Question by Heron By The Sea: What is the difference between divination, soothsaying, prophecy, and augury?
What exactly is each one of these, and how are they different from one another?

Thanks.

Best answer:

Answer by gabriel_zachary
DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS:

Prophecy: An inspired utterance of a prophet, viewed as a revelation of divine will.

Augury: an event that is experienced as indicating important things to come.

Divination: the practice of attempting to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means.

Soothsaying: the practice or art of foretelling events through visions and dreams.

Prognosticating: To predict according to present indications or signs; to foretell; to foreshadow.

HOW THEY DIFFER:

Prophecy: divine revelation as uttered by someone said to be a prophet. A prophet is defined as someone who is in direct communication with the Divine and speaks on behalf of the Divine.
Example: Noah. God spoke directly to Noah and told Noah about the upcoming flood. There were no indicators of a flood, Noah didn’t use some magic ritual to learn about the flood….God spoke directly to Noah and told Noah. Noah thus tried to warn others. His warnings are prophecy because he is a prophet.

Augury: this is where omens or signs signal some future event. Example: “he hoped it was an augury” that is to say “he hoped it was a sign from God”
Example: Many Christians use the words from prophets of the old testament that foretold the events that would indicate the messiah…they then conclude that these events occured with Jesus. Jesus is also a good example in that he provided “signs” for the end of days, for his return. Many shamanic religions also use augury, or signs, in nature to indicate supposed future events such as animal behaviors, etc.

Divination: this is using a ritual or ceremony of some kind to predict the future. Example: using a crystal ball, tarot cards, etc to predict the future. This is what most people think about when they think of fortune telling, future prediction. That people are using some kind of ritual, ceremony, or set of tools (and magic) to foresee the future.

Soothsaying: A soothsayer is also called by term “seer”, this is someone who “sees” the future events and tells others. Many times a soothsayer sees these in dreams or visions.
Example: Joseph in the Bible would be called a soothsayer because he soothsayed…that is he interpreted dreams (though in this case the dreams were not his own, they were Pharoah’s dreams). We don’t really use this term much anymore. Today we call soothsayers by a different name: psychics. People who have visions of the future whether in dreams when they sleep or in visions while awake. That’s what it soothsaying means.

Prognosticating: this is where something foreshadows what might happen in the future. This word is not always used for predictions in the “Divine” sense, but can be used as a synonym for all the words above. However it most often appears in such phrases as “urban renewal prognosticates a social and cultural renaissance.” That is to say that urban renewal foreshadows a social and cultural rebirth (of the area obviously being renewed in the urban setting). I mention this word because in most of the definitions in dictionaries the words above say “to foretell the future, to prognosticate”

Hope this helps.

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