Rules of Divination and Trelawney

[caliburncy at yahoo.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 25598

First, a quick note on the Rules of Divination thread:

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., magpie1112 at y... wrote:
> Professor Trelawney's prediction (the true one, I mean) comes on her 
> quite by surprise.  She drifts into a trance and makes her 
> prediction, and then can't remember it after she comes to.  She may 
> have been prodded by the crystal ball, but it seems like a totally 
> separate occurrence.

Right.  What I meant by medium wasn't necessarilly a physical object 
or aid, but just any sort of "go-between" that seperates the concious 
person from their predictions (don't know if I explained that 
properly).  So I included in the list I made the trance you mentioned 
and also prescient dreams as media.  My intention was to seperate 
these from regular conversation which is neither subconcious (like the 
one kind of media: trances and dreams) nor using a physical aid (like 
the other kind of media).

**********

Now on to Trelawney debate: True Seer or Actress with Over-sized 
Glasses and Bangles on her Wrists. . . 

First off, I should say that I may have overstated myself in the Grim 
analysis.  What I meant by fraud was not that she is a TOTAL fraud, 
but that everything she did was an act except for the two correct 
predictions referred to by Dumbledore.  (Please wait before you point 
out that this isn't provable--I know that and I'll explain why a 
couple sentences from now).  Of course these two correct predictions 
make her not a fraud--she must have some true seer ability--but on a 
day to day basis she is a fraud.  But more importantly, the reason I 
declared her a fraud in that analysis is not because that represented 
my personal beliefs, but because, mechanically speaking, I think we as 
readers are supposed to accept that as regards the Grim.  For purpose 
of the analysis, I tried to do everything from the assumption of what 
we as the readers are supposed to think.  So even when some people 
might draw different conclusions, I have tried to put what I perceive 
to be the intended conclusion--how else to ilustrate the way an author 
manipulates the reader?  I myself frequently drew slightly different 
conclusions (not just about Trelawney but from the foreshadowing), but 
for me to put those there would not be the point.

My personal opinion (not without some sort of basis in canon, but 
lacking truly conclusive evidence) is that Professor Trelawney is a 
true seer who doesn't realize that she is one and therefore has all 
this time been putting on an act, without knowing that she really does 
possess an Inner Eye.  But I think her only real predictions may be 
the two referred to by Dumbledore.  Anything else she says that turns 
out to be true I think is probably true by "crafted coincidence", 
(meaning that she picked things to say that she knew were likely to 
happen or be true), "inverse reasoning" (sorry, bad title--but meaning 
that given a conclusion beforehand, people will often find a way to 
make the proof fit it before they try it the other way around--this is 
not in reference to us, though it could be as well, but to Trelawney's 
students) and the power of suggestion ("Ohh, what's really going to 
bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I 
hadn't said anything?" -- The Oracle, "The Matrix").  I'm not 100% 
firm in that conclusion, but that's my current stance.

As for her really seeing a dog (Sirius) and just misinterpreting it as 
a Grim, that could very well be true, but I don't know enough about 
JKR's rules for reading tea leaves to say one way or the other.  See, 
I would think, based on all the other things Trelawney says, that 
reading tea leaves is based purely on symbols--like Tarot cards.  So, 
for example, when she saw the falcon it would have to signify what the 
falcon symbolizes: a deadly enemy--it couldn't just be literally a 
falcon.  But later on she does see the Grim in the crystal ball, and 
crystal balls may very well give more literal, less symbolic visions. 
 So I don't know; I'm not making any judgments on this.

See, the real trouble here is that the only benchmark we have here for 
the rules of divination is Professor Trelawney herself and there's no 
unanimous agreement as to how reliable a benchmark she is.

For all we know, true seers normally only make a few predictions in 
their lifetime.  For all we know, the only true predictions from seers 
(not say, centaurs) arrive in the form of hypnotic trances and perhaps 
prescient dreams--and the rest of the mediums are just con-artist's 
derivations.  For all we know, there are oracular pigs in HP just like 
the Prydain Chronicles.  :)  I'm not saying any of these things are 
true, I'm just saying we really don't know much for certain about 
Divination yet, because our only basis for comparison is so 
questionable.

I agree that JKR has made Trelawney's status as a true seer or a fraud 
rather ambiguous, including her smaller predictions (those other than 
the two Dumbledore mentioned).  Certainly you could make a case that 
many of those were accurate, but you could also explain them 
effectively away to parlor tricks.  What I don't know is to what end 
JKR is making this ambiguous.  I could even make a case, perhaps not 
an excellent one, that she only intended it to be ambiguous in this 
novel and not have far-reaching consequences.  In fact, pretty much 
all I can say with certainty is Trelawney will come into play again, 
because there has to be some significance to when we find out what her 
first correct prediction is.  So hopefully then we'll get a better 
idea.  Or maybe not hopefully.  Because in a way there are some 
questions that are just better if you never find the truth.

-Luke