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192 DIVINATION & AUGURY IN A MODERN LIGHT
and indeed of all the Semitic and Indo-European nations. If these beings are human, they would naturally continue to take an interest in their descendants, especially if these descendants kept up the old spirit that animated them, and, if these beings had a wider purview of the environment, it was worth while to consult their advice; hence every Roman family and Gens consulted the spirits of its ancestors; and the nation, going to war, did the same. When experience taught the diviners that these beings could influence movements of muscles and thoughts automatically, various codes were devised by which these spirits could communicate their ideas, and, as long as parties of both sides were aware of these codes, communications between the two worlds could be easily kept up. There is, perhaps, no reason in itself why a raven should be a sign of illfortune; but let it be settled by the code that a raven croaking under special strange circunstances. means disaster, and white swan means prosperity, and an eagle something else, and that numbers mean something, and the direction something, then friends in the unseen world could communicate, as the operator in the Morse code of telegraphy does, when the receiver knows that a short stroke means "e" and a long one means "t."
So in the same way with throwing the staff, dreams, consulting of cards; prophecy by means of them requires the possession of mutual code, be the understanding what it may, and differing possibly among different people; but, given the code, and person whose
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