Divining the Past, Present, and Future: Oracles, Series 1 – Four Lectures
Join us for Series 1 as we journey into the histories and mysteries of divination. Delivered by leading scholars in the field, ‘Divining the Past, Present, and Future’ includes talks on specific types of divination, from Mambila spider divination to Medieval necromancy.
Curated & Hosted by
Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She lives in Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesvos.
Image: John Collier, ‘Priestess of Delphi’ (1891), Art Gallery of South Australia
Lecture 1 – Divination: ‘Looking for answers, not just stars and cards but spiders too!’’ – David Zeitlyn – 11 January 2026
After many years of studying Mambila spider divination in Cameroon I will discuss different ways of understanding a particular occult practice such as ŋgam dù – versions of which are found throughout southern Cameroon. This allows us to better appreciate the approaches to the academic study of divination exemplified in the recent Oxford exhibition and related book. People are looking for answers to hard questions. There is huge variation in how answers are produced. We should focus on questions not techniques when thinking about divination in general.
Bio:
David Zeitlyn is professor of social anthropology at University of Oxford and conseil technique to the chief of Somié in Cameroun. He is an initiated ŋgam dù Spider diviner. He has been working with Mambila in Cameroon since 1985. Recent publications include An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts (2022) and Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers (2020). With Michelle Pfeffer he curated the exhibition in Oxford, ‘Oracles Omens Answers’ (Dec 2024-April 2025): https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/oracles-omens-and-answers and edited the related book, Divination Oracles Omens published by Bodleian Library Press:
https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/divination-oracles-omens (in Europe and UK), or in
USA: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/D/bo249121065.html
Image: A divinatory result: Asking about Trump and Biden (2019)
Lecture 2 – Creativity in an Eggshell: The Freedom of Uncovering One’s Own World? – Katherine Swancutt – 18 January 2026
Probably every kind of divination requires creativity, but the Nuosu of Southwest China open up whole microcosms of it when cracking eggs into bowls of water and reading the bubbles that form. Nuosu egg divination is a spontaneous craft––one that both shapes and responds to the world––which means that diviners are free to interpret the same results differently. Many clients value this ‘natural’ approach to divination because it lets them address problems flexibly. Yet Nuosu egg divination also raises large questions about the nature of divination that I address in this talk: Is it possible to have too much creativity in divination? Or too much freedom in envisioning our own place within the cosmos?
Bio:
Katherine Swancutt is reader in social anthropology at King’s College London and Project Lead of the ERC synergy grant ‘Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia’. She has worked with Nuosu in Southwest China since 2007 and carried out fieldwork on shamanism and animism across Inner Asia for more than 25 years. Recent publications include Demons and Gods on Display: The Anthropology of Display and Worldmaking (special issue of Asian Ethnology, 2023) and ‘Dreams, Visions, and Worldmaking: Envisioning Anthropology Through Dreamscapes’ (Annual Review of Anthropology, 2024). Her chapters on ‘Nuosu Egg Divination’ and ‘Buryat Mongolian Card Divination’ appear in David Zeitlyn and Michelle Aroney’s Divination, Oracles & Omens (2024) published by Bodleian Library Press: https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/divination-oracles-omens (in Europe and UK), or in USA: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/D/bo249121065.html
Image: Pointing at a bubble trapped just beneath the surface to indicate the client’s lost soul. Photograph © Katherine Swancutt
Lecture 3 – Getting Down to the Bare Bones: Scapulimancy and Second Sight in Scottish Gaelic Tradition – Andrew Wiseman – 15 March 2026
Scapulimancy (Slinneineachd in Scottish Gaelic) is a form of augury or divination involving the examination or interpretation of the scapula usually, though not exclusively, of the shoulder-blade or speal bone of a sheep, and sometimes that of a cow or a pig. Such a practice was believed to be able to foretell important events in the owner’s life, including deaths, battles, commotions, and other significant occurrences. Disasters such as the Massacre of Glencoe (1692) and the Battle of Culloden (1746) were said to have been prognosticated using scapulimancy.
The earliest ethnographic records of scapulimancy, from a Scottish context, dates to the seventeenth-century and the latest to the nineteenth-century. To judge from these accounts, as well as those supplemented from oral sources, such a practice crosses ethnic and cultural boundaries. Indeed, such a divinatory method is found throughout many parts of the world and is well documented, for instance, in East Asian cultures.
The purpose of this presentation is to critically examine the various early modern sources and to assess why and by whom such a practice was resorted to and why at times scapulimancy is sometimes taken to be or sometimes confused with second sight. Also offered in the presentation are some thoughts on the actual origins of such a divinatory practice either to foretell future events (precognition) or those at a distance in space and time (detection).
Bio:
Andrew Wiseman is a cultural historian, specialising in the Scottish Highlands from the late medieval to the modern period, who has developed a keen interest in Scottish Gaelic intangible culture. He is currently editing a number of works and has authored around twenty chapters and articles as well as numerous blogs and mainstream publications. As editor of the forthcoming titles Your Work Will Remain: Diaries of Calum I. Maclean (1951–1954), From Lochaber, Badenoch, Morar, Arisaig, Moidart, Easter Ross and Sutherland and The Highlands and Selected Writings of Calum I. Maclean, a detailed and engaging account of Calum Maclean’s fieldwork diaries as well as his academic and mainstream publications will offer an opportunity to reassess the legacy of one of Scotland’s most important twentieth-century ethnologists and folklorists.
Image: James Hamilton, ‘Massacre of Glencoe,’ 1883–86. Glasgow Museums.
Lecture 4 – Medieval Necromancy and the Cursed Imagination’ – Sophie Page – 26 April 2026
Necromancers – medieval Christian demon conjurors – thought they could compel demons to reveal the truth about anything they asked, including all the secrets of the past, present, and future. Demons had access to extraordinary knowledge because of their immortality and superior rationality. It was not that they were omniscient: rather that they had lived for a very long time, had seen it all before, and were superlative predicters. Some medieval thinkers thought of demons as the first natural scientists, permitted by God to pass the eons observing and interpreting humans to puzzle out each sin an individual was likely to succumb to. As the demons wandered eternally in the sublunar realm, they noticed things of great interest to the necromancer: where treasure was buried, who stole objects of value, unfaithful lovers, wrongful imprisonment, and princes’ guilty secrets. In this talk I will discuss how necromancers hoped to succeed in their rituals despite the intense malice and cunning of demons. We will also investigate the mystery and ambiguity of the spirit realm and the charge laid at necromancers that they had a ‘cursed imagination.’
Bio:
Sophie Page is Professor of Medieval History at University College London. She has published on monks and magic, cosmology, diagrams, animals and rituals and was joint editor of the Routledge History of Medieval Magic (2019). In 2018 she co-created the exhibition, Spellbound: Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
Image: The Pilgrim meeting the messenger of Necromancy, from ‘The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man’ by John Lydgate. Cotton Tiberius A VII/1, f. 42.r
Attendees will receive a recording of each lecture valid for 4 weeks.
