Theresa Cheung – The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Hauntings: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World (страница 34)
Parapsychologists call displacement ‘psychic noise’ and believe it to be caused by the absence of earth time in the higher planes where psychic insight functions and the psychic association of a group of potential targets that are difficult to tell apart.
DIVINATION
The art or practice of foretelling the future to discover hidden knowledge, find the lost or identify the guilty by the interpretation of omens or by supernatural powers. All divination is an attempt to communicate with the divine, higher spirit realm or supernatual or to learn the will of the gods. If a distinction is to be made with fortune telling, divination has a formal or ritual or social character, while fortune telling is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Sceptics often dismiss divination as mere superstition but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for the efficacy of divination. Others believe that divination is the process by which messages from the unconscious mind are decoded and that these messages have a supernatural source.
Divination is a universal phenomenon that has served a social function in most religions and cultures throughout history as a means of solving problems and resolving conflicts. The responsibility for divination typically falls to a prophet, priest, medicine man, shaman, witch or other person with psychic powers.
In ancient civilizations divination was often a royal or holy function, used for guidance in matters of war or state and to forecast natural disasters. Many courts employed astrologers. In ancient Greece a special caste of priests, called augers, interpreted natural phenomena such as cloud and smoke paterns. The Greeks consulted horoscopes, dreams and oracles for divination purposes, the most famous oracle being the one at Delphi, near Mount Parnasus. In tribal and shamanic cultures divination is a sacred function performed by shamans who go into a trance to consult spirit helpers. In the East divination is more an accepted part of daily life than it is in the West where it has been criticized strongly by the Church and by the scientific community. Despite condemnation, however, divination has not been eradicated in the West and the majority of people remain open minded and curious about the possibility of seeing into the future.
There are hundreds of different types of divination, but they can be classified as belonging to one of two categories: direct communication with gods and spirits through visions, trance, dreams and possession, or the interpretation of natural or artificial signs, lots or omens via a system. The most common example of the latter involves the sorting or casting of bones, stones, beans or other objects, with conclusions drawn from the patterns of their fall. Two well-known divination methods – the I Ching and the Tarot – are of this type. When a card, coin or stick is selected the randomness of the action allows the spirits or gods to affect the outcome and give a message.
Scientific research has shown that it is possible to predict future events, e.g. weather forecasts, but this is not divination. Unlike science, divination assumes the influence of some supernatural force.
Divination methods range from the accepted and well known, such as astrology, palmistry and Tarot, to the forgotten, such as entomancy (divination interpreting the appearance and behaviour of insects), to the bizzarre, such as uromancy – divination by reading the appearance of urine in a pot. Most terms associated with divination end in ‘mancy’, from the Greek
DIXON, JEANNE (1918–1997)
Twentieth century Psychic who claimed to be able to predict the future. Information came to her in the form of dramatic visions. According to her supporters Dixon accurately foretold the assassinations of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. She also predicted the launch of Sputnik and the sinking of the submarines USS
Jeanne Dixon, who was told by a gypsy when she was eight years old that she would become a great psychic, also made hundreds of trivial predictions about celebrities and insignificant events and earned the dubious nickname of ‘gossip prophet’. As she explained it, ‘When a psychic vision is not fulfilled as expected, it is not because what has been shown is not correct; it is because I have not interpreted it correctly.’
Like Nostradamus (C. 1:60) and St John (in the Book of Revelation 8: 10–12), she prophesized that Earth will be struck by a comet. Her timing, however, was premature:
I have seen a comet strike our Earth around the middle of the 1980s. Earthquakes and tidal waves will befall us as a result of the tremendous impact of this heavenly body in one of our great oceans.
And like several other prophets, Dixon also has foreseen the advent of the Antichrist and the False Prophet:
Satan is now coming into the open to seduce the world and we should be prepared for the inevitable events that are to follow. I have seen that the United States is to play a major role in this development.
Ms Dixon believed her powers were a gift from God. She made little financial profit from them, making it a policy not to charge fees and to donate income to a children’s charity. Sceptics argue that her predictions were vague, wide open to interpretation and often completely inaccurate or wrong. They also believe that the media played a part in the cult surrounding her.
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