Divination
the art or act of foretelling future events, or discovering things secret or obscure, by the aid of superior beings, or by other than human means; prescience; presage; prediction. At an early time divination formed a regular science, intimately allied with religion, and furnished with rules and regulations. Of all the nations of antiquity, few cultivated the science of divination with such enthusiasm as the Greeks and Romans. The different systems of divination ployed by the ancients were of several kinds; by water, fire, air, earth; by the flight' of birds, and their singing; by lots, dreams, arrows, etc. The Israelites were prohibited from practicing divination of any kind by the law of Moses. em-