How to Ask Good Divination Questions

Back in the day, the purpose of divination was to discern the will of the gods: Will you drop a plague of locusts on my people if I cross this river with a band of five hundred armed warriors? If I sail with the next tide, will one of your one-eyed children stomp my boat to splinters? Is that my bloody armor you’re washing in the river, Morrigan, or Bobby’s?

Life was short and bloody, and when the odds were a coin toss between you getting the sweating sickness or someone else, it was really easy to believe that fate was all-powerful and that choice didn’t really have anything to do with how your life went.*

This enshrined a sort of divination question that makes it sound like whether or not you get married is entirely up to Cupid.

But this type of god-cam future prediction isn’t, fundamentally, what divination is for.

Divination is a problem-solving tool.

There’s a common saying in the magic(k)al communities that you should do what you can to solve your problems at the mundane level before you turn to magic. If you put your resume on the internet, your sigil spell will have a much easier time finding you a job. Brushing your teeth is an essential element of every charm spell.

Divination is magic(k), so the same rules apply. It is a tool to help you figure out what actions you should take to solve your problems.

Even if the divination method you’re using is (like astrology) one that is deeply concerned with understanding yourself, that understanding isn’t just so that you can type people in coffeeshops who annoy you and smilie smugly to yourself. As fun as that is.

The picture divination tools gives you of yourself is fundamentally pessimistic because it’s focused on your problems.

So you can fix them.

That’s why everyone knows that Taurus is lazy and Aquarius is weird and Gemini won’t stop talking and Pisces is so serenely spiritual it wanders out into traffic.

It’s so that Taurus can get off its ass and Aquarius can learn how to tie a tie (before it sets it on fire) and Gemini can learn to listen before someone remembers where the duct tape is and Pisces can learn to take its headphones out of its ears before it crosses train tracks.

Even evolutionary astrology, which emphasizes that each of the signs and planets is a collection of good and bad qualities, focuses on the “karmic predicament.” It’s all about understanding problems so you can solve them.

Every good divination question assumes you can influence the future.

This is why “When am I getting married?” is a bad question and “Should I propose with the ethically sourced diamond or my beloved’s favorite crystal?” is a good one.

This is why my past life readings aren’t just a funny little story about what you were up to before you were dead last time and always contain a bit of advice for how to make the future better.

The fundamental assumption in a divination reading is that something about life sucks, and you want to know why, and you want to make it suck less if possible.

A good divination question is one that asks:

• What is really happening right now?

• Why it is happening?

• What can I can do to make it better?

Construct your questions that way, and you’ll be shocked how long your to-do list gets.

* I will note here that there are people who are currently in situations like these, and divination is a tool they use to help their gods help them win the coin toss. But they’re probably not on the internet wondering what kinds of questions to ask because they’re too busy asking how to stay alive.

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