“Lucky 8 Ball didn’t see that one coming!” – public domain image of Magic 8 Ball

(3) DIVINATION

And so we go from the flashy heights of conjuration to the subtle nuances of divination – this school of magic is essentially all about knowledge. As such, it rivals abjuration as one of the oldest schools of magic in actual history, as our ancestors sought magical means of knowing the unknown, from shamanic vision quests, through augurs and soothsayers, to hopelessly cryptic oracles. And like abjuration, it is the most substantial surviving into the present day, in the form of astrology, psychics and other frauds. (It’s my secret dream to walk in on a psychic, smack them in the head and say “Didn’t see that one coming!” – but I digress…)

There have been (and remains) an almost infinite variety of bewildering and surreal techniques of divination, including animal entrails, bird flights, tea leaves and basically any word ending in mancy – from dreamy oneiromancy (reading dreams or Freudian psychology) to the stuff of nightmares like arachnomancy (reading spiders – or dear God get that thing off me!).

Knowledge is power and divination is the ultimate source of magical knowledge – so much so that it is the one school of magic you can’t skip in Dungeons and Dragons, although you’d be better off blind than go without it anyway. (Indeed – there’s a long tradition of prophets and seers being blind or blindfolded for their ‘second sight’. And Odin, chief of the Nordic gods, plucked out one of his own eyes to drink from the fountain of wisdom, because the Nordic gods were hardcore – my money would be on them in an all-out smack-down brawl between pantheons).

Just knowing the past would be useful, knowing the present (particularly reading people’s minds) even more so and knowing the future would be approaching godlike power, as omniscience is next to omnipotence. A supreme diviner could walk through a pitched battle dodging everything without a scratch because he or she’s seen it all coming – or sit sipping cocktails served by demons in hell because he or she knows all their secret names and s€x tapes.

Clearly James Bond relies on divination for his uncanny luck in games of chance and villainous death traps (image of Daniel Craig as James Bond)

BLING & BOOTY POTENTIAL

Divination rivals conjuration as the jackpot of magic schools, unless your school of conjuration includes time travel. Again, even just knowing the past would be lucrative (not least in all the missing or lost secrets and treasures of the world), knowing the present even more so (not least as the ultimate insider trading) but knowing the future would be your licence to make money.

Even discounting such easy options as casinos, gambling and lotteries (which presumably would be abjured to the hilt in a fantasy world), there’d be the fabulous wealth to be made through markets and other business or political fields. Through divination, you would always be in the right place at the right time and cashing in your compound interest in the present. Basically, divination lets you steal from the future, not only having your cake and eating it but doing both before it’s even baked – like plucking Microsoft from the future mind of Bill Gates, just in time to sue him for copyright as the icing on the cake.

As for booty, apart from your fabulous wealth, you would also always be in the right place at the right time – with the perfect pickup line. Otherwise, you can always hang out with the freaky drugged and fantastically gymnastic oracle groupies from 300.