Fogging the Future

[Barry Arrowsmith]

Never had much truck with astrology, I Ching or any of that lot.  
Well, usually, that is. At one time I was a dab hand with a Tarot  
deck, but that was because so many girls were fascinated by the  
thought of a reading - even if it was back at my place. "You will  
meet a bearded man who has ulterior motives..." Worked, too, mostly  
because we'd be talking about her instead of tedious bloke-ish stuff  
like football or cars. Still, by the standards of occult chicanery it  
was fairly innocent stuff and nobody took it too seriously.

But take it seriously some folk do. A few years back, John Sladek, an  
irrepressibly mischievous SF writer, came up with the 13th zodiacal  
sign, Arachne (30th Nov - 17th Dec) and published a hoax book about  
it under the name James Vogh. None of the astrology crowd seemed to  
get the joke - they took him seriously, pointing out that Ptomely  
mentions Ophiuchus in his star catalogue, and so on, and so on, and  
"yes, we know all about it and I really can't explain why we've never  
mentioned it before, it's all terribly complicated." Odd that they'd  
never bothered to mention to a chunk of saggitarians that they'd been  
getting the wrong readings all these years. Mind you, it was Sladek's  
own fault - he shouldn't have used plausibly logical reasoning;  
always a mistake when dealing with a belief system.

Never really understood why such beliefs still flourish - I mean,  
haven't we decided that the Ptomeleic idea of planets and stars being  
fixed in crystal spheres and therefore each potentially able to exert  
an influence equal to any other, is a load of tripe? And what is this  
'influence' anyway? Gravity? Met someone once who spent weeks  
calculating the gravitational force exerted by Jupiter on a newborn  
babe in a delivery suite. Turned out that a double-decker bus passing  
the hospital had more pull - and as for the mid-wife standing in the  
catching position, well...  But you'll  never hear a prediction "The  
bus was going to Goldsmith's Hall, so you'll be lucky with money, and  
the mid-wife was named Felicity, so you'll be sweet and gentle." Too  
simple, I suppose - plus there'd be some very pointed questions if  
the vehicle was a garbage truck and the mid-wife was called  
Messalina. The lonely  hearts columns could offer some entertainment,  
though: "32 y.o. hot stuff Shell Petroleum Tanker, non-smoker, GSOH,  
WLTM 40s Fire Appliance. Extendable ladder and foam generator  
essential."

Then there're the oracles. Never a plain answer, always couched in  
ambiguous terms that could mean anything or nothing. There was that  
Greek king who got the message that if he crossed the Hellespont a  
great empire would fall. Damn fool got the idea that meant he'd win  
and you can bet your boots that the seer didn't disillusion him,  
probably gratefully trousered a hefty bonus from an ecstatic ruler.  
Since the wars of the time generally got fought to a finish, even if  
it took years, and since every jumped up little scrote ruling a  
territory slightly larger than your back  garden considered himself  
an emperor, the oracle couldn't really lose with that one, could he?  
Now if it had been me that got that forecast, the oracle would've  
been strung up by the goolies until he got a bit more specific.

Has anyone ever heard of a seer who comes right out with it, no  
messing, no prevarication, no ambiguity, a straight-forward "Your cat  
will be run over on Tuesday, 'bout half-past two, by a speeding Post  
Office van."? Not recently, I'll bet. Mind you, those that have  
generally wished that they hadn't. For example, Elizabeth Barton (aka  
The Nun of Kent) with a history of trances and prophecies behind her,  
predicted that if Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon and married  
Anne Boleyn, then he'd die within a month. The King dropped by to see  
her after she'd been  carted off to the Tower, had a chat, then had  
her executed for treason. So busy being concerned about the future,  
she forgot about the present. Didn't matter if her visions were real  
or faked, to "encompass or imagine the death of our lord the king"  
was one of the seven definitions of high treason. And she was wrong  
anyway.
You have to laugh, don't you?

There is one sub-group that tends towards specificity, those  
forecasting the end of the world or some such trivia, and there have  
been an awful lot of them over the centuries. A considerable majority  
of these forecasts are predicted to occur within the expected life- 
time of the forecaster, who invariably considers him/herself one of  
the elect who, due to divine dispensation will avoid the general  
nastiness visited on everyone else and proceed straight to their  
preferred nirvana.
Sort of "Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 dolours...."

Not a few, when the due date passes without the expected  
Gotterdamarung son et lumiere, show considerable resilience by  
redoing their sums and coming up with a new date, sometimes more than  
once. Yet still their followers do not dessert them. Just supports  
the contention that man is not a rational being, merely a  
rationalising one.

Yet despite the dodgy track record demonstrated by futurologists  
throughout the ages, they get a much kinder treatment in fiction.  
There every prophecy turns out to be valid - unless it's a deliberate  
fake uttered for misleading and dastardly purposes. Reasonable  
enough, one thinks. These little snippets are usually clues (of the  
conundrum variety) intended to give the protagonists (and sometimes  
the reader) something to worry about. And always, but always, there's  
an irritating mentor figure who already knows what it's all about,  
but for various high-minded reasons doesn't see fit to enlighten the  
hero/heroine, even though this would prevent an awful lot of trouble  
- and about two volumes in the three volume series. The hero/heroine  
invariably has an impressive talent or two, but these never include  
intelligence, logic or the ability to conduct a risk assessment study  
before, fired up with boundless enthusiasm, he/she rushes off into a  
patently obvious trap. He/she never does figure out the true meaning  
of any prophecy - ever. It has to be explained in words of one  
syllable a couple of chapters from the end. Naturally our hero is gob- 
smacked at the deviousness of the words uttered by a slightly batty,  
scruffy and unwashed pensioner living in a hole in the ground and  
subsisting on nuts and the romance equivalent of road-kill. Who'd  
have thought it? Everyone but you, mate.

In conformity with her reputation for deviousness Jo has added a few  
twists to the standard fictional treatment of prophecies, seers and  
'here's a convoluted clue' brigade. There's more than a little  
ambivalence as to whether Divination is the real deal or if it's folk  
superstition that's got respectable solely through repetition. For a  
start the two characters that presumably reflect her own views and  
generally regarded as guides to what is true (in plot terms) can't be  
regarded as enthusiasts for the forecasting lark. DD was seriously  
considering dropping the subject from the school curriculum as  
worthless and Hermy is just plain dismissive. Even the super- 
stargazing Centaurs warn of the dangers of assuming that the future  
is up there for those that can read it. Well, OK, you may say - it  
matters not a jot whether that prophecy is true, but it does matter  
if characters *believe* it to be true. That belief will be enough to  
drive the plot along its arc as per the Ministry dust-up.
Couldn't agree more, and yet...

It's no secret that I'm a firm advocate of the Puppetmaster!DD  
heresy, and by extension have a strong suspicion that Sybill was DD's  
mouthpiece at the Inn, that he quite literally put words into her  
mouth. But what about the other prophecy, the one in PoA? Was it  
real, or was it too a bit of sleight-of-tongue? Hm. Difficult. Mind  
you, there are minor differences between the two. With the Inn  
episode, the stories from Sybill and DD don't quite match; DD reckons  
that the eavesdropper wasn't able to hear the prophecy  in its  
entirety, yet old Syb, who should have been in a trance, recollects  
Snape bursting into the room. Somebody is leading us up the garden  
path. Might even be Jo - if the eavesdropper is not Sevvy after all.  
Again, in HBP she reports that she'd felt "a little odd", whereas on  
PoA  she thinks she may just have "drifted off". Not quite the same  
thing. Is it a significant difference? Are both real prophecies, is  
one real (if so, which?), or are both fake?

BTW - a stray thought regarding the prophecy.
With a fully paid up membership of the Puppetmaster!DD club, and an  
addiction to twisty thinking, it took all of 15 seconds on the first  
reading of OoP to arrive at the conclusion that "neither can live"  
referred to James and Lily and that DD therefore knew in advance that  
they would have to be sacrificed for Harry to gain protection - and  
did nothing. Not a popular theory with the DD cheering section.  
However, it has occurred to me that the "neither can live while the  
other survives", indeed the whole Dark Lord shtick can be tied to  
another fragment of my aberrant logic. PT - of course. Suppose that  
the prophesy isn't about Voldy and Harry - after all, Voldy's name  
doesn't get mentioned. Suppose it's meant to be about Harry and  
Sally, and that fragment inside the Potter noggin, and that Voldy is  
mostly incidental to the situation, he's just the one that passed it on.

Then there's Ron.
He's got a reputation for throw-away lines and jokes which turn out  
to be uncannily close to eventual events. He's probably got a better  
track record than Sybill. Of course, if a popular theory of  
yesteryear (that there is an unmentioned dead Weasley son) is  
correct, then that would make Ron a seventh son. Hmm. I wonder how  
many brothers Arthur had? Six perhaps? Now that would be really sneaky.

Though that's Jo for you. Will it all work out according to the  
confused ramblings of a dodgy old bat or is there more to it?
Is the prophecy a glimpse of the future or a cunning ploy designed to  
influence the future?
Only a few months before we find out and in the meantime Jo keeps us  
guessing, 'cos if we're uncertain about a key 'fact' then reader  
predictions become ever more tentative.

Kneasy