Which comes first, divine agency or the calculations of diviners? Both are integral to divination, other predictive methods, and ‘hatching out’ new creation stories among Nuosu Southwest China. In this article, I present ethnography on divination in which eggs evoke person’s position world while bodies bones chickens indices health prosperity. When cracking open raw eggs, peeling slaughtered ch...

Is there a world of mathematics above and beyond ordinary reality, as Plato proposed? Or is mathematics a cultural construct? In this short article we speculate on the place of mathematical reality from the perspective of the mystical cosmologies of the ancient traditions of meditation, psychedelics, and divination.

In studies of ancient Greek divination, oracles are often claimed to pronounce ambiguous but true statements within an intricately ordered cosmos. There exist, however, several problematic exceptions. Book 2 the Iliad , Zeus deliberately deceives Agamemnon through a prophetic dream; Hesiod’s Muses speak truths or lies depending on their mood; and Apollo’s utterances can harm as easily help. The...