Divination and Augury

In Ars Magica Fifth Edition, Divination and Augury is a Major Supernatural Virtue that gives a character a magical ability to interpret mystical signs to gain information. It does not actually grant the ability to foretell the future -- that would violate the Limit of Time -- but it does allow the user to estimate likely outcomes of current situations. As The Mysteries Revised Edition puts it, "... [D]ivination is inherently interpretive in nature and not predictive ..."

Divination and Augury is taught by several Mystery Cults.

Hermetic Divination

Divination and Augury as written is only usable by magi, and hence is also called Hermetic Diviniation. The rules for Divination and Augury, like the rules for most other Supernatural Virtues, are based on a special Ability rather than on the Arts. Therefore it would be easy to make a House Rule that Divination and Augury is available to non-magus characters, such as hedge wizards.

Earlier Editions

In Third and Fourth Editions, there was a Supernatural Virtue called Divination that did the same thing, but its rules were less detailed. It was dropped from the core rule book in Fifth Edition but given expanded treatment in TMRE.

References

• Divination and Augury, TMRE pages 58-63
• Divination, ArM4 page 45

Related Topics

• Intellego
• TMRE
• Gematria is a divination skill based on Judaic Mysticism. It is briefly covered in Realms of Power: the Divine, as well as in the free supplement Mythic Judaism.

Legacy Page

The history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at Legacy:divination_and_augury