Rules of Divination

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25468

With all the speculation that goes about for <ENTER NAME OF JUST ABOUT 
ANY CHARACTER HERE> being a seer, I have long been surprised by the 
choice of evidence many use.

It seems to me that all the canon instances we have suggests that 
seeing is not done without some kind of "medium".  It's not just 
intuitive comments, as far as I can see.  It comes in the following 
forms:

Prescient Dreams
Crystal ball-gazing
Astronomy
Reading tea-leaves
Palmistry
Prophecy Trance

This list is probably not exhaustive.  But what I'm wondering is, what 
reason do we have to believe that seeing also involves comments that 
turn out to be true?  Trelawney does say a couple things during class 
without first using an aid (all the comments she drops at random in 
the first lesson), but the assumption might be that she divined them 
beforehand.  (And she IS a fraud, but that's immaterial)

So what are the rules of Divination, do you guys think?  Under what 
circumstances does one 'see'?  Surely it's not just a randomly 
inspired statement that happens to also fit in with the current 
direction of the conversation?

I guess the reason this strikes me as strange is that, generally, in 
other fiction and in real-life, the ability to predict the future is, 
like I said before limited to some 'mediums', like dreams or touching 
objects that key sensory experiences or Tarot cards or whatever.

I'm quite curious to hear various opinions on this.

-Luke