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Divination
| Disclaimer: It is suggested any form of fortune-telling/divination should be taken with a pinch of salt and is not to be taken seriously. It can also become potentially dangerous to one's well-being if one is sensitive and becomes dependent on it. This subject may also be seen as occult, taboo or controversial in certain religions or cultures. |
Fortune telling redirects here.
Divination (Japanese term: 占い, Uranai) is a practise in seeking meaning/magic through various methods or rituals. It is also related to spells, such as random card shuffling and incantation, love spells, symbolism and archetypes, magic circles, wands, staves, broomsticks, the spirits in animals (and totems), and so on. It is called this because since the earliest human societies, people have believed in the power of spirits believed to be supernatural to this world, and the theory of acquiring it, or contacting important figures/symbols, gods, respecting and honouring kami in Japan.
However, it is commonly translated as simply fortune telling.
Views on the subject can vary greatly from culture to culture, including the attitudes towards such things.
Summary
Divination may refer to both serious witchcraft/sorcery, as well as more casual play with methods like tarot cards.
Since 1815, the power on the state of both magic and dogma in religion began to fade since the European Age of Englightment, as it stressed the importance of rational or logical thinking and was linked to the rise of empiricism, critical thinking, and the scientific method (such as; that information must be testable, falsifiable and the test must be fair). For a long time, and still today, witch-hunt movements have also demonised practises regarded as witchcraft or sorcery; an early example is since the age of gnosticism following or before Anno Domini (0 AD).
Early divination is tied with animism; the belief that creatures, objects and places all possess a spiritual power, soul, energy, etc. [1] However, the beliefs are complex and vary from culture to culture, such as whether those figures or objects, places, and so on, are remembered as gods/demons (as stereotypically the West views) or if they are more remembered for their power (three relevant topics here are The Dreaming, Shintoism, or simple respect to the kami rather than identifying as Shinto, and the historical book Daemonologie for Western ideas influenced by Gnosticism and the authority of King James VI and I of Scotland).
It includes not just practises like reading tarot cards, palmistry and crystal ball reading, but other often more obscure in the West methods of divination as well. Like mystics in the West, in Japan it is also stereotypically associated more with adult women (though divination is practised by both men and women, and the male identity might be that of a warlock, sorcerer, wizard or simply a male witch); so uranai media has often been marketed towards females rather than males, including in Sanrio media.
Some Sanrio media includes uranai elements, including books, video games, and tarot cards.
In Sanrio media
Books
- Sanrio Rene Van Dahl Watanabe series (1980s): A series of books published by Sanrio, based on the works of a now deceased fortune-teller/mystic Rene Van Dahl Watanabe. Misako Ichikawa's Penkin-san characters appear.
Video games
- Sanrio Uranai Party (Game Boy (1997, Japan)). There was also a Christmas 1997 limited edition Game Boy Pocket console themed around this game.
- Fairy Kitty no Kaiun Jiten: Yousei no Kuni no Uranai Shugyou (Game Boy Color) (1998, Japan)
Not the main feature
- Hello Kitty no Oshare Party: Sanrio Character Zukan DS (Nintendo DS) (2007, Japan)
- Tomotoru: Hello Kitty Happy Life (2010s, Android devices, simple fortune-telling)
Tarot cards
External links
