Option Thailand Collection: เมษายน 2012

Fortune telling book

Fortune-telling is the practice of predicting information about a person's life. The scope of fortune-telling is in principle identical with the practice ofdivination. The difference is that divination is the term used for predictions considered part of a religious ritual, invoking deities or spirits, while the term fortune-telling implies a less serious or formal setting, even one of popular culture, where belief in occult workings behind the prediction is less prominent than the concept of suggestion, spiritual or practical advisory or affirmation.

Historically, fortune-telling grows out of folkloristic reception of Renaissance magic, specifically associated with Gypsies.

During the 19th and 20th century, methods of divination from non-Western cultures, such as the I Ching, were also adopted as methods of fortune-telling in western popular culture. An example of divination or fortune-telling as purely an item of pop culture, with little or no vestiges of belief in the occult, would be the Magic 8-Ball sold as a toy by Mattel, or Paul II, a cephalopod of the Sea Life Aquarium at Oberhausen used to predict the outcome of matches played by the German national football team.

There is opposition against fortune-telling in Christianity and Judaism based on biblical prohibitions against divination. This sometimes causes discord in the Jewish community due to their views on mysticism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia