not come under the same explanation, it will be as well to classify them in groups according as they seem to be due to the same cause or to bear some superficial similarity,
In the first-class may be placed the cases where the judgment was based on the action of animals and not of human beings or on natural operations independent of human actions, such as the movements of birds, of dying victims, appearances and cries of beasts, the boiling of water, settling of dregs, blowing of leaves, and drifting of waifs.
Next akin to the first come judgments made from the fortuitous movement of human agents, such as dice and lots, the flinging up of sticks and staves, the haphazard opening of books, spontaneous utterances and ejaculations of the voice, automatic writing and drawing.
In the third-class we may put the divinations which appeal to, or rest upon, a supposed higher inspiration of the automatic conciousness and judgment-such as the decision of number on which Geomancy was based and the decision of right moments of time or 'elections' by which Horary Astrology foretells the issue of events. Under this heading may be classed prophecy by dreams, and impressions by the choosing or cutting of cards, the picking of petalled flowers. A fourth-class may be made of divination by human beings in abnormal states-in fire, in frenzy, in hypnotic trance, ecstacy states of clairvoyance, clairaudience, in lunacy, madness, epilepsy, in giddiness-as whirling dervishes--in fasting
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