Divination means simply making the unknown into the known. Many cultures all around the world have some form of divination tools or rituals, often ancient in age and practice. Some examples of different divination systems are the tarot, I Ching, scrying and using a pendulum.

Those who believe that divination works believe that all matter, whether “living” in the traditional sense or not, has an innate intelligence and that all things are connected through their energy. When you are working with objects, whether it be tarot cards, runes, bones or tea leaves, those objects are connected energetically to a higher power. Since you are handling those objects and are connected to them, you are then connected to a higher power through their energy. It's as if all objects are alive. Believing and accepting that everything on earth is intelligent makes it easy to believe that everyday objects and events have meaning and may be trying to “tell you something.”

One general type of divination is the reading of omens, which is the most primitive method. Historical Chinese records indicate mentions of unusual weather events and uncommon births. Information such as this was used in long-range planning, and may even have been the impetus to our modern-day scientific method.

One theory on how divination works is that the information obtained comes from our unconscious. Our minds constantly process data and information that we are not aware of at the time. It's feasible that this “data bank” is accessed during divination. The unconscious mind may physically determine how Tarot cards are ordered or how the runes are cast.

A different aspect of this theory explains that the events may really be truly random. The Tarot cards are shuffled and laid out in a certain way but the cards are totally separate from each other and in arbitrary patterns. The unconscious mind interprets the patterns and relationships of the cards instead of determining the patterns themselves.

Another theory describing divination is called synchronicity, which states that separate events may actually be meaningfully connected. Arbitrary events, no matter how disconnected they seem, contain meaning and wisdom if their hidden meaning can be ascertained. For certain types of divination such as Tarot or runes the synchronicity theory is a common explanation.

Can divination tell the future? Popular divinatory techniques such as Tarot seem to do so. Yet modern physics shows us that events happen on a totally random scale. This brings into question whether foretelling future events is possible – events occur in a certain way simply because they did not happen in another way.

Many events that happen in our everyday lives can be seen as divinatory. If you're rushing around like a crazy person and your car breaks down in the middle of your errands, some might take that as a message to slow down. But don't fall into the trap of assigning divine meaning to every single thing that happens in your life. Some things that happen really are just random events. As Freud stated, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!