Divination - Alexandra Brown

Divination...I never thought i'd hear/read/see this term outside of Harry Potter. But when I was doing research for my paper, I came across an article which mentioned how shamans use divination as a physical medicine. I always considered divination to be a way of telling the future, but never as a way of diagnosing illness. Divination is about discovering the unknown through mystical means. And to the Nharo bushmen, illness is most definitely part of the unknown. I really should've put it together much sooner as I was researching how shamans act as spiritualists, which happens most often when they're healing. So Harry Potter is wrong! Divination isn't just about reading crystal balls and tea leaves to tell the future...it is about finding what needs to be known (which does pertain to the future, but includes much more than that). Perhaps J.K. Rowling intended the Divination class to be structured that way, but from my impression it was not. And it seems completely ironic that the practices and beliefs of an oral culture has proven a written text wrong.

Barnard, Alan. "Nharo Bushman Medicine and Medicine Men." Africa. 49.1 (1979): 68-80. Print.