Chapter 49: Divination

Chapter Forty-NineDivination

As a Seer who had only just stepped through the door of mysticism, Klein dared not claim he understood much. Yet he was certainly far more knowledgeable than an ordinary person. He knew that all kinds of divination methods could be sorted into three great categories according to a certain standard.

That standard was the source of the “revelation.”

The first category included tarot, playing cards, pendulums, dowsing, dreams, and similar methods. These relied on the “querent’s” own spirituality communicating with the spirit world to obtain revelations, which were then interpreted from the divination result. Pendulum and dowsing methods placed very high demands on spirituality, the Spirit Body, and the Astral Body; without being a Beyonder, one could not obtain accurate or obvious “revelations.” Card divination, by contrast, used the idea of providing fixed symbolic elements in advance, allowing even the vague, instinctive revelations ordinary people sensed to appear in a comprehensible form. Dreams fell somewhere between the two.

The second category included numerology, astrology, and all types derived from them. Through objective information provided by the querent or by natural changes, the diviner calculated, inferred, and interpreted the corresponding result. In this case, initiative did not lie with the querent, but with the diviner.

The third category borrowed power from a third party outside both diviner and querent. The spirit board and pen spirit Klein had known in his previous life belonged to this kind. Through a certain ritual, one requested that an unknown, mysterious existence directly provide an answer. Although ordinary people most likely would not succeed, if by some chance they did—and if they communicated with an existence full of malice, or one whose mere contact could cause collapse—the result would often become tragedy.

The “magic mirror divination” Hynas Vincent had just mentioned belonged to this kind of method. In mysticism, mirrors were doors leading to the unknown, the bizarre, and the spiritual world. That was why Klein had stopped outside the meeting room. He intended to hear how this well-known diviner explained it, then decide whether to report to the Captain and come raid the man’s gas meter in the middle of the night.

Of course, there were safe ways to perform magic mirror divination: by praying to one of the seven orthodox deities for an answer. Even if ordinary people found it extremely, extremely difficult to obtain genuine revelation, at least there would be no danger, no lingering aftereffects.

The kind of magic mirror divination strictly controlled by the Nighthawks, Mandated Punishers, and similar organizations involved requesting help from evil gods or mysterious existences worshipped by certain organizations. Inventing one’s own ritual at random was no good either. For all one knew, a single word or particular trait might attract unknown attention.

In this world with extraordinary power, divinations of that sort always tended toward the worst possible results. Klein even suspected that the original owner, Welch, and Naya had performed a similar “black divination” based on the Antigonus family notebook.

By then, Hynas had already explained the principle of magic mirror divination clearly to the five members and had begun describing the concrete procedure.

“First, choose a suitable date and time according to the deity you believe in. This can be decided through the Manual of Astrology. For example, we all know that Sunday symbolizes the Evernight Goddess and embodies rest. And the periods from two to three in the morning, nine to ten in the morning, four to five in the afternoon, and eleven at night to midnight are moon hours, ruled by the Evernight Goddess. Therefore, diviners who believe in the Evernight Goddess may perform magic mirror divination during those time periods on Sundays.”

A very solid foundation…

Klein nodded slightly, using the…