In Cameroon, the Mambila people practise a specific form of divination that will have arachnophobes sweating. Using tarot-like “leaf cards”, questions are asked, and a tarantula emerges from a hole in the ground to select a card and offer guidance.
This spider divination is one of the specialities of David Zeitlyn, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oxford – so much so that he is a fully initiated spider diviner, trained by the people he has spent time with for his research.
Zeitlyn is co-curator of a new exhibition, Oracles, Omens and Answers, which opened at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries last week and explores the practices of divination, fortune-telling and predicting the future, throughout history and across the world.
Zeitlyn spoke of a rise in interest in prophesying during the Covid pandemic, fuelled by an increase in online tarot reading and other forms of divination, especially on TikTok.
“People wanted alternative sources of advice,” he said. “They were saying: OK, you’re telling me what’s going to happen across the country, what the projections are, but I want to know if I’m going to be all right.”
His co-curator, Dr Michelle Aroney, specialises in 17th-century astrology. Zeitlyn said: “One of the things that brought us together was realising that the questions we are dealing with are basically the same. Michelle has been studying the casebooks of medieval astrologers and I’ve been looking at the questions that people bring to spider divination.
“And it’s things like: I’m sick, or my child’s sick, what’s the best treatment? Who should I marry? Can I trust my spouse? So there’s a lot of looking for guidance rather than necessarily wanting to know exactly what the future holds.”
Belief in divination is not something restricted to the distant past, as the exhibits show. Alongside 3,000-year-old oracle bones from China and dusty grimoires, there are more modern examples. These include a plastic Magic 8 ball and something you might well find in your Christmas cracker later this month – a plastic fish that curls up in your palm when asked a question.
“Whether we look at the cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia in the exhibition, or an I Ching app on your phone, we can see that the problems that face humans haven’t changed that much,” said Zeitlyn.
Among the exhibits is a beautiful, illuminated manuscript about geomancy – divining the meaning of patterns drawn in the dirt – which was owned by King Richard II. That is displayed alongside a book by Joan Quigley, who was the official White House astrologer during the US presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Zeitlyn said: “Powerful people have always used diviners and divination. Another example, which isn’t in the exhibition, is Winston Churchill, who wrote about bibliomancy. He would open the Bible at random and pick a verse and use it to guide him.”
Earlier this year, Fox News hosted English-born psychic Paula Roberts, who gave a tarot card reading predicting a “sense of loss” for Donald Trump in election year. Trump won last month’s election.
“It might be considered a strange thing for people to believe in divination in a very scientific age,” Zeitlyn said. “But science tells us about things which at the generalisation level are secure and founded about a population.
“But it doesn’t tell us about an individual, and here’s where divination comes in. It drills down into the personal. It answers the question: what should I do? Science might be able to tell us what everyone should do, or most people should do, but what should I do in these specific circumstances?”
The exhibits, drawn from the Bodleian’s own archives and other collections at Oxford’s museums and universities, also include a sketch of Oscar Wilde’s palm after he developed an interest in palmistry.
Zeitlyn and Aroney have co-authored a book to accompany the exhibition, entitled Divination: Oracles & Omens, which was published by the Bodleian last week.
Given that world leaders from Richard II to Ronald Reagan consulted methods of divination, what are the chances that those in power now are doing the same?
“I’d be very surprised if they aren’t,” said Zeitlyn. “I also think that they would all deny it. But we might find out later, when the current ones leave office and write their memoirs.”
