Good Omens...And Bad: Prophecy in Theory and Practice, Class Six

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

Monday, October 9, First Period

Since it would be the first sign of the apocalypse if there wasn't a table laden with breakfast pastries and tea...there is indeed a table laden with breakfast pastries and tea. There is also a pile of review handouts for the students to pick up on their way in.

"Good morning everyone. I hope you all had an enjoyable time at the Homecoming festivities. Before we begin, I'd like to remind Miss Halliwell to please turn in your take-home test from the Lab." He smiled at Phoebe.

"Today we're going to have a review of the material we've covered in the first five weeks of class, followed by a test on that material. Your handouts should help you in reviewing, and this is the time to ask any questions you might have."

REVIEW:
Review of Class One: Definitions, categories of divination, prophecy in daily life
Review of Class Two: major historical figures
Review of Class Three: prophecy in legend and folklore
Review of Class Four: interpreting prophecy
Review of Class Five: dream symbolism

TEST: Test can be found in the OCD threads, handwavey or real answers as you like.

HOMEWORK:
"Your homework assignment is to consider how you would react to the following scenario: You have an acquaintance who is the subject of a personal prophecy. They are aware of this prophecy, and are unhappy with the predicted outcome. What sort of advice would you offer them, and how would you support them in their decision to either accept or reject their role in the prophecy? This assignment is only for personal contemplation, you are not required to submit any sort of written answers."

Syllabus
Class Roster
Classes Linkdrop

[ooc: Please wait for OCD threads are up and ready to be tagged!]

Comments

Sign In

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

In a manner like that which collapses.

Re: Sign In

[demonbelthazor]

Belthazor

Ask Questions

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

Here's the place to ask any questions you might have during the test review.

Test!

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

SHORT ANSWER
1. Define prophecy.

2. What was the Delphic Sibyl?

3. Describe one work of written literature that contains prophetic work.

4. There are six dream types that nearly everyone experiences at some point. One of these is Flying. What are the other five?

SHORT ESSAY
5. Explain three of the eleven Principles of Interpreting Prophecy that were discussed in class.

6. Michel de Nostradamus never accepted the title of Prophet, and was considered by many of his peers to be incompetent in the field of astrology. His written prophecies are filled with references to earlier literary works. In fact, the work that he is most famous for is titled The Prophecies by M. Michel Nostradamus, not The Prophecies of M. Michel Nostradamus. Despite all of this, he continues to be revered as one of the foremost prophetic figures in Earth history. In your opinion, should Nostradamus be considered a seer, a charlatan, or something in between. Explain.


7. BONUS: Do you feel that the subject of a prophecy should be informed of what that prophecy says? Why or why not?

Re: Test!

[joxertehmighty.livejournal.com]

1. Saying things that are going to happen which haven't actually happenend yet.

2. The Oracle at Delphi? She's a prophet from my time, actually. At Delphi.

3. Pat the Bunny

4. Falling, Eating, Dancing, Hunting, and Drowning.

5. I don't think I can.

6. He had to be pretty smart to write all those words. But the fact that I don't understand any of them, well, that'd probably makes him extra smart. So, he's probably a seer. I think.

7. Maybe? If you really like them?

Re: Test!

[strongestgirl.livejournal.com]

1. A pronouncement of future events drawn from some divine or mystic source.

2. The priestess who would breathe in natural gasses that came up through a crack in the earth at Delphi and answer questions about the future.

3. Accurate Prophecies of the Nice Witch Agnes Nutter

4. Falling, Naked, Test, Chase, and Teeth.

5.
- 1. Understand the point of prophesy. ((Pippi wasn't sure what that meant actually but she knew it was the right answer.
- 2. Remember the prophesy doesn't negate free will. When giving the prophesy, try to make sure your audience understands that as well.
- 3. Give careful consideration to the meaning of the words. As words are tricky things even when not dealing with prophesy.
- 4. Understand what kind of prophesy you're dealing with.
- 5. Is the prophesy concerned with long term or short term?
- 6. Keep in mind the source of the prophesy, as cultural influences may come into play.
- 7. Understanding the "voice" of the prophesy. Is it poetic, musical, rambling? Punctuation can make the words mean different things, is the way the words are parsed a result of what the prophesy is trying to say? Or because it's being made to fit a certain cadence? This goes back to #3.
- 8. Is the prophesy conditional? Despite #2, the prophesy may be telling you that you have a better chance of avoiding or bringing about an event if certain other events happen or do not happen.
- 9. Has the prophesy already been fulfilled? Is the prophesy about a recurring event?
- 10. Just because something important has happened, doesn't mean there was a prophesy about it. Some prophesies could be about events that would be insignificant to all but one or a few people.
- 11. Interpreting a prophesy is tricky, watch yourself.

6. I could not say that Nostradamus was a charlatan. Going by information we have about his work in other areas, such as medicine, and things written about him by his family and associates, he seems to have been an earnest fellow. The humility shown in the use of the word "by" rather then "of", while I suppose it could be false, is refreshing. I would call him a seer. Though I would not venture a guess as to if everything he saw was genuine.

7. In many ways, this is the question that prompted me to join this class. There is not room nor time for me to express my feelings, though they are somewhat clearer then they had been.

Re: Test!

[demonbelthazor]

SHORT ANSWER
1. Prophecy is the prediction of future events as if by divine inspiration..

2. The Delphic Sibyl was a legendary figure who gave prophecies in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.

3. J. R. R. Tolkein's The King of the Bracelets

4. Naked, Chase, Teeth, Falling, and Exam.

SHORT ESSAY
5. *handwavey*

6. *handwavey*

7. Maybe they should know, but maybe they'll just waste their time and energy trying to change what they can't change.

Re: Test!

[oatmanspatient.livejournal.com]

1. Knowledge of the future usually obtained from a divine or mystical source

2. A legendary figure who gave prophecies in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi.

3. The Bible.

4. Being chased, Sex, Naked in front of the entire school, Sex and Sex in front of the entire school naked.

SHORT ESSAY
5. Start with an understanding of the primary purposes of prophecy: A method of sharing information. that serves to inform, convince and motivate the recipients.

Emphasis on prophecy must be properly directed: Misinterpreted and misused prophecies can cause more harm than never having had the information at all.

Understand what the words mean: Interpretation is a bitch.

6. Whack Job. Sure he got some things right but really isn't he a figure that's just been popularized by the media? Honestly I'm thinking he's just a hoax.


7. Sure. Nothing like knowing you're going to either save or doom a bunch of people. Otherwise what's the point of a prophecy.

Re: Test!

[lovechildblair.livejournal.com]

1. Prophecy can be defined as using mystical means to gather information about the future.

2. The Delphic Sibyl was a prophtess. Legend says that she was the daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph. She apparently lived for a long time and might have propheised the birth of Christ.

3. The Bhavishya Purana is an ancient Sanskrit text authored by Rishi Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedic texts. It is one of the 18 major Puranas and it contains the prophecies of important events of the world.

4. Naked, chase, teeth, falling and exam.

SHORT ESSAY
5. Handwaved answer that explains everything.

6. Look, here's another handwavy answer that talks about how Nostradamus is a hack

7. BONUS: Do you feel that the subject of a prophecy should be informed of what that prophecy says? Why or why not?

7. Yes. I think that if the subject wasn't supposed to know what the prophecy said then the universe wouldn't have allowed it to be heard. It's kismet.

Re: Test!

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

Anders turned in a totally handwaved because his player's brain is just not at all in it test with answers that were vague and a bit too general, but in the general vicinity of correct. Right about where the radio signals from the metropolitan center of Correctness start to go a wee bit fuzzy. His short essays? About three sentences long, but at least they were compound sentences.


He did, however, note that he had once known a girl named Sibyl back home in Delphi, who pushed his face into a mud pie when he was five and she was seven.

Re: Test!

[walter-n-wires.livejournal.com]

1. Information about the future, or a potential one, obtained mystically

2. A seer who gave prophecies at Delphi. (Not the Delphic Oracle.) She may have predicted the birth of Jesus and was the grand-daughter of Poseidon.

3. The book of Revelation in the Bible.

4. Naked, Chase, Teeth, Falling, Exam

5. Understand the words, the cultural and "environmental" context, and whether it's conditional or not. The prophet might give the prophecy in terms they can understand, but if you're from another time or place or speak a different language, you may misunderstand if you don't take the prophet's context into account. Maybe someone gives a prophecy about "great metal birds" and now we interpret it as aeroplanes, but the prophet really did mean a great metal bird from outer space that comes and makes its next in the front gardens at Buckingham. Or it's conditional, "if a fight breaks out in Parliament between an MP and a clown, then the great metal bird will come." Which makes you wonder - what's the difference between the MP and the clown?

6. I don't know. I wasn't there when he wrote the prophecies. I don't know what his sources were. I don't know what he saw or meant with his writings. Are people reading into the predictions after the fact? It's possible that the prophecies were just vaguely worded enough that if we wait long enough, some event will occur we could twist every one of them to apply to.

7. I think it is situational, but often, yes. I know something about my potential future that I do not want to happen. I might or might not be able to prevent it, but I think that knowing lets me make choices I might not otherwise even if I don't think it's as easy as just never wearing a ponytail or monocle.

Re: Test!

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

It occurred to Dawn that if she had remembered there had been a test, she would have actually spent last night studying for it. Oops.

SHORT ANSWER
1. Define prophecy.

Information about the future, or a possible future, obtained through mystical means.

2. What was the Delphic Sibyl?

The Delphic Sibyl was a legendary figure who gave prophecies in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. According to a late source, her mother was Lamia, daughter of Poseidon. One of the legends surrounding her says that her last prophecy heralded the birth of Jesus Christ.

3. Describe one work of written literature that contains prophetic work.

An ancient Sanskrit text called the Bhavishya Purana contains predictions of important world events. It uses past tense which is a huge pain to translate, thanks in the language of the book as Hindu philosophy maintains that the past will recur in the future and the future has happened. It is regarded as 'the Book of Prophecies'.

4. There are six dream types that nearly everyone experiences at some point. One of these is Flying. What are the other five?

Naked, Chase but not naked Cordelia Chase unless you're Xander or maybe Willow later, Teeth, Falling, and Exam.

SHORT ESSAY
5. Explain three of the eleven Principles of Interpreting Prophecy that were discussed in class.

a) Understand What the Words Mean.

Each word has a very definite and precise meaning, not just in general, but inside that prophecy. If you have the wrong meaning, it can throw your entire interpretation out of whack.

b) Consider the historical, cultural, social, political, moral and religious context.

First, this tells you whether the prophecy has already come to pass. Second, you have to use all these contextual clues to give you a true interpretation (or find out if someone just wrote a prophecy so they could pay for groceries for the month).

c) Determine whether the prophecy has already been fulfilled.

Because if it's already happened, you don't need to worry about it. Duh. Although, just to make things more complicated, sometimes they can be set to happen twice or in more than one way.



6. Michel de Nostradamus never accepted the title of Prophet, and was considered by many of his peers to be incompetent in the field of astrology. His written prophecies are filled with references to earlier literary works. In fact, the work that he is most famous for is titled The Prophecies by M. Michel Nostradamus, not The Prophecies of M. Michel Nostradamus. Despite all of this, he continues to be revered as one of the foremost prophetic figures in Earth history. In your opinion, should Nostradamus be considered a seer, a charlatan, or something in between. Explain.

The associations made between world events and Nostradamus' quatrains are largely the result of misinterpretations or mistranslations (sometimes deliberate) or else are so tenuous as to render them useless as evidence of any genuine predictive power. Moreover, none of the sources listed offers any evidence that anyone has ever succeeded in interpreting any of Nostradamus' quatrains specifically enough to allow a clear identification of any event in advance. That being said, however, there is just enough accuracy in the quatrains to make his prophecies totally discountable. They should just be taken with a very large grain of salt. And maybe some alcohol.


7. BONUS: Do you feel that the subject of a prophecy should be informed of what that prophecy says? Why or why not?

No. If a prophecy is going to come true, it will come true whether the subject is told or not. Telling them ahead of time will do nothing but scare them and maybe help to bring it about.

Yes. People have a right to know and control their own destinies.

...It depends on what the prophecy says.

Re: Test!

[singasoloduet.livejournal.com]

Agnes did moderately well, answering all of the questions, but probably not doing A work but I already did one test for one character, and I'm lazy.

Re: Test!

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge does pretty well with most of the test... until he gets to the bonus question. He considers just leaving and not answering it, but eventually decides to write something.

Yes and no. Sometimes, I've *wanted* to tell him a person about a vision I've had about them, but staying quiet was the "right" thing to do, so I did. Even though it felt wrong.

Re: Test!

[nadiathesaint]

Nadia handwavily took the majority of the test because her mun is juuuuuuust a little too braindeadish to do it all ICly. She was pretty sure she did well.

The bonus was the one she found really interesting, though.

7. I think that depends, and not just on the prophesy, but on the person. For example, suppose a prophesy were made about a person's death, detailing the time and place of that happening. Some might take this as due warning and try their best to change it. Some might take it as meaning they can do whatever they want, since they know how they're going to die and it isn't happening yet, perhaps becoming overly reckless. And some might become so depressed by it that they stop doing anything at all.

Re: Test!

[saltandammo.livejournal.com]

1. Knowledge about future events, that may or may not happen.
2. She was this chick in Ancient Greece who prophesised when she got high off these gases that she breathed in from a crack in the ground.
3. The bible, the book of revelations. It describes a possible way the world will end.
4. Falling, Teeth, Naked, Chase, and Exam. Which hey, means this might all be a dream.

Dean answered the essay questions accurately though with less formal language than is usually wanted for school essays.

7. I know if I was the subject I'd want to know. But I can see how sometimes it could be a bad thing. Still, I wouldn't want someone who has seen something have to deal with that burden all by themselves. They should share and then everyone involved can figure out how to deal together.

Re: Test!

[likethegun]

1. Prophecy is information about the future, or what the future might be like, that is obtained through some sort of divine or mystical method.

2. The Delphic Sibyl was a seer in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. One of the most famous legends about her is that she predicted the birth of Jesus Christ.

3. "The King of the Bracelets," by J. R. R. Tolkien.

4. Naked, Chase, Teeth, Falling, and Exam.

5. *detailed handwavey answer*

6. *detailed handwavey answer*

7. I think it depends on the prophecy, and on the person. Prophecies can be dangerous if the subject is the kind of person who will let their entire lives be ruled by what a prophecy says. But if the subject understands that prophecies aren't always set in stone, and that they can still live their own lives if they just try to, then informing them of the prophecy is safer, and there's no reason to keep the truth from them.

Re: Test!

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

*Handwavey About a B.*

Re: Test!

[sensethevisions]

Phoebe turned in her take-home test and then worked on this one.

SHORT ANSWER
1. Define prophecy. --- the foretelling or prediction of what is to come.

2. What was the Delphic Sibyl? --- The Delphic Sibyl was a legendary figure who gave prophecies in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus.

3. Describe one work of written literature that contains prophetic work. --- The Bible is considered to be a text that is full of prohecies and prophets. This text is held sacred by a great many people.

4. There are six dream types that nearly everyone experiences at some point. One of these is Flying. What are the other five? --- Normal people, or me? Naked, Chase, Falling, Exam.


SHORT ESSAY
5. Explain three of the eleven Principles of Interpreting Prophecy that were discussed in class. --- Start with an understanding of the primary purposes of prophecy.. Different prohecies can have more than one purpose and you need to find the underlying purpose in the prohecy before you can start to trace the threads and knit them into something that makes sense. Understand what the words mean. Because of the way prohecies and the languages used in them is set up, one word can mean so many things. You need to know the context of the word in order to kow the meaning as translating it wrong could spell disaster or hurt feelings. Understand the pitfalls of interpreting literally or figuratively. We should interpret a prophecy by asking, "What did the writer mean?" The writer may have intended a figurative meaning. Of course, to understand the figure of speech or the metaphor, we must first understand what the words mean literally. But we cannot arbitrarily reject all other possibilities. On the other hand, a strictly figurative interpretation can lead us to the same bad results, where a prophecy can be made to mean essentially whatever the interpreter wants it to mean. This negates any usefulness the prophecy might have once had. The best interpretation is a careful and education combination of both literal and figurative, based upon the historical and literary context of the prophecy.

6. Michel de Nostradamus never accepted the title of Prophet, and was considered by many of his peers to be incompetent in the field of astrology. His written prophecies are filled with references to earlier literary works. In fact, the work that he is most famous for is titled The Prophecies by M. Michel Nostradamus, not The Prophecies of M. Michel Nostradamus. Despite all of this, he continues to be revered as one of the foremost prophetic figures in Earth history. In your opinion, should Nostradamus be considered a seer, a charlatan, or something in between. Explain. Nostradamus was a bad poet with a good imagination and some of his quatraines have hit lucky guesses. The thing is, his followers will move things around to try to make people believe that he was/is a prophet. I just think he was a bad poet whose followers have overactive imaginations.


7. BONUS: Do you feel that the subject of a prophecy should be informed of what that prophecy says? Why or why not? *Phoebe may have done a few headdesks at that question* What I feel or think about this is irrelevant. When you're the Seer in question and you have a duty to fulfil, you don't actually seem to get a choice on what should be done in a case like this.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

Not during the test!

Re: Talk Amongst Yourselves

[lilpunkinbelly.livejournal.com]

Dawn wrote down the homework assignment, but was really unhappy about the scenario. It hit a little too close to home.

Re: Talk Amongst Yourselves

[apocalypsesoon.livejournal.com]

JOhn wrote downt he homework, frowning.

After Class

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

He's on his way to office hours, but if you need him briefly you can catch him on the way out.

OOC

[a-phale.livejournal.com]

Because without it, all the other threads would slide off the bottom of the screen.

Re: OOC

[oatmanspatient.livejournal.com]

But what about comments underneath the OOC thread? Aren't we in danger of..

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