The journal · Divination and belief
Divination and belief
The I Ching, Da Liu Ren, face reading, fortune cookies, past lives, and the question of what any of it is for.
55 articles.
Affirmations: what the research actually found
There are two different things called affirmations. One has thirty years of experiments behind it. The other is the one on the poster.
6 min read
Chakras, crystals and incense: what each one is, and what it is not
Three practices that arrive as one aesthetic and come from three unrelated places. Taking them apart is the most useful thing you can do with them.
7 min read
What happens to your zodiac sign when you die?
Nothing happens to it. A sun sign is a fact about one past minute, and the past doesn't update.
5 min read
Is there an astrology of serial killers?
No. There's no astrological signature of violence, and the viral lists claiming one disagree with each other, which is the tell.
6 min read
Do serial killers share the same zodiac sign?
No. And the reason is one line of arithmetic that the viral posts never show you.
5 min read
What zodiac signs are most common among billionaires?
There is no real answer, and the reason is more interesting than any sign: the lists disagree because there's nothing there to agree on.
9 min read
Kulam: the Philippines' version of black magic?
The folk tradition of the hex, the mangkukulam who is said to cast it, and the everyday ways Filipinos have long guarded against both.
6 min read
What is tawas? The Filipino divination practice explained
The folk healer's diagnostic ritual, alum, candle wax and water, read for the shape that names what is wrong.
9 min read
What is an agimat? Inside the Philippines' mystical amulet tradition
The amulet a Filipino holds for protection, power, or luck, and the folk-Catholic world it comes from.
9 min read
What is an anting-anting? The Filipino talisman in brass
The brass disc itself: its triangle and eye, its almost-Latin lettering, and the rules its keepers live by.
7 min read
What is usog | and why do Filipinos say 'pwera usog'?
The everyday Filipino custom of warding off harm from a stranger's admiring glance, said over almost every baby.
5 min read
The albularyo: the Philippines' folk healer
The healer half of Filipino folk belief: the herbalist-diagnostician families call when an illness won't lift, and the counterweight to every story about kulam.
5 min read
Gayuma: the Filipino love charm, explained
The love charm of Filipino folk belief. What a gayuma is said to do, who is asked to make one, and why practitioners' own stories treat charmed love with suspicion.
6 min read
What is santet? Indonesia's black magic explained
Indonesia's tradition of harmful sorcery: the objects said to appear in the body, the dukun blamed for sending them, and the prayers raised against it.
10 min read
What is susuk? Indonesia's charm-needle tradition explained
The charm needles slipped under the skin for beauty and charisma: the taboos that come with them, and why folklore says they must be removed before death.
9 min read
What is a leak? Bali's black magic and night-witches explained
Bali's night-witches of the Calon Arang legend, the flying head, the witch-queen Rangda, and the healers and offerings raised to hold them in balance.
9 min read
What is a tuyul? The Javanese money-stealing spirit
The small, child-like spirit said to be kept and fed in secret to steal coins and small valuables for its keeper.
9 min read
What is babi ngepet? The Javanese were-pig of wealth
The were-pig of Javanese and Sundanese lore: a person said to change shape to draw away a neighbour's wealth, at a heavy hidden cost.
5 min read
What is primbon? The Javanese almanac of weton and neptu
The Javanese book of calculations, birth-day weton, neptu numbers and the reckonings used to time a wedding, a move, or a marriage.
5 min read
What is Ifá? The Yoruba religion of sacred wisdom and divination
The Yoruba tradition of sacred wisdom read by an initiated priest: the deity Ọ̀rúnmìlà, the 256 Odù, and the vast oral corpus behind them.
9 min read
What is an orisha? The divine forces of the Yoruba religion
The deities of the Yoruba faith, emanations of the one God, each a force in nature and human life, served through devotion, drumming and dance.
6 min read
The major orishas, explained: names, domains and diaspora
A respectful introduction to the most widely venerated òrìṣà, the forces they're associated with, and the parallel names they carry in Yorubaland, Cuba and Brazil.
10 min read
How is your orisha determined? The candid answer
The orisha said to own a person's head is revealed by an initiated priest through divination, not by a quiz, a birthday or a birth month. The candid answer, and why it matters.
5 min read
Is Ifá astrology? Why divination and the zodiac are not the same
Both are called divination, and both give guidance, but Ifá is a religious oracle cast in the moment, not a reading of the sky from your birth date.
9 min read
What does déjà vu mean?
Déjà vu is French for 'already seen': the sudden, fleeting sense that a new moment has happened before, even though you know it hasn't.
9 min read
What is synchronicity?
Carl Jung's term for coincidences that feel connected: the candid reason they land so hard, and why that isn't nothing.
5 min read
What do aura colours mean?
The colour field some practitioners say they can read around a person: the traditional meanings, and what the evidence shows.
4 min read
Common dream meanings
The most-searched dream symbols and their traditional readings, held as prompts rather than predictions. I ask what the symbol means to you before I tell you what the books say.
5 min read
Eye twitching superstitions: what a twitching eye is said to mean
The luck, the omens and the incoming news people have long read into a fluttering eyelid, and the plain reason it usually happens. Sleep first.
5 min read
Palmistry basics: how to read the major lines of the hand
The heart, head, life and fate lines, what tradition reads into each, and the one thing the life line definitely does not tell you.
10 min read
What is my Weton? Your Javanese birth day, explained
The Javanese birth day that pairs the seven-day week with the five-day Pasaran cycle, and the Neptu number it holds.
5 min read
Are our Wetons compatible? Reading jodoh in Primbon
How Javanese Primbon reads a match from two people's Neptu: the counting, the named outcomes, and the straight caveats.
4 min read
Distance Reiki removes the room, the touch and the hour
Take away everything a session does for the nervous system and see what is left. That is the experiment.
7 min read
Dana: what giving is for, and what it was never promised to buy
There is a genre of page that lists what each gift buys you: give lamps, get eyesight; give water, get wealth. The tradition it claims to quote is more interesting and much less generous.
9 min read
Astrology in Islam: scholarship, history and the ruling
A tradition that advanced the astronomy while its scholars ruled against the divination.
5 min read
Do Magic 8 Balls work?
There's a twenty-sided die in there, the odds are stacked toward yes, and I still keep one on my desk.
4 min read
Should I believe my fortune cookie?
They aren't Chinese, they aren't personal, and one of them once cost a lottery ten million dollars, which is the best fact I know about dessert.
4 min read
Should I believe in past lives?
There is more serious research here than sceptics expect, and it's weaker than believers hope.
5 min read
Access Bars and Access Consciousness: what it is
Access Bars is a technique within Access Consciousness, a modern personal-development movement founded in 1990 by Gary Douglas and later co-led by Dain Heer.
5 min read
Breathwork: the one on this shelf that works
Breathwork covers two very different families of practice, and lumping them together is how people get hurt.
9 min read
Energy and energy healing: what the word means
One word is doing an enormous amount of work, and it's not the same word physics uses.
9 min read
The Ouija board: a Victorian toy and a mind trick
The planchette really does move on its own. The reason is stranger and more interesting than a ghost.
5 min read
Reiki: the hands-on energy practice, examined fairly
A calm hour of light touch that many find soothing, wrapped in a claim about energy that the evidence doesn't support.
9 min read
Sound healing: what a sound bath does, and what it doesn't
Sound healing (sound baths, Tibetan and crystal singing bowls, gongs, tuning forks and 'healing frequencies') is the New Age practice of using sound to improve wellbeing.
6 min read
Vibrational therapy: the premise underneath the whole shelf
Almost every modality on the shelf rests on one sentence: everything is vibration. Read sentence slowly.
10 min read
What is a bomoh? The Malay world's healer-shaman
The healer at work: the ubat kampung, the spirit work, the contested place in Islam — and why the figure endures.
7 min read
The Chinese divination systems, ranked by how hard they are
Five systems, five different questions, ranked by how hard they are to learn. BaZi still wins on use to an ordinary person.
4 min read
Da Liu Ren: the hardest thing in Chinese divination
A chart built from the moment a question is asked, and the hardest thing in Chinese divination. Do not start here.
4 min read
Chinese face reading (面相): the map, the method and the evidence
Mian Xiang divides a face into three sections, five officers, twelve palaces and a hundred age points, and reads a life from them. A clear account of the map, its history, and why AsterNym will not read your photo.
6 min read
Iron Plate Divination (铁板神数): the system that names your siblings
A Chinese system with a reputation for stating your parents' animals and your number of siblings before it says anything else. How it is supposed to work, why that verification step is the whole argument, and what AsterNym does and does not compute.
8 min read
The I Ching: a philosophy of change, not just an oracle
A philosophy of change with an oracle attached, not the other way round. Read the Wings before you throw the coins.
10 min read
Qi Men Dun Jia vs Da Liu Ren: which answers which question
Both build a chart from the moment a question is asked. One tells you what to do; the other tells you what is. Pick by the question.
5 min read
Manifesting: what the research supports, and what it does not
There is real psychology near this, and it says something the practice won't like: vividly imagining the outcome tends to make you less likely to get it.
10 min read
Spiritual awakening: what people mean, and when to get help
The experiences are real and often well described in contemplative traditions. Some of them also need a doctor, and the community around them is bad at saying which.
9 min read
Vibes: the real psychology, and the part that is made up
Sensing the mood of a room is a genuine and well-measured human ability. It's also nothing whatsoever to do with frequency.
6 min read