Welcome
This exhibition explores divination in Britain in the early modern period – that is, between about 1500 and 1750. Divination was the practice of seeking hidden knowledge by reading patterns in the natural world or invoking the aid of supernatural powers. Divinatory methods typically predicted the future. They might also discover other secrets, such as the location of lost or stolen items. The exhibition presents a variety of methods – many of which you can try out yourself – and tells the stories of some early modern diviners and their clients.
The early modern period witnessed the rapid expansion of print culture, the transformative discoveries collectively termed the Scientific Revolution, and an increasingly connected globe. It also saw religious upheaval, beginning in 1517 with the Protestant Reformation; frequent bouts of warfare, including the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Britain (1639-53); and recurrent outbreaks of famine and disease. Divination was a means of navigating a world plagued with uncertainties.
According to the contemporary religious orthodoxy, God had made a plan for the universe. Everything operated according to the decree of his divine providence, and the underlying order could be perceived in the workings of the natural world and the heavens. It followed that it might just be possible to discern the patterns of things to come. Whether it was lawful to make the attempt was another matter. The Puritan theologian William Perkins (1558-1602) expressed a common view when he wrote that ‘Divination is a part of witchcraft, whereby men reveal strange things, either past, present, or to come, by the assistance of the Devil’.1William Perkins, A Discourse of the Damned art of Witchcraft (Cambridge, 1608), p. 56. A Welsh author writing in 1711 under the initials T. P. – possibly the clergyman Thomas Price – was scornful of anyone who imagined that divination could be a pious act: ‘It is easy for you to know that God does not send his holy angels to lead wizards and devilish prophets to proclaim men’s fortunes, and to provide information about wretched things that are lost’.2T. P., Cas Gan Gythraul, ed. and trans. Lisa Tallis (Newport, 2015 [1711]), p. 111.
Diviners were also commonly parodied by sceptics. Barten Holyday’s play Technogamia (first performed 1617) featured the villians Magus and his wife Astrologia (representing magic and astrology), who sought to murder the heroine Astronomia (astronomy). It also featured pickpockets called Physiognomus (physiognomy) and Cheiromantes (chiromancy, or palmistry), described as ‘gypsies and fortune-tellers’. Magus, Astrologia, Physiognomus and Cheiromantes were finally exiled from the ‘commonwealth’ of sciences. Attacks like this notwithstanding, divination remained a popular practice across social groups.
Above: Stars in a late fifteenth-century French manuscript.3Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS Douce 134 (France, c. 1450-70).
Below: Woodcut of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, 1620.4Title page of Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall Histo[r]y of the Life and Death of Dr Faustus (London, 1620), Wikimedia Commons.
There is a rich language of divination. Alectryomancy involves observing a rooster pecking at corn kernels; cephaleonomancy, roasting the skull of a donkey; ichthyomancy, examining fish entrails; gastromancy, listening to noises from the stomach; and typomancy, watching the coagulation of cheese. Below are some more handy terms. Can you match words to definitions?
Etching from 1737 showing Adam and Eve beholding God’s cosmological plan.5Etching dedicated to Edmund Gibson from Thomas Stackhouse ([London], [1737]), Wellcome Collection.
In this extract from a 1659 pamphlet, the bookseller John Allen outlines legitimate and illegitimate methods of predicting the future.6John Allen, Judicial Astrologers Totally Routed (London, 1659), pp. 10-11.
Question: How many sorts of foretelling things are there?
Answer: Three. 1. Divine: such as are by God himself, or by the prophets inspired by him.
Secondly, humane, and natural; which are from natural causes to their natural effects. Thus the astronomer may foretell the eclipses, the physician the effects of some diseases. Of which sort are politic predictions, which wise men can somtimes presage about commonwealths, though indeed these are but conjectures.
Thirdly, diabolical, which are by God’s just judgment suffered to be upon a people: and these are either by the Devil, or by his instruments, as Witches, Sorcerers, Astrologers, &c.
