§ 8 Apparent Failure of Omens
Though in their nature infallible, Omens are not always fulfilled—at least, their fulfilment is not always ascertainable. But this is easily explained; for whatever an Omen may be in itself, our knowledge of it depends on observation, which may be superficial and incomplete, so that we may not know what it was. What kind of bird was it? Which way did it fly? How many cries did it utter? These questions go to the heart of the matter; yet each of them points out an opportunity of error. But granting the observations perfect, we have still to learn what the Omen portends; and although a simple mind, trusting to simple rules, may be ready offhand with an answer, it becomes, with the development of the art of Divination, more and more complicated and difficult, demanding long experience and profound erudition—something worth paying for. It is popularly known that dreams are perplexing as the guide of life. Are they to be accepted at face value, or do they go by contraries? What difference does it make whether they happen early in the night, or in the morning, or whether we sleep in white or in coloured night-clothes? There is an extensive casuistry of this matter. Interpretations of Omens proceeded generally by analogy: the length and direction of the cracks in a shoulder-blade indicate the length and tenor of a man’s life. Oracles, again, were often distractingly obscure; from Delphi much like riddles; but those of Zeus at Dodona are said to have been sometimes taken to Apollo at Delphi to ask what they meant. Clearly, then, besides possible errors of observation, there were further pitfalls of interpretation; if a physician or a pilot is sometimes out in his reckoning, why not also a diviner? So that an Omen might very well be fulfilled without our knowing exactly what it was or what it indicated.
But that is not all; for we have seen that any kind of magical force is only infallible as a tendency; it may be counteracted, and this is generally thought to be the case with Omens. Just as the rites of one magician may be frustrated by the more powerful operations of another, so an Omen indicates a course of events which may, perhaps, be turned aside. That which is foreseen by one spirit may be prevented by another, whose intervention was not foreseen; for spirits are by no means infallible. Hence, however well observed and interpreted, the tendency of an Omen, or of the force it manifests, may be diverted or reversed by some unknown cause. Moreover, we ourselves are loth to relinquish all control over affairs. We have seen that the efficacy of Omens depended (not without reason) on the way they were received; and that we may meet them with our own magical influence, accepting them, or rejecting with a spell.
And further, we have seen that Magic often works by symbols, and that a symbolic action will cause or incite a real event; and similarly it is believed that the event foreshown by an Omen may be symbolically fulfilled; that some harmless semblance of the event may be substituted for it, absorb (as it were) the poison of the menace and let the threatened man go free. Astyages dreamed a dream which the Magi interpreted to mean that the child of his daughter (married to a Persian) should reign over Asia in his stead—implying that the kingdom must pass from the Medes. He therefore took measures to have the child destroyed; but by a series of happy chances Cyrus, the child, escaped and grew up; and in his boyhood Astyages discovered who he was, and was greatly alarmed. So he sent again for the Magi; but they, on learning that the boys in the village where Cyrus had been reared had in games appointed him their king, decided that this fulfilled the dream; for, said they, “he will not reign a second time.”378 So Cyrus lived, and the lordship of Asia passed to the Persians; for the Magi in this case overestimated the value of symbols. But all these ways of frustrating an Omen are incompatible with the interpretation of them by the course of Fate, and are only fit to be believed in by the weaker brethren.