Divination

"Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future."

— Sybill Trelawney

Harry Potter and Ron Weasley unenthusiastically gaze into a crystal ball in Divination class

Divination was a branch of magic that involved attempting to foresee the future, or gather insights into past, present and future events, through various rituals and tools.

Divination was different from other branches of magic in that it required the practitioner to possess a natural aptitude. One could not simply study hard and expect to get better at it, if a witch or wizard lacked any aptitude for divination, then they were doomed to fail no matter how hard they worked.

Human divination

"Divination is one of the most imprecise branches of magic. I shall not conceal from you that I have very little patience with it."

— Minerva McGonagall's negative view of Divination

Divination had been practised since ancient times. The earliest known method of human fortune-telling was the product known in the West as Chinese Fortune Sticks.

Seers

A record of Trelawney's first prophecy

Witches and wizards who were born with the natural gift for prophecy were known as Seers, and had the ability to foresee the future with their Inner Eye. Professor Sybill Trelawney is an example of someone with this gift; her predictions almost always seemed "woolly" and even fraudulent, and she was always predicting the deaths of students. However, aside from these death predictions that never came true, Professor Trelawney actually had an impressively accurate track record, seemingly by simply making stuff up in an effort to appear all-knowing, possibly her Inner Eye at work without her even realizing it.

Professor Trelawney has asserted that "The Inner Eye does not See upon command!". Furthermore, the Inner Eye apparently skips three generations in families.

According to Professor Mudiwa Onai, Divination was an important yet often misunderstood branch of magic. True Seers were very rare and as often the case with unique individuals, they could often be misread or even feared.

There was an occupation in the Wizarding world known as a Naming Seer. In exchange for gold, Seers would make predictions about the future of an unborn child and advise the parents to give them a suitable name.

Wands made from Silver lime wood had a reputation for performing best for Seers and those skilled in Legilimency.

Non-Seers

A third year Divination class at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

While those born with the gift of the Inner Eye were rare, non-Seers could also learn divination methods and develop and gain various insights with them. A common way of seeing the future was with the aid of a crystal ball. To this end, Divination was taught as an elective subject from the third year on at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However, the success of these non-seers varied, the main problem being that Divination was highly imprecise in the first place.

During a Divination class in 1993, Professor Trelawney told Hermione Granger that she perceived very little aura around her, indicating that she had "very little receptivity to the resonances of the future". This indicated that there was a distinct correlation between a witch or wizards' "amount" of aura and whether or not they would be competent at Divination.

Imprecision

"At times, the future is murky to us all. As with rippling water, one must wait for things to settle before the reflection becomes clear."

— Professor Mudiwa Onai

Learned wizards and witches seemed to regard the practice of divination with scepticism. Hermione Granger once described it as "woolly" and "a lot of guesswork," Minerva McGonagall thought it was "one of the most imprecise branches of magic," and before he decided to take on Sybill Trelawney as Divination professor at Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore was inclined to scrap the subject altogether. Be that as it may, true prophecies were not lightly dismissed, even by sceptics. The truly wise knew that the words of prophecies always held importance, even if that importance was not easily or immediately apparent.

In some cases, the signs granted by Divination can be more literal that symbolic. An example of this was when Harry Potter had the Grim (a giant spectral dog that haunted churchyards, seen as an omen of death). As it turned out, the image of a dog just meant that a dog would play a significant role in his future. The dog actually being his Godfather, Sirius Black, who was a dog Animagus.

According to Professor Onai, it was wise to have a measured perception. Nothing worthwhile was ever easy to achieve, but that is precisely why such futures were worth striving for.

The inaccuracy of Divination was not necessarily a bad thing in the right circumstances; a vision of danger did not necessarily mean certain doom. It could at least help one to prepare for what was to come. The future was not etched in stone, it could be carved out by those who had very strong wills. However, the future that one carved out for themselves could not be taken back.

Centaur divination

"In the past decade, the indications have been that Wizard-kind is living through nothing more than a brief calm between two wars. Mars, bringer of battle, shines brightly above us, suggesting that the fight must break out again soon. How soon, centaurs may attempt to divine by the burning of certain herbs and leaves, by the observation of fume and flame..."

— Firenze explaining Centaur Divination

Firenze teaching Divination class in 1996

Centaurs had a way of practising divination distinct from that of wizardkind, which they had been doing for centuries by 1996. It was apparently mainly based around astrology, the art of observing the movement of planets, moons, and stars. It could take up to a decade for centaurs to understand what these celestial portents meant, and even then, the results were rarely precise. They may have attempted to narrow their prediction of when an event would take place by burning certain herbs, such as sage and mallowsweet, and looking for various shapes and symbols in the fumes. The Forbidden Forest centaur colony heavily practised this kind of Divination which helped them reach their predictions about what would happen.

Centaurs seemed to have had a low opinion of human methods of divination, believing that the movements of heavenly bodies were far to large scale to effect the trivial affairs that humans fussed over. Firenze, who taught Divination at Hogwarts, described what "humans call fortune-telling" as "self-flattering nonsense," and voiced the belief that humans obsessed over mundane, day-to-day predictions because they were "blinkered and fettered by the limitations of [their] kind."

Known methods

Method(s)	Notes
Astrology	Observing the movements of planets and stars.
Bibliomancy	Involved opening a book on a random page, in order to interpret its contents in a contextual way, or to adapt its meaning to the present time.
Bird entrails	Unknown.
Capnomancy	Reading smoke patterns.
Cartomancy	Reading Tarot cards.
Catoptromancy	Looking into mirrors.
Chinese Fortune Sticks	Involved wooden sticks that told the user's daily fortune.
Crystal-gazing	Looking into a crystal ball.
Dream interpretation	Analysing the meaning of dreams.
Fire-omens	Unknown, possibly related to observing flames.
Heptomology	Unknown, possibly related to the number seven.
Ichthyomancy	Involving fish.
Lithomancy	Involving stones.
Myomancy	Involving rats and mice.
Numerology	Predicting the future using numbers.
Ornithomancy	Reading omens from observing the behaviour of birds.
Ovomancy	Cracking open eggs and observing which way the yolks fell.
Palmistry	Reading the lines on a person's palm.
Phyllomancy	Involving the use of leaves.
Rune stones	Somehow using rune stones to divine the future.
Tessomancy	Reading tea leaves.
Xylomancy	Reading twigs.

Known texts

Xylomancy by Selina Sapworthy

Unfogging the Future by Cassandra Vablatsky

The Dream Oracle by Inigo Imago

Omens, Oracles & the Goat by Bathilda Bagshot

The Predictions of Tycho Dodonus

Death Omens: What to Do When You Know the Worst is Coming

Behind the scenes

• In real life, divination is the practice of communing with supernatural forces to determine the future. Though dismissed by modern science as superstition, many cultures worldwide have practised or do practise some form of divination. As magic consists of supernatural forces, true Divination actually can be learned and achieved like the other magical arts, whether or not a wizard possesses the Inner Eye.
• In the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione Granger compares Divination to Ancient Runes, thinking the first a woolly subject and the second very fascinating; however, in the novel she did the same but with Divination and Arithmancy.

Appearances

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (First mentioned) (Mentioned as "fortune-telling")
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Mentioned only) (First identified as Divination)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (First appearance)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (video game) (GBA version)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (video game)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (video game) (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (video game) (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (Appears in flashback(s))
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (play)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay (Mentioned only)
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (film) (Mentioned only)
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - The Original Screenplay
• Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore - The Complete Screenplay
• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Mentioned only)
• Pottermore
• Wizarding World
• The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
• Harry Potter: The Character Vault (Mentioned only)
• Harry Potter: The Creature Vault (Mentioned only)
• LEGO Harry Potter
• LEGO Harry Potter (Mentioned only)
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7
• Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery
• Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
• Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells
• Harry Potter: Magic Awakened
• Hogwarts Legacy

See also

• Countersight
• Vision
• Scrying mirror
• Superconscious