Oracles, Omens and Answers

About the exhibition

Discover how people have sought answers to life’s big questions throughout history.

Drawing on material from across time and cultures – from oracle bones from Shang Dynasty China (ca. 1250-1050 B.C.E.) to an autobiography of Ronald Reagan’s White House astrologer – Oracles, Omens and Answers will explore the different techniques humans have used to unveil the past, understand the present and predict the future.

From palm reading and astrology to weather and public health forecasting, see how societies have turned to divination to ask questions that resonate with us today: on health, relationships, money and politics.

Step into the world of divination and uncover the ways that humanity has tried to confront the unknown and uncertain.

Exhibition book

A book cover showing the detail of an astrological symbol with a bright green centre and yellow circle around it with shapes that look like flames around edge

Divination, Oracles & Omens

Edited by Michelle Aroney and David Zeitlyn
Published on 5 December 2024

Accompanying the exhibition, a spellbinding collection of twenty-four divinatory techniques from around the world exploring our need to appeal to powers beyond our realm for prediction and clarification.

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 Curators

  • Dr Michelle Aroney, historian of science and religion at Magdalen College, Oxford.
  • Professor David Zeitlyn, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and an initiated Mambila gam dù spider diviner.

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