[909]. Divinatory signs may be grouped in various classes according as they belong to the outer world or to men's inward experiences, and according as they present themselves without or with preparation by man. Outward signs in ordinary occurrences which, so far as human initiative is concerned, are accidental may be called, for convenience, "omens." Uncommon occurrences may be called, if they appear in the forms of men and animals, "prodigies," and if they are seen in the physical world, "portents." These designations are arbitrary, and sometimes two or more of them may be appropriate for the same event. Inward signs are dreams, revelations in the ecstatic state, and prophetic inspirations.[1600] We may begin with divination from the observation of external objects, and consider first such as are accidental (omens, prodigies, portents).
[910]. Omens, prodigies, and portents are to be regarded as the product of ages of experience. The observations of early men seem to them to show that certain appearances are followed by certain events, and the details of experience, handed down and interpreted by successive generations, are in the course of time sifted, systematized, and formulated. In savage and half-civilized communities divinatory signs are usually simple, drawn from appearances of familiar objects and occurrences. They become more complicated in civilized times—they are mingled with elaborate astrological ideas. Divination becomes a science for the practice of which a technical education is required. Belief in omens and other signs survives among the highest civilized peoples long after the conceptions on which they rest have been abandoned. The origin of signs among savage peoples may often be traced with more or less probability; in the case of such as survive in periods of high culture the origin is necessarily obscured by the lapse of time and can be surmised only by comparison with earlier conceptions.
The belief in such signs may be traced over a great part of the world. It is found among the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hindus, Chinese, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and at a later time among the Celtic, Slavic, and Teutonic peoples.[1601] At the present day it occurs most highly developed in Polynesia, Northern Africa, Southern India, and Central Asia; it is relatively unimportant in Western and Central Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. One difference between divination and magic thus appears to be that the latter is vigorous in savage communities that pay little attention to the former. Further collections of facts may require a modification of this statement; but, in general, it would seem that an organization of signs, demanding, as it does, orderly reflection on phenomena, is proper to communities that have advanced beyond the hunting and nomadic stages. For the rest, there are few objects or occurrences that have not been regarded at some time by some people as indications of divine will in respect to present, past, or future events.
[911]. A fair illustration of the early belief in omens is afforded by the divinatory system that prevails in Samoa and the neighboring group of islands.[1602] It appears that all omens are derived either from the movements of animals that are regarded as incarnations of deities,[1603] or from phenomena that are held to be produced immediately by deities. The flight of owls, bats, or rails, according to its direction, indicates the result of a battle or a war; the howling of a dog is a sign of coming misfortune; if a centipede crawls on the top of a mat it is a good omen, if on the bottom of a mat it is bad; it is unfortunate when a lizard crosses one's path; if a basket be found turned upside down in a road, this is a sign of evil; the way in which sacred stones fall to the ground is an indication of the future. The animals mentioned above (and there are many other such) are all regarded as incarnations of deities. So as to portents: loud thunder, taken to be the voice of the great god Tangaloa, is a good sign; the significance of lightning (which also is sent by the god) depends upon the direction taken by the flash. An eclipse is regarded as a presage of death. A similar system of interpretation of signs is found elsewhere. The Masai and the Nandi draw omens from the movements of birds.[1604] In Ashantiland the cry of the owl means death.[1605] When in Australia the track of an insect is believed to point toward the abode of the sorcerer by whom a man has been done to death, the conception is probably the same. The modern Afghans hold that a high wind that continues three days is a sign that a murder has been committed.[1606] Examples from Brazil, Borneo, New Zealand, Old Calabar and Tatarland are given by Tylor.[1607] In the early Hebrew history it appears that a rustling in trees was looked on as a sign of divine intervention.[1608]
[912]. In ancient Babylonia and Assyria an elaborate system of interpretation of ordinary occurrences prevailed—the movements and appearances of various species of birds, of bulls, of dogs of all colors are noted, with minute interpretations.[1609] The Greeks recognized omens in the acts of various animals, especially in the flight and cries of birds; so important were these last that the words for 'bird' came to be employed for 'omens from birds' and even simply for 'omens';[1610] Aristophanes, laughing at the Athenians, declares that they called every mantic sign 'bird'.[1611] Skepticism, however, appears in Hector's passionate rejection of the signs of birds and his declaration that the best omen is to fight for one's country.[1612] A similar mantic prominence of birds appears in ancient Rome where the terms for the observation of birds (auspicium, augurium) came to signify 'omens' in general. The preëminence thus accorded to birds was due perhaps to the fact that they move in a region above the earth, the larger species (οἰωνός) seeking the sky near the abode of the gods, as well as to the frequency and variety of their actions.[1613] The feeling of direct contact with the deity appears in the significance attached to the movements of a sacrificial animal: if it approached the altar willingly, this, showing accord with the deity, was a good omen, and unwillingness was a bad omen.[1614] Among the later Romans the entrance of a strange black dog into a house, the falling of a snake through the opening in the roof, the crowing of a hen were unfavorable signs which prevented the immediate undertaking of any new affair;[1615] these were all unusual and therefore uncanny occurrences. Some of the animals that furnish omens are totems, and in such cases the totemic significance coalesces with that of the omen; the animal that appears to the young Sioux candidate as his manitu has both characters—it is the sign of divine acceptance and the embodiment of the divine patron.[1616]
[913]. Prodigies connected with the birth of children are numerous. The complete or incomplete character of the infant's body, various marks and colors, and the number produced at a birth have been carefully noted by many peoples. The birth of twins seems to have been more commonly regarded in savage and half-civilized communities either as a presage of misfortune (as being unusual and mysterious) or as a sign of conjugal unfaithfulness (as indicating two fathers, one of whom might be a god). Interpretations of births are given in Babylonian records.[1617] Everywhere monstrous births, misshapen forms, and abnormal colors in the bodies of men and beasts have been regarded as indications of divine displeasure.
[914]. That the stars early attracted the attention of man is shown by the fact that constellations are recognized in some lower tribes—for example, in the New Hebrides Islands, among the Todas, the Masai, the Nandi, and elsewhere.[1618] Since all heavenly bodies were regarded originally as divine, and later as controlled by divine beings, sometimes also as the abodes of the dead or as the souls of the dead, it was natural that astral movements should be looked on as giving signs of the will of the gods. Astronomy appears to have been pursued in the first instance not from interest in the natural laws governing the movements of sun, moon, and stars, but from belief in their divinatory significance. How far this study was carried on all over the ancient world we have no means of knowing; but, as far as the records go, it was the Babylonians that first reduced astral divination to the form of a science,[1619] and it is probable that from them it spread over Western Asia and India, and perhaps into Europe. Babylonian and Assyrian documents contain many accurate statements of the appearances of heavenly bodies; and in the third or second century B.C., as we learn from the Book of Daniel, the term 'Chaldean' was synonymous with 'magician.' While astronomy was pursued by the Egyptians with great success, whereby they made a notable construction of the calendar, they seem not to have cultivated astrology, though they associated certain stars with certain gods and with lucky or unlucky days.[1620]
[915]. Of all divinatory methods astrology has played the greatest rôle in human history, and is still believed in and studied by not a few persons. It derived its prominence originally, no doubt, from the splendor and mystery of the sidereal heavens; the identification (by the Babylonians) of certain planets with certain deities gave it more definite shape. It was necessarily a learned pursuit, and, falling naturally into the hands of priestly bodies, was developed by them in accordance with the needs of the situation. Rules of interpretation were established that became more and more specific. In the early period of astrology it was concerning matters of public interest that information was sought—crops, wars, and the fortunes of the king as the head of the nation.[1621] At a later time, but before the beginning of our era, in accordance with the growth of ethical individualism, the stars were interrogated for the destinies of private individuals;[1622] the aspect of the heavens at the moment of birth, the horoscope, announced the fate of the nascent man.[1623]
In the hands of the Chaldeans astrology remained exclusively or largely a science of omens. An advance toward a higher conception, however, was made by their identification of certain planets with certain gods,[1624] whereby the regularity and certainty of movement of the astral world were carried over to the world of divine Powers. When, in the centuries just preceding and following the beginning of our era, Chaldean astrology was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, it was organized by them in accordance with their philosophy, and it entered into alliance with all the higher religious tendencies of the period. In the unchangeableness of stellar movements the Stoics saw a principle substantially identical with their doctrine of fate. Along various lines (in Judaism and Christianity, and in the mysteries of Mithra and Isis) men were moving toward the conception of a single supreme ruler of the world, and astrology fell into line with this movement. The starry universe was held to be the controller of human life, worthy of worship, and able to call forth emotion. Thus astrology became a religion[1625]—it was adopted by learned and unlearned, its ethical and spiritual quality being determined by the character and thought of the various groups that professed it. For some centuries it was a religious power in the world; as a religious system it gave way gradually to more definite constructions, but it survived as a science long after it had ceased to be believed in as a life-giving faith.
The persistence of faith in it as a science is an additional illustration of men's demand for visible signs of the intervention of the deity in human affairs;[1626] as often as certain supposed embodiments of the supernatural are discarded, others are taken up. The earlier philosophical views of the relation of the heavenly bodies to human life are now generally abandoned, and such belief in this relation as now exists has no scientific basis, but is founded on vague desire.