I wonder if there’s a mapping from types of magician into types of people who, today, predict the future. e.g. innovation consultants. Bear with me on this.
There used to be many more birds.
The bird population is down 29% since 1970 in North America and likely Europe too.
In the ancient world…
The Mediterranean world of 2,500 years ago would have looked and sounded very different. Nightingales sang in the suburbs of Athens and Rome; wrynecks, hoopoes, cuckoos and orioles lived within city limits, along with a teeming host of warblers, buntings and finches; kites and ravens scavenged the city streets; owls, swifts and swallows nested on public buildings. In the countryside beyond, eagles and vultures soared overhead, while people could observe the migrations of cranes, storks and wildfowl.
And that article is a great read on the prevalence of birds in ancient literature and thought.
Birds were functional: In the ancient world, weather and seasonal changes were matters of vital consequence for agriculture, travel, trade and the rounds of domestic life, and birds served as a standard point of reference in calibrating and interpreting the cycles of the year.
Birds were magical: They crop up in all manner of figures of speech, proverbs, myths, fables, and in ritual and magical practices, some of which now seem very strange.
Magic!
I’ve touched on this before so let me summarise: the Codex Justinianus (534 AD), being the book of law for ancient Rome at that time, banned magicians and, in doing so, itemised the types:
A haruspex is one who prognosticates from sacrificed animals and their internal organs;
a mathematicus, one who reads the course of the stars;
a hariolus, a soothsayer, inhaling vapors, as at Delphi;
augurs, who read the future by the flight and sound of birds;
a vates, an inspired person - prophet;
chaldeans and magus are general names for magicians;
maleficus means an enchanter or poisoner.
I’m not prepared to dismiss magicians as simply cold reading when they give their advice. I have to believe they actually have access to something that the rest of us don’t – knowledge, not the supernatural.
And it’s interesting to imagine what it means for an augur to tell the future.
I mean: birds migrate.
So let’s say a migration from the east is a little early. That means there’s poor climate to the east, possibly a famine. So the people there will be struggling. If it’s a province, that means the governor will be struggling and agitating. If it’s nomads on the Eurasian Steppes, they’ll be starting raids for food. So send legions to defend the Empire!
Or the birds from the south are looking particularly plump, for several years. Whoever’s looking after Egypt will be doing pretty well, feeling a bit big for their boots after that amount of time, perhaps they’ll cause trouble, so hey Emperor, why don’t you move a few people around to keep them on their toes.
Etc.
I happen to have spent my career in a number of fields that promise to have some kind of claim to supernatural powers: design, innovation, startups…
It’s not hard to run through a few archetypes of the people in those worlds, and map them onto types of ancient magician.
Those like Steve Jobs (with his famous Reality Distortion Field) who can convincingly tell a story of the future, and by doing so, bring it about by getting others to follow them – prophets.
Inhaling the vapours and pronouncing gnomic truths? You’ll find all the thought leaders you want in Delphi, sorry, on LinkedIn.
Those with a good intuition about the future who bring it to life with theatre, and putting people in a state of great excitement so they respond – ad planners. Haruspex.
People with a great aptitude for systems and numbers, who can tell by intuition what will happen, from systems that stump the rest of us. We call them analysts now. MBAs. Perhaps the same aptitude drew them to read the stars before? Mathematicus.
Augurs being people who pay attention to the faint signals in the world, wherever they appear, continuously collating and integrating, waiting until something mysteriously precipitates out into a hunch, just a hunch, and saying it out loud, and occasionally - just occasionally - being right… or at least, provocatively useful.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
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I wonder if there’s a mapping from types of magician into types of people who, today, predict the future. e.g. innovation consultants. Bear with me on this.
There used to be many more birds.
The bird population is down 29% since 1970 in North America and likely Europe too.
In the ancient world…
And that article is a great read on the prevalence of birds in ancient literature and thought.
Birds were functional:
Birds were magical:
Magic!
I’ve touched on this before so let me summarise: the Codex Justinianus (534 AD), being the book of law for ancient Rome at that time, banned magicians and, in doing so, itemised the types:
I’m not prepared to dismiss magicians as simply cold reading when they give their advice. I have to believe they actually have access to something that the rest of us don’t – knowledge, not the supernatural.
And it’s interesting to imagine what it means for an augur to tell the future.
I mean: birds migrate.
So let’s say a migration from the east is a little early. That means there’s poor climate to the east, possibly a famine. So the people there will be struggling. If it’s a province, that means the governor will be struggling and agitating. If it’s nomads on the Eurasian Steppes, they’ll be starting raids for food. So send legions to defend the Empire!
Or the birds from the south are looking particularly plump, for several years. Whoever’s looking after Egypt will be doing pretty well, feeling a bit big for their boots after that amount of time, perhaps they’ll cause trouble, so hey Emperor, why don’t you move a few people around to keep them on their toes.
Etc.
I happen to have spent my career in a number of fields that promise to have some kind of claim to supernatural powers: design, innovation, startups…
It’s not hard to run through a few archetypes of the people in those worlds, and map them onto types of ancient magician.
Augurs being people who pay attention to the faint signals in the world, wherever they appear, continuously collating and integrating, waiting until something mysteriously precipitates out into a hunch, just a hunch, and saying it out loud, and occasionally - just occasionally - being right… or at least, provocatively useful.
I would be a middling sort of augur, of course.