"Many witches and wizards, talented though they are in the area of loud bangs and smells and sudden disappearings, are yet unable to penetrate the veiled mysteries of the future."
-- Sybill Trelawney
"(O)bserve the heavens. Here is written, for those who can see, the fortune of our races."
-- Firenze the Centaur
"Broaden your minds, my dears, and allow your eyes to see past the mundane!"
-- Sibyll Trelawney
"I think Divination seems very woolly. A lot of guesswork, if you ask me."
-- Hermione Granger
Fortunetelling techniques
Tea leaf reading
Astrology
Centaur Divination the real thing?
Books about Divination
Divination is magic which attempts to forsee future events. Many in the Wizarding World consider this branch of magic to be imprecise at best. There are several types of Divination. The most imprecise is what is commonly known as "fortunetelling," and this is what Trelawney teaches at Hogwarts. The second kind of Divination is what is practiced by the Centaurs. When Firenze started teaching Divination classes in the spring of 1996, he taught these techniques, although they were mostly lost on the human students in his classes.
The third type of Divination is called Seeing. This is true Divination, although what the Seer reveals is usually in the form of a Prophecy which then itself requires some interpretation. A Seer, one who possesses the Inner Eye, doesn't seem to have control over their Seeing. Trelawney, for example, only made actual Prophecies twice, although she made plenty of claims about everything from troubles ahead for various students to Neville breaking a teacup. In each case when she made an actual Prophecy, Trelawney went into a trance and spoke in a completely different voice. Both times, after speaking the Prophecy, she didn't remember a thing about it.
True Seeing is very rare, but it has happened plenty of times over the centuries. There is a huge cathedral-sized room of the Department of Mysteries where records of thousands of Prophesies are stored in glass spheres. Each sphere is labeled with the initials of the Seer who spoke the Prophecy and the person it was spoken to and with the subject of the Prophesy. The record of the first Prophesy Trelawney made, which was spoken to Albus Dumbledore, was labeled as follows:
S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D.
Dark Lord and (?)Harry Potter
Fortunetelling techniques
Palmistry
Bird entrails
Reading tea leaves
Playing cards
Crystal ball
Fire omens
Astrology
Tea leaf symbols from Unfogging the Future, pages five and six
Cross - “trials and suffering"
Club - "an attack"
Sun - "great happiness"
Acorn - "windfall, unexpected gold"
Falcon - "a deadly enemy"
Skull - "danger in your path"
The Grim - "death"
Astrology
"Mars causes accidents and burns and things like that, and when it makes an angle to Saturn, that means people need to be extra careful when handling hot things--"
-- Parvati Patil
The study of Astrology requires a careful study of star charts relating to the date of a person's birth. The students in Trelawney's Divination classes have to create complicated charts and determine which planets were where and how that all affects their lives. Based on Astrological signs, Trelawney suggested that Harry must have been born in December.
Centaur Divination
Firenze explains the kind of Seeing his race practices as follows:
"I know that you have learned the names of the planets and their moons in Astronomy, and that you have mapped the stars' progress through the heavens. Centaurs have unravelled the mysteries of these movements over centuries. Our findings teach us that the future may be glimpsed in the sky above us -
"I...am here to explain the wisdom of centaurs, which is impersonal and impartial. We watch the skies for the great tides of evil or change that are sometimes marked there. It may take ten years to be sure of what we are seeing.
"In the past decade, the indications have been that wizardkind is living through nothing more than a brief calm between two wars. Mars, bringer of battle, shines brightly above us, suggesting that the fight must soon break out again. How soon, centaurs may attempt to divine by the burning of certain herbs and leaves, by the observation of fume and flame…"
In his class, the students burned sage and mallowsweet and looked for certain shapes and symbols in the fumes, but Firenze "seemed perfectly unconcerned that not one of them could see any of the signs he described, telling them that humans were hardly ever good at this, that it took centaurs years and years to become competent, and finished by telling them that it was foolish to put too much faith in such things, anyway, because even centaurs sometimes read them wrongly."
Firenze had little patience for what he called "fortunetelling," suggesting that to try to understand Divination in these terms was being "blinkered and fettered by the limitations" of being human.
The "real thing"?
While most of what Trelawney teaches seems to be just "lucky guesswork and a spooky manner," as Harry thinks, there are instances of actual prescience and prediction in the books.
Harry's dreams
Trelawney's two correct predictions, according to Dumbledore the Centaurs' comments in the forest ("Mars is bright tonight!")
Is this the real thing? Trelawney starts out the first class with a series of predictions. Did they come true? Here's the list:
(to Neville) "Is your grandmother well?...I wouldn't be so sure."
(to Parvati) "Beware a red-haired man."
"Classes will be disrupted in February by a nasty bout of flu. I myself will lose my voice."
"Around Easter, one of our number will leave us forever."
(to Lavender) "That thing you are dreading--it will happen on Friday, the sixteenth of October."
(to Neville) "After you've broken your first cup, would you be so kind as to select one of the blue patterned ones?"
(to Neville) "You'll be late next time, so mind you work extra-hard to catch up."
Books about Divination
Broken Balls: When Fortunes Turn Foul
Death Omens: What To Do When You Know The Worst Is Coming
Dream Oracle by Inigo Imago [Hogwarts Divination textbook]
Predicting the Unpredictable: Insulate Yourself Against Shocks
Unfogging the Future by Cassandra Vablatsky [Hogwarts Divination textbook]
Divination: Two Approaches
I am an astrologer, and I observed the types of astrology Trelawney and Firenze teach (and presumbaly practice) are two different types.
Trelawney's astrology is natal or genethiliacal astrology. It consists of personal birthcharts and what will happen when Mars and Saturn make an angle. Like Pavarti said. It has to do with individuals and their lives. It's 95% of the popular astrology today, and 99% of the books you see today contain something on this subject, as that's what sells books.
Firenze's (and the rest of the Centaurs) practice Mundane, or political astrology. This is much older and concerns countries, regions, and the world in general. This is the astrology that Nostradamus used in his predictions. It has little to do with individual personalities, except when they rule (govern) countiries or affect the world (like You-know-who, and maybe Harry). But the statements about the world is between conflicts and Voldemort will return and the rest and even the famous "Mars is bright tonight" are all attributable to Mundane astrology. Firenze, burning mallow root and the rest is supporting mundane predictions with various forms of scrying. It's similar to what the Ancient Greeks and Romans did. (And possibly the Chaldeans--the original astrologers--but we don't know that much about their exact practices.)
Anyhow, comparing what Firenze and Trelawney do with astrology are like comparing apples and tomatoes. They speak different astrological languages.
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