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From ancient Greece to cyberculture, we can safely say that divination has been present throughout the history of mankind. And everywhere, too. It seems that anywhere you go, people have believed without a shadow of a doubt that there are coded messages in nature. Humans being resourceful, we quickly developed methods to interpret these messages. The ancient Egyptians tried to decode dreams (and believed that the very ability to read and write was a divine gift from the god Thoth). The Hittites, ancient residents of what is known today as Turkey, interpreted messages from counting birds and observing the direction they flew in (Romans had a specific priest solely for this purpose too). A common practice in pre-colonial Brazil was to talk to gods through dreams, or through trances and visions induced by fasting or taking hallucinogenic drugs—usually with the help of a Pajé (analogous to a Shaman, as they are known in other cultures). Tarot was first documented around the 15th century in Italy, but could be older than that. The Jogo de Búzios—literally “Game of Cowrie-shells”—originated in West Africa and is a very common form of divination in African-American religions as well as among the Yoruba people. In ancient China, people wrote their questions into turtle shells, set them on fire, and then counted the cracks in a practice called “plastromancy”. This eventually developed into a highly complex and famous divination system: the I-Ching.

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