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

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.