Divination and Healing: Potent Vision, by Michael Winkelman, Philip M. Peek

Title: Divination and Healing: Potent Vision
Author: Michael Winkelman, Philip M. Peek
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816523770

Pro:
•  Interesting ethnographic studies

Con:
•  More details than casual readers will care about

Description:
•  Analysis of how divination is used in healing practices
•  Argues that divination “works” for various reasons
•  Explains how users of divination employ their own skeptical standards

Although there have been many anthropological studies on various cultures and their religious systems, there hasn’t been much that has focused specifically on divination systems and their role in healing, physical or social. That’s where Divination and Healing: Potent Vision, edited by Michael Winkelman and Philip M. Peek, comes in. This volume of eleven articles addresses a wide variety of issues: the epistemologies and cosmologies behind divination systems, the ways in which people experience divination events, and the role played by divination in healing.

Central to much of the research explained in the book is the highly social nature of divination. Ailments which people seek to have explained and treated are often regarded as products not simply of physical problems but also social problems. Divination is thus a route for both physical and social healing:

“[D]ivination emphasizes traditional social roles and traditional normative expectations for healing.... [D]ivination is not just a means to achieving social consensus, but a way of asserting one’s rights in the face of injustice. Functionalist perspectives emphasize the product of divination, not the process by which the information is obtained.”

This book is not a skeptical, critical examination of divination. The authors are all sympathetic and are more interested in helping readers understand divination practices from the inside rather than criticize them from the outside. At the same time, though, the authors don’t ignore the naturally skeptical reactions that readers are likely to have. In the introduction, the editors make it clear that skepticism is often built-in to divination practices and that people don’t participate in them mindlessly:

“Academic perspectives on divination often ignore the highly skeptical behavior of those who use divination. Skepticism is reflected in the right of the client to take back the consultation fee and leave if flagrant errors occur during the initial phase of consultation. Diviners from distant places are often preferred, and consultants may maintain their anonymity to avoid revealing information to the diviner... [T]he divinatory contingent often tests the diviner by trying to fool him or her into offering incorrect diagnoses... A skeptical attitude and concern with verification of information is reflected in consulting several diviners and comparing their revelations before taking steps to resolve illness or other problems.”

This is not skepticism of the sort that one typically encounters in a Western, scientific context. It’s not the deliberate, applied skepticism that one experiences with skeptical organizations. It is, nevertheless, a form of skepticism which reveals that participants are conscious of what is going on, aware of the possibility of fraud, and determined to ensure that their experiences are as honest and fair as possible. It’s more skepticism that what many Westerners seem to demonstrate in the context of psychic hotlines, astrologers, and UFO abduction claims.

This books addresses divination in many general ways, but always on the basis of ethnographic studies of very specific cases from around the world. This makes the work highly detailed, so much so that it’s probably not appropriate for the casual reader. Someone with a particular interest in divination and traditional healing practices, however, should derive a lot of benefit from reading this.