While there are many ways to practice divination, basically it comes down to two possibilities. Either it’s impetrative where we are asking for the information or it’s oblative where the information presents itself to us. We all experience the oblative variety constantly. The question is whether or not we pick up on the message and how able we are to interpret it.
I often divine from observing birds. That method is called augury or taking the auspices. I will divine from almost anything that catches my attention but I don’t try to turn every experience into a divination. You could make yourself crazy that way. As Shirley Jackson says:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
With divination the question quickly becomes which is the reality and which is the dream because they tend to be one and the same. This is not cause and effect but something unexplainable. I might call it accessing the Tao.
BaZi and Feng Shui both employ divination, often by way of using the Yi Jing or Flying Stars, but my favorite method of divination is Qi Men Dun Jia.
QMDJ divination not only gives an answer to the question, it also gives the backstory of the situation and how it will play out. It homes in on details that will make your hair stand on end. You can actually identify the people and places involved. Some people say that QMDJ precedes all other Feng Shui methods but I don’t see how it could be so because it requires a deep knowledge to come up with an accurate understanding.
