Destiny: Encyclopedia II - Destiny - Divination of destiny

Destiny - Divination of destiny

In most cultures, ones destiny can only be learned about through a shaman, prophet, sibyl or seer. In Shang dynasty China, turtle bones were thrown ages before the I Ching was codified. Arrows were tossed to read destiny, from Thrace to pagan Mecca.

Destiny is commonly regarded as fate, a fixed timeline of events that is inevitable and unchangeable, and the future knowable through means of divination. This has led to a misconception of divination as fortune-telling, though the actual practice accounts for the self-determination of individual people and an unknowable future. In divination, destiny takes on a meaning different from its common usage.

Although the words are used interchangeably, fate and destiny are distinct things. Modern usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events, and adds an aura of doom and gloom. The definition of fate has it that if events are ordered or "meant to be" that they are put in order by a force or intelligence beyond us, acting upon us, usually for the worst (e.g. "the jury determined his fate"). Fate is used in regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out, and that same finality is projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out. Fate also has a morbid association with finality in the form of "fatality". Destiny, or fate, used in the past tense is "one's lot" and includes the sum of events leading up to a currently achieved outcome (e.g. "it was her destiny to be leader", "it was his fate to be executed"). Fate is an outcome determined by an outside agency acting upon a person or entity; but with destiny the entity is participating in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens wilfully.

Destiny in divinatory practice has none of the negative connotations of fate. Destiny has the same root as "destination": destine, to direct something towards a given end ("she is destined to be leader"). Without a subject's wilful participation, there is no destining. Destiny cannot be forced on someone; if they are forced into circumstances then that is their fate. As an example, there was a scene in the movie Whale Rider when the whales had beached, and Paikea walked up to the largest one and gently kissed it. She had reached a state of consciousness where a message she had absorbed from the mythology of her people, that she had memorized, sang, and enacted in dance on stage, moved from her subconscious mind to conscious awareness, where she was informed by the myth of the Whale Rider. Until then, there was doubt in the mind of the audience that she would be leader; circumstances looked dim; but in that moment she knew that she was leader, and she knew her destiny. Events, as they played out, had guided her to this place and this time. Her next act was made with full awareness--it was what the leader must do; it was what the first Whale Rider had done.

"Why did the whales beach? Did they do it for her benefit? Because she called them?" That is fate: the objective events, the opportunities and the limitations placed before us, the circumstances we are bound to that are beyond our control, and sometimes even beyond our meager understanding as to how they happen, but are a part of our destiny in that they shape us. Fate is a backdrop on which we play out our destiny. "Why did she ride the whale and become leader?" That is her destiny, what she determined will be, by directly participating in what was happening. She directed circumstances towards a certain outcome, and in doing so determined future circumstances. By participating in our destiny, we shape fate.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Divination of destiny", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki