Premonition
An impressional warning of a future event.
Premonitions may range from vague feelings of disquiet, suggestive of impending disaster, to actual hallucinations, whether visual or auditory. Dreams are frequent vehicles of premonitions, either direct or symbolical, and there are countless instances of veridical dreams. In such cases it is hard to say whether the warning may have come from an external source, as spiritualists aver, or whether the portended catastrophe may have resulted, in part, at least, from auto-suggestion. The latter is plainly the explanation of another form of premonition-i.e., the predictions made by patients in the magnetic or mediumistic trance with regard to their maladies. The magnetic subject who prophesied that his malady would reach a crisis on a certain date several weeks ahead, probably himself attended subconsciously to the fulfilling of his prophecy. Might not the same thing happen in " veridical" dreams and hallucinations? We know that a subject obeying a post-hypnotic suggestion will weave his action quite naturally into the surrounding circumstances, though the very moment of its performance may have been fixed months before. That the dreamer and hallucinated subject also might suggest and fulfil their premonitions, either directly or by telepathic communication of the suggestion to another agent, does not seem very far-fetched or improbable. Then there is, of course, coincidence. It is impossible but that a certain proportion of verified premonitions should be the result of coincidence. Possibly, also, such impressions, whether they remain vague forebodings or are embodied in dreams or otherwise, must at times be subconscious inferences drawn from an actual, if obscure, perception of existing facts. As such, indeed, they are not to be lightly treated. Yet very frequently premonitions prove to be entirely groundless, even the most impressive ones, where the warning is emphasized by a ghostly visitant. Prenestine Lots, The: or Sortes Prenestina. A method of divination by lots, in vogue in Italy. The letters of the alphabet were placed in an urn which was shaken, and the letters then turned out on the floor; the words thus formed were received as omens. In the East this method of divination is still common.
Pretu (a departed ghost): The form which the Hindus believe the soul takes after death. This ghost inhabits a body of the size of a man's thumb, and remains in the keeping of Yumu, the judge of the dead. Punishment is inflicted on the Pretu, whose body is enlarged for this purpose and is strengthened to endure sorrow. At the end of a year the soul is delivered from this state by the performance of the Shraddhu, and is translated to the heaven of the Pitrees, where it is rewarded for its good deeds. Afterwards, in a different body, the soul enters its final abode. The performance of the Shraddhu is aboslutely necessary to escape from the Pretu condition.