1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Magic/Magic and Divination

Magic and Divination.—Magic is an attempt to influence the course of events, divination (q.v.) to foresee them; but divination is frequently regarded as magical. It is certain that a large part of divination is religious, and the knowledge is explained as a message from the gods; but necromancy, the practice of discovering the future by consulting the dead, is in many respects essentially magical. Perhaps the magical character of divination may be in part explained, when we regard it as a group of practices in many varieties of which animism plays no part; for non-animistic ceremonies tend to be regarded as magical (cf. rain-making). Thus, heteroscopic divination seems to involve the idea of what may be termed a return current of magico-religious force; the event is not influenced, but itself determines the issue of the diviner’s experiment.