The foggy future

[Vicki Merriman]

No: HPFGUIDX 525

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Steve Bates" <spicoli323 at h...> 
wrote:
> All this about fortunetellers reminds me of some thoughts I have 
had > for awhile on Professor Trelawney.  I personally don't think 
she is a > crackpot at all.  My reasoning is this.  It's been said 
time and time > again that fortunetelling is a very imprecise type of 
magic,

But if it's so imprecise that its not practical, then why study it at 
all.  Best to leave it undisturbed.

I don't think Trelawney is a crackpot because she doesn't appear to 
be a good psychic.  Its her fixation on bad things happening to 
people.  She has YET, to my knowledge, suggested that something good, 
or even decent, would happen to a person.  She was thrilled when Ron 
and Harry invented all sorts of horrors for their months of 
predictions and doesn't even seem to care whether they came true or 
not.

She comes across as having an attitude that "if its not bad, then its 
no fun at all."

She focuses on Harry for her bad tidings, but every student seems to 
come in for some of it.  Remember, she was disappointed when 
Harry "predicted" that Buckbeak would escape.  But Harry was right!  
(with a little help from Himself and Hermione.)

 and so I do think she's got a problem, even for an imprecise form of 
magic.

> future. I think Trelawney is very in touch with the universe.  This 
> connection with the universe is almost a religious experience for 
> her, a sort of meditation.  Her ability to see the future as a 
result > is only a side effect.

If she was just "airy fairy" I'd agree, but she's fixated on bad 
things.

> prophecies, but she is continually making smaller, vague 
predictions 
> that usually come roughly true.  Examples include Neville's teacup 
> and Lavender's rabbit.  As for Hermione leaving the class; she 
> obviously had some idea something of the sort was going to happen 
but > probably didn't know the specifics or the person involved.


_I_ could predict that "one of us would leave us forever" in a new 
elective class with a group of students.  The odds are very high that 
someone in the class would do something that fit that description.  
Hermione just happened to be the one.  Likewise, anyone who had heard 
of Neville could predict that he'd break at least one cup, and 
despite the fact that Professor Trelawney is supposed to spend a lot 
of time in her area, I suspect that she is kept informed by someone 
or somehow on all the students and who is who.  Remember, she didn't 
say that Neville would break it that day.  Lavender's rabbit shows a 
_slight_ tendency to be a true prediction, but again, almost anything 
could be considered to fit that vague prediction.  If they'd had 
steak and kidney pie for dinner and Lavender didn't like steak and 
kidney pie, she probably would have considered _that_ the "thing that 
you were dreading."


>She can't > see into the future precisely all the time.  But she has 
a hazy idea, > and that is the best we can expect of her in strictly 
practical > terms.

I stick to the idea that she can't really see into the future at all 
except for the two predictions referred to by Dumbledore.  I have an 
absolute belief in telepathy (though, IMO, the distribution is very 
very rare in the population) and a fairly strong belief in rare 
instances of precognition, but Professor Trelawney doesn't show any 
real evidence of being precognitive.  

As we've already discussed, no one in HP's universe shows any signs 
of being telepathic.

Vicki