DiAnna Diaz
May 07, 2011 5:57 AM
Advanced Divination: Haruspicy (6th years) by DiAnna Diaz
When she’d taken the job at Sonora, DiAnna had been certain that her duties would include nothing more than being the librarian, and her interaction with students would be limited to those wanting to rent or return books, and the small group of students who had volunteered to assist her. She had been wrong. Not only did she have occasion to talk to students in the library more frequently than she had anticipated, she had also been in a position to substitute a class. It just so happened that she had a divinations major, and the class that needed covering was divinations. She’d never considered teaching as a career, but once she got into the swing of it, she hadn’t minded taking the intermediate class.The following week, the Headmaster approached her to take the advanced class, too. DiAnna didn’t especially mind, as her first class had gone without any problems, but she was becoming concerned that whatever Professor le Faye was doing to prevent her from coming to classes might continue longer than DiAnna was really prepared for. Her fears were confirmed when, just an hour before she was due to take the advanced class, Headmaster Regal informed her that Professor le Faye would not be returning to teach, and requested that DiAnna teach the all the divination classes for the remainder of the year. Gulp.
Consequently, as the small group of sixth year students arrived for the advanced divinations class, DiAnna was equally nervous as she had been for the Intermediate group. She waited at the front of the classroom, which, considering Professor le Faye’s departure, looked more like a classroom than usual. The desks were still sparkly midnight blue, to which DiAnna didn’t object, but that aside the classroom looked like any other. The stand-in professor didn’t really look like any other professor in her crimson velvet dress robes and gothic face make-up, but she maintained that her black high-heeled boot were helpful in bringing her to meet the height of at least some of the older students. DiAnna waited for the sixth year students to find a seat. She took a quick register, and then proceeded with the class.
“You probably know me as the librarian,” she guessed they had noticed her this far into the year. “My name is DiAnna Diaz, I recently graduated from Sapienti University of Magic with a major in Divinations, and so Headmaster Regal has asked me to teach divinations classes for the time being.” She wasn’t sure of the circumstances of Professor le Faye’s withdrawal, so she decided not to mention it. “According to professor notes over the past couple of years, you’ve already studied rhapsodomancy, psychometry, tarot cards, Ouija boards, and tea leaves – both burning and drinking them. All good fun, but now you’re in the advanced level classes we should be moving on to more complex methods of divining, like rune reading, or things with a bit more, well, a bit more exciting, like pyromancy.” She realized after she’d spoken that she probably shouldn’t encourage the belief that playing with fire was more exciting than other forms of divining. She moved swiftly on.
“So today we’ll look at Haruspicy, but before we do that I’d like to draw your attention to the board.” She walked to stand beside said board, hair and robes flowing behind her, and read out the information written on it. “‘Current day Muggle law: fortune telling is a class B misdemeanor in many states, including New York’,” she read the first line, and then proceeded to the second. “‘In 1572 Augustus of Saxony imposed the penalty of burning for witchcraft of every kind, including simple fortune-telling.’ And so started the witch trials you’ve probably heard about at some point in your education.” Although Sonora didn’t teach history of magic as a subject at the moment, DiAnna thought it was unlikely that any student would be ignorant of historic witch burnings. She read the third and final line, “ ‘In Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Canaan, and Ancient Rome, soothsayers were respected and revered members of society.’ As you can see, practise of divination has come in and out of favour throughout history.” She walked away from the blackboard and back to the front central position she’d occupied before while she was still talking. “Today we’re going to look at the main divining tool used by those classical civilisations. Haruspicy is the practice of using inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals to predict or divine future events. It’s not often used today because it grosses most people out, and there are all sorts of animal rights these days that tend to frown on ritualistic animal slaughtering,” she commented lightly. “Organs inspected can include the liver, intestines, lungs, et cetera. Sheep liver was most common, so that’s what we’ll be using. I mean,” she stopped as she saw a look of distaste on one student’s face, “we won’t be using an actual sheep’s liver. There is a labelled diagram in your textbooks on page one hundred and seven. We’ll be studying that,” she said, thinking she should perhaps have made it clear early on they wouldn’t be studying actual viscera.
“So your assignment today,” DiAnna said, having finished the introduction to the lesson, “is to study the diagram, and then use it to practise making a reading – I’d recommend asking your partner to make pencil marks on your diagram to represent anomalies on an actual liver, and then interpret accordingly. Your homework is to write a two-foot essay on how and why Haruspicy was used in classical cultures – use your textbook and the library to find the information – due this time next week. If you have any questions see me, otherwise you can begin working.”
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Advanced Divination: Haruspicy (6th years)
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