(03-21-2015, 06:05 PM)cuideag Wrote: I hand wave A LOT of things. I've never fought a soul in my life and goodness knows I would probably kill myself trying to smelt metals. I'm also incredibly bad at studying things. Tried to do some research into tarot and haruspicy once but it all just kind of flew over my head.tarot's way easier than it first appears, you just gotta pick up the "meanings" of the cards then you learn to make shit up on the spot when you do readings for people
think of it less as a magical exercise and more a literary one
picking up cold reading/hot reading techniques helps too, there's a lot of guessing involved in tarot
haruspicy is a little harder to understand because it's an ancient thing that's more or less fallen out of practice, it's fairly well-documented though - history books are your friend
all methods of divination function more or less on the same principles anyway, the only difference is in the physical medium used - fire, birds, guts, cards, bones, weather, etc.
learn one method and you've learnt 'em all