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

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. It was described as an inexact science, which required certain mind and concentration techniques to improve one's sensibility and logical thinking, and to gain insight into various events, appearances, details, emotions and thoughts. Therefore, Divination might have been related to Legilimency and possibly some aspects of wandlore. Divination was a more practical way to analyse and interpret a wizard's surroundings by logical thinking and sensibility of mind and body in comparison to Arithmancy, which focused on calculating probabilities, magnitude, strength and effectiveness of magical forces in general including properties of numbers and their application.

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 NEGATIVE VIEW OF DIVINATION

Witches and wizards who were born with the rare natural gift for prophecy were known as Seers, who cold foresee the future with their Inner Eye. Non-Seers could learn divination methods and develop and gain various insights with them, but their success varied. Divination was taught as an elective subject from the third year on at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

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.

Learned wizards and witches seemed to regard the practise 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.

Silver lime wands had a reputation for performing best for Seers and those skilled in Legilimency.

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

Centaurs had a way of practising divination distinct from that of humans, apparently mainly based around observing the movement of planets, moons, and stars, which they had been doing for centuries by 1996. 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.

Centaurs seemed to have had a low opinion of human methods of divination. 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

Astrology: observing the movements of planets and stars.

Numerology: predicting the future using numbers.

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.

Cartomancy: reading Tarot cards.

Catoptromancy: looking into mirrors.

Chinese Fortune Sticks: involved wooden sticks that told the user's daily fortune.

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.

Myomancy: involving rats and mice.

Palmistry: reading the lines on a person's palm.

Ornithomancy: related to birds in an unknown manner.

Ovomancy: cracking open eggs and observing which way the yolks fall.

Tessomancy: reading tea leaves.

Xylomancy: involving twigs.

Behind the scenes

In real life, divination is the practise 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 film adaptation 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: The Crimes of Grindelwald - The Original Screenplay

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

LEGO Harry Potter: Characters of the Magical World (Mentioned only)