Divination

Divination is a branch of magic used to gain insights into the future. It first appears in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

About

Those who study divination have to use their concentration and interpretation skills to analyse Signs and deduce an insight into the future. Clearing their Inner Eye so that they can See by relaxing your conscious mind and physical eyes is key to getting into their superconscious.

A branch of divination is fortune-telling that can be done in various ways, including palmistry and crystal balls. It encourages intuition rather than logical thinking and calculation by using numbers like in Arithmancy). Another branch of divination is used by centaurs but their ways are not understood by humans.

There are several kinds of omens, good and bad. The worst of these is a Sign someone is going die called the Grim. Having a strong Aura and perception is important to their success at divination. Known books about the subject include Death Omens: What to Do When You Know the Worst Is Coming and Unfogging the Future. Seers include Cassandra Vablatsky and Sybill Trelawney.

Human divination

Sybill Trelawney, a Seer

A true Seer is rare and has a natural talent for using their Inner Eye to actually see into the future, interpret what happens and even give a Prophecy. Learned Seers have better success at seeing into the future. If a person does not have an Inner Eye, they are a non-Seer. Studying it will only take a non-seer so far. They will never truly see into the future. A non-Seer can be taught how to develop an understanding and gain insights into the future. A subject at Hogwarts is an elective which chosen for study in the third-year.

Hermione Granger was very unskilled at divination because she doubted how authentic it was. She was negative in Divination lessons and Professor Trelawney told her she had very little aura and perception. Learned witches and wizards viewed the subject with scepticism because it isn't based in clear and proven logic. Professor McGonagall called it an "imprecise branch of magic", Hermione called it "woolly" and guesswork" and Professor Dumbledore was leaning towards scrapping the subject at Hogwarts before finding Sybill Trelawney.

Centaur divination

Centaurs are very gifted in divination and have their own ways of divining the future, usually centred around the observing and placement of planets and stars. They have done it their own way for centuries, including burning certain herbs like sage and mallowsweet and looking for various shapes and symbols in a fume.

It will take a centaur years and years of studying until they are competent but it is considered foolish to have too much confidence in their insights because even they could be wrong. Their findings lead centaurs to conclude thry could find the future in the skies above but it can take even ten years to be certain of what they See.

Centaurs tend to have a very low opinion of human divination. Firenze called it "self-flattering nonsense" and berated their tendency to focus on day-to-day insights because they are "blinkered and fettered by the limitations of [their] kind". He thought they were rarely ever any good at it, and was unconcerned when he taught a Divination lesson to a student he found to be incompetent.

Branches

Branch	Notes
Crystal-gazing	Looking in crystal balls
Omens	Grim
Palmistry	Looking at a person's palm and life-lines
Tessomancy	Interpreting tea leaves