BY THE TERMS divination and oracles I refer to methods of communication between two worlds or dimensions which are usually divided from each other. We are trying to put questions which we are unable to answer for ourselves to another order of beings whose knowledge transcends the limitations of our own. Our knowledge of time stops short at the present moment. Our knowledge of causes is limited to a few rather crude mechanisms. It is comforting, therefore, to feel that another order of beings exists, beyond our own natural order and hence ‘supernatural’, whose knowledge is not subject to these strictures and who can be called upon for advice.

But our questions will have to go out, so to speak, across an ontological gap, from one separate and enclosed world to another. We cannot expect to put them in the ordinary manner in which we bandy questions among ourselves, for they will not necessarily ‘reach’ the beings on the other side. We must, therefore, find a special method which will carry us across the divide.

Likewise, we cannot expect the answers, if they come at all, simply to resound in the air. We have to discover some sensitive organ through which the supernatural being can leave his imprint in a comprehensible manner. Perhaps there may be even a further layer of mystery. The signs he leaves may have to be interpreted. They are not in plain language, but in a cypher which requires a special faculty to understand.

By the term divination, therefore, I refer to the various methods whereby such questions can be put, and by oracles to the answers vouchsafed by the beings on the other side.

The field afforded for the study of such methods in Japan is a particularly nch one. The Japanese have a long tradition of belief in another world, peopled by superior and usually benevolent divinities, which is accessible to men if they know the proper manner of communicating with it. This other world is by no means hopelessly remote and distant. Given the right time, the nght place and the nght method, contact can be made with it. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that a good many different types of divination have made their appearance in Japan throughout the centunes, at all levels of society from the Emperor's Court to the village shrine.