What You Will Learn
“Only sacred divination united with the gods truly gives a share in the divine life, participating in foreknowledge and divine thoughts, and truly makes us divine.” This was written by Iamblichus (ca. 250–ca. 330 CE), a Pagan philosopher and teacher of theurgy (the art of communicating with gods). He also tells us that the Pythagoreans—the ancient Pagan masters of magic and the Mysteries—considered divination (along with medicine and music) the highest among the sciences, for divination “alone is the means of interpreting the intentions of the gods.”
Since ancient times, divination has been an important tool for seeking guidance from the gods, and most modern Pagans, Wiccans, and others who practice the old faiths are familiar with divination and many practice some divinatory art, such as tarot, runes, I Ching, or scrying. In restoring the faiths of our ancient ancestors, we would like to understand the arts by which they sought divine guidance. Unfortunately, there is little documentation to guide us. Although there are legends of the tarot’s origin in ancient Egypt, history traces it back to a fifteenth-century Italian card game, and its documented use for divination is no older than the late eighteenth century. The runes indeed date from our Pagan past, but we do not have documentation of how they were used for divination in ancient times. Of course older is not necessarily better, and new divinatory arts can be developed. Esoteric, Neopagan, and Wiccan tarots have been developed (including my own Pythagorean Tarot), which work well for us. Nevertheless, we would like to understand divination as it was practiced by our Pagan predecessors.1
This was my motivation more than twenty years ago when I made the first English translation of the ancient Greek Alphabet Oracle and made it available on the Internet. Although I had practiced magic since the 1960s and studied Ancient Greek in college so that I could read ancient mythology, literature, and philosophy, it was in the 1980s that I realized it was the Greek gods who spoke most clearly to me. At that time there were few groups practicing Hellenic Neopaganism, and so it was difficult to organize group rituals. Therefore, in 1995 I founded the Omphalos, a networking group for Greek and Roman Neopagans, which was listed in the Circle Guide to Pagan Groups from 1997 onward. This was in the early days of the Internet, and so contact information was distributed on paper through the post office! As more people got online in the 1990s, I moved operations to the Internet and established the Stêlê, the homepage for the Omphalos (still online, but not actively maintained).
At that time, many devotees of the Greek gods were practicing “Wicca with Greek god names,” but I was interested in practicing in the ancient way established by our Pagan forebearers (with, of course, some adaptations for the world today). There was little available of a practical nature, so I began doing research into ancient practices and adapting them for contemporary use. I made these rituals, developed by myself and other Pagans, available with other information on the Stêlê.
Although I had used the tarot, runes, the I Ching, and other divination systems for many years, they didn’t fit well with the Greek pantheon. One outcome of my discomfort was the Pythagorean Tarot, which I developed in the late 1990s. However, it was a conscious adaptation of a post-Pagan divination system to ancient Paganism, and I wanted to understand how my Hellenic predecessors had practiced divination. Until very recently, Halliday’s Greek Divination (1913) was about the only book on the subject, and it did not give enough information for practical use. Therefore, I started on a long quest, aided by a good research library and much use of interlibrary loan—again before the modern Internet era—to get access to rare books and epigraphic reference material.2 From these I made the first English translation of the Greek Alphabet Oracle—imperfect in many respects—and published it on the Stêlê in 1995. In Part II of this book, you will see an improved translation based on corrected readings of the original inscriptions along with much previously unpublished supplementary material to help you put the Oracle to good use.
Indeed, this book will teach you two divination systems. The first is Text of the Alphabet Oracle, which uses the ancient Greek alphabet much like the runes are used. The difference is that we have actual ancient stone tablets (dating from the early third century CE 3 ) that give the divinatory meanings of the letters. About a dozen of these tablets are known and survive in whole or in part. Although there are differences, they are amazingly consistent, and those are the meanings you will learn. In Part II, I will explain several techniques for consulting this Oracle, including the use of alphabet stones (analogous to rune stones), dice, staves, beads, and coins. The Alphabet Oracle has proved to be valuable to many modern people, as it was to the Ancients, in the twenty years since I first made it available on the Internet.
The second oracle is based on The Counsels of the Seven Sages, which were inscribed on tablets at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Although the original tablets do not survive (so far as we know), there are both written and inscribed copies, so we can be confident of the text. The Counsels are short, somewhat enigmatic, oracular statements from the Seven Sages of ancient Greece. I don’t know of any evidence that they were used for divination in ancient times, but they were inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the most important oracular site of the ancient world, dedicated to the god whose gift is divination. They beg to be used for divination, and I provide a means for doing so in the Oracle of the Seven Sages in Part III.
Both oracles are especially suited to giving advice about practical matters. Stone tablets and pillars with the Alphabet Oracle were set up in town squares and similar places where wayfarers could get practical advice on their enterprises. The Oracle of the Seven Sages gives advice on how to live well, but it is also practical, for the Seven Sages were practical men. (Yes, I’m afraid they were all men, but I have no doubt that much of their wisdom was learned at their mothers’ knees.)
In the remainder of part 1, I will also tell you a little of the history and mythology of ancient divination, which I think you will find interesting. And I will explain a little of the ancient theory of divination and how it facilitates communication with the gods. This will help you to improve your practice of these authentic ancient arts of divination. Finally, in Part I you will learn rituals, based in ancient practice, for consecrating your divinatory tools and for conducting divinations, which are, of course, communications with the gods. These rituals are based in the Hellenic tradition, but you will have no trouble adapting them to your own tradition. Of course you can do impromptu divinations and get good results, but an effective ritual can tune your soul more closely to the divine energies and ensure clearer communication. All this will lay a solid foundation for using effectively the divinatory arts taught in Part II and Part III.
1. Iamblichus’s quotations from Iamblichus on the Mysteries, X.4 (2003), ¶289; p. 346, and On the Pythagorean Way of Life (1991), ¶¶138, 163; pp. 156–7, 179, respectively. I use ¶ for the Parthey page numbers. On tarot history, see Decker, Depaulis, and Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (New York: St. Martins, 1996, ch. 2). See also https://marygreer.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/origins-of-divination-with-playing-cards/ (accessed Nov. 6, 2015).
2. E.g., Sterrett, The Wolfe Expedition to Asia Minor (Boston, MA: Damrell & Upham, 1888) and Leaflets from the Notebook of an Archaeological Traveler in Asia Minor (Austin, TX: University of Texas, 1889) and Heinevetter, Würfel- und Buchstabenorakel in Griechenland und Kleinasien (Breslau, Germany: Universität Breslau, 1912).
3. Nollé, Kleinasiatische Losorakel (München, Germany: C.H. Beck, 2007), 226.