Seeing the future
Divination has been practiced by human beings throughout written history and probably throughout prehistory as well. The human need to predict the future is a deep one that has taken many forms and now a new study has thrown light on why this might be so.
Astrology, palmistry, numerology, and tea-leaf reading are among the better known manifestations of the human desire for precognition, or the ability to predict the future. Humans are nothing if not creative however, and future prediction methods don’t end there. The ancient Greeks believed in onychomancy studying the shapes that appeared on the oiled fingernails of a young boy in sunlight to see what was in store for them. Eggs (oomancy) were historically used in China to predict the future. They were painted and boiled then the patterns in the cracks were used to tell the fortune of the cook. Scarpomancy relies on predictions based on the wear patterns, tongue deformation and lace fraying of shoes. Bibliomancy involves opening a book at a random page and reading the first passage you see to find what lies ahead of you. “Tyromancy” was a practice in the Middle Ages that saw young girls write the names of prospective suitors on a piece of cheese and the name where mould grew first was believed to be the ideal love match. Yes, human ingenuity meets the need to know the future in an endless number of ways. So what is the basis of that need?
To study this researchers at the University of Queensland had people read a study from a scientific journal. One study reported evidence of the ability to see the future (precognition) while the other article refuted that precognition exists.
Believing in paranormal capacities helps create a sense of predictability and control over your destiny.
When the completed surveys after reading these articles people who read the article confirming that precognition exists were much more likely to agree with statements like “I am in control of my own life”, “My life is determined by my own actions”, and “I am able to live my life how I wish” by comparison to the other group.
In a second experiment people who were made to feel a loss of control and then read the same articles reported feeling more control when they had read that precognition exists.
The conclusion of the researchers is that we need to believe in a capacity to predict the future as a way of maintaining a sense of control. Believing in paranormal capacities helps create a sense of predictability and control over your destiny.
Of course none of this says anything about whether any of these predictive techniques have veracity or not. If you want to work that out if this research and these methods are valid you might try a bit of “Coiffomancy”, the ancient Minoan practice of holding a thought in your mind before going to sleep and then using the orientation of your “bed-hair” when you wake in the morning to establish what the universe thinks about it all.
