ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the literature on divination and the various typologies that have been proposed, such as that going back to the classics, that distinguish inspired divination (based on possession) and technical divination (based on procedures). Different functions have been attributed to the use of divination, for example distancing the speaker from the utterance, and randomizing decisions about where to hunt. Functionalist accounts, concentrating on the consequences, ignore the intellectual activity of both diviners and clients. An example of this is the interpretation of the divinatory results by diviners and their clients. This chapter presents a typology of technical divination focusing on who knows the questions and on how constrained the interpretation is.
